All Poems
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Voxpopuli
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
What if the Turk be foul or fair? Is't known
That the sublime Samaritan of old
Never Bite A Married Woman On The Thigh
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
Never bite a married woman on the thigh oh my
Cause she just can't rub it off no matter how she'll try
And when she gets home at night her man will ask her why
Then she'll say it's just a birthmark or some other silly lie
Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past
Escape From The Snares Of Love
© Caroline Norton
YOUNG LOVE has chains of metal rare,
Heavy as gold-yet light as air:
It chanced he caught a heart one day
Which struggled hard, as loth to stay.
The Flowers
© William Brighty Rands
When Love arose in heart and deed
To wake the world to greater joy,
Hymn XVIII: Father, Saviour of Mankind
© Charles Wesley
Father, Saviour of mankind,
Who hast on me bestowed
False February
© John Payne
NOT seldom, whilst the Winter yet is king,
Whilst yet the meads are mute and boughs are bare,
Common Janthina by Tatiana Ziglar: American Life in Poetry #93 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Newborns begin life as natural poets, loving the sound of their own gurgles and coos. And, with the encouragement of parents and teachers, children can continue to write and enjoy poetry into their high school years and beyond. A group of elementary students in Detroit, Michigan, wrote poetry on the subject of what seashells might say if they could speak to us. I was especially charmed by Tatiana Ziglar's short poem, which alludes to the way in which poets learn to be attentive to the world. The inhabitants of the Poetry Palace pay attention, and by that earn the stories they receive.
Common Janthina
My shell said she likes the king and queen
of the Poetry Palace because they listen to her.
She tells them all the secrets of the ocean.
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. Reprinted by permission from âShimmering Stars,â? Vol. IV, Spring, 2006, published by the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. Copyright © 2006 by the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. 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.
Classic Scene
© William Carlos Williams
A power-house
in the shape of
a red brick chair
90 feet high
Trafalgar Square
© Robert Fuller Murray
These verses have I pilfered like a bee
Out of a letter from my C. C. C.
In London, showing what befell him there,
With other things, of interest to me
The Paralytic
© Robert Laurence Binyon
He stands where the young faces pass and throng;
His blank eyes tremble in the noonday sun:
He sees all life, the lovely and the strong,
Before him run.
Shermans In Savannah
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
LIKE the tribes of Israel,
Fed on quails and manna,
Sherman and his glorious band
Journeyed through the rebel land,
Fed from Heaven's all-bounteous hand,
Marching on Savannah!
The Woodpecker Keeps Returning by Jane Hirshfield: American Life in Poetry #20 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet
© Ted Kooser
In this fascinating poem by the California poet, Jane Hirshfield, the speaker discovers that through paying attention to an event she has become part of it, has indeed become inseparable from the event and its implications. This is more than an act of empathy. It speaks, in my reading of it, to the perception of an order into which all creatures and events are fitted, and are essential.
The Woodpecker Keeps Returning
The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.
For an Epitaph at Fiesole
© Walter Savage Landor
LO! where the four mimosas blend their shade
In calm repose at last is Landor laid;
For ere he slept he saw them planted here
By her his soul had ever held most dear,
And he had livd enough when he had dried her tear.
The Haunted Chamber
© Robert Fuller Murray
Life is a house where many chambers be,
And all the doors will yield to him who tries,
Save one, whereof men say, behind it lies
The haunting secret. He who keeps the key,
Dreading
© Edgar Albert Guest
SOMETIMES when they are tucked in bed the gentle mother comes to me
And talks about each curly head, and wonders what they're going to be.
She tells about the fun they've had while I was toiling far away,
Recalls the bright things that the lad and little girl have had to say.
Each morning is a pleasure new, and gladness overflows the cup,
And then she says: "What will we do, what will we do when they're grown up?"
Last Words Of Saul (extract from Saul)
© Charles Heavysege
Now let me die, for I indeed was slain
With my three sons. Where are ye, sons? Oh let me
Ianthes Troubles
© Walter Savage Landor
YOUR pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down and up again as blithe as ever;
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples in a sunny river.
Riches
© George Essex Evans
You said as your thin lips curled:
Money is better than bays.
Battered and bruised by the world!
I still have my golden days.
