1. Poem - written by Donald Justice
Read 46617 times on American Poems.

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does no matter.
The poem will... (Read full poem)

1

the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the... (Read full poem)

3. Your Dog Dies - written by Raymond Carver
Read 38731 times on American Poems.

it gets run over by a van. 
you find it at the side of the road 
and bury it. 
you feel bad about it. 
you feel bad personally, 
but you feel bad for your daughter 
because it was her pet, 
and she loved it so. 
she used to croon to it 
and let it... (Read full poem)

The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.

Notice what this poem is not doing.

A house, a house, a barn, the old
quarry, where the river shrugs--
how much of... (Read full poem)

5. Introduction To Poetry - written by Billy Collins
From The Apple that Astonished Paris. Published in 1988. Read 10292 times on American Poems.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light 
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I... (Read full poem)

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- 

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

                 *

A... (Read full poem)

7. Glass - written by Robert Francis
Read 3372 times on American Poems.

Words of a poem should be glass
But glass so simple-subtle its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.

A glass spun for itself is empty,
Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.
Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence.

Words should... (Read full poem)

Words of a poem should be glass
But glass so simple-subtle its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.

A glass spun for itself is empty,
Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.
Embossed glass hides the poem or its absence.

Words should be... (Read full poem)

9. Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry - written by Stephen Dunn
Read 11796 times on American Poems.

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist 
somewhere in the... (Read full poem)

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour.  I know you are reading this poem
standing up in... (Read full poem)

11. In Back Of The Real - written by Allen Ginsberg
From Howl and Other Poems. Published in 1954. Read 7310 times on American Poems.

railroad yard in San Jose 
     I wandered desolate 
in front of a tank factory 
     and sat on a bench 
near the switchman's shack. 

A flower lay on the hay on 
     the asphalt highway 
--the dread hay flower 
     I thought--It had a 
brittle... (Read full poem)

My poem would eat nothing. 
I tried giving it water 
but it said no, 
  
worrying me. 
Day after day, 
I held it up to the llight, 
  
turning it over, 
but it only pressed its lips 
more tightly together. 
  
It grew sullen, like a toad 
through... (Read full poem)

13. Odysseus' Decision - written by Louise Gluck
From Meadowlands. Published in 1996. Read 4965 times on American Poems.

The great man turns his back on the island.
Now he will not die in paradise
nor hear again
the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,
by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time

begins now, in which he hears again
that pulse which is the... (Read full poem)

Each picture is heartbreakingly banal,
a kitten and a ball of yarn,
a dog and bone.
The paper is cheap, easily torn.
A coloring book's authority is derived
from its heavy black lines
as unalterable as the ten commandments
within which minor... (Read full poem)

15. As if some little Arctic flower - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 3610 times on American Poems.

As if some little Arctic flower
Upon the polar hem --
Went wandering down the Latitudes
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer --
To firmaments of sun --
To strange, bright crowds of flowers --
And birds, of foreign tongue!
I say, As if this... (Read full poem)

My life has been the poem I would have writ, 
But I could not both live and utter it.(Read full poem)

17. I Have Loved Hours At Sea - written by Sara Teasdale
Read 1935 times on American Poems.

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at... (Read full poem)

WHAT flower is this that greets the morn,
Its hues from Heaven so freshly born?
With burning star and flaming band
It kindles all the sunset land:
Oh tell us what its name may be,--
Is this the Flower of Liberty? 

It is the banner of the... (Read full poem)

19. So gay a Flower - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1618 times on American Poems.

So gay a Flower
Bereaves the Mind
As if it were a Woe --
Is Beauty an Affliction -- then?
Tradition ought to know --(Read full poem)

We should not mind so small a flower --
Except it quiet bring
Our little garden that we lost
Back to the Lawn again.

So spicy her Carnations nod --
So drunken, reel her Bees --
So silver steal a hundred flutes
From out a hundred trees --

That... (Read full poem)

21. The Telephone - written by Robert Frost
From Mountain Interval. Published in 1916. Read 12604 times on American Poems.

'When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head again a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the window sill-
Do... (Read full poem)

This is a Blossom of the Brain --
A small -- italic Seed
Lodged by Design or Happening
The Spirit fructified --

Shy as the Wind of his Chambers
Swift as a Freshet's Tongue
So of the Flower of the Soul
Its process is unknown.

When it is found, a... (Read full poem)

23. The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 3731 times on American Poems.

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had... (Read full poem)

Bloom -- is Result -- to meet a Flower
And casually glance
Would scarcely cause one to suspect
The minor Circumstance

Assisting in the Bright Affair
So intricately done
Then offered as a Butterfly
To the Meridian --

To pack the Bud -- oppose the... (Read full poem)

25. Finis - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 579 times on American Poems.

An idle rhyme of the summer time, 
Sweet, and solemn, and tender; 
Fair with the haze of the moon's pale rays, 
Bright with the sunset's splendour.

Summer and beauty over the lands -
Careless hours of pleasure; 
A meeting of eyes and a... (Read full poem)