Poetry poems
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Fences by Pat Mora: American Life in Poetry #192 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Class, status, privilege; despite all our talk about equality, they're with us wherever we go. In this poem, Pat Mora, who grew up in a Spanish speaking home in El Paso, Texas, contrasts the lives of rich tourists with the less fortunate people who serve them. The titles of poems are often among the most important elements, and this one is loaded with implication.
Fences
Mouths full of laughter,
the turistas come to the tall hotel
with suitcases full of dollars.
The Deacon And His Daughter
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
He saved his soul and saved his pork,
With old time preservation;
He did not hold with creosote,
Or new plans of salvation;
He said that "Works would show the man,"
"The smoke-house tell upon the ham!"
Western by Michelle Bennett : American Life in Poetry #234 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
This week’s poem is by a high school student, Michelle Bennett, who lives in Tukwila, Washington, and here she is taking a look at what comes next, Western Washington University in Bellingham, with everything new about it, including opportunity.
Western
How Are You Doing? by Rick Snyder: American Life in Poetry #103 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It's not just baseball caps, it's Tasmanian Devil caps; it's not just music on the intercom, it's James Taylor. And Snyder's poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone.
How Are You Doing?
Foreward
© Madison Julius Cawein
_And one, perchance, will read and sigh:
"What aimless songs! Why will he sing
Of nature that drags out her woe
Through wind and rain, and sun, and snow,
From miserable spring to spring?"
Then put me by._
Hamlet As Told On The Street
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
Well, that was the end of our sweet prince,
He died in confusion and nobodys seen him since.
And the moral of the story is bells do get out of tune
And you can find shit in a silver spoon
And an old mans revenge can be a young mans ruin
Oh and never look too close
at what your mamma is doin.
Wallpapering by Sue Ellen Thompson: American Life in Poetry #109 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
One big test of the endurance of any relationship is taking on a joint improvement project. Here Sue Ellen Thompson offers an account of one such trial by fire.
Wallpapering
My parents argued over wallpaper. Would stripes
make the room look larger? He
would measure, cut, and paste; she'd swipe
the flaws out with her brush. Once it was properly
Matinee by Patrick Phillips: American Life in Poetry #124 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Here is a lovely poem about survival by Patrick Phillips of New York. People sometimes ask me "What are poems for?" and "Matinee" is an example of the kind of writing that serves its readers, that shows us a way of carrying on.
Matinee
After the biopsy,
after the bone scan,
after the consult and the crying,
David
© Thomas Parnell
When e'er his flocks the lovely shepherd drove
To neighb'ring waters, to the neighb'ring grove;
To Jordan's flood refresh'd by cooling wind,
Or Cedron's brook to mossy banks confin'd,
In easy notes and guise of lowly swain,
'Twas thus he charm'd and taught the listning train.
The End Of May
© Charles Lamb
"Our governess is not in school,
So we may talk a bit;
Sit down upon this little stool,
Come, little Mary, sit:
A Poem To His Magesty, Presented To The Lord Keeper. To The Right Hon. Sir John Somers, Lord Keeper
© Joseph Addison
If yet your thoughts are loose from state affairs,
Nor feel the burden of a kingdom's cares;
A Yellow Leaf by Alberto Rios: American Life in Poetry #40 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Arizonan Alberto Rios probably observed this shamel ash often, its year-round green leaves never changing. On this particular day, however, he recognizes a difference—a yellow leaf. In doing so he offers us a glimpse of how something small yet unexpected may stay with us, perhaps even become a secret pleasure.
A Yellow Leaf
To The Lady H.O.
© Caroline Norton
I.
COME o'er the green hills to the sunny sea!
The boundless sea that washeth many lands,
Where shells unknown to England, fair and free,
On Certain Elizabethan revivals
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
O RUFF-EMBASTIONED vast Elizabeth,
Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine,
The Owl by Wendy Videlock : American Life in Poetry #264 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Wendy Videlock lives in western Colorado, where a person can stop to study what an owl has left behind without being run over by a taxi.
Another Feeling by Ruth Stone: American Life in Poetry #4 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
None of us can fix the past. Mistakes we've made can burden us for many years, delivering their pain to the present as if they had happened just yesterday. In the following poem we join with Ruth Stone in revisiting a hurried decision, and we empathize with the intense regret of being unable to take that decision back, or any other decision, for that matter.
Another Feeling
I Am Visited By An Editor And A Poet
© Charles Bukowski
I had just won $115 from the headshakers and
was naked upon my bed
The Animals are Leaving by Charles Harper Webb: American Life in Poetry #203 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet L
© Ted Kooser
To read in the news that a platoon of soldiers has been killed is a terrible thing, but to learn the name of just one of them makes the news even more vivid and sad. To hold the name of someone or something on our lips is a powerful thing. It is the badge of individuality and separateness. Charles Harper Webb, a California poet, takes advantage of the power of naming in this poem about the steady extinction of animal species.
The Animals are Leaving
One by one, like guests at a late party
They shake our hands and step into the dark:
Arabian ostrich; Long-eared kit fox; Mysterious starling.
