1. A Pig's-Eye View of Literature - written by Dorothy Parker
From Sunset Gun. Published in 1928. Read 4326 times on American Poems.

The Lives and Times of John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And... (Read full poem)

Stand forth,John Keats!  On earth thou knew'st me not;
Steadfast through all the storms of passion,thou,
True to thy muse,and virgin to thy vow;
Resigned,if name with ashes were forgot,
So thou one arrow in the gold had'st shot!
I never placed my... (Read full poem)

3. Oatmeal - written by Galway Kinnell
Read 3568 times on American Poems.

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone. 
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health 
        if somebody eats it with... (Read full poem)

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; 
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! 
The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold 
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep 
The nightingale is singing from the steep; 
It is midsummer,... (Read full poem)

5. To John Keats - written by Amy Lowell
From A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. Read 1648 times on American Poems.

Great master!  Boyish, sympathetic man!
Whose orbed and ripened genius lightly hung
From life's slim, twisted tendril and there swung
In crimson-sphered completeness; guardian
Of crystal portals through whose openings fan
The spiced winds... (Read full poem)

"Where are you going to-night, to-night, -- 
Where are you going, John Evereldown? 
There's never the sign of a star in sight, 
Nor a lamp that's nearer than Tilbury Town. 
Why do you stare as a dead man might? 
Where are you pointing away... (Read full poem)

7. Barney Hainsfeather - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 459 times on American Poems.

If the excursion train to Peoria
Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life --
Certainly I should have escaped this place.
But as it was burned as well, they mistook me
For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery
At... (Read full poem)

“Tell me what you’re doing over here, John Gorham, 
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you’re not; 
Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight 
Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot.”— 

“I’m over... (Read full poem)

9. The Portent - written by Herman Melville
Read 1815 times on American Poems.

Hanging from the beam, 
Slowly swaying (such the law), 
Gaunt the shadow on the green, 
Shenandoah! 
The cut is on the crown 
(Lo, John Brown), 
And the stabs shall heal no more. 

Hidden in the cap 
Is the anguish none can draw; 
So your... (Read full poem)

Listen, ladies, while I sing
The ballad of John Henry King.

John Henry was a bachelor,
His age was thirty-three or four.

Two maids for his affection vied,
And each desired to be his bride,

And bravely did they strive to bring
Unto their feet John... (Read full poem)

11. The Visitation - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Main Street and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 1457 times on American Poems.

(For Louise Imogen Guiney)

There is a wall of flesh before the eyes
Of John, who yet perceives and hails his King.
It is Our Lady's painful bliss to bring
Before mankind the Glory of the skies.
Her cousin feels her womb's sweet burden... (Read full poem)

what i liked about e.e. cummings
was that he cut away from 
the holiness of the
word
and with charm
and gamble
gave us lines
that sliced through the
dung.

how it was needed!
how we were withering 
away
in the old
tired
manner.

of course, then came... (Read full poem)

13. Rebecca Wasson - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 417 times on American Poems.

Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring,
After each other drifting, past my window drifting!
And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting
The years till a terror came in my heart at times,
With the feeling that I had become... (Read full poem)

If God has been good enough to give you a poet
Then listen to him. But for God's sake let him alone until he is dead; 
no prizes, no ceremony,
They kill the man. A poet is one who listens
To nature and his own heart; and if the noise of the world... (Read full poem)

15. Imanuel Ehrenhardt - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 462 times on American Poems.

I began with Sir William Hamilton's lectures.
Then studied Dugald Stewart;
And then John Locke on the Understanding,
And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,
Kant and then Schopenhauer --
Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers.
All read with... (Read full poem)

I stand beneath the tree, whose branches shade
Thy western window, Chapel of St. John!
And hear its leaves repeat their benison
On him, whose hand thy stones memorial laid;
Then I remember one of whom was said
In the world's darkest hour,... (Read full poem)

17. To England - written by Richard Brautigan
From Shake the Kaleidoscope. Read 1224 times on American Poems.

There are no postage stamps that send letters
back to England three centuries ago,
no postage stamps that make letters
travel back until the grave hasn't been dug yet,
and John Donne stands looking out the window,
it is just beginning to rain this... (Read full poem)

I've always wanted to play the part 
of that puckish pubescent Filipino boy

in those John Wayne Pacific-War movies.
Pepe, Jose, or Juanito would be smiling,

bare-chested and eager to please
for most of the steamy jungle scenes.

I'd be the one who... (Read full poem)

19. Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Muses - written by Delmore Schwartz
Read 1233 times on American Poems.

Nothing is given which is not taken.

Little or nothing is taken which is not freely desired,
       freely, truly and fully.

"You would not seek me if you had not found me": this is
       true of all that is supremely desired and admired...

"An... (Read full poem)

Both of us had been close
to Joel, and at Joel's death
my friend had gone to the wake
and the memorial service
and more recently he had
visited Joel's grave, there
at the back of the grassy
cemetery among the trees,
"a quiet, gentle... (Read full poem)

21. In the Shadow of the Palace - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1366 times on American Poems.

LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspapers office.
  
Let us sit among the... (Read full poem)

How the season surrounds us and mistakes
itself for some other force,
while we may be left wondering:
What was she doing
with our bolt of wishes?
Reverberants
through the ground with the spoils
of acorn, gourd.
One life 
inverted into a swollen... (Read full poem)

23. Lather As You Go - written by Ogden Nash
Read 1969 times on American Poems.

Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed.
He watched the ads
And not the road.(Read full poem)

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,--John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr... (Read full poem)

25. An Empty Threat - written by Robert Frost
From New Hampshire. Published in 1923. Read 5229 times on American Poems.

I stay;
But it isn't as if
There wasn't always Hudson's Bay
And the fur trade,
A small skiff
And a paddle blade.
 
I can just see my tent pegged,
And me on the floor,
Cross-legged,
And a trapper looking in at the door
With furs to... (Read full poem)