Snow fell in the night.
At five-fifteen I woke to a bluish
mounded softness where 
the Honda was. Cat fed and coffee made,
I broomed snow off the car
and drove to the Kearsarge Mini-Mart
before Amy opened 
to yank my Globe out of the... (Read full poem)

2. So Long In Coming - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 520 times on American Poems.

When shall I hear the thrushes sing, 
And see their graceful, round throats swelling? 
When shall I watch the bluebirds bring
The straws and twiglets for their dwelling? 
When shall I hear among the trees
The little martial partridge drumming?... (Read full poem)

I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
hanging identically in all the booths
or the customer behind the Chronicle
who has been giving... (Read full poem)

4. Assurances. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 3961 times on American Poems.

I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul; 
I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of,
    are
	now looking faces I am not cognizant of—calm and actual faces; 
I do... (Read full poem)

Hymn to the Dope


Goddess of the murmuring courts,
Nicotine, my Nicotine,
Houri of the mystic sports,
trailing-robed in gabardine,
Gliding where the breath hath glided,
Hidden sylph of filmy veils,
Truth behind the dream is veiléd
E'en... (Read full poem)

6. Miracles. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 13500 times on American Poems.

WHY! who makes much of a miracle? 
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the... (Read full poem)

A good man is seized by the police
and spirited away. Months later
someone brags that he shot him once
through the back of the head
with a Walther 7.65, and his life
ended just there. Those who loved
him go on searching the cafés
in the... (Read full poem)

8. To The Whore Who Took My Poems - written by Charles Bukowski
Read 26266 times on American Poems.

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)

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)

10. Her -- "last Poems" - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 22343 times on American Poems.

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)

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

12. Song at Sunset. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 16763 times on American Poems.

SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! 
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past! 
Inflating my throat—you, divine average! 
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. 
  
Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of... (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)

14. What Are Big Girls Made Of? - written by Marge Piercy
Read 2637 times on American Poems.

The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh 
of bone and sinew 
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. 
She is manufactured like a sports sedan. 
She is retooled, refitted and redesigned 
every decade. 
Cecile had been... (Read full poem)

(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)

16. Judson Stoddard - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 8891 times on American Poems.

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)

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)

18. The Planet On The Table - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 6297 times on American Poems.

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)

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)

20. Indications, The. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 4639 times on American Poems.

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)

There were three in the meadow by the brook 
Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, 
With an eye always lifted toward the west 
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud 
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger 
Flickering across its bosom.... (Read full poem)

22. 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)

24. 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)