Poetry poems
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Fifteen by Leslie Monsour: American Life in Poetry #38 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
I'd guess that many women remember the risks and thrills of their first romantic encounters in much the same way California poet Leslie Monsour does in this poem.
My name came from. . . by Emmett Tenorio Melendez: American Life in Poetry #180 Ted Kooser, U.S. Po
© Ted Kooser
What's in a name? All of us have thought at one time or another about our names, perhaps asking why they were given to us, or finding meanings within them. Here Emmett Tenorio Melendez, an eleven-year-old poet from San Antonio, Texas, proudly presents us with his name and its meaning.
My name came from. . .
Slow Dancing on the Highway:the Trip North by Elizabeth Hobbs: American Life in Poetry #112 Ted Koos
© Ted Kooser
Not only do we have road rage, but it seems we have road love, too. Here Elizabeth Hobbs of Maine offers us a two-car courtship. Be careful with whom you choose to try this little dance.
Slow Dancing on the Highway:
the Trip North
You follow close behind me,
for a thousand miles responsive to my movements.
I signal, you signal back. We will meet at the next exit.
In Your Absence by Judith Harris: American Life in Poetry #157 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
From your school days you may remember A. E. Housman's poem that begins, âLoveliest of trees, the cherry now/ Is hung with bloom along the bough.â? Here's a look at a blossoming cherry, done 120 years later, on site among the famous cherry trees of Washington, by D.C. poet Judith Harris.
In Your Absence
Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.
Lint by Gary Metras : American Life in Poetry #257 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Often when I dig some change out of my jeans pocket to pay somebody for something, the pennies and nickels are accompanied by a big gob of blue lint. So it’s no wonder that I was taken with this poem by a Massachusetts poet, Gary Metras, who isn’t embarrassed.
Lint
It doesn’t bother me to have
Sent To Mr. Haley, On Reading His Epistles On Epic Poetry
© Henry James Pye
What blooming garlands shall the Muses twine,
What verdant laurels weave, what flowers combine,
The Nevers of Poetry
© Charles Harpur
Never heed whether a line strictly goes
By learned rule, if, brook-like, it warble as it flows,
Or if, in concord with the thought, it fills
Fast forward, like a torrent fast flooding from the hills.
If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem
© Jean Ingelow
'Many,' methought, 'and rich
They must have been, so long their chronicle.
Perhaps the world was fuller then of folk,
For ships at sea are few that near us now.'
Clarification To My Poetry-Readers
© Nizar Qabbani
And of me say the fools:
I entered the lodges of women
Seeing the Eclipse in Maine by Robert Bly: American Life in Poetry #165 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
In âThe Moose,â? a poem much too long to print here, the late Elizabeth Bishop was able to show a community being created from a group of strangers on a bus who come in contact with a moose on the highway. They watch it together and become one. Here Robert Bly of Minnesota assembles a similar community, around an eclipse. Notice how the experience happens to âwe,â? the group, not just to âme,â? the poet.
Seeing the Eclipse in Maine
It started about noon. On top of Mount Batte,
We were all exclaiming. Someone had a cardboard
And a pin, and we all cried out when the sun
Appeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.
Bach in the DC Subway by David Lee Garrison : American Life in Poetry #239 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Lau
© Ted Kooser
It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway.
Bach in the DC Subway
As an experiment,
Reunion by Jeff Daniel Marion: American Life in Poetry #76 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
I'd guess we've all had dreams like the one portrayed in this wistful poem by Tennessee poet Jeff Daniel Marion. And I'd guess that like me, you too have tried to nod off again just to capture a few more moments from the past.
Night Dive by Samuel Green: American Life in Poetry #170 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
we don't inflate our vests, but let the scrubbed cheeks
of rocks slide past in amniotic calm.
At sixty feet we douse our lights, cemented
by the weight of the dark, of water, the grip
of the sea's absolute silence. Our groping
Sandys Ghost ; A Proper Ballad on the New Ovid's Metamorphosis
© Alexander Pope
Ye Lords and Commons, Men of Wit,
And Pleasure about Town;
Read this ere you translate one Bit
Of Books of high Renown.
Alfred And Janet
© Robert Bloomfield
At thirteen she was all that Heaven could send,
My nurse, my faithful clerk, my lively friend;
Last at my pillow when I sunk to sleep,
First on my threshold soon as day could peep:
I heard her happy to her heart's desire,
With clanking pattens, and a roaring fire.
Mr. Nixon
© Ezra Pound
In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht
Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer
Dangers of delay. 'Consider
Carefully the reviewer.
Young Man by John Haines: American Life in Poetry #95 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Literature, and in this instance, poetry, holds a mirror to life; thus the great themes of life become the great themes of poems. Here the distinguished American poet, John Haines, addresses—and celebrates through the affirmation of poetry—our preoccupation with aging and mortality.
Cicadas at the End of Summer by Martin Walls: American Life in Poetry #24 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laur
© Ted Kooser
But all you ever see is the silence.
Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.
With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do
just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space
museum —
Green Pear Tree in September by Freya Manfred : American Life in Poetry #259 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet
© Ted Kooser
Wisconsin writer Freya Manfred is not only a fine poet but the daughter of the late Frederick Manfred, a distinguished novelist of the American west. Here is a lovely snapshot of her father, whom I cherished among my good friends.
Green Pear Tree in September
On a hill overlooking the Rock River
