Poetry poems
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The Woman Who Collects Noah's Arks by Janet McCann: American Life in Poetry #15 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poe
© Ted Kooser
Many of us are collectors, attaching special meaning to the inanimate objects we acquire. Here, Texas poet Janet McCann gives us insight into the significance of one woman's collection. The abundance and variety of detail suggest the clutter of such a life.
The Woman Who Collects Noah's Arks
A Song Of Greek Prose
© Robert Fuller Murray
Thrice happy are those
Who ne'er heard of Greek Prose
Or Greek Poetry either, as far as that goes;
For Liddell and Scott
Shall cumber them not,
Nor Sargent nor Sidgwick shall break their repose.
Afterwards by David Baker: American Life in Poetry #133 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
It may be that we are most alone when attending funerals, at least that's how it seems to me. By alone I mean that even among throngs of mourners we pull back within ourselves and peer out at life as if through a window. David Baker, an Ohio poet, offers us a picture of a funeral that could be anybody's.
Afterwards
A short ride in the van, then the eight of us
there in the heatâwhite shirtsleeves sticking,
the women's gloves offâfanning our faces.
The workers had set up a big blue tent
Dear Birds, Tell This To Mothers
© Eli Siegel
Fly, birds, over all grieving mothers.
Tell them, if they know more,
They will grieve less.
Tell them that the children they grieve for
Written In Juice Of Lemon
© Abraham Cowley
Whilst what I write I do not see,
I dare thus, ev'n to you, write poetry.
Ah, foolish Muse! which dost so high aspire,
And know'st her judgment well,
How much it does thy power excel,
Yet dar'st be read by, thy just doom, the fire.
Sister Songs-An Offering To Two Sisters - Part The First
© Francis Thompson
The leaves dance, the leaves sing,
The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring.
Bankruptcy Hearing by Dana Bisignani : American Life in Poetry #260 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
These days are brim full of bad news about our economy-businesses closing, people losing their houses, their jobs. If there’s any comfort in a situation like this, it’s in the fact that there’s a big community of sufferers. Here’s a poem by Dana Bisignani, who lives in Indiana, that describes what it feels like to sit through a bankruptcy hearing.
Bankruptcy Hearing
Gathering Leaves in Grade School by Judith Harris: American Life in Poetry #183 Ted Kooser, U.S. Po
© Ted Kooser
Perhaps you made paper leaves when you were in grade school. I did. But are our memories as richly detailed as these by Washington, D.C. poet, Judith Harris?
Gathering Leaves in Grade School
First Grade by Ron Koertge : American Life in Poetry #230 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
It’s been sixty-odd years since I was in the elementary grades, but I clearly remember those first school days in early autumn, when summer was suddenly over and we were all perched in our little desks facing into the future. Here Ron Koertge of California gives us a glimpse of a day like that.
First Grade
Aubade by Dore Kiesselbach : American Life in Poetry #237 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
An aubade is a poem about separation at dawn, but as you’ll see, this one by Dore Kiesselbach, who lives in Minnesota, is about the complex relationship between a son and his mother.
Aubade
78 RPM by Jeff Daniel Marion : American Life in Poetry #265 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Tell a whiny child that she sounds like a broken record, and she’s likely to say, “What’s a record?” Jeff Daniel Marion, a Tennessee poet, tells us not only what 78 rpm records were, but what they meant to the people who played them, and to those who remember the people who played them.
78 RPM
On Donne's Poetry
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
Family Reunion by Catherine Barnett: American Life in Poetry #67 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill,
until finally we joined him, making margaritas,
cutting the fat off the bone.
Veterans of the Seventies by Marvin Bell: American Life in Poetry #146 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat
© Ted Kooser
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a new name for âshell shock,â? a term once applied only to military veterans. Here the poet Marvin Bell describes a group of these emotionally damaged soldiers, gathered together for breakfast. I'd guess that just about everybody who reads this column has known one or two men like these.
Veterans of the Seventies
The Quarrel by Linda Pastan: American Life in Poetry #149 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Elsewhere in this newspaper you may find some advice for maintaining and repairing troubled relationships. Here, in a poem by Linda Pastan of Maryland, is one of those relationships in need of some help.
The Quarrel
If there were a monument
to silence, it would not be
the tree whose leaves
murmur continuously
among themselves;
The Poetry Of Shakespeare
© George Meredith
Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; -
Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;
Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;
Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great
human heart.
Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet by Anne Caston: American Life in Poetry #45 Ted Kooser, U.S.
© Ted Kooser
Poets are experts at holding mirrors to the world. Here Anne Caston, from Alaska, shows us a commonplace scene. HavenÃt we all been in this restaurant for the Sunday buffet? Caston overlays the picture with language that, too, is ordinary, even sloganistic, and overworn. But by zooming in on the joint of meat and the belly-up fishes floating in
butter, she compels us to look more deeply into what is before us, and a room that at first seemed humdrum becomes rich with inference.
