1. Alley Rats - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 11012 times on American Poems.

THEY were calling certain styles of whiskers by the name of “lilacs.”
And another manner of beard assumed in their chatter a verbal guise
Of “mutton chops,” “galways,” “feather dusters.”
  
Metaphors such as... (Read full poem)

Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword,
Threw it down, became a lamb.
Swift spat upon the species, but
Took two women to his heart.
Samson who was strong as death
Paid his strength to kiss a slut.
Othello that stiff warrior
Was broken by a woman's... (Read full poem)

3. Metaphors - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1959. Read 93664 times on American Poems.

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in... (Read full poem)

The last Campbell's tomato soup can 
of the twentieth century is going to 
the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh 
That is an example of a sentence 
Another is this from a CEO in Fortune 
"You die in either case, but this way you get 
to do it... (Read full poem)

5. Sonnet VII - written by Alan Seeger
Read 3094 times on American Poems.

To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound 
Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, 
As of a silken city famed afar 
Over the sands for wealth and holy ground, 
Came the report of one -- a woman crowned 
With all perfection, blemishless and... (Read full poem)

This is the hardest part:
When I came back to life
I was a good family dog
and not too friendly to strangers.
I got a thirty-five dollar raise
in salary, and through the pea-soup fogs 
I drove the General, and introduced him 
at rallies. I... (Read full poem)

7. Metaphors Of A Magnifico - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 2914 times on American Poems.

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into... (Read full poem)

They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail, 
each a foot of luminosity 
barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections 

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery 

prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly... (Read full poem)

9. Long I Thought that Knowledge. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 11744 times on American Poems.

LONG I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me—O if I could but obtain
    knowledge! 
Then my lands engrossed me—Lands of the prairies, Ohio’s land, the southern
    savannas,
	engrossed me—For them I would live—I... (Read full poem)

After the burial 
we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses. 
Our posture was the new posture 
and not the old sick posture. 
When we left our stations 
it was just to prove we could, 
not a serious departure 
or a search for yet another... (Read full poem)

11. Helen In Hollywood - written by Judy Grahn
From The Queen of Wands. Published in 1982. Read 1828 times on American Poems.

When she goes to Hollywood
she is an angel.

She writes in red red lipstick
on the window of her body,
long for me, oh need me!
Parts her lips like a lotus.

Opening night she stands, poised
on her carpet, luminescent,
young men humming
all around... (Read full poem)