Poetry poems
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Music Is Time by Jill Bialosky : American Life in Poetry #263 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
Music lessons, well, maybe 80 out of every 100 of us had them, once, and a few of us went on to play our chosen instruments all our lives. But the rest of us? I still own a set of red John Thompson piano books that haven’t been opened since about 1950. Here Jill Bialosky, who lives in New York City, captures the atmosphere of one of those lessons.
To the Muse of Poetry
© Mary Darby Robinson
O MUSE ADOR'D, I woo thee now
From yon bright Heaven, to hear my vow;
From thy blest wing a plume I'll steal,
And with its burning point record
Each firm indissoluble word,
And with my lips the proud oath seal!
The World as It is by Carolyn Miller : American Life in Poetry #269 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
It is enough for me as a reader that a poem take from life a single moment and hold it up for me to look at. There need not be anything sensational or unusual or peculiar about that moment, but somehow, by directing my attention to it, our attention to it, the poet bathes it in the light of the remarkable. Here is a poem like this by Carolyn Miller, who lives in San Francisco.
Ode to the Muse
© Mary Darby Robinson
But, if thy magic pow'rs impart
One soft sensation to the heart,
If thy warm precepts can dispense
One thrilling transport o'er my sense;
Oh! keep thy gifts, and let me fly,
In APATHY's cold arms to die.
Ode to Despair
© Mary Darby Robinson
TERRIFIC FIEND! thou Monster fell,
Condemn'd in haunts profane to dwell,
Why quit thy solitary Home,
O'er wide Creation's paths to roam?
Lines to Him Who Will Understand Them
© Mary Darby Robinson
No, I will breathe the spicy gale;
Plunge the clear stream, new health exhale;
O'er my pale cheek diffuse the rose,
And drink OBLIVION to my woes.
"Do you remember still the little song"
© Lesbia Harford
Do you remember still the little song
I mumbled on the hill at Aura, how
I told you it was made for Katie's sake
When I was fresh from school and loving her
A Library Of Skulls
© Thomas Lux
Shelves and stacks and shelves of skulls, a Dewey
Decimal number inked on each unfurrowed forehead.
Here's a skull
who, before he lost his fleshy parts
To A Lady Who Commanded Me To Send Her An Account In Verse
© Mary Barber
How I succeed, you kindly ask;
Yet set me on a grievous Task,
When you oblige me to rehearse,
The Censures past upon my Verse.
Sunday Poetry: Ballade of Lost Objects
© Phyllis McGinley
Prince, I warn you, under the rose,
Time is the thief you cannot banish.
These are my daughters, I suppose.
But where in the world did the children vanish?
Icicles Round A Tree In Dumfriesshire
© Ruth Padel
We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.
Trial
© Ruth Padel
I was with Special Force, blue-X-ing raids
to OK surfing on the Colonel's birthday.
Operation Ariel: we sprayed Jimi Hendrix
loud from helis to frighten the slopes
before 'palming. A turkey shoot.
Mr Cogito And The Imagination
© Zbigniew Herbert
he would rarely soar
on the wings of a metaphor
and then he fell like Icarus
into the embrace of the Great Mother
Fable Of The Rhododendron Stealers
© Sylvia Plath
I walked the unwalked garden of rose-beds
In the public park; at home felt the want
Of a single rose present to imagine
The garden's remainder in full paint.
In Dispraise Of Poetry
© Jack Gilbert
When the King of Siam disliked a courtier,
he gave him a beautiful white elephant.
The miracle beast deserved such ritual
that to care for him properly meant ruin.
Yet to care for him improperly was worse.
It appears the gift could not be refused.
Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying
© Jack Gilbert
Poetry is a kind of lying,
necessarily. To profit the poet
or beauty. But also in
that truth may be told only so.
A Terre (being the philosophy of many soldiers)
© Wilfred Owen
Sit on the bed. I'm blind, and three parts shell.
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me,-brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton
© Alan Dugan
The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
The Parisian Orgy
© Arthur Rimbaud
O cowards! There she is!
Pile out into the stations!
The sun with its fiery lungs blew clear
the boulevards that, one evening,
the Barbarians filled.
Planting a Dogwood by Roy Scheele: American Life in Poetry #73 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Those of us who have planted trees and shrubs know well that moment when the last spade full of earth is packed around the root ball and patted or stamped into place and we stand back and wish the young plant good fortune. Here the poet Roy Scheele offers us a few well-chosen words we can use the next time.
