Poetry poems
/ page 5 of 55 /
Crochet by Jan Mordenski : American Life in Poetry #270 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
We are sometimes amazed by how well the visually impaired navigate the world, but like the rest of us, they have found a way to do what interests them. Here Jan Mordenski of Michigan describes her mother, absorbed in crocheting.
Crochet
Even after darkness closed her eyes â¨
Don Juan: Canto The Fourth
© George Gordon Byron
Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
What Calls Us by David Bengtson: American Life in Poetry #42 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
Here is a poem by David Bengtson, a Minnesotan, about the simple pleasure of walking through deep snow to the mailbox to see what's arrived. But, of course, the pleasure is not only in picking up the mail with its surprises, but in the complete experience—being fully alive to the clean cold air and the sound of the wind around the mailbox door.
Fried Beauty by R. S. Gwynn: American Life in Poetry #166 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Texas poet R. S. Gwynn is a master of the light touch. Here he picks up on Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet âPied Beauty,â? which many of you will remember from school, and offers us a picnic instead of a sermon. I hope you enjoy the feast!
Fried Beauty
On the Death of E. Waller, Esq.
© Aphra Behn
How, to thy Sacred Memory, shall I bring
(Worthy thy Fame) a grateful Offering?
Speak Poetry
© Friedrich von Schlegel
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
The One Certain Thing by Peter Cooley : American Life in Poetry #268 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
© Ted Kooser
If writers are both skilled and lucky, they may write something that will carry their words into the future, past the hour of their own deaths. I’d guess all writers hope for this, and the following poem by Peter Cooley, who lives in New Orleans and teaches creative writing at Tulane, beautifully expresses his hope, and theirs.
The One Certain Thing
A day will come I’ll watch you reading this.
Poem
© Alan Dugan
After your first poetry reading
I shook hands with you
and got a hard-on. Thank you.
We know that old trees
The Poetry of A Root Crop
© Charles Kingsley
Underneath their eider-robe
Russet swede and golden globe,
The Potato Eaters by Leonard E. Nathan: American Life in Poetry #7 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 20
© Ted Kooser
Leonard Nathan is a master of short poems in which two or three figures are placed on what can be seen to be a stage, as in a drama. Here, as in other poems like it, the speaker's sentences are rich with implications. This is the title work from Nathan's book from Orchises Press (1999):
The Potato Eaters
Sometimes, the naked taste of potato
reminds me of being poor.
Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Vakzy, James Joyce, Et A
© Delmore Schwartz
Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Marching by Jim Harrison: American Life in Poetry #51 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Walt Whitman's poems took in the world through a wide-angle lens, including nearly everything, but most later poets have focused much more narrowly. Here the poet and novelist Jim Harrison nods to Whitman with a sweeping, inclusive poem about the course of life.
Marching
A Letter ToThe Same Person
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
The Trojan Prince did pow'rful Numbers join
To sing of War; but Love was the Design:
And sleeping Troy again in Flames was drest,
To light the Fires in pitying Dido's Breast.
The Heroic Enthusiasts - Part The First =First Dialogue.=
© Giordano Bruno
TANS. The enthusiasms most suitable to be first brought forward and
considered are those that I now place before you in the order that seems
to me most fitting.
Language Lessons by Alexandra Teague : American Life in Poetry #223 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
© Ted Kooser
There's lots of literature about the loss of innocence, because we all share in that loss and literature is about what we share. Here's a poem by Alexandra Teague, a San Franciscan, in which a child's awakening to the alphabet coincides with another awakening: the unsettling knowledge that all of us don't see things in the same way.
Language Lessons
The carpet in the kindergarten room
Poetry And Philosophy
© Madison Julius Cawein
Out of the past the dim leaves spoke to me
The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet
On A Portrait Of Wordsworth By B. R. Haydon
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free
Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist:
No portrait this, with Academic air !
This is the poet and his poetry.
Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin by Robert Wrigley: American Life in Poetry #191 Ted Kooser, U.
© Ted Kooser
Most of us love to find things, and to discover a quarter on the sidewalk can make a whole day seem brighter. In this poem, Robert Wrigley, who lives in Idaho, finds what's left of a Bible, and describes it so well that we can almost feel it in our hands.
Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin
