Poetry poems
/ page 14 of 55 /
Cautionary Tales by Mark Vinz : American Life in Poetry #229 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
For over forty years, Mark Vinz, of Moorhead, Minnesota-poet, teacher, publisher-has been a prominent advocate for the literature of the Upper Great Plains. Here’s a recent poem that speaks to growing older.
Cautionary Tales
Beyond the field of grazing, gazing cows
Don Juan: Dedication
© George Gordon Byron
Bob Southey! You're a poet-Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
"You, Who Was Born..."
© Anna Akhmatova
You, who was born for poetrys creation,
Do not repeat the sayings of the ancients.
Though, maybe, our Poetry, itself,
Is just a single beautiful citation.
Night Flight by George Bilgere : American Life in Poetry #244 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
Love predated the invention of language, but love poetry got its start as soon as we had words through which to express our feelings. Here’s a lovely example of a contemporary poem of love and longing by George Bilgere, who lives in Ohio.
Night Flight
I am doing laps at night, alone
The Departure. AN ELEGY.
© Henry King
VVere I to leave no more then a good friend,
Or but to hear the summons to my end,
(Which I have long'd for) I could then with ease
Attire my grief in words, and so appease
The Laughter of Women by Mary-Sherman Willis: American Life in Poetry #168 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Lau
© Ted Kooser
So often, reading a poem can in itself feel like a thing overheard. Here, Mary-Sherman Willis of Virginia describes the feeling of being stilled by conversation, in this case barely audible and nearly indecipherable.
The Laughter of Women
From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women
in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city.
They sat (so I thought) perfumed in their hats and their silks,
Sleep by Todd Davis: American Life in Poetry #136 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Here's a fine seasonal poem by Todd Davis, who lives and teaches in Pennsylvania. It's about the drowsiness that arrives with the early days of autumn. Can a bear imagine the future? Surely not as a human would, but perhaps it can sense that the world seems to be slowing toward slumber. Who knows?
Sleep
Convergence by Christine Stewart-Nunez : American Life in Poetry #249 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
© Ted Kooser
One of the wonderful things about small children is the way in which they cause us to explain the world. “What’s that?” they ask, and we have to come up with an answer. Here Christine Stewart-Nunez, who lives and teaches in South Dakota, tries to teach her son a new word only to hear it come back transformed.
Convergence
Through the bedroom window
Homecoming by Keith Althaus: American Life in Poetry #65 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Visiting a familiar and once dear place after a long absence can knock the words right out of us, and in this poem, Keith Althaus of Massachusetts observes this happening to someone else. I like the way he suggests, at the end, that it may take days before that silence heals over.
Homecoming
Songs Of Poltescoe Valley
© Arthur Symons
I
Under the trees in the dell.
Here by the side of the stream,
Were it not pleasant to dream,
Were it not better to dwell?
The Farewell
© Charles Churchill
_P_. Farewell to Europe, and at once farewell
To all the follies which in Europe dwell;
To Play Pianissimo by Lola Haskins: American Life in Poetry #43 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
Lola Haskins, who lives in Florida, has written a number of poems about musical terms, entitled "Adagio," "Allegrissimo," "Staccato," and so on. Here is just one of those, presenting the gentleness of pianissimo playing through a series of comparisons
To Play Pianissimo
Does not mean silence.
The absence of moon in the day sky
for example.
Ghost Villanelle by Dan Lechay: American Life in Poetry #187 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
I thought that we'd celebrate Halloween with an appropriate poem, and Iowa poet Dan Lechay's seems just right. The drifting veils of rhyme and meter disclose a ghost, or is it a ghost?
Ghost Villanelle
We never saw the ghost, though he was thereâ
we knew from the raindrops tapping on the eaves.
We never saw him, and we didn't care.
Car Showroom by Jonathan Holden: American Life in Poetry #161 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
I may be a little sappy, but I think that almost everyone is doing the best he or she can, despite all sorts of obstacles. This poem by Jonathan Holden introduces us to a young car salesman, who is trying hard, perhaps too hard. Holden is the past poet laureate of Kansas and poet in residence at Kansas State University in Manhattan.
Car Showroom
Dedication
© Tadeusz Borowski
Staszek, my old friend,
from all the prisons of the earth
I come back to you
in a flight of poetry.
The Mask Of Anarchy
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.
Clean by Jeff Vande Zande: American Life in Poetry #82 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Many poems celebrate the joys of having children. Michigan poet Jeff Vande Zande reminds us that adults make mistakes, even with children they love, and that parenting is about fear as well as joy.
Driving Through by Mark Vinz: American Life in Poetry #91 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before. And of course it seems familiar because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz.
Driving Through
