Poetry poems

Sream Travel

© John Kenyon

Who hath not longed, by converse fired or book,

  To break him sudden from his own home-nook,

Elegy for an Old Boxer by James McKean: American Life in Poetry #80 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2

© Ted Kooser

One of poetry's traditional public services is the presentation of elegies in honor of the dead. Here James McKean remembers a colorful friend and neighbor.

The Dunciad: Book I.

© Alexander Pope

The Mighty Mother, and her son who brings

The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,

Poetry

© George Meredith

Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy
As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.
Tender to tearfulness-childlike, and manly, and motherly;
Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English ground.

Santa Paula by Lee McCarthy: American Life in Poetry #148 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

I've written about the pleasures of poetry that offers us vivid scenes but which lets us draw our own conclusions about the implications of what we're being shown. The poet can steer us a little by the selection of details, but a lot of the effect of the poem is in what is not said, in what we deduce. Lee McCarthy is a California poet, and here is something seen from across the street, something quite ordinary yet packed with life.

Alice And The White Knight

© Lewis Carroll

Alice was walking beside the White Knight in Looking Glass Land.

"You are sad." the Knight said in an anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to comfort you."

Earth

© John Hall Wheelock

Yea, and this, my poem, too,
Is part of her as dust and dew,
Wherein herself she doth declare
Through my lips, and say her prayer.

Books

© Zora Bernice May Cross

Oh! Bury me in books when I am dead,

Fair quarto leaves of ivory and gold,

Tooth Painter by Lucille Lang Day : American Life in Poetry #254 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004

© Ted Kooser

What might my late parents have thought, I wonder, to know that there would one day be an occupation known as Tooth Painter?  Here’s a partial job description by Lucille Lang Day of Oakland, California. Tooth Painter

He was tall, lean, serious

At a Life's End

© Muriel Stuart

COME here, rekindle the old fire,
This last night leave no lamp unlit!
In later days we twain shall sit,
Remembering the joys of it,-
The warmth and sweetness of desire.

Humanities Lecture

© William Stafford

Aristotle was a little man with
eyes like a lizard, and he found a streak
down the midst of things, a smooth place for his feet
much more important than the carved handles
on the coffins of the great.

Of Some Renown by Jean L. Connor: American Life in Poetry #22 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20

© Ted Kooser

In this short poem by Vermont writer Jean L. Connor, an older speaker challenges the perception that people her age have lost their vitality and purpose. Connor compares the life of such a person to an egret fishing. Though the bird stands completely still, it has learned how to live in the world, how to sustain itself, and is capable of quick action when the moment is right.

Proem

© Octavio Paz

Inscrutable Twist by Anne Pierson Wiese: American Life in Poetry #199 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat

© Ted Kooser

I'd guess that most of us carry in our memories landscapes that, far behind us, hold significant meanings for us. For me, it's a Mississippi River scenic overlook south of Guttenberg, Iowa. And for you? Here's just such a memoryscape, in this brief poem by New Yorker Anne Pierson Wiese.

Indian Summer by Diane Glancy : American Life in Poetry #233 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200

© Ted Kooser

Diane Glancy is one of our country’s Native American poets, and I recently judged her latest book, Asylum in the Grasslands, the winner of a regional competition.  Here is a good example of her clear and steady writing. Indian Summer

There’s a farm auction up the road.

Epilogue To Lessing's Laocooen

© Matthew Arnold

One morn as through Hyde Park  we walk'd,

My friend and I, by chance we talk'd

A Fable For Critics

© James Russell Lowell

  'Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack
On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack,
Who thinks every national author a poor one,
That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, 
And assaults the American Dick--'

At the Choral Concert by Tim Nolan : American Life in Poetry #248 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 200

© Ted Kooser

Many if not all of us have had the pleasure of watching choruses of young people sing. It’s an experience rich with affirmation, it seems to me.  Here is a lovely poem by Tim Nolan, an attorney in Minneapolis.

At the Choral Concert

The high school kids are so beautiful

This Morning in a Morning Voice by Todd Boss : American Life in Poetry #221 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet La

© Ted Kooser

Sometimes, it's merely the sound of a child's voice in a nearby room that makes a parent feel immensely lucky. To celebrate Father's Day, here's a joyful poem of fatherhood by Todd Boss, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. This Morning in a Morning Voice

to beat the froggiest   

The Poetry Of Wordsworth

© George Meredith

A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,
That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.
The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,
Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.