1. Within that little Hive - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1525 times on American Poems.

Within that little Hive
Such Hints of Honey lay
As made Reality a Dream
And Dreams, Reality --(Read full poem)

America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world

you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.

People are your own word, you
invented that locus and... (Read full poem)

3. With The Face - written by Laura Riding Jackson
Read 2219 times on American Poems.

With the face goes a mirror
As with the mind a world.
Likeness tells the doubting eye
That strangeness is not strange.
At an early hour and knowledge
Identity not yet familiar
Looks back upon itself from later,
And seems itself.

To-day seems... (Read full poem)

Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,
You dauntless fledglings
Who pass by my headstone,
Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army
And my faith in God!
They are not denials of each other.
Go by reverently, and read with sober care
How a... (Read full poem)

5. Dreams - written by Edgar Allan Poe
Read 6197 times on American Poems.

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awakening, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.
Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
'Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose... (Read full poem)

PRIMEVAL my love for the woman I love, 
O bride! O wife! more resistless, more enduring than I can tell, the thought of you! 
Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born, 
The ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation, 
I ascend—I... (Read full poem)

7. Cinderella - written by Randall Jarrell
Read 2027 times on American Poems.

Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up 
In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances, 
The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes 
Draw over an old ember --as the mother 
In a jug of cider-- were a comfort to her. 
They sat by the fire and told each... (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)

9. Fast Anchor’d, Eternal, O Love. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 2161 times on American Poems.

FAST-ANCHOR’D, eternal, O love! O woman I love! 
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you! 
—Then separate, as disembodied, or another born, 
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation; 
I ascend—I... (Read full poem)

How is it that, being gone, you fill my days,
And all the long nights are made glad by thee?
No loneliness is this, nor misery,
But great content that these should be the ways
Whereby the Fancy, dreaming as she strays,
Makes bright and present... (Read full poem)

11. An Asphodel - written by Allen Ginsberg
From Howl and Other Poems. Published in 1953. Read 3501 times on American Poems.

O dear sweet rosy 
     unattainable desire 
...how sad, no way 
     to change the mad 
cultivated asphodel, the 
     visible reality... 

and skin's appalling 
     petals--how inspired 
to be so Iying in the living 
     room drunk naked 
and... (Read full poem)

nothing false and possible is love
(who's imagined,therefore is limitless)
love's to giving as to keeping's give;
as yes is to if,love is to yes

must's a schoolroom in the month of may:
life's the deathboard where all now turns when
(love's a... (Read full poem)

13. Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 2435 times on American Poems.

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache... (Read full poem)

poem in the ancient mode for you
that was musical and had old words

in it such as would never do in 
the academies you loved it and you

said you did not know how to thank 
me and in truth this is a problem

for who can ever be grateful... (Read full poem)

15. Celestial Music - written by Louise Gluck
Read 1633 times on American Poems.

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found... (Read full poem)

Orange blossoms blowing over Castile
children begging for coins

I met my love under an orange tree
or was it an acacia tree
or was he not my love?

I read this, then I dreamed this:
can waking take back what happened to me?
Bells of San... (Read full poem)

17. To a Pupil. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 4222 times on American Poems.

IS reform needed? Is it through you? 
The greater the reform needed, the greater the personality you need to accomplish it. 
  
You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? 
Do you not see how it would... (Read full poem)

Poem Faithful to your commands, o consciousness, o 

Beating wings, I studied

the roses and the muses of reality,

the deceptions and the deceptive elation of the redness of the growing morning,

and all the greened and thomed variety of the vines... (Read full poem)

19. Herman Altman - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 407 times on American Poems.

Did I follow Truth wherever she led,
And stand against the whole world for a cause,
And uphold the weak against the strong?
If I did I would be remembered among men
As I was known in life among the people,
And as I was hated and loved on... (Read full poem)

1

I move my hand over 
slopes, falls, lumps of sight,
Lashes barely able to be touched,
Lips that give way so easily
it's a shock to feel underneath them

The bones smile.

Muffled a little, barely cloaked,
Zygoma, maxillary, turbinate.

2

I put... (Read full poem)

21. When they come back -- if Blossoms do -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2537 times on American Poems.

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)

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)

23. Night Thoughts Over A Sick Child - written by Philip Levine
From On The Edge. Published in 1963. Read 714 times on American Poems.

Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep, 
I keep night watch. Looking for 
signs to quiet fear, I creep 
closer to his bed and hear 
his breath come and go, holding 
my own as if my own were 
all I paid. Nothing I bring, 
say, or do has meaning here.... (Read full poem)

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)

25. Eurydice - written by H. D.
Read 5778 times on American Poems.

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)