1. Prayers of Steel - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 2793 times on American Poems.

LAY me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
 
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a... (Read full poem)

I was a gun-smith in Odessa.
One night the police broke in the room
Where a group of us were reading Spencer.
And seized our books and arrested us.
But I escaped and came to New York
And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River,
Where I... (Read full poem)

3. The Challenge of Thor - written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
From Tales of a Wayside Inn. Read 1377 times on American Poems.

I am the God Thor,
I am the War God,
I am the Thunderer!
Here in my Northland, 
My fastness and fortress, 
Reign I forever!
Here amid icebergs 
Rule I the nations; 
This is my hammer, 
Miölner the mighty; 
Giants and sorcerers 
Cannot... (Read full poem)

The Auctioneer of Parting
His "Going, going, gone"
Shouts even from the Crucifix,
And brings his Hammer down --
He only sells the Wilderness,
The prices of Despair
Range from a single human Heart
To Two -- not any more --(Read full poem)

5. Gouge, Adze, Rasp, Hammer - written by Chris Forhan
Published in 2001. Read 377 times on American Poems.

So this is what it's like when love
leaves, and one is disappointed
that the body and mind continue to exist,

exacting payment from each other,
engaging in stale rituals of desire,
and it would seem the best use of one's time

is not to stand for... (Read full poem)

Seen my lady home las' night, 
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye,
An' a smile go flittin' by --
Jump back,... (Read full poem)

7. Laughing Blue Steel - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1939 times on American Poems.

TWO fishes swimming in the sea,
Two birds flying in the air,
Two chisels on an anvil—maybe.
Beaten, hammered, laughing blue steel to each other—maybe.
Sure I would rather be a chisel with you than a fish.
Sure I would rather be a chisel... (Read full poem)

LEGS hold a torso away from the earth.
And a regular high poem of legs is here.
Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs
Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear
And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run... (Read full poem)

9. Roman Fountain - written by Louise Bogan
Read 1239 times on American Poems.

Up from the bronze, I saw
Water without a flaw
Rush to its rest in air,
Reach to its rest, and fall.

Bronze of the blackest shade,
An element man-made,
Shaping upright the bare
Clear gouts of water in air.

O, as with arm and hammer, 
Still it is... (Read full poem)

It comes oozing
out of flowers at night,
it comes out of the rain
if a snake looks skyward,
it comes out of chairs and tables
if you don't point at them and say their names.
It comes into your mouth while you sleep,
pressing in like a... (Read full poem)

11. Hornet - written by Anne Sexton
Read 2032 times on American Poems.

A red-hot needle
hangs out of him, he steers by it
as if it were a rudder, he
would get in the house any way he could
and then he would bounce from window
to ceiling, buzzing and looking for you.
Do not sleep for he is there wrapped in the... (Read full poem)

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day... (Read full poem)

13. Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat? - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2362 times on American Poems.

Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
Then crouch within the door --
Red -- is the Fire's common tint --
But when the vivid Ore
Has vanquished Flame's conditions,
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed Blaze.
Least... (Read full poem)

There they are 
drooping over the breakfast plates, 
angel-like, 
folding in their sad wing, 
animal sad, 
and only the night before 
there they were 
playing the banjo. 
Once more the day's light comes 
with its immense sun, 
its mother trucks,... (Read full poem)

15. Let Love Go On - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 3324 times on American Poems.

LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.
  
Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets... (Read full poem)

(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—on the tombs... (Read full poem)

17. The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 1624 times on American Poems.

THE North Star whispers: "You are one 
Of those whose course no chance can change. 
You blunder, but are not undone, 
Your spirit-task is fixed and strange. 

"When here you walk, a bloodless shade, 
A singer all men else forget. 
Your chants of... (Read full poem)

When they come back -- if Blossoms do --
I always feel a doubt
If Blossoms can be born again
When once the Art is out --

When they begin, if Robins may,
I always had a fear
I did not tell, it was their last Experiment
Last Year,

When it is May, if... (Read full poem)

19. The Whistling Girl - written by Dorothy Parker
From Sunset Gun. Published in 1928. Read 3436 times on American Poems.

Back of my back, they talk of me,
Gabble and honk and hiss;
Let them batten, and let them be-
Me, I can sing them this:

"Better to shiver beneath the stars,
Head on a faithless breast,
Than peer at the night through rusted bars,
And share an... (Read full poem)

A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.

It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer... (Read full poem)

21. I Go Back To The House For A Book - written by Billy Collins
Read 2610 times on American Poems.

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a... (Read full poem)

Why did you turn back,
that hell should be reinhabited
of myself thus
swept into nothingness?

Why did you turn?
why did you glance back?

So you have swept me back--
I who could have walked with the live souls
above the earth.
I who could have... (Read full poem)

23. My Father's Love Letters - written by Yusef Komunyakaa
Read 3798 times on American Poems.

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, &... (Read full poem)

As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to... (Read full poem)

25. February: Thinking of Flowers - written by Jane Kenyon
Read 2580 times on American Poems.

Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white--the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on... (Read full poem)