1. The Red Dance - written by Anne Sexton
Read 3820 times on American Poems.

There was a girl
who danced in the city that night,
that April 22nd,
all along the Charles River.
It was as if one hundred men were watching
or do I mean the one hundred eyes of God?
The yellow patches in the sycamores
glowed like miniature... (Read full poem)

You have heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day.
And then, of a sudden, it up and bust,
And all that was left was a mound of dust?
Holmes—O. W.—told it well
In a rhyme of... (Read full poem)

3. Examples (August 27) - written by David Lehman
Read 6841 times on American Poems.

The last Campbell's tomato soup can 
of the twentieth century is going to 
the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh 
That is an example of a sentence 
Another is this from a CEO in Fortune 
"You die in either case, but this way you get 
to do it... (Read full poem)

Many decades after graduation
the students sneak back onto
the school-grounds at night
and within the pane-lit windows
catch me their teacher at the desk
or blackboard cradling a chalk:
someone has erased their youth,
and as they crouch closer to... (Read full poem)

5. Dream Song 121: Grief is fatiguing. He is out of it - written by John Berryman
From His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Published in 1968. Read 636 times on American Poems.

Grief is fatiguing. He is out of it,
the whole humiliating Human round,
out of this & that.
He made a-many hearts go pit-a-pat
who now need never mind his nostril-hair
nor a critical error laid bare.

He endured fifty years. He was Randall... (Read full poem)

SMALL is the theme of the following Chant, yet the greatest—namely,
	One’s-Self—that wondrous thing a simple, separate person. That, for the use of
    the
	New World, I sing. 
Man’s physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing.... (Read full poem)

7. The Fallen Angels - written by Anne Sexton
Read 6997 times on American Poems.

They come on to my clean
sheet of paper and leave a Rorschach blot.
They do not do this to be mean,
they do it to give me a sign
they want me, as Aubrey Beardsley once said,
to shove it around till something comes.
Clumsy as I am,
I do it.
For I am... (Read full poem)

Roach, foulest of creatures,
who attacks with yellow teeth
and an army of cousins big as shoes,
you are lumps of coal that are mechanized
and when I turn on the light you scuttle
into the corners and there is this hiss upon the land.
Yet I know you... (Read full poem)

9. Here I Am ... - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 4352 times on American Poems.

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)

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every... (Read full poem)

11. Base of all Metaphysics, The. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 1999 times on American Poems.

AND now, gentlemen, 
A word I give to remain in your memories and minds, 
As base, and finale too, for all metaphysics. 
  
(So, to the students, the old professor, 
At the close of his crowded course.)
  
Having studied the new and antique, the... (Read full poem)

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers... (Read full poem)

13. The Difference Between Pepsi And Coke - written by David Lehman
From An Alternative to Speech. Published in 1986. Read 3859 times on American Poems.

Can't swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat
   intolerable feelings of inadequacy;
Won't admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind
   numerous marital infidelities;
Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés with confidence,
   breaks... (Read full poem)

This is not the way I am.
Really, I am much taller in person,
the hairline I conceal reaches back
to my grandfather, and the shyness my wife
will not believe in has always been why
I was bold on first dates. My father a crack salesman.
I've saved... (Read full poem)

15. My Father's Love Letters - written by Yusef Komunyakaa
Read 3798 times on American Poems.

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, &... (Read full poem)

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
Clinical Sonnet; goodbye, manufacturer
of... (Read full poem)

17. Two Poems from the War - written by Archibald MacLeish
Read 786 times on American Poems.

Oh, not the loss of the accomplished thing! 
Not dumb farewells, nor long relinquishment 
Of beauty had, and golden summer spent, 
And savage glory of the fluttering 
Torn banners of the rain, and frosty ring 
Of moon-white winters, and the... (Read full poem)

All that I ask, 'says Love, 'is just to stand
And gaze, unchided, deep in thy dear eyes;
For in their depths lies largest Paradise.
Yet, if perchance one pressure of thy hand
Be granted me, then joy I thought complete
Were still more... (Read full poem)

19. M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School--Detroit, 1942 - written by Philip Levine
Read 880 times on American Poems.

He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of... (Read full poem)

WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write,
The muses promise to assist my pen;
'Twas not long since I left my native shore
The land of errors, and Egyptain gloom:
Father of mercy, 'twas thy gracious hand
Brought me in safety from those dark... (Read full poem)

21. After Apple-Picking - written by Robert Frost
From North of Boston. Published in 1914. Read 32342 times on American Poems.

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter... (Read full poem)

Talking with my beloved in New York
I stood at the outdoor public telephone
in Mexican sunlight, in my purple shirt.
Someone had called it a man/woman
shirt. The phrase irked me. But then
I remembered that Rainer Maria
Rilke, who until he was seven... (Read full poem)

23. A Blue Valentine - written by Joyce Kilmer
From Main Street and Other Poems. Published in 1917. Read 4428 times on American Poems.

(For Aline)

Monsignore,
Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus,
Sometime of Interamna, which is called Ferni,
Now of the delightful Court of Heaven,
I respectfully salute you,
I genuflect
And I kiss your episcopal ring.
It is not,... (Read full poem)

"First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a... (Read full poem)

25. TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK - written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
From The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems. Read 2645 times on American Poems.

Welcome, my old friend,
Welcome to a foreign fireside,
While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.

The ungrateful world
Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,
Since, beneath the skies of Denmark,
First I met thee.

There are marks of... (Read full poem)