Poetry poems
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Somewhere This
© Eli Siegel
Trees standing in rain;
Footfalls on the pavement, feet crushing leaves;
A little girl leaving her house;
The moon, barely to be seen, shining dully in the gray sky;
The Hymn Of Man
© Khalil Gibran
I was,
And I am.
So shall I be to the end of time,
For I am without end.
Undivine Comedy
© Zygmunt Krasinski
THE MAN:
(Casting away his cloak) I need you no longer. My best men have perished and those kneeling over there are stretching out their arms to the victors and bellowing for mercy! (He looks all around him.) They are not coming up this side yet. There is still time. Let us rest a while. Ha, now they have battered their way up the northern tower. New troops have plunged into the tower and they are looking to see if Count Henry is hidden somewhere there. I am here, here - but you shall not judge me! I have already started on my way. I am going toward the judgment of God. (He mounts a fragment of a bastion overhanging the very precipice.) I see it, all black, with dark expanses, flowing toward me, my eternity, without shores, without islands, without end, and in its midst is God, like an eternally burning sun - ever shining - and illuminating nothing. (Advances a step farther. ) They run, they've seen me! Jesus, Mary! O poetry, be you as cursed as I am for all the ages! Arms of mine, go before and cut me a path through those ramparts! (He leaps into the precipice.)
Moonflowers by Karma Larsen: American Life in Poetry #8 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of poems have been written to express the grief of losing a parent. Many of the most telling of these attach the sense of loss to some object, some personal thing left behind, as in this elegy to her mother by a Nebraskan, Karma Larsen:
Moonflowers
Night in Day by Joseph Stroud : American Life in Poetry #220 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
One of the privileges of being U.S. Poet Laureate was to choose two poets each year to receive a $10,000 fellowship, funded by the Witter Bynner Foundation. Joseph Stroud, who lives in California, was one of my choices. This poem is representative of his clear-eyed, imaginative poetry.
Night in Day
The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students
© Galway Kinnell
Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmarks again
of shattered towns-Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell-
their loneliness
given away in poems, only their solitude kept.
The Rhyme of the Three Greybeards
© Henry Lawson
He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat",
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote",
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote.
Photo, Brownie Troop, St. Louis, 1949 by Margaret Kaufman : American Life in Poetry #225 Ted Kooser
© Ted Kooser
There have been many poems written in which a photograph is described in detail, and this one by Margaret Kaufman, of the Bay Area in California, uses the snapshot to carry her further, into the details of memory.
Photo, Brownie Troop, St. Louis, 1949
No Children, No Pets by Sue Ellen Thompson: American Life in Poetry #89 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
Loss can defeat us or serve as the impetus for positive change. Here, Sue Ellen Thompson of Connecticut shows us how to mourn inevitable changes, tuck the memories away, then go on to see the possibility of a new and promising chapter in one's life.
To an Ungentle Critic
© Robert Graves
The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine....
But whats the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
The Poet in the Nursery
© Robert Graves
The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling
In a dim library, just behind the chair
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling
A song about some Lovers at a Fair,
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling
That rhymes were beastly things and never there.
John Skelton
© Robert Graves
What could be dafter
Than John Skeltons laughter?
What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?
Babylon
© Robert Graves
The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And alls poetry with him.
Sorleys Weather
© Robert Graves
When outside the icy rain
Comes leaping helter-skelter,
Shall I tie my restive brain
Snugly under shelter?
At Twenty-Eight by Amy Fleury: American Life in Poetry #59 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Contrary to the glamorized accounts we often read about the lives of single women, Amy Fleury, a native of Kansas, presents us with a realistic, affirmative picture. Her poem playfully presents her life as serendipitous, yet she doesn't shy away from acknowledging loneliness.
At Twenty-Eight
About My Poetry
© Nazim Hikmet
I have no silver-saddled horse to ride,
no inheritance to live on,
neither riches no real-estate -
a pot of honey is all I own.
A pot of honey
red as fire!
Aurora Leigh: Book One
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I, alas,
A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,
And she was there to meet me. Very kind.
Bring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.
August Morning by Albert Garcia: American Life in Poetry #71 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
William Carlos Williams, one of our country's most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day.
The Uses Of Poetry
© William Carlos Williams
I've fond anticipation of a day
O'erfilled with pure diversion presently,
For I must read a lady poesy
The while we glide by many a leafy bay,
