1. Be Angry At San Pedro - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 2108 times on American Poems.

I say to my woman, "Jeffers was 
a great poet. think of a title
like Be Angry At The Sun. don't you 
realize how great that is?

"you like that negative stuff." she 
says

"positively," I agree, finishing my
drink and pouring another.
"in one of... (Read full poem)

A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand
over the demon's mouth sometimes...-- D. H. Lawrence

I mentioned my demon to a friend
and the friend swam in oil and came forth to me
greasy and cryptic
and said,
"I'm thinking of taking him out... (Read full poem)

3. Green Fields - written by W.S. Merwin
Read 1245 times on American Poems.

By this part of the century few are left who believe
    in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts
of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks
    are sounds of shadows that possess no future
there is still game... (Read full poem)

In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient,
stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and
song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the... (Read full poem)

5. Now List to my Morning’s Romanza. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 2090 times on American Poems.

1
NOW list to my morning’s romanza—I tell the signs of the Answerer; 
To the cities and farms I sing, as they spread in the sunshine before me. 
  
A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother; 
How shall the young man know... (Read full poem)

some say we should keep personal remorse from the 
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out... (Read full poem)

7. if you like my poems let them - written by e.e. cummings
Read 81486 times on American Poems.

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants."(Read full poem)

Her -- "last Poems" --
Poets -- ended --
Silver -- perished -- with her Tongue --
Not on Record -- bubbled other,
Flute -- or Woman --
So divine --
Not unto its Summer -- Morning
Robin -- uttered Half the Tune --
Gushed too free for the Adoring... (Read full poem)

9. To see the Summer Sky - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 36284 times on American Poems.

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie --
True Poems flee --(Read full poem)

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line... (Read full poem)

11. The Spring - written by Delmore Schwartz
Published in 1965. Read 19745 times on American Poems.

(After Rilke)


Spring has returned! Everything has returned!
The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes
Poems, so many poems. ... Look, she has learned
So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes!

Teacher was strict. We delighted in the... (Read full poem)

On a mountain top above the clouds
That streamed like a sea below me
I said that peak is the thought of Budda,
And that one is the prayer of Jesus,
And this one is the dream of Plato,
And that one there the song of Dante,
And this is Kant and... (Read full poem)

13. Thought. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 10853 times on American Poems.

OF what I write from myself—As if that were not the resumé; 
Of Histories—As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the preceding
	poems; 
As if those shreds, the records of nations, could possibly be as lasting as... (Read full poem)

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of... (Read full poem)

15. Endnote - written by Hayden Carruth
From Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995. Published in 1996. Read 3922 times on American Poems.

The great poems of
our elders in many
tongues we struggled

to comprehend who
are now content with
mystery simple

and profound you
in the night your
breath your body

orbit of time and
the moment you
Phosphorus and

Hesper a dark... (Read full poem)

THE indications, and tally of time; 
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs; 
Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts; 
What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their
	words; 
The... (Read full poem)

17. Big Hair - written by David Lehman
Read 4791 times on American Poems.

Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin 
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written... (Read full poem)

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree... (Read full poem)

19. For Lew Welch In A Snowfall - written by Gary Snyder
From No Nature. Published in 1992. Read 3503 times on American Poems.

Snowfall in March:
I sit in the white glow reading a thesis
About you.  Your poems, your life.

The author's my student,
He even quotes me.

Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.

All those years and their... (Read full poem)

the phone rang at 1:30 a.m.
  and it was a man from Denver:
   
   "Chinaski, you got a following in
  Denver..."
    "yeah?"
   "yeah, I got a magazine and I want some
  poems from you..."
    "FUCK YOU,... (Read full poem)

21. Poems, Potatoes - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1963. Read 5125 times on American Poems.

The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line
Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous,
In establishments which imagined lines

Can only haunt.  Sturdy as potatoes,
Stones, without conscience, word and line endure,
Given an inch.  Not that they're... (Read full poem)

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain... (Read full poem)

23. The Present - written by Philip Levine
Read 727 times on American Poems.

The day comes slowly in the railyard 
behind the ice factory. It broods on 
one cinder after another until each 
glows like lead or the eye of a dog 
possessed of no inner fire, the brown 
and greasy pointer who raises his muzzle 
a moment and... (Read full poem)

THE AUTOPSY OF

    TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA



This is the autopsy of Trout Fishing in America as if Trout

Fishing in America had been Lord Byron and had died in

Missolonghi, Greece, and afterward never saw the shores

of Idaho again, never saw... (Read full poem)

25. Revolt In The Ranks - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 2652 times on American Poems.

I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half
handicapping tomorrow's
card.
when am I going to get at the poems?
well, they'll just have to wait
they'll have to warm their feet in the 
anteroom
where they'll sit gossiping about 
me.
"this Chinaski,... (Read full poem)