1. Poem - written by Donald Justice
Read 46426 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)

3. Your Dog Dies - written by Raymond Carver
Read 37978 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)

5. Introduction To Poetry - written by Billy Collins
From The Apple that Astonished Paris. Published in 1988. Read 10030 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)

7. Glass - written by Robert Francis
Read 3173 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)

9. Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry - written by Stephen Dunn
Read 11532 times on American Poems.

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)

I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen
and so I swung into action and wrote a poem

and it was miserable, for that was how I thought
poetry worked: you digested experience shat

literature.  It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since
defunct,... (Read full poem)

11. From an Atlas of the Difficult World - written by Adrienne Rich
Read 11964 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)

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)

13. My life has been the poem - written by Henry David Thoreau
Read 59894 times on American Poems.

My life has been the poem I would have writ, 
But I could not both live and utter it.(Read full poem)

The Sun in reigning to the West
Makes not as much of sound
As Cart of man in road below
Adroitly turning round
That Whiffletree of Amethyst(Read full poem)

15. February 23 - written by David Lehman
Read 1205 times on American Poems.

Light rain is falling in Central Park
but not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West
where sun and sky are yellow and blue
Winds are gusting on Washington Square
through the arches and on to LaGuardia Place
but calm is the corner of 8th Street... (Read full poem)

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)

17. These held their Wick above the West -- - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1054 times on American Poems.

These held their Wick above the West --
Till when the Red declined --
Or how the Amber aided it --
Defied to be defined --

Then waned without disparagement
In a dissembling Hue
That would not let the Eye decide
Did it abide or no --(Read full poem)

The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That... (Read full poem)

19. To the East and to the West. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 2285 times on American Poems.

TO the East and to the West; 
To the man of the Seaside State, and of Pennsylvania, 
To the Kanadian of the North—to the Southerner I love; 
These, with perfect trust, to depict you as myself—the germs are in all men; 
I believe the main... (Read full poem)

Old man in the crystal morning after snow,
Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent
Figure building the snow man which is meant
For the grandchild's target,
                                                       do you know
This fat cartoon, his... (Read full poem)

21. Poem (Faithful to your commands, o consciousness) - written by Delmore Schwartz
Published in 1962. Read 596 times on American Poems.

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)

THE SUNSET swept
To the valley’s west, you remember.
  
  The frost was on.
  A star burnt blue.
  We were warm, you remember,
And counted the rings on a moon.
  
  The sunset swept
  To the valley’s west
And was gone in a big dark door of... (Read full poem)

23. Moonset - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 2964 times on American Poems.

LEAVES of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west.
Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures.
      The moon’s good-by ends pictures.
The west is empty. All else is empty. No moon-talk at all now.
      Only dark listening to... (Read full poem)

SMOKE of autumn is on it all.
The streamers loosen and travel.
The red west is stopped with a gray haze.
They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,
They make a long-tailed rider
In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star..    .... (Read full poem)

25. Madmen - written by Billy Collins
Read 2854 times on American Poems.

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as... (Read full poem)