1. Words - written by Anne Sexton
Read 12238 times on American Poems.

Be careful of words, 
even the miraculous ones. 
For the miraculous we do our best, 
sometimes they swarm like insects 
and leave not a sting but a kiss. 
They can be as good as fingers. 
They can be as trusty as the rock 
you stick your bottom on.... (Read full poem)

My business is words. Words are like labels, 
or coins, or better, like swarming bees. 
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; 
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, 
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry... (Read full poem)

3. Our Whole Life - written by Adrienne Rich
Published in 1969. Read 8631 times on American Poems.

Our whole life a translation 
the permissible fibs

and now a knot of lies 
eating at itself to get undone

Words bitten thru words

~~

meanings burnt-off like paint 
under the blowtorch

All those dead letters 
rendered into the... (Read full poem)

When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,
Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;
And I can only stare, and shape my grief
In little words.

I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown
The bitter woe that racks my cords apart.
The weary pen that... (Read full poem)

5. A Token - written by Robert Creeley
Read 2410 times on American Poems.

My lady
fair with
soft
arms, what

can I say to
you-words, words
as if all
worlds were there.(Read full poem)

Lay these words into the dead man's grave
next to the almonds and black cherries---
tiny skulls and flowering blood-drops, eyes,
and Thou, O bitterness that pillows his head.

Lay these words on the dead man's eyelids
like eyebrights, like... (Read full poem)

7. Coal - written by Audre Lorde
Read 5253 times on American Poems.

I 
is the total black, being spoken 
from the earth's inside. 
There are many kinds of open 
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame 
how sound comes into a words, coloured 
by who pays what for speaking. 

Some words are open like a diamond 
on... (Read full poem)

The words the happy say
Are paltry melody
But those the silent feel
Are beautiful --(Read full poem)

9. As Planned - written by Frank O\'Hara
Read 1474 times on American Poems.

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and... (Read full poem)

Your thoughts don't have words every day
They come a single time
Like signal esoteric sips
Of the communion Wine
Which while you taste so native seems
So easy so to be
You cannot comprehend its price
Nor its infrequency(Read full poem)

11. For an Unknown Lady - written by Dorothy Parker
From Enough Rope. Published in 1926. Read 2634 times on American Poems.

Lady, if you'd slumber sound,
Keep your eyes upon the ground.
If you'd toss and turn at night,
Slip your glances left and right.
Would the mornings find you gay,
Never give your heart away.
Would they find you pale and sad,
Fling it to a whistling... (Read full poem)

I found the words to every thought
I ever had -- but One --
And that -- defies me --
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun

To Races -- nurtured in the Dark --
How would your own -- begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal --
Or Noon -- in Mazarin?(Read full poem)

13. By homely gift and hindered Words - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1439 times on American Poems.

By homely gift and hindered Words
The human heart is told
Of Nothing --
"Nothing" is the force
That renovates the World --(Read full poem)

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the... (Read full poem)

15. Water Music - written by Robert Creeley
Read 2727 times on American Poems.

The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.

Water music,
loud in the clearing

off the boats,
birds, leaves.

They look for a place
to sit and eat--

no meaning,
no point.(Read full poem)

He ate and drank the precious Words --
His Spirit grew robust --
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was Dust --

He danced along the dingy Days
And this Bequest of Wings
Was but a Book -- What Liberty
A loosened spirit brings --(Read full poem)

17. February Morning - written by Hayden Carruth
Read 1252 times on American Poems.

The old man takes a nap
too soon in the morning.
His coffee cup grows cold.

Outside the snow falls fast.
He'll not go out today.
Others must clear the way

to the car and the shed.
Open upon his lap
lie the poems of Mr. Frost.

Somehow... (Read full poem)

Walking to-day on the Common, 
I heard a stranger say
To a friend who was standing near him, 
'Do you know I am going away? '
I had never seen their faces, 
May never see them again; 
Yet the words the stranger uttered, 
Stirred me with... (Read full poem)

19. Threes - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 2116 times on American Poems.

I WAS a boy when I heard three red words
a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets
for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—I asked
why men die for words.
  
I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,
lilacs, told me the high golden words... (Read full poem)

If you could write down the words
moving through a man's mind as
he masturbates you'd have a quick 
bonus bonk read, I used to think. 
But words were never adequate 
or the point in the bar where the girl
is a boy the boy is a girl the two... (Read full poem)

21. She dealt her pretty words like Blades - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 4132 times on American Poems.

She dealt her pretty words like Blades --
How glittering they shone --
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone --

She never deemed -- she hurt --
That -- is not Steel's Affair --
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh --
How ill the Creatures... (Read full poem)

A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway.  And his beloved,
the next morning driving to work...?
His words are not... (Read full poem)

23. Words - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1963. Read 11134 times on American Poems.

Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white... (Read full poem)

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in... (Read full poem)

25. The Lady's Reward - written by Dorothy Parker
From Death and Taxes. Published in 1931. Read 4588 times on American Poems.

Lady, lady, never start
Conversation toward your heart;
Keep your pretty words serene;
Never murmur what you mean.
Show yourself, by word and look,
Swift and shallow as a brook.
Be as cool and quick to go
As a drop of April snow;
Be as delicate and... (Read full poem)