1. This was a Poet -- It is That - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 4485 times on American Poems.

This was a Poet -- It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings --
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door --
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it -- before --

Of Pictures, the Discloser --
The... (Read full poem)

Shall I take thee, the Poet said
To the propounded word?
Be stationed with the Candidates
Till I have finer tried --

The Poet searched Philology
And when about to ring
For the suspended Candidate
There came unsummoned in --

That portion of the... (Read full poem)

3. The Hideous Chair - written by Erin Belieu
Read 912 times on American Poems.

This hideous,
upholstered in gift-wrap fabric, chromed
in places, design possibility

for the future canned ham.
Its genius
wonderful, circa I993.

I've assumed a great many things:
the perversity of choices, affairs
I did or did not... (Read full poem)

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such... (Read full poem)

5. Let Them Alone - written by Robinson Jeffers
Published in 1963. Read 1205 times on American Poems.

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)

the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.

at dawn we would, each of us,
rise frm our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.

did... (Read full poem)

7. A New Poet - written by Linda Pastan
From Heroes In Disguise. Published in 1991. Read 928 times on American Poems.

Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see

its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way

its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In... (Read full poem)

I had sex with a famous poet last night 
and when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered 
because I was married to someone else, 
because I wasn't supposed to have been drinking,
because I was in fancy hotel room
I didn't... (Read full poem)

9. Ai - written by Denise Duhamel
Read 2663 times on American Poems.

There is a chimp named Ai who can count to five.
There's a poet named Ai whose selected poems Vice
just won the National Book Award.
The name "Ai" is pronounced "I"
so that whenever I talk about the poet Ai
such as I'm teaching Ai's... (Read full poem)

Elizabeth, it surely is most fit
[Logic and common usage so commanding]
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction;
Each poet... (Read full poem)

11. Old Poets - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Trees and Other Poems. Published in 1914. Read 3068 times on American Poems.

(For Robert Cortez Holliday)

If I should live in a forest
And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of impudent saplings
Would make a home for me.
I'd go where the old oaks gather,
Serene and good and strong,
And they would not sigh and... (Read full poem)

I slumbered with your poems on my breast
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb
To see, if in a dream they brought of you,

I might not have the chance I missed in life
Through some delay, and... (Read full poem)

13. Wapentake - written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
From Birds Of Passage. Read 692 times on American Poems.

To Alfred Tennyson 

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;
Not as a knight, who on the listed field
Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
In token of defiance, but in sign
Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,
In English song;... (Read full poem)

In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a schoolboy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a... (Read full poem)

15. An Epithet for the Dead Poet - written by Joseph Mayo Wristen
From The Code. Read 1701 times on American Poems.

The voice of a dead poet
calling out from his grave 
asking me to follow his visions. 
Once a spirit he is now just 
one of the many souls
who have remained here to 
be with the living.
His passionate thoughts. 
His causes. 
The moment in... (Read full poem)

Minstrel, what have you to do
With this man that, after you,
Sharing not your happy fate,
Sat as England's Laureate?
Vainly, in these iron days,
Strives the poet in your praise,
Minstrel, by whose singing side
Beauty walked, until you died.

Still,... (Read full poem)

17. Why I Am Not A Painter - written by Frank O\'Hara
Read 4145 times on American Poems.

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in... (Read full poem)

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)

19. Poem (Halleck monument dedication) - written by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Read 371 times on American Poems.

SAY not the Poet dies!
Though in the dust he lies,
He cannot forfeit his melodious breath,
Unsphered by envious death!
Life drops the voiceless myriads from its roll;
Their fate he cannot share,
Who, in the enchanted air
Sweet with the... (Read full poem)

I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it,
            the lights, the stars, and the bridges
I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic
            -of the peoples' hearts, crossing it 
                         to new... (Read full poem)

21. The Poet - written by Delmore Schwartz
Published in 1954. Read 1669 times on American Poems.

The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry 
His power is his left hand
      It is idle weak and precious
His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him
   like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience 
And this... (Read full poem)

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)

23. Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success - written by Amy Lowell
From Sword Blades & Poppy Seed. Read 2080 times on American Poems.

Beneath this sod lie the remains
Of one who died of growing pains.(Read full poem)

Elves are no smaller
than men, and walk
as men do, in this world,
but with more grace than most,
and are not immortal.

Their beauty sets them aside
from other men and from women
unless a woman has that cold fire in her
called poet: with... (Read full poem)

25. FOREWARD, is 5 - written by e.e. cummings
Read 7393 times on American Poems.

F O R E W A R D

On the assumption that my technique is either complicated or original
or both, the publishers have politely requested me to write an intro-
duction to this book.
At least my theory of technique, if I have one, is very far... (Read full poem)