1. Alley Rats - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 11012 times on American Poems.

THEY were calling certain styles of whiskers by the name of “lilacs.”
And another manner of beard assumed in their chatter a verbal guise
Of “mutton chops,” “galways,” “feather dusters.”
  
Metaphors such as... (Read full poem)

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in... (Read full poem)

3. Loyalty - written by James Tate
From Worshipful Company of Fletchers. Read 11291 times on American Poems.

This is the hardest part:
When I came back to life
I was a good family dog
and not too friendly to strangers.
I got a thirty-five dollar raise
in salary, and through the pea-soup fogs 
I drove the General, and introduced him 
at rallies. I... (Read full poem)

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into... (Read full poem)

5. Helen In Hollywood - written by Judy Grahn
From The Queen of Wands. Published in 1982. Read 1828 times on American Poems.

When she goes to Hollywood
she is an angel.

She writes in red red lipstick
on the window of her body,
long for me, oh need me!
Parts her lips like a lotus.

Opening night she stands, poised
on her carpet, luminescent,
young men humming
all around... (Read full poem)

some say we should keep personal remorse from the 
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out... (Read full poem)

7. if you like my poems let them - written by e.e. cummings
Read 80306 times on American Poems.

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants."(Read full poem)

Her -- "last Poems" --
Poets -- ended --
Silver -- perished -- with her Tongue --
Not on Record -- bubbled other,
Flute -- or Woman --
So divine --
Not unto its Summer -- Morning
Robin -- uttered Half the Tune --
Gushed too free for the Adoring... (Read full poem)

9. To see the Summer Sky - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 35888 times on American Poems.

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie --
True Poems flee --(Read full poem)

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line... (Read full poem)

11. The Spring - written by Delmore Schwartz
Published in 1965. Read 19621 times on American Poems.

(After Rilke)


Spring has returned! Everything has returned!
The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes
Poems, so many poems. ... Look, she has learned
So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes!

Teacher was strict. We delighted in the... (Read full poem)

On a mountain top above the clouds
That streamed like a sea below me
I said that peak is the thought of Budda,
And that one is the prayer of Jesus,
And this one is the dream of Plato,
And that one there the song of Dante,
And this is Kant and... (Read full poem)

13. Thought. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 10684 times on American Poems.

OF what I write from myself—As if that were not the resumé; 
Of Histories—As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the preceding
	poems; 
As if those shreds, the records of nations, could possibly be as lasting as... (Read full poem)

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of... (Read full poem)

15. Endnote - written by Hayden Carruth
From Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995. Published in 1996. Read 3878 times on American Poems.

The great poems of
our elders in many
tongues we struggled

to comprehend who
are now content with
mystery simple

and profound you
in the night your
breath your body

orbit of time and
the moment you
Phosphorus and

Hesper a dark... (Read full poem)

THE indications, and tally of time; 
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs; 
Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts; 
What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their
	words; 
The... (Read full poem)

17. Big Hair - written by David Lehman
Read 4673 times on American Poems.

Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin 
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written... (Read full poem)

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree... (Read full poem)

19. For Lew Welch In A Snowfall - written by Gary Snyder
From No Nature. Published in 1992. Read 3355 times on American Poems.

Snowfall in March:
I sit in the white glow reading a thesis
About you.  Your poems, your life.

The author's my student,
He even quotes me.

Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.

All those years and their... (Read full poem)

the phone rang at 1:30 a.m.
  and it was a man from Denver:
   
   "Chinaski, you got a following in
  Denver..."
    "yeah?"
   "yeah, I got a magazine and I want some
  poems from you..."
    "FUCK YOU,... (Read full poem)

21. Poems, Potatoes - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1963. Read 4891 times on American Poems.

The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line
Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous,
In establishments which imagined lines

Can only haunt.  Sturdy as potatoes,
Stones, without conscience, word and line endure,
Given an inch.  Not that they're... (Read full poem)

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain... (Read full poem)

23. Revolt In The Ranks - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 2552 times on American Poems.

I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half
handicapping tomorrow's
card.
when am I going to get at the poems?
well, they'll just have to wait
they'll have to warm their feet in the 
anteroom
where they'll sit gossiping about 
me.
"this Chinaski,... (Read full poem)

There is a chimp named Ai who can count to five.
There's a poet named Ai whose selected poems Vice
just won the National Book Award.
The name "Ai" is pronounced "I"
so that whenever I talk about the poet Ai
such as I'm teaching Ai's... (Read full poem)

25. A Poetry Reading At West Point - written by William Matthews
Read 890 times on American Poems.

I read to the entire plebe class,
in two batches. Twice the hall filled
with bodies dressed alike, each toting
a copy of my book. What would my
shrink say, if I had one, about
such a dream, if it were a dream?

Question and answer time.
"Sir," a... (Read full poem)