1. Poem - written by Donald Justice
Read 46406 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. What A Writer - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 2565 times on American Poems.

what i liked about e.e. cummings
was that he cut away from 
the holiness of the
word
and with charm
and gamble
gave us lines
that sliced through the
dung.

how it was needed!
how we were withering 
away
in the old
tired
manner.

of course, then came... (Read full poem)

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)

5. Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing - written by William Stafford
Read 10711 times on American Poems.

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)

"Nature" is what we see --
The Hill -- the Afternoon --
Squirrel -- Eclipse -- the Bumble bee --
Nay -- Nature is Heaven --
Nature is what we hear --
The Bobolink -- the Sea --
Thunder -- the Cricket --
Nay -- Nature is Harmony --
Nature is what we... (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 3152 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. Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry - written by Stephen Dunn
Read 11513 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 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)

13. 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)

I thought that nature was enough
Till Human nature came
But that the other did absorb
As Parallax a Flame --

Of Human nature just aware
There added the Divine
Brief struggle for capacity
The power to contain

Is always as the contents
But give a... (Read full poem)

15. My life has been the poem - written by Henry David Thoreau
Read 59842 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)

Nature assigns the Sun --
That -- is Astronomy --
Nature cannot enact a Friend --
That -- is Astrology.(Read full poem)

17. Phoenix Lyrics - written by Delmore Schwartz
Published in 1957. Read 1421 times on American Poems.

I

If nature is life, nature is death:
It is winter as it is spring:
Confusion is variety, variety
And confusion in everything
Make experience the true conclusion
Of all desire and opulence,
All satisfaction and poverty.

II

When a hundred years... (Read full poem)

I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry.
It had no trouble accepting its limits,
yet defining and redefining a small area
so that any shape was possible, any movement.
It stayed put, but was part of all the air.
I wanted to learn... (Read full poem)

19. Garland for Queens, may be - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 5007 times on American Poems.

Garland for Queens, may be --
Laurels -- for rare degree
Of soul or sword.
Ah -- but remembering me --
Ah -- but remembering thee --
Nature in chivalry --
Nature in charity --
Nature in equity --
This Rose ordained!(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)

21. Of Nature I shall have enough - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2027 times on American Poems.

Of Nature I shall have enough
When I have entered these
Entitled to a Bumble bee's
Familiarities.(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)

23. Epithalamium: A Marriage Poem - written by Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
Read 951 times on American Poems.

'Twas summer, when softly the breezes were blowing,
And Hudson majestic so sweetly was flowing,
The groves rang with music & accents of pleasure
And nature in rapture beat time to the measure,
When Helen and Jonas, so true and so loving,
Along... (Read full poem)

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)

25. Nature can do no more - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 2334 times on American Poems.

Nature can do no more
She has fulfilled her Dyes
Whatever Flower fail to come
Of other Summer days
Her crescent reimburse
If other Summers be
Nature's imposing negative
Nulls opportunity --(Read full poem)