1. Autobiography - written by Dorothy Parker
From Enough Rope. Published in 1926. Read 3735 times on American Poems.

Oh, both my shoes are shiny new,
And pristine is my hat;
My dress is 1922....
My life is all like that.(Read full poem)

[Written while a field-worker in the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois.]


King Arthur's men have come again. 
They challenge everywhere 
The foes of Christ's Eternal Church. 
Her incense crowns the air. 
The heathen knighthood cower and curse... (Read full poem)

3. Rhyming Poem - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 7260 times on American Poems.

the goldfish sing all night with guitars,
and the whores go down with the stars,
the whores go down with the stars 
I'm sorry, sir, we close at 4:30,
besides yr mother's neck is dirty,
and the whores go down with the etc.,
the whrs. go dn. with the... (Read full poem)

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room. 
...in the morning
they're out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys,... (Read full poem)

5. On The Meeting Of García Lorca And Hart Crane - written by Philip Levine
Read 521 times on American Poems.

Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane's
been drinking and has no idea who
this curious Andalusian is, unable
even to speak the language of poetry.
The young man who brought them
together knows both Spanish and English,
but he has a headache from... (Read full poem)

Now that they've got it settled whose I be,
I'm going to tell them something they won't like:
They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it.
Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting
To make a present of me to each other.
They... (Read full poem)

7. 1985 - written by Brooks Haxton
From Uproar. Read 478 times on American Poems.

The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth 
            the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in 
            the blood of the wicked.   Psalm 58

It was the fortieth year since Buchenwald:  two thousand
Jewish refugees in Sudan starved while... (Read full poem)

drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end of my 2nd bottle
of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young girls in this
dwindling twilight
liver gone
kidneys going
pancrea pooped
top-floor blood pressure... (Read full poem)

9. The Lost Pilot - written by James Tate
From The Lost Pilot. Published in 1967. Read 6083 times on American Poems.

for my father, 1922-1944

Your face did not rot
like the others--the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more... (Read full poem)

AN ARGUMENT FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE AND GOODWILL WITH THE JAPANESE PEOPLE

Glossary for the uninstructed and the hasty: Jimmu Tenno, ancestor of all the Japanese Emperors; Nikko, Japan's loveliest shrine; Iyeyasu, her greatest statesman;... (Read full poem)

11. Mark Twain and Joan of Arc - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 653 times on American Poems.

When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade
Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.

For she is there in armor clad, today,
All the young poets of the wide world say.

Which of our freemen did she greet the first,
Seeing him come against the... (Read full poem)

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to... (Read full poem)

13. Mummy's Curse - written by Charles Simic
Read 2200 times on American Poems.

Befriending an eccentric young woman
The sole resident of a secluded Victorian mansion.
She takes long walks in the evening rain,
And so do I, with my hair full of dead leaves.

In her former life, she was an opera singer.
She remembers the rich... (Read full poem)

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would... (Read full poem)

15. Nothing Stays Put - written by Amy Clampitt
Read 1472 times on American Poems.

In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985


The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes—a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom—
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not... (Read full poem)

This is not bad --
ambling along 44th Street
with Sonny Rollins for company,
his music flowing through the soft calipers
of these earphones,

as if he were right beside me
on this clear day in March,
the pavement sparkling with sunlight,
pigeons... (Read full poem)

17. Ode To Meaning - written by Robert Pinsky
Read 2152 times on American Poems.

Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer--

In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:

Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By... (Read full poem)

“Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see, 
So far beyond the faint edge of the world? 
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian, 
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons 
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far... (Read full poem)

19. The Grocery - written by Amy Lowell
From Men, Women and Ghosts. Read 1713 times on American Poems.

"Hullo, Alice!"
"Hullo, Leon!"
"Say, Alice, gi' me a couple
O' them two for five cigars,
Will yer?"
"Where's your nickel?"
"My!  Ain't you close!
Can't trust a feller, can yer."
"Trust you!  Why
What you owe this store
Would set you up in... (Read full poem)