Poetry poems
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Faith by Judy Loest : American Life in Poetry #216 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Judy Loest lives in Knoxville and, like many fine Appalachian writers, her poems have a welcoming conversational style, rooted in that region's storytelling tradition. How gracefully she sweeps us into the landscape and the scene!
Faith
Leaves drift from the cemetery oaks onto late grass,
In November by Lisel Mueller: American Life in Poetry #85 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
The Illinois poet, Lisel Mueller, is one of our country's finest writers, and the following lines, with their grace and humility, are representative of her poems of quiet celebration.
Sober Song by Barton Sutter: American Life in Poetry #6 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Rhyme has a way of lightening the spirit of a poem, and in this instance, the plural, spirits, is the appropriate word choice. Lots of readers can relate to "Sober Song," which originally appeared in North Dakota Quarterly. Barton Sutter is a Minnesota poet, essayist, and fiction writer who has won awards in all three genres.
Sober Song
To Giovanni Bellini
© Richard Monckton Milnes
Thou didst not slight with vain and partial scorn
The inspirations of our nature's youth,
Knowing that Beauty, wheresoe'er 'tis born,
Must ever be the foster--child of Truth.
The Inevitable by Allan Peterson: American Life in Poetry #159 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Bad news all too often arrives with a ringing telephone, all too early in the morning. But sometimes it comes with less emphasis, by regular mail. Here Allan Peterson of Florida gets at the feelings of receiving bad news by letter, not by directly stating how he feels but by suddenly noticing the world that surrounds the moment when that news arrives.
The Inevitable
Catching the Moles by Judith Kitchen: American Life in Poetry #106 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 20
© Ted Kooser
By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen presents an experience that resonates beyond the simple details, and suggests that children can learn important lessons through observation of the natural world.
Catching the Moles
First we tamp down the ridges
that criss-cross the yard
The Muses Threnodie: Third Muse
© Henry Adamson
These be the first memorials of a bridge,
Good Monsier, that we truely can alledge.
Thus spoke good Gall, and I did much rejoyce
To hear him these antiquities disclose;
Which I remembering now, of force must cry
Gall, sweetest Gall, what ailed thee to die?
Sonnet LVI. Music And Poetry. 2.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
YET words though weak are all that poets own
Wherewith their muse translates that kindred muse
Of Harmony, whose subtle forms and hues
Float in the unlanguaged poesy of Tone.
The Fear
© Pablo Neruda
They all ask me to jump
to invigorate and to play soccer,
to run, to swim and to fly.
Very well.
A Small Moment by Cornelius Eady: American Life in Poetry #197 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
I suspect that one thing some people have against reading poems is that they are so often so serious, so devoid of joy, as if we poets spend all our time brooding about mutability and death and never having any fun. Here Cornelius Eady, who lives and teaches in Indiana, offers us a poem of pure pleasure.
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire
© George Gordon Byron
These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the bards to whom the muse must bow;
While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.
Something Nasty In The Bookshop
© Kingsley Amis
Between the Gardening and the Cookery
Comes the brief Poetry shelf;
By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology
Offers itself.
To A Child
© Christopher Morley
The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.
Safari, Rift Valley by Roy Jacobstein: American Life in Poetry #116 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
It's the oldest kind of story: somebody ventures deep into the woods and comes back with a tale. Here Roy Jacobstein returns to America to relate his experience on a safari to the place believed by archaeologists to be the original site of human life. And against this ancient backdrop he closes with a suggestion of the brevity of our lives.
To Mr. Thomas Southern, on his Birth-Day
© Alexander Pope
Resign'd to live, prepar'd to die,
With not one sin, but poetry,
Fire Victim by Ned Balbo : American Life in Poetry #271 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
It’s not uncommon for people to turn their eyes away from those who bear the scars of misfortune. Here’s a poem about that by Ned Balbo, who lives and teaches in Maryland.
Fire Victim
Once, boarding the train to New York City,
The Bestiary: or Orpheuss Procession
© Guillaume Apollinaire
Admire the vital power
And nobility of line:
Its the voice that the light made us understand here
That Hermes Trismegistus writes of in Pimander.
