Poetry

Introduction

An Anecdote: Where Poetry Starts

Speaker, Listener, and Context

The Star-Spangled Banner

Lyric, Narrative, Dramatic

The Language of Poetry

Figurative Language

Allegory and Symbol

Tone of Voice

Repetition: Sounds and Schemes

Meter and Rhythm

Free Verse, Open Form and Closed Forms

Stanza Forms

Fixed Forms

Literary History, Poetic Conventions, and Theory



Writing about Poetry



Poetry



Anonymous

Western Wind

Bonny Barbara Allan

Sir Patrick Spens

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?-1542)

They Flee from Me

Whoso List to Hunt

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

Amoretti: Sonnet 75

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

Astrophel and Stella: Sonnet 1

Robert Southwell (1561?-1595)

The Burning Babe

Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Idea: Sonnet 61

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Sonnet 18

Sonnet 20

Sonnet 29

Sonnet 73

Sonnet 116

Sonnet 129

Sonnet 130

When Daisies Pied (Spring and Winter)

Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

There Is a Garden in Her Face

John Donne (1572-1631)

The Flea

Holy Sonnet 10

Holy Sonnet 14

The Sun Rising

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Ben Jonson (1573-1637)

On My First Son

Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount

Mary Wroth (1587?-1651?)

In This Strange Labyrinth How Shall I Turn

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

George Herbert (1593-1633)

Easter Wings

The Pulley

Redemption

Edmund Waller (1606-1687)

Song

John Milton (1608-1674)

How Soon Hath Time

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

The Author to Her Book

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

To His Coy Mistress

John Dryden (1631-1700)

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

A Description of a City Shower

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

from An Essay on Criticism

Ode on Solitude

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

William Blake (1757-1827)

The Chimney Sweeper

The Little Black Boy

A Poison Tree

The Tyger

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

A Red, Red Rose

John Barleycorn

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

It Is a Beauteous Evening

Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room

Ode: Intimations of Immortality

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Frost at Midnight

Kubla Khan

Work Without Hope

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

She Walks in Beauty

Stanzas

When We Two Parted

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Ode to the West Wind

Ozymandias

John Keats (1795-1821)

* Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art

La Belle Dame sans Merci

Ode to a Nightingale

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese, 18

Sonnets from the Portuguese, 43

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

The Arsenal at Springfield

The Cross of Snow

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

The Haunted Palace

The Raven

Sonnet: To Science

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

The Eagle

The Lady of Shalott

Tears, Idle Tears

Ulysses

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

My Last Duchess

Porphyria's Lover

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

A Noiseless Patient Spider

O Captain, My Captain

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Grey and Dim

Song of Myself, 1

Song of Myself, 5

Song of Myself, 6

Song of Myself, 11

Song of Myself, 21

Song of Myself, 32

Song of Myself, 52

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Dover Beach

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

The Brain Is Wider than the Sky

I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

Much Madness is Divinest Sense

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church

The Soul Selects Her Own Society

Tell All the Truth, But Tell It Slant

There's a Certain Slant of Light

Wild Nights--Wild Nights

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Up-Hill

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?

Channel Firing

Neutral Tones

The Ruined Maid

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

God's Grandeur

Pied Beauty

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

The New Colossus

A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

Eight O'Clock

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall

"Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff . . ."

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Leda and the Swan

Sailing to Byzantium

The Second Coming

The Song of Wandering Aengus

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

Firelight

The Mill

Richard Cory

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

The Trees in the Garden Rained Flowers

The Wayfarer

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

We Wear the Mask

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Acquainted with the Night

After Apple-Picking

Design

Home Burial

The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

The Road Not Taken

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1034)

Amaze

Languor after Pain

Trapped

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Anecdote of the Jar

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

The Snow Man

Sunday Morning

The Worms at Heavens Gate

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

The Last Words of My English Grandmother

The Red Wheelbarrow

Spring and All

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

In a Station of the Metro

Portrait d'une Femme

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter

Elinor Wylie (1885-1928)

Let No Charitable Hope

Ophelia

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961)

Pear Tree

Sea Rose

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Dreamers

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

The Purse-Seine

Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

The Fish

Silence

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Journey of the Magi

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Preludes

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

If I Should Learn, in Some Quite Casual Way

Oh, Oh, You Will Be Sorry for that Word

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Dulce et Decorum Est

e. e. cummings (1894-1962)

pity this busy monster,manunkind

plato told

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

* somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

Georgia Dusk

Louise Bogan (1897-1970)

Women

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Dream Boogie

* Harlem Sweeties

The Weary Blues

Stevie Smith (1902-1971)

Our Bog Is Dood

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

Incident

Yet Do I Marvel

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

As I Walked Out One Evening

Musee des Beaux Arts

The Unknown Citizen

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

Dolor

My Papa's Waltz

Root Cellar

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

The Fish

One Art

* The Shampoo

Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

Those Winter Sundays

Dudley Randall (1914-2000)

Ballad of Birmingham

William Stafford (1914-1993)

Traveling through the Dark

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Poem in October

Weldon Kees (1914-1955)

For My Daughter

Margaret Walker (1915-1998)

For Malcolm X

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

the ballad of chocolate Mabbie

the mother

We Real Cool

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)

A Coney Island of the Mind, #15

May Swenson (1919-1989)

How Everything Happens

Howard Nemerov (1920-1991)

A Primer of the Daily Round

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

Junk

* For C

The Writer

Year's End

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Next, Please

This Be the Verse

The Whitsun Weddings

James Dickey (1923-1997)

The Heaven of Animals

Alan Dugan (1923-2003)

Love Song: I and Thou

Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)

The Dover Bitch

Third Avenue in Sunlight

Daniel Hoffman (b. 1923)

As I Was Going to Saint-Ives

Louis Simpson (b. 1923)

American Classic

My Father in the Night Commanding No

Vassar Miller (1924-1997)

Subterfuge

Donald Justice (b. 1925)

Counting the Mad

Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925)

The Ungrateful Garden

Pro Femina: Part Three

Maxine Kumin (b. 1925)

Noted in the New York Times

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

A Supermarket in California

James Merrill (1926-1995)

Casual Wear

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)

The Day Lady Died

W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009)

Mementos, I

John Ashbery (b. 1927)

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

Paradoxes and Oxymorons

W. S. Merwin (b. 1927)

For the Anniversary of My Death

The Last One

James Wright (1927-1980)

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

Saint Judas

Philip Levine (b. 1928)

You Can Have It

Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Cinderella

Thom Gunn (b. 1929)

From the Wave

Terminal

X. J. Kennedy (b. 1929)

In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day

Little Elegy

Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

Diving into the Wreck

Rape

Ted Hughes (b. 1930-1998)

Pike

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

A Walk

Miller Williams (b. 1930)

The Book

Linda Pastan (b. 1932)

Ethics

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Daddy

Edge

Metaphors

Gerald Barrax (b. 1933)

Strangers like Us: Pittsburgh, Raleigh, 1945-1985

Mark Strand (b. 1934)

The Tunnel

Lewis Turco (b. 1934)

The Premonition

Russel Edson (b. 1935)

Ape

Mary Oliver (b. 1935)

The Black Walnut Tree

Honey at the Table

Fred Chappell (b. 1936)

Narcissus and Echo

Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)

homage to my hips

wishes for sons

Marge Piercy (b. 1936)

What's That Smell in the Kitchen!

Betty Adcock (b. 1938)

Voyages

Robert Phillips (b. 1938)

The Stone Crab: A Love Poem

Dabney Stuart (b. 1938)

Discovering My Daughter

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

Siren Song

Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)

The Sacred

Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

Digging

Punishment

Ted Kooser (b. 19390

Abandoned Farmhouse

Tom Disch (b. 1940)

Ballade of the New God

Florence Cassen Mayers (b. 1940)

All American Sestina

Pattiann Rogers (b. 1940)

Foreplay

Billy Collins (b. 1941)

Litany

Paradelle for Susan

Robert Hass (b. 1941)

Meditation at Lagunitas

Simon J. Ortiz (b. 1941)

The Serenity in Stones

Gibbons Ruark (b. 1941)

The Visitor

Gladys Cardiff (b. 1942)

Combing

B.H. Fairchild (b. 1942)

Body and Soul

Charles Martin (b. 1942)

E.S.L.

Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

The One Girl at the Boys Party

Henry Taylor (b. 1942)

From Brief Candles

Diane Lockward (b. 1943)

My Husband Discovers Poetry

Ellen Bryant Voight (b. 1943)

Daughter

Robert Morgan (b. 1944)

Mountain Bride

Craig Raine (b. 1944)

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Enid Shomer (b. 1944)

Women Bathing at Bergen Belsen

Wendy Cope (b. 1944)

Rondeau Redouble

Dick Davis (b. 1945)

A Monorhyme for the Shower

Kay Ryan (b. 1945)

Bestiary

Leon Stokesbury (b. 1945)

The Day Kennedy Died

John Whitworth (b. 1945)

The Examiners

Marilyn Nelson (b. 1946)

The Ballad of Aunt Geneva

Ai (1947-2010)

Child Beater

Jim Hall (b. 1947)

Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too

Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)

Facing It

R.S. Gwynn (b. 1948)

Approaching a Significant Birthday, He Peruses an Anthology of Poetry

Timothy Steele (b. 1948)

Sapphics Against Anger

James Fenton (b. 1949)

God, a Poem

Sarah Cortez (b. 1950)

Tu Negrito

Carolyn Forche (b. 1950)

The Colonel

Dana Gioia (b. 1950)

Planting a Sequoia

Rodney Jones (b. 1950)

Winter Retreat: Homage to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Timothy Murphy (b. 1950)

Case Notes

Joy Harjo (b. 1951)

She Had Some Horses

Andrew Hudgins (b. 1951)

Air View of an Industrial Scene

Robert Wrigley (b. 1951)

Thatcher Bitchboy

Judith Ortiz Cofer (b. 1952)

The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica

Rita Dove (b. 1952)

American Smooth

Mark Jarman (b. 1952)

After Disappointment

Julie Kane (b. 19520

Alan Doll Rap

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952)

The Traveling Onion

Alberto Rios (b. 1952)

The Purpose of Altar Boys

Julia Alvarez (b. 1953)

Bilingual Sestina

Harryette Mullen (b. 1953)

Dim Lady

Kim Addonizio (b. 1954)

Sonnenizio on a Line by Millay

David Mason (b. 1954)

Fog Horns

Mary Jo Salter (b. 1954)

Welcome to Hiroshima

Cathy Song (b. 1955)

Stamp Collecting

Ginger Andrews (b. 1956)

Primping in the Rearview Mirror

Annie Finch (b. 1956)

Coy Mistress

* Amy Gerstler (B. 1956)

Advice from a Caterpillar

* Rebecca Faust (B. 1957)

Family Story

April Lindner (b. 1962)

First Kiss

Catherine Tufariello (b. 1963)

Useful Advice

Sherman Alexie (b. 1966)

The Exaggeration of Despair

Natasha Trethewey (b. 1966)

Domestic Work, 1937

* Craig Arnold (1967-2009)

The Singers

Allison Joseph (b. 1967)

The Athlete

Brian Turner (b. 1967)

Here. Bullet

Suji Kwock Kim (b. 1968)

Occupation

A. E. Stallings (b. 1968)

First Love: A Quiz

Joshua Mehigan (b. 1969)

Riddle

* Ernest Hilbert (B. 1970)

Domestic Situation

Sophie Hannah (b. 1971)

The Guest Speaker

Emily Moore (b. 1977)

Auld Lang Syne

* Erica Dawson (B. 1979)

Somewhere Between Columbus and Cincinnati



Appendix: Stanza, Fixed, and Nonce Forms



Acknowledgments



Index of Critical Terms



Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines of Poems



Additional Titles of Interest