The Giant Book of Poetry (2006) Read online

  The Mill

  The Pity of the Leaves

  The Sheaves

  The Tavern

  Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

  In the desert

  W.H. Davies (1871 – 1940)

  Leisure

  Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

  “Out, Out—”

  A Brook in the City

  A Dream Pang

  A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey's Ears, and Some Books

  A Late Walk

  After Apple-Picking

  An Old Man’s Winter Night

  Birches

  Death of the Hired Man

  Fire and Ice

  For Once, Then, Something

  Good-by and Keep Cold

  Home Burial

  In a Disused Graveyard

  Into My Own

  Mending Wall

  Misgiving

  On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

  Storm Fear

  The Aim was Song

  The Need of Being Versed in Country Things

  The Onset

  The Road Not Taken

  The Vantage Point

  The Wood-Pile

  Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)

  A Decade

  New Heavens for Old

  Patterns

  Robert Service (1874 – 1958)

  Just Think!

  Lost

  My Madonna

  On the Wire

  The Ballad of Pious Pete

  The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin

  The Cremation of Sam McGee

  The Shooting of Dan McGrew

  The Smoking Frog

  The Soldier of Fortune

  The Wee Shop

  Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946)

  from Idem the Same, A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson, A Very Valentine

  Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)

  Last Answers

  The Junk Man

  To Know Silence Perfectly

  Vachel Lindsay (1879 – 1931)

  The Horrid Voice of Science

  Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

  The Snow Man

  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

  Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1881 – 1968)

  Cubist Portrait

  William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

  Danse Russe

  The Act

  The Last Words of My English Grandmother

  The Red Wheelbarrow

  The Three Graces

  To Mark Anthony in Heaven

  This is Just to Say

  Tract

  Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933)

  There will come soft rains

  D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

  From The Ship of Death

  New Year’s Eve

  Snake

  Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

  A Pact

  Francesca

  In a Station of the Metro

  Lustra (from the Introduction)

  Tame Cat

  Salutation

  The Eyes

  The Garden

  The Plunge

  The Tree

  Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1972)

  Long Feud

  Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

  The Soldier

  Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962)

  Fawn’s Foster-Mother

  Joyce Kilmer (1887 – 1918)

  Trees

  Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972)

  I May, I Might, I Must

  Injudicious Gardening

  Poetry

  To a Steam Roller

  T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

  Rhapsody on a Windy Night

  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  Hysteria

  Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

  ReQuiem – Instead of a Preface

  Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982)

  Ars Poetica

  Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

  First Fig

  Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)

  Dulce et Decorum Est

  Lucian Blaga (1895 – 1961)

  I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders

  Miyazawa Kenji (1896 – 1933)

  Daydreaming on the Trail

  Louise Bogan (1897 – 1970)

  from Beginning and End—Knowledge

  Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1960)

  from Wanderings — Chapter Heading

  Wen I-to (1899 – 1946)

  Dead Water

  Anonymous

  The Anvil—God’s Word

  Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967)

  Dream Deferred: Harlem

  Evil

  Maybe

  Suicide’s Note

  Stevie Smith (1902 – 1983)

  Not Waving but Drowning

  Sunt Leones

  W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

  Dichtung and Wahrheit

  From Selected Shorts

  Marginalia (Extracts)

  Zawgee (1907 – 1973)

  The Way of the Water-Hyacinth

  Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)

  Filling Station

  In the Waiting Room

  One Art

  Sestina

  The Armadillo

  May Swenson (1913 – 1989)

  A Couple

  David Ignatow (1914 – 1997)

  The Bagel

  Randall Jarrell (1914 – 1965)

  Bats

  Next Day

  The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

  William Stafford (1914 – 1993)

  Traveling Through the Dark

  Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)

  Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

  Robert Lax (1915 – 2000)

  Alley Violinist

  Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000)

  A Song in the Front Yard

  The Boy Died in my Alley

  Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977)

  Reading Myself

  Keith Douglas (1920 – 1944)

  Vergissmeinnicht

  Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991)

  Gyroscope

  Money

  Snowflakes

  Hayden Carruth (b. 1921)

  Little Citizen, Little Survivor

  Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

  A Summer Morning

  Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

  An Arundel Tomb

  Talking In Bed

  This Be the Verse

  James Dickey (1923 – 1997)

  The Heaven of Animals

  The Sheep Child

  Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003)

  How We Heard the Name

  Love Song: I and Thou

  Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997)

  Consulting the Oracle

  From a Plane

  Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)

  Imaginary Paintings

  Reader

  Silence and Dancing

  The Story

  Widow

  Roberto Juarroz (1925 – 1995)

  Any movement kills something

  Donald Justice (1925 – 2004)

  American Sketches

  In Bertram’s Garden

  Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925)

  Bitch

  The Ashes

  Robert Creeley (1926 – 2005)

  Heaven

  I Know a Man

  I’ll Win

  Old Days

  Place (“There’s a Way out”)

  Thanksgiving’s Done

  Galway Kinnell (b. 1927)

  St. Francis and the Sow

  James Wright (1927 – 1980)

  A Blessing

  Beginning

  Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

  Irving Feldman (b. 1928)

  The Dream

  Donald Hall (b. 1928)

  My mother said


  Names of Horses

  The Porcelain Couple

  Philip Levine (b. 1928)

  Belle Isle, 1949

  Sweet Will

  Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974)

  Her Kind

  from The Death of the Fathers: 2.How We Danced

  With Mercy for the Greedy

  Thom Gunn (1929 – 2004)

  Still Life

  The Reassurance

  Dan Pagis (1930 – 1986)

  Conversation

  Izet Sarajlic (b. 1930)

  Luck in Sarajevo

  Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

  Axe Handles

  What you should know to be a poet

  Derek Walcott (b. 1930)

  Love after Love

  Miller Williams (b. 1930)

  Listen

  Etheridge Knight (1931 – 1991)

  The Idea of Ancestry

  The Warden Said to Me the Other Day

  Tanikawa Shuntaro (b. 1931)

  A Rudimentary Explanation of an Ideal Poem

  from With Silence My Companion

  From My Father’s Death

  The Naif

  Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932)

  A Puppy Called Puberty

  Heberto Padilla (1932 – 2000)

  Landscapes

  Alden Nowlan (1933 – 1983)

  An Exchange of Gifts

  It’s Good To Be Here

  Weakness

  Richard Shelton (b. 1933)

  The Bus to Veracruz

  The Stones

  Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (b. 1934)

  “Wise I”

  Rutger Kopland (b. 1934)

  Natzweiler

  Mark Strand (b. 1934)

  Eating Poetry

  Keeping Things Whole

  Reading in Place

  Paul Zimmer (b. 1934)

  Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard

  David R. Slavitt (b. 1935)

  Titanic

  C.K. Williams (b. 1936)

  My Fly

  The Dance

  Gail Mazur (b. 1937)

  In Houston

  Diane Wakoski (b. 1937)

  George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth

  Robert Phillips (b. 1938)

  Instrument of Choice

  Charles Simic (b. 1938)

  Country Fair

  Fork

  Northern Exposure

  Prodigy

  The Old World

  Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

  Manet’s Olympia

  Miss July Grows Older

  Variations on the Word Sleep

  You Fit Into Me

  Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

  A Dream of Jealousy

  Clearances

  Punishment

  ReQuiem for the Croppies

  The Haw Lantern (Dedication)

  Ted Kooser (b. 1939)

  At the Office Early

  Selecting a Reader

  David Budbill (b. 1940)

  Dilemma

  The Three Goals

  Thomas M. Disch (b. 1940)

  The Cardinal Detoxes: A Play in One Act

  Robert Pinsky (b. 1940)

  Shirt

  Billy Collins (b. 1941)

  Budapest

  Forgetfulness

  Introduction to Poetry

  Nightclub

  Not Touching

  Passengers

  Purity

  Questions About Angels

  Toi Derricotte (b. 1941)

  Allen Ginsberg

  Stephen Dobyns (b. 1941)

  Tomatoes

  Eamon Grennan (b. 1941)

  Detail

  Gerald Locklin (b. 1941)

  Late Registration

  Jack Myers (b. 1941)

  Jake Addresses the World from the Garden

  Nancy Vieira Couto (b. 1942)

  Living in the La Brea Tar Pits

  Stuart Dybek (b. 1942)

  Brass Knuckles

  Maroon

  B. H. Fairchild (b. 1942)

  The Dumka

  Tom Hennen (b. 1942)

  Soaking Up Sun

  The Life of a Day

  David Huddle (b. 1942)

  Holes Commence Falling

  Louis Jenkins (b. 1942)

  A Place for Everything

  William Matthews (1942 – 1997)

  A Poetry Reading at West Point

  Onions

  Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

  I Go Back to May 1937

  Once

  Quake Theory

  Satan Says

  The Pope’s Penis

  The Promise

  The Space Heater

  Dave Smith (b. 1942)

  Pulling a Pig’s Tail

  Wreck in the Woods

  Sharon Bryan (b. 1943)

  Beyond Recall

  Philip Schultz ((b. 1945)

  The Answering Machine

  Ronald Wallace (b. 1945)

  Thirteen

  Tom Wayman (b. 1945)

  Did I Miss Anything?

  Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945)

  Electric Elegy

  Moment

  Andrei Codrescu (b. 1946)

  Defense of the meek

  Two fragments from Three Types of Loss, Part 3

  Larry Levis (1946 – 1996)

  The Poem You Asked For

  Brian Patten (b. 1946)

  Party Piece

  Maura Stanton (b. 1946)

  Living Apart

  Lorna Goodison (b. 1947)

  Birth Stone

  Kaylin Haught (b. 1947)

  God Says Yes to Me

  Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)

  Blackberries

  Camouflaging the Chimera

  Facing It

  Ode to the Maggot

  Heather McHugh (b. 1948)

  What He thought

  Agha Shahid Ali (1949 – 2001)

  The Dacca Gauzes

  Mark Halliday (b. 1949)

  Get It Again

  Population

  Robert Hedin (b. 1949)

  The Old Liberators

  Joyce Sutphen (b. 1949)

  Living in the Body

  Bruce Weigl (b. 1949)

  What Saves Us

  Claribel Alegria (b. 1950)

  Documentary

  Charles Bernstein (b. 1950)

  Of Time and the Line

  Jorie Graham (b. 1950)

  Salmon

  Michael Pettit (b. 1950)

  Driving Lesson

  Brigit Pegeen Kelly (b. 1951)

  The White Pilgrim: Old Christian Cemetery

  Timothy Russell (b. 1951)

  In Simili Materia

  Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (b. 1952)

  Ceist na Teangan (The Language Issue)

  Sean O’Brien (b. 1952)

  Rain

  Shu Ting (b. 1952)

  Assembly Line

  Mark Irwin (b. 1953)

  Woolworth’s

  Richard Jones (b. 1953)

  Certain People

  Leaving Town after the Funeral

  The Bell

  Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed