1. A Pig's-Eye View of Literature - written by Dorothy Parker
From Sunset Gun. Published in 1928. Read 4214 times on American Poems.

The Lives and Times of John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And... (Read full poem)

With a love a madness for Shelley
Chatterton   Rimbaud
and the needy-yap of my youth
     has gone from ear to ear:
       I HATE OLD POETMEN!
Especially old poetmen who retract
who consult other old poetmen
who speak their youth in... (Read full poem)

3. Myself - written by Robert Creeley
Read 2410 times on American Poems.

What, younger, felt
was possible, now knows
is not - but still
not chanted enough -

Walked by the sea,
unchanged in memory -
evening, as clouds
on the far-off rim

of water float,
pictures of time,
smoke, faintness -
still the dream.

I want, if... (Read full poem)

My father who owned the wagon-shop
And grew rich shoeing horses
Sent me to the University of Montreal.
I learned nothing and returned home,
Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler,
Hunting quail and snipe.
At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my... (Read full poem)

5. I Held A Shelley Manuscript - written by Gregory Corso
Read 1947 times on American Poems.

My hands did numb to beauty
as they reached into Death and tightened!

O sovereign was my touch
upon the tan-inks's fragile page!

Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!

I would have taken the... (Read full poem)

After a long day of work in my hot-houses
Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
I was among my flowers where some one
Seemed to be raising them on trial,
As if after-while to be transplanted
To... (Read full poem)

7. Apology - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Main Street and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 5233 times on American Poems.

(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)

For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in... (Read full poem)

With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
As often before, the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed... (Read full poem)

9. Those Graves In Rome - written by Larry Levis
From The Selected Levis, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Read 407 times on American Poems.

There are places where the eye can starve,
But not here. Here, for example, is
The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room
Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing
Tourists. And here is the Protestant Cemetery
Where Keats &... (Read full poem)

Read by the poet at The Public Ceremonial of The Naional Institute 
of Arts and Letters at Carnegie Hall, New York, January 18th, 1941.

Great Muse, that from this hall absent for long
Hast never been, 
Great Muse of Song,
Colossal Muse of mighty... (Read full poem)

11. A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor - written by Ogden Nash
Read 5208 times on American Poems.

The hands of the clock were reaching high
In an old midtown hotel;
I name no name, but its sordid fame
Is table talk in hell.
I name no name, but hell's own flame
Illumes the lobby garish,
A gilded snare just off Times Square
For the maidens of the... (Read full poem)