1. An Instructor's Dream - written by Bill Knott
From The Unsubscriber. Published in 2000. Read 2987 times on American Poems.

Many decades after graduation
the students sneak back onto
the school-grounds at night
and within the pane-lit windows
catch me their teacher at the desk
or blackboard cradling a chalk:
someone has erased their youth,
and as they crouch closer to... (Read full poem)

Oh, Marcia, 
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.
I want high school report cards 
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass... (Read full poem)

3. Poem - written by Donald Justice
Read 46408 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)

5. Your Dog Dies - written by Raymond Carver
Read 37944 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)

7. Introduction To Poetry - written by Billy Collins
From The Apple that Astonished Paris. Published in 1988. Read 10008 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)

9. Glass - written by Robert Francis
Read 3153 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)

11. Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day - written by Delmore Schwartz
Published in 1937. Read 2617 times on American Poems.

Calmly we walk through this April's day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all... (Read full poem)

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the... (Read full poem)

13. End Of The World - written by Robinson Jeffers
From The Beginning and the End & Other Poems. Read 3299 times on American Poems.

When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War,
We used to take it for known that the human race
Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died. I wrote a schoolboy poem
About the last man walking in stoic... (Read full poem)

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)

15. From an Atlas of the Difficult World - written by Adrienne Rich
Read 11931 times on American Poems.

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)

I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without 
still sucks his tumb 
in secret
how come my knees are 
always so ashy
what if I die
before the morning comes
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

I have to learn... (Read full poem)

17. The Poem You Asked For - written by Larry Levis
From Wrecking Crew, University of Pittsburgh Press . Published in 1972. Read 3099 times on American Poems.

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)

AN old man’s thought of School; 
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot. 
  
Now only do I know you! 
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass! 
  
And these I see—these sparkling eyes,
These... (Read full poem)

19. The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students - written by Galway Kinnell
Read 1666 times on American Poems.

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
Clinical Sonnet; goodbye, manufacturer
of... (Read full poem)

If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch... (Read full poem)

21. What Fifty Said - written by Robert Frost
From West-Running Brook. Published in 1928. Read 11941 times on American Poems.

When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now when I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be... (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)

23. One Third Of The Calendar - written by Ogden Nash
Read 2463 times on American Poems.

In January everything freezes.
We have two children. Both are she'ses.
This is our January rule:
One girl in bed, and one in school.

In February the blizzard whirls.
We own a pair of little girls.
Blessings upon of each the head ----
The one in... (Read full poem)

It was not dying: everybody died. 
It was not dying: we had died before 
In the routine crashes-- and our fields 
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, 
And the rates rose, all because of us. 
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,... (Read full poem)

25. The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 3509 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)