Poetry poems
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Anniversary by Cecilia Woloch: American Life in Poetry #204 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Memories form around details the way a pearl forms around a grain of sand, and in this commemoration of an anniversary, Cecilia Woloch reaches back to grasp a few details that promise to bring a cherished memory forward, and succeeds in doing so. The poet lives and teaches in southern California.
Anniversary
Future Poetry
© Alice Meynell
No new delights to our desire
The singers of the past can yield.
I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
Poets unborn and unrevealed.
"I stand alone at the foot " by William Kloefkorn: American Life in Poetry #147 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poe
© Ted Kooser
Our earliest recollections are often imprinted in our memories because they were associated with some kind of stress. Here, in an untitled poem, the Nebraska State Poet, William Kloefkorn, brings back a difficult moment from many years before, and makes a late confession:
"I stand alone at the foot "
Cicely
© Francis Bret Harte
Cicely says you're a poet; maybe,--I ain't much on rhyme:
I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry!--that's the way some chaps puts up an idee,
But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that's what's the matter with me.
The Other Fathers by Lyn Lifshin : American Life in Poetry #251 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
The poet Lyn Lifshin, who divides her time between New York and Virginia, is one of the most prolific poets among my contemporaries, and has thousands of poems in print, by my loose reckoning. I have been reading her work in literary magazines for at least thirty years. Here’s a good example of this poet at her best.
Love Worn by Lita Hooper: American Life in Poetry #75 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
In many American poems, the poet makes a personal appearance and offers us a revealing monologue from center stage, but there are lots of fine poems in which the poet, a stranger in a strange place, observes the lives of others from a distance and imagines her way into them. This poem by Lita Hooper is a good example of this kind of writing.
Love Worn
In a tavern on the Southside of Chicago
a man sits with his wife. From their corner booth
each stares at strangers just beyond the other's shoulder,
nodding to the songs of their youth. Tonight they will not fight.
A Lesson In Drawing
© Nizar Qabbani
My son lays down his pens, his crayon box in
front of me
and asks me to draw a homeland for him.
The brush trembles in my hands
and I sink, weeping.
Sunflower by Frank Steele: American Life in Poetry #176 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Hearts and flowers, that's how some people dismiss poetry, suggesting that's all there is to it, just a bunch of sappy poets weeping over love and beauty. Well, poetry is lots more than that. At times it's a means of honoring the simple things about us. To illustrate the care with which one poet observes a flower, here's Frank Steele, of Kentucky, paying such close attention to a sunflower that he almost gets inside it.
Sunflower
Where Are You Poets?
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
Where are you, Poets, that a Hero dies
Unsung? He who, when Duty brought too soon
Radiator by Connie Wanek: American Life in Poetry #52 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
What a marvelous gift is the imagination, and each of us gets one at birth, free of charge and ready to start up, get on, and ride away. Can there be anything quite so homely and ordinary as a steam radiator? And yet, here, Connie Wanek, of Duluth, Minnesota, nudges one into play.
Radiator
Mittens are drying on the radiator,
boots nearby, one on its side.
Like some monstrous segmented insect
the radiator elongates under the window.
The Progress Of Refinement. Part II.
© Henry James Pye
CONTENTS OF PART II. Introduction.Sketch of the Northern barbarians.Feudal system.Origin of Chivalry.Superstition.Crusades. Hence the enfranchisement of Vassals, and Commerce encouraged. The Northern and Western Europeans, struck with the splendor of Constantinople, and the superior elegance of the Saracens.Origin of Romance. The remains of Science confined to the monasteries, and in an unknown language.Hence the distinction of learning.Discovery of the Roman Jurisprudence, and it's effects.Classic writers begin to be admiredArts revive in Italy.Greek learning introduced there, on the taking of Constantinople by the Turks.That event lamented.Learning encouraged by Leo X.Invention of Printing.The Reformation.It's effects, even on those countries that retained their old Religion. It's establishment in Britain.Age of Elizabeth. Arts and Literature flourish.Spenser.Shakespear. Milton.Dryden.The Progress of the Arts checked by the Civil War.Patronized in France. Age of Lewis XIV.Taste hurt in England during the profligate reign of Charles II.Short and turbulent reign of his Successor.King William no encourager of the Arts.Age of Queen Anne.Manners.Science and Literature flourish.Neglected by the first Princes of the House of Brunswick.Patronage of Arts by his present Majesty.Poetry not encouraged.Address to the King.General view of the present state of Refinement. Among the European Nations.France. Britain.Italy.Spain.Holland and Germany. Increasing Influence of French manners. Russia.Greece.Asia.China.Africa. America.Newly discovered islands.European Colonies.
Heartsease And Rue: Friendship
© James Russell Lowell
Natures benignly mixed of air and earth,
Now with the stars and now with equal zest
Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest.
Love Like Salt by Lisel Mueller: American Life in Poetry #16 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
There are thousands upon thousands of poems about love, many of them using predictable words, predictable rhymes. Ho-hum. But here the Illinois poet Lisel Mueller talks about love in a totally fresh and new way, in terms of table salt.
Love Like Salt
It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher
The Australian Bell-Bird
© Jean Ingelow
And 'Oyez, Oyez' following after me
On my great errand to the sundown went.
Lost, lost, and lost, whenas the cross road flee
Up tumbled hills, on each for eyes attent
A carriage creepeth.
At the Mermaid Caffeteria
© Christopher Morley
TRUTH is enough for prose:
Calmly it goes
To tell just what it knows.
Somebody Else's Baby by Mary Jo Salter: American Life in Poetry #97 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
Though parents know that their children will grow up and away from them, will love and be loved by others, it's a difficult thing to accept. Massachusetts poet Mary Jo Salter emphasizes the poignancy of the parent/child relationship in this perceptive and compelling poem.
Somebody Else's Baby
From now on they always are, for years now
they always have been, but from now on you know
they are, they always will be,
Ironing After Midnight by Marsha Truman Cooper: American Life in Poetry #69 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet La
© Ted Kooser
This marvelous poem by the California poet Marsha Truman Cooper perfectly captures the world of ironing, complete with its intimacy. At the end, doing a job to perfection, pressing the perfect edge, establishes a reassuring order to an otherwise mundane and slightly tawdry world.
Ironing After Midnight
