Poetry poems

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Get Drunk

© Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk.

That's it!

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Cliff Swallows-Missouri Breaks by Debra Nystrom: American Life in Poetry #29 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet L

© Ted Kooser

Many of you have seen flocks of birds or schools of minnows acting as if they were guided by a common intelligence, turning together, stopping together. Here is a poem by Debra Nystrom that beautifully describes a flight of swallows returning to their nests, acting as if they were of one mind. Notice how she extends the description to comment on the way human behavior differs from that of the birds.

Cliff Swallows
-Missouri Breaks

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The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog by Alicia Ostriker : American Life in Poetry #

© Ted Kooser

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is one of our country’s finest poets. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey. I thought that today you might like to have us offer you a poem full of blessings. The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

To be blessed

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Elegance by Linda Gregg: American Life in Poetry #142 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

There's that old business about the tree falling in the middle of the forest with no one to hear it: does it make a noise? Here Linda Gregg, of New York, offers us a look at an elegant beauty that can be presumed to exist and persist without an observer.

Elegance

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Propertius's Bid For Immortality

© Franklin Pierce Adams


Let us return, then, for a time,
To our accustomed round of rhyme;
And let my songs' familiar art
Not fail to move my lady's heart.

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My Father Holds the Door for Yoko Ono by Christopher Chambers: American Life in Poetry #88 Ted Koose

© Ted Kooser

This wistful poem shows how the familiar and the odd, the real and imaginary, exist side by side. A Midwestern father transforms himself from a staid businessman into a rock-n-roll star, reclaiming a piece of his imaginary youth. In the end, it shows how fragile moments might be recovered to offer a glimpse into our inner lives.


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Geology by Bob King: American Life in Poetry #46 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, "Well, you know, love is like...it's like...well, YOU know what it's like." Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.

Geology

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Moss by Bruce Guernsey: American Life in Poetry #78 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

greening in the dark,
longing for north,
the silence
of birds gone south.

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Deliverance Through Art

© Lesbia Harford

When I am making poetry I'm good
And happy then.
I live in a deep world of angelhood
Afar from men.

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And What Have You To Say?

© Henry Lawson

I MIND the days when ladies fair
  Helped on my overcoat,
And tucked the silken handkerchief
  About my precious throat;
They used to see the poet’s soul
  In every song I wrote.

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Poetry

© Boris Pasternak

Yes, I shall swear by you, my verse,
I shall wheeze out, before I swoon:
You're not a tenor's shape and voice,
You're summer travelling third class,
You are a suburb, not a tune.

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I Was Always Leaving by Jean Nordhaus : American Life in Poetry #224 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

© Ted Kooser

When we're young, it seems there are endless possibilities for lives we might lead, and then as we grow older and the opportunities get fewer we begin to realize that the life we've been given is the only one we're likely to get. Here's Jean Nordhaus, of the Washington, D.C. area, exploring this process. I Was Always Leaving

I was always leaving, I was

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Tomes

© William Taylor Collins

There is a section in my library for death


and another for Irish history,

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Don Juan: Canto The Twelfth

© George Gordon Byron

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that

Which is most barbarous is the middle age

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Rosemary

© Madison Julius Cawein

Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay;
Around her, flowers scattered earth with gold,
Or down the path in insolence held sway--
Like cavaliers who ride the elves' highway--
Scarlet and blue, within a garden old.

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December 23, 1879

© George MacDonald

A thousand houses of poesy stand around me everywhere;
They fill the earth and they fill my thought, they are in and above the
air;
But to-night they have shut their doors, they have shut their shining
windows fair,
And I am left in a desert world, with an aching as if of care.

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I Am With Terrorism

© Nizar Qabbani

We are accused of terrorism:
if we wrote about the ruins of a homeland
torn, weak...
a homeland with no address
and an nation with no names 

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The Task : Complete

© William Cowper

In man or woman, but far most in man,
And most of all in man that ministers
And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe
All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn;
Object of my implacable disgust.

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Today's News by David Tucker: American Life in Poetry #156 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

We greatly appreciate your newspaper's use of this column, and today we want to recognize newspaper employees by including a poem from the inside of a newsroom. David Tucker is deputy managing editor of the New Jersey “Star-Ledgerâ€? and has been a reporter and editor at the “Toronto Starâ€? and the “Philadelphia Inquirer.â€? He was on the “Star-Ledgerâ€? team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Mr. Tucker was awarded a Witter-Bynner fellowship for poetry in 2007 by former U. S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall.

Today's News

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On Our Eleventh Anniversary by Susan Browne : American Life in Poetry #214 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet La

© Ted Kooser

Sometimes I wonder at my wife's forbearance. She's heard me tell the same stories dozens of times, and she still politely laughs when she should. Here's a poem by Susan Browne, of California, that treats an oft-told story with great tenderness.  On Our Eleventh Anniversary

You're telling that story again about your childhood,