Poetry poems
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Sustenance by Ronald Wallace : American Life in Poetry #226 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Elizabeth Bishop, one of our greatest American poets, once wrote a long poem in which the sudden appearance of a moose on a highway creates a community among a group of strangers on a bus. Here Ronald Wallace, a Wisconsin poet, gives us a sighting with similar results.
Sustenance
The Crossing by Ruth Moose: American Life in Poetry #135 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
The road is wide
but he is called
by something
that knows him
on the other side.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright �© 2004 by Ruth Moose, whose most recent book of poetry is âThe Sleepwalker,â? Main Street Rag, 2007. Reprinted from â75 Poems on Retirement,â? edited by Robin Chapman and Judith Strasser, published by University of Iowa Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Summer Job by Richard Hoffman: American Life in Poetry #162 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Though at the time it may not occur to us to call it âmentoring,â? there's likely to be a good deal of that sort of thing going on, wanted or unwanted, whenever a young person works for someone older. Richard Hoffman of Massachusetts does a good job of portraying one of those teaching moments in this poem.
Summer Job
Poetry
© Ernest Hemingway
So now,
Losing the three last night,
Takeing them back today,
Dripping and dark the woods . . .
The Captive
© John Blight
This toil-free moment moves me to dissent
there are no hours of freedom, since the mind
An Extraordinary Adventure Which Happened To Me, Vladimir Mayakovsky, One Summer In The Country
© Vladimir Mayakovsky
A hundred suns the sunset fired,
into July summer shunted,
it was so hot,
even heat perspired-
The Wonder-Working Magician - Act I
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
TO THE MEMORY OF
SHELLEY,
WHOSE ADMIRATION FOR
"THE LIGHT AND ODOUR OF THE FLOWERY AND STARRY AUTOS"
IS THE HIGHEST TRIBUTE TO THE BEAUTY OF
CALDERON'S POETRY,
The Rain Poured Down by Dan Gerber: American Life in Poetry #18 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
Every reader of this column has at one time felt the frightening and paralyzing powerlessness of being a small child, unable to find a way to repair the world. Here the California poet, Dan Gerber, steps into memory to capture such a moment.
The Rain Poured Down
The Poetry Of Chaucer
© George Meredith
Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy
As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.
Tender to tearfulness--childlike, and manly, and motherly;
Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English
ground.
The Wind Chimes by Shirley Buettner: American Life in Poetry #37 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
Painful separations, through divorce, through death, through alienation, sometimes cause us to focus on the objects around us, often invested with sentiment. Here's Shirley Buettner, having packed up what's left of a relationship.
I Explain A Few Things
© Pablo Neruda
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
Nessmuk
© James Whitcomb Riley
I hail thee, Nessmuk, for the lofty tone
Yet simple grace that marks thy poetry!
At The Top Of My Voice - First Prelude
© Vladimir Mayakovsky
My most respected
comrades of posterity!
The Pastime of Pleasure : The First Part.
© Stephen Hawes
Here begynneth the passe tyme of pleasure.
Ryyght myghty prynce / & redoubted souerayne
Saylynge forthe well / in the shyppe of grace
Ouer the wawes / of this lyfe vncertayne
Silent Music by Floyd Skloot: American Life in Poetry #94 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
While many of the poems we feature in this column are written in open forms, that's not to say I don't respect good writing done in traditional meter and rhyme. But a number of contemporary poets, knowing how a rigid attachment to form can take charge of the writing and drag the poet along behind, will choose, say, the traditional villanelle form, then relax its restraints through the use of broken rhythm and inexact rhymes. I'd guess that if I weren't talking about it, you might not notice, reading this poem by Floyd Skloot, that you were reading a sonnet.
Silent Music
Medical History by Carrie Shipers: American Life in Poetry #152 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
A child with a sense of the dramatic, well, many of us have been that child. Here's Carrie Shipers of Missouri reminiscing about how she once wished for a dramatic rescue by screaming ambulance, only to find she was really longing for the comfort of her mother's hands.
Medical History
Stable by Claudia Emerson Andrews: American Life in Poetry #26 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Descriptive poetry depends for its effects in part upon the vividness of details. Here the Virginia poet, Claudia Emerson, describes the type of old building all of us have seen but may not have stopped to look at carefully. And thoughtfully.
Stable
