1. Some Like Poetry - written by Wislawa Szymborska
Read 7137 times on Poetry Connection.

Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves, 
there might be two people per thousand.

Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles, 
one likes... (Read full poem)

Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

into the only whole thinking: poetry.
Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words
and nothing's true that figures in words... (Read full poem)

3. Poetry - written by Don Paterson
From The White Lie; New and Selected Poetry. Published in 1993. Read 3984 times on Poetry Connection.

In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet's early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright... (Read full poem)

This book is not about heroes.  English Poetry is not yet fit to speak
  of them.  Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour,
  dominion or power,
                              except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned... (Read full poem)

5. Poetry - written by Marianne Moore
Read 9626 times on Poetry Connection.

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all 
   this fiddle.
  Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one 
     discovers in
  it after all, a place for the genuine.
   Hands that can grasp, eyes
   that can... (Read full poem)

GOD to his untaught children sent

Law, order, knowledge, art, from high,
And ev'ry heav'nly favour lent,

The world's hard lot to qualify.
They knew not how they should behave,

For all from Heav'n stark-naked came;
But Poetry their garments... (Read full poem)

7. Ars Poetica? - written by Czeslaw Milosz
Read 1057 times on Poetry Connection.

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is... (Read full poem)

So how is life with your new bloke?
Simpler, I bet. Just one stroke
of his quivering oar and the skin
of the Thames goes into a spin,

eh? How is life with an oarsman? Better?
More in--out? Athletic? Wetter?
When you hear the moan of the... (Read full poem)

9. Eating Poetry - written by Mark Strand
From Selected Poems. Published in 1980. Read 13266 times on Poetry Connection.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The... (Read full poem)

The poetry of earth is never dead:
      When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
      And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
      In summer... (Read full poem)

11. The Art Of Poetry - written by Jorge Luis Borges
Read 3074 times on Poetry Connection.

To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is... (Read full poem)

By all love's soft, yet mighty powers,
It is a thing unfit,
That men should fuck in time of flowers,
Or when the smock's beshit.

Fair nasty nymph, be clean and kind,
And all my joys restore;
By using paper still behind,
And sponges for... (Read full poem)

13. The New Poetry Handbook - written by Mark Strand
Read 48895 times on Poetry Connection.

1    If a man understands a poem,
     he shall have troubles.

2    If a man lives with a poem,
     he shall die lonely.

3    If a man lives with two poems,
     he shall be unfaithful to one.

4    If a man conceives of a poem,
     he shall... (Read full poem)

Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet
Because of those new dead
That come into my soul and escape
Confusion of the bed,
Or those begotten or unbegotten
Perning in a band,
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.

Or those begotten or... (Read full poem)

15. Called Into Play - written by A.R. Ammons
Read 3464 times on Poetry Connection.

Fall fell:  so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written... (Read full poem)

Selecting in the dining-room
          The silver of his choice,
The burglar heard from chamber gloom
          A female voice.
As cold and bitter as a toad,
          She spat a nasty name,
So even as his swag he stowed
          He blushed for... (Read full poem)

17. My Masters - written by Robert William Service
From Songs of a Sun-Lover. Read 1463 times on Poetry Connection.

Of Poetry I've been accused,
But much more often I have not;
Oh, I have been so much amused
By those who've put me on the spot,
And measured me by rules above
Those I observe with equal love.

An artisan of verse am I,
Of simple sense and humble... (Read full poem)

You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.

What strengthened me, for you was... (Read full poem)

19. About Tu Fu - written by Li Po
Read 1106 times on Poetry Connection.

I met Tu Fu on a mountaintop
in August when the sun was hot.

Under the shade of his big straw hat
his face was sad--

in the years since we last parted,
he'd grown wan, exhausted.

Poor old Tu Fu, I thought then,
he must be agonizing... (Read full poem)

What can I do in poetry,
Now the good spirit's gone from me?
Why, nothing now but lonely sit
And over-read what I have writ. (Read full poem)

21. HIS REQUEST TO JULIA - written by Robert Herrick
Read 348 times on Poetry Connection.

Julia, if I chance to die
Ere I print my poetry,
I most humbly thee desire
To commit it to the fire:
Better 'twere my book were dead,
Than to live not perfected. (Read full poem)

There is an evening coming in
Across the fields, one never seen before,
That lights no lamps.

Silken it seems at a distance, yet
When it is drawn up over the knees and breast
It brings no comfort.

Where has the tree gone, that locked 
Earth to... (Read full poem)

23. The Ballad of G. R. Dibbs - written by Andrew Barton Paterson
Read 430 times on Poetry Connection.

This is the story of G.R.D., 
Who went on a mission across the sea 
To borrow some money for you and me. 

This G. R. Dibbs was a stalwart man 
Who was built on a most extensive plan, 
And a regular staunch Republican. 

But he fell in the... (Read full poem)

I stood beside the silken rope,
      Five dollars in my hand,
And waited in my patient hope
      To sit anear the Band,
And hear the famous Louie play
      The best hot trumpet of today.
      
And then a waiter loafing near
      Says in a nasty... (Read full poem)

25. Epitaph On A Tyrant - written by W. H. Auden
Published in 1939. Read 6765 times on Poetry Connection.

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with... (Read full poem)