Poetry poems
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Cliff Swallows-Missouri Breaks by Debra Nystrom: American Life in Poetry #29 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet L
© Ted Kooser
Many of you have seen flocks of birds or schools of minnows acting as if they were guided by a common intelligence, turning together, stopping together. Here is a poem by Debra Nystrom that beautifully describes a flight of swallows returning to their nests, acting as if they were of one mind. Notice how she extends the description to comment on the way human behavior differs from that of the birds.
Cliff Swallows
-Missouri Breaks
The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog by Alicia Ostriker : American Life in Poetry #
© Ted Kooser
Alicia Suskin Ostriker is one of our country’s finest poets. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey. I thought that today you might like to have us offer you a poem full of blessings.
The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
To be blessed
Elegance by Linda Gregg: American Life in Poetry #142 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
There's that old business about the tree falling in the middle of the forest with no one to hear it: does it make a noise? Here Linda Gregg, of New York, offers us a look at an elegant beauty that can be presumed to exist and persist without an observer.
Elegance
Propertius's Bid For Immortality
© Franklin Pierce Adams
Let us return, then, for a time,
To our accustomed round of rhyme;
And let my songs' familiar art
Not fail to move my lady's heart.
My Father Holds the Door for Yoko Ono by Christopher Chambers: American Life in Poetry #88 Ted Koose
© Ted Kooser
This wistful poem shows how the familiar and the odd, the real and imaginary, exist side by side. A Midwestern father transforms himself from a staid businessman into a rock-n-roll star, reclaiming a piece of his imaginary youth. In the end, it shows how fragile moments might be recovered to offer a glimpse into our inner lives.
Geology by Bob King: American Life in Poetry #46 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, "Well, you know, love is like...it's like...well, YOU know what it's like." Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.
Geology
Moss by Bruce Guernsey: American Life in Poetry #78 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
greening in the dark,
longing for north,
the silence
of birds gone south.
Deliverance Through Art
© Lesbia Harford
When I am making poetry I'm good
And happy then.
I live in a deep world of angelhood
Afar from men.
And What Have You To Say?
© Henry Lawson
I MIND the days when ladies fair
Helped on my overcoat,
And tucked the silken handkerchief
About my precious throat;
They used to see the poets soul
In every song I wrote.
Poetry
© Boris Pasternak
Yes, I shall swear by you, my verse,
I shall wheeze out, before I swoon:
You're not a tenor's shape and voice,
You're summer travelling third class,
You are a suburb, not a tune.
I Was Always Leaving by Jean Nordhaus : American Life in Poetry #224 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
© Ted Kooser
When we're young, it seems there are endless possibilities for lives we might lead, and then as we grow older and the opportunities get fewer we begin to realize that the life we've been given is the only one we're likely to get. Here's Jean Nordhaus, of the Washington, D.C. area, exploring this process.
I Was Always Leaving
I was always leaving, I was
Tomes
© William Taylor Collins
There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
Don Juan: Canto The Twelfth
© George Gordon Byron
Of all the barbarous middle ages, that
Which is most barbarous is the middle age
Rosemary
© Madison Julius Cawein
Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay;
Around her, flowers scattered earth with gold,
Or down the path in insolence held sway--
Like cavaliers who ride the elves' highway--
Scarlet and blue, within a garden old.
December 23, 1879
© George MacDonald
A thousand houses of poesy stand around me everywhere;
They fill the earth and they fill my thought, they are in and above the
air;
But to-night they have shut their doors, they have shut their shining
windows fair,
And I am left in a desert world, with an aching as if of care.
I Am With Terrorism
© Nizar Qabbani
We are accused of terrorism:
if we wrote about the ruins of a homeland
torn, weak...
a homeland with no address
and an nation with no names
The Task : Complete
© William Cowper
In man or woman, but far most in man,
And most of all in man that ministers
And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe
All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn;
Object of my implacable disgust.
Today's News by David Tucker: American Life in Poetry #156 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
We greatly appreciate your newspaper's use of this column, and today we want to recognize newspaper employees by including a poem from the inside of a newsroom. David Tucker is deputy managing editor of the New Jersey âStar-Ledgerâ? and has been a reporter and editor at the âToronto Starâ? and the âPhiladelphia Inquirer.â? He was on the âStar-Ledgerâ? team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Mr. Tucker was awarded a Witter-Bynner fellowship for poetry in 2007 by former U. S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall.
Today's News
On Our Eleventh Anniversary by Susan Browne : American Life in Poetry #214 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet La
© Ted Kooser
Sometimes I wonder at my wife's forbearance. She's heard me tell the same stories dozens of times, and she still politely laughs when she should. Here's a poem by Susan Browne, of California, that treats an oft-told story with great tenderness.
On Our Eleventh Anniversary
You're telling that story again about your childhood,
