Poems begining by P
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Praeludium
© Benjamin Jonson
And must I sing? What subject shall I choose!
Or whose great name in poets' heaven use,
For the more countenance to my active muse?
Pictures From Theocritus
© William Lisle Bowles
Goat-herd, how sweet above the lucid spring
The high pines wave with breezy murmuring!
So sweet thy song, whose music might succeed
To the wild melodies of Pan's own reed.
Poem for My Twentieth Birthday
© Kenneth Koch
Passing the American graveyard, for my birthday
the crosses stuttering, white on tropical green,
the years quick focus of faces I do not remember . . .
Poor Old Lady
© Pierre Reverdy
Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Poor old lady, I think she'll die.
Pumberly Pott’s Unpredictable Niece
© Jack Prelutsky
Pumberly Pott’s unpredictable niece
declared with her usual zeal
that she would devour, by piece after piece,
her uncle’s new automobile.
Pity the Beautiful
© Dana Gioia
Pity the beautiful,
the dolls, and the dishes,
the babes with big daddies
granting their wishes.
Psyche in Somerville
© Denise Levertov
I am angry with X, with Y, with Z,
for not being you.
Enthusiasms jump at me,
wagging and barking. Go away.
Go home.
Passing
© Toi Derricotte
A professor invites me to his “Black Lit” class; they’re
reading Larson’s Passing. One of the black
Paris and Helen
© Judy Grahn
He called her: mother of pearl
barley woman, rice provider,
millet basket, corn maid,
flax princess, all-maker, weef
Poem with One Fact
© Donald Hall
"At pet stores in Detroit, you can buy
frozen rats
for seventy-five cents apiece, to feed
your pet boa constrictor"
back home in Grosse Pointe,
or in Grosse Pointe Park,
Puppet-Maker
© Charles Simic
In his fear of solitude, he made us.
Fearing eternity, he gave us time.
I hear his white cane thumping
Up and down the hall.
Peacock Display by David Wagoner: American Life in Poetry #11 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
Here David Wagoner, a distinguished poet living in Washington state, vividly describes a peacock courtship, and though it's a poem about birds, haven't you seen the males of other species, including ours, look every bit as puffed up, and observed the females' hilarious indifference?
Peacock Display
He approaches her, trailing his whole fortune,
Perfectly cocksure, and suddenly spreads
The huge fan of his tail for her amazement.
Pipes O' Pan At Zekesbury
© James Whitcomb Riley
The pipes of Pan! Not idler now are they
Than when their cunning fashioner first blew
Pig Song
© Margaret Atwood
This is what you changed me to:
a greypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,
