Ray W. Howard Library: ENGL& 113 Intro to Poetry (Oldham) : Poetry

Poetry Websites

There are lots of poetry sites online. Here are a few that I think are especially good, based on reliability, amount of information available and number of poems.

The Poetry Foundation
Poems and biographical information on lots of poets, along with a lot of other useful poetry-related information.
Academy of American Poets
From the About page: "Founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry— the producer of Poets.org, Poem-a-Day, National Poetry Month, and more."
Cave Canem's Poet of the Week
Cave Canem is a website for Black poets and poetry online. This link takes you to the search page for their "poet of the week" feature, where you can be introduced to over 100 contemporary Black poets, plus related articles, interviews, commentary, etc. Browse the whole site for lots of other interesting material.
The Margins--Poetry
The Margins is an online literary journal published by the Asian American Writers Workshop. This link takes you to the poetry page.
The Poetry Society of America
A very thorough site, organized around commentary, interviews, essays, and other forms of poets talking about poetry. Within these pages you'll find links to lots of poems, but the focus is on talking about the poetry. A good site to visit if you want to learn more about how poets think about what they do.
Modern American Poetry
"A comprehensive resource for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry." Fewer poems & poets, but with lots of critical essays on the poets they do have, very helpful for understanding what you read.
Ethnopoetics from Ubuweb
"Ethnopoetics" describes Western poets' interest in the poetry, myths and rituals of traditional societies, and especially their similarities to some of the most radical and experimental features of modern Western poetry. There’s some great stuff here. Part of a much larger project called "Ubuweb," a collection of avant-garde and experimental poetry, music, film and other arts. Browse around! (Among other things, the "Papers" section has a copy of "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes.)
CAPA: The Contemporary American Poetry Archive
An archive of out-of-print books of poetry by contemporary American poets, fully searchable in basic text format.
English Meter and Scansion Software
Charles Hartman, poet and essayist, has written a couple of useful programs for studying meter. The first two links on this page are a tutorial on English meter, providing an excellent introduction to the subject, and a program called "Scandroid" that will analyze the meter of lines of verse that you enter. Fascinating and impressively accurate.
For Better For Verse
Another interactive tutorial on how to scan metrical poetry, with numerous practice poems, commentary, and resources. A very rich, web-based resource (no download/install required).
Poetry Metrics 1
This is the first in a series of four brief videos introducing the basics of meter in English poetry. You can find the other three from this page.
The Moneyed Muse
A fascinating article from the New Yorker magazine about the Poetry Foundation and the influence of money on modern American poetry. "What can two hundred million dollars do for poetry?"

Poems and Poets

Here are some links to poems available on line. Most come from the sites listed in the box on the left (especially the first two in the list), where you can also find biographical information about the poets, other poems by the same poets, critical analysis of some poems, and other poetry resources.

Poets are arranged in alphabetical order by last name.

(There are a few more poems on the class Blackboard site. These are poems that are not available online, which I cannot put up on the LibGuide for copyright reasons. Go to Blackboard, English 111, and choose "Content" to find these poems.)

Rae Armantrout, "Thing"
Armantrout is a contemporary poet who's been writing since the 1970s. She is associated with a group of poets known as the "Language Poets." See the second box on the right side of this page for a link to a brief explanation of this school of poetry.
Rae Armantrout, "Yonder"
Another poem from Armantrout that challenges our expectations about what poetry does, what meaning is.
W. H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening"
Auden (1907-1973) was a very influential poet, considered by many to be among the best English poets in the 20th century. This poem borrows its form (with variation) from traditional ballads in which the speaker begins "As I walked out one evening" and then proceeds to report an overheard conversation--but in this case the tale of true love is complicated and uncertain and the lovers turn out not to be the main focus.
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Listening to jazz now"
Abandoned, orphaned, homeless, imprisoned, Baca taught himself to read and write in prison, then began writing poetry. His work has been published in several books and numerous magazines.
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "This Day"
A poem that mixes Baca's characteristic insistence on the ordinariness and imperfections of life with a lyrical, if sardonic, celebration of nature and our connection with the eternal.
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "What is Broken is What God Blesses"
In this powerful poem Baca celebrates humanity in all its imperfection and insists it is that very imperfection that makes it sacred.
Elizabeth Bishop, "At the Fishhouses"
Not very well known during her lifetime, Bishop became more widely respected after her death. She did not write very much but worked extremely hard over each poem. A discussion of this one can be found in the second box on the right side of this page.
Elizabeth Bishop, "Filling Station"
A quiet, descriptive poem with a last line that evokes worlds of meaning from what has gone before.
William Blake, "London"
A powerful prophetic vision of the dark side of civilization.
William Blake, "The Tyger"
This poem combines many of Blake's qualities: Deceptively simple formal style, mystical vision, celebration of creation mixed with terror at its power and mystery.
Gwendolyn Brooks, "Boy Breaking Glass"
Brooks was the first African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first to hold the position of Poet Laureate of the United States. Her career spanned decades, from the 1940s to the 1990s, with poems that are both technically accomplished and socially insightful.
Gwendolyn Brooks, "Riot"
A powerful poem, ruthless, disturbing perhaps for some, yet exhibiting all of Brooks' usual command of technique.
Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool"
Perhaps Brooks' most famous poem. See the second box on the right side of this page for a link to various comments on this poem, including some by the poet.
Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
I like this poem not just for the rhythm, sound, and imagery but also for the way it is all build-up, no climax. It has a kind of austerely beautiful refusal to actually tell a story, but simply suggest one. It reminds me of certain herbs that are quite bitter but which, in the right combination, can produce an exhilarating flavor. I also like the bleak setting, which goes along with that austere, bleak narrative refusal.
more...less...
Link to the poem in a collection of his works, at Project Gutenberg.
Lucille Clifton, "oh antic God"
Clifton is a multiple award-winning poet whose work is at turns angry, lyrical, wry and sensuous. She died in 2010 at 74. She published 13 volumes of poetry plus 21 books for children.
Lucille Clifton, "jasper texas 1998"
This poems commemorates one of the most horrific hate crimes of the 1990s, in which a Black man was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck.
Lucille Clifton, "mulberry fields"
This poem uses strong enjambment (line breaks in the middle of a grammatical structure) and no punctuation to create a sense of urgency about the historical memory it addresses. Its final line is reminiscent in some ways of Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo."
Emily Dickinson, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes – "
Dickinson was a very reclusive figure during her lifetime, in part at least because of the limited opportunities available to women at the time. Her poetry was barely known while she was living but has since become extraordinarily influential; she is considered by many to be among the greatest American poets.
Emily Dickinson, "I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – "
This is one of Dickinson's best-known poems, and represents many of the qualities of her work: a deceptively simple surface that conceals great depths; a highly individual approach to rhythm within the bounds of conventional meter; an idiosyncratic use of punctuation; and a fascination with the topic of death.
Emily Dickinson, "I started Early -- Took my Dog"
Not as well known as the other two of her poems represented here, this is a longer piece with a more sustained narrative that demands to be read metaphorically.
Deborah Digges, "The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart"
Published in the New Yorker, August 24, 2009. Biography and more of her work are available at Poets.org and PoetryFoundation.org, but I wanted you to see an example of poetry appearing in magazines, part of an ongoing cultural conversation, not just in separate collections.
John Donne, "The Sun Rising"
Donne was one of what are sometimes called the "Metaphysical Poets," part of a larger group called the Elizabethans because they wrote during the reign of Elizabeth I in England--the late 1500s and early 1600s (when Shakespeare was writing too).
Rita Dove, "Banneker"
Benjamin Banneker was the African American architect who designed the layout for the city of Washington, D.C.
Rita Dove, "Testimonial"
Rita Dove was Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 - 1995, the youngest poet to hold the position and the second African American. Her work is at times lyrical and personal, at times very concerned with social issues and history.
Camille Dungy, "Language"
This link is from a book review at NPR.org about a book Dungy edited called "Black Nature: Four Centuries of African-American Nature Poetry." There is also an audio file of the poet reading the poem.
T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
One of the most famous poems of the 20th century. Choose the author's name at the top of the page for extensive biography and more poems. More of his work can be found at poetryfoundation.org.
Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"
This poem changed American poetry permanently. It was a scandal when it appeared, and there are legends about Ginsberg stripping naked and throwing his clothes at the audience as he read during an early performance. Ginsberg employs long, chant-like lines to pile up images, references, ideas and feelings in a surreal ceremony of prophecy, celebration and condemnation.
Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California"
Ginsberg's tribute to Walt Whitman, his most obvious poetic influence. Like Whitman, Ginsberg is interested in extremely long lines that create an incantatory, wave-like feel.
Joy Harjo, "Deer Dancer" (prose poem)
This is an example of "prose poetry," a hybrid form that combines the imagery and linguistic intensity of poetry with the form of prose--no line breaks as in other poetry. Joy Harjo is a Muskogee Creek Native American poet, musician and playwright.
Charles Hartman, "Fascination"
Charles Hartman is the author of several books of poems and prose essays on poetry, including Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody, which we have at the SCC library. It's an excellent explanation of how poetry works. This is a more recent poem of Hartman's.
Charles Hartman, "Honeydew"
Here is a lyrical, funny, profound meditation on the relationship of poetry to the larger world.
Zbigniew Herbert, "I Would Like to Describe"
In this poem Herbert comments wryly on the impossibility of using language to express one's feelings, while at the same time managing to do just that.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Windhover"
A poem famous for its use of rhythm and alliteration, as well as rhyme.
Langston Hughes, "Harlem"
Hughes was an African American poet who began to publish in the 1920s and continued into the 1960s. This is one of his best known poems, from which Lorraine Hansberry took the title of her well-known play, A Raisin in the Sun. This poem, along with a whole series of poems about Harlem and the life of African Americans, was set to music by the great jazz bassist and composer, Charles Mingus, with Hughes reading the poems. It's on a CD called "The Weary Blues.
Richard Hugo, "Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg"
Hugo (1923 - 1982) was from Seattle and lived and worked in the Northwest most of his life. This is one of his best-known poems.
John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Keats was one of the most influential of the Romantic poets, a group writing in England in the early 1800s who emphasized spontaneity, the primacy of their personal emotional experience and direct contact with nature. This is one of his best-known poems.
Jane Kenyon, "Let Evening Come"
The author of five books of poetry, Kenyon was born in 1947 and died of leukemia in 1995. This is the title poem from her second collection.
Philip Levine, "Sweet Will"
One of the things that makes Levine an interesting poet is the way his line breaks belie the seemingly casual quality of the language, creating drama and feeling out of everyday speech.

PLEASE NOTE: This poem is a little over two pages long, so be sure to navigate through to the end. Use the arrow icons in the upper right corner of the page.
John Milton, "When I Consider How my Light is Spent"
One of Milton's most famous poems, attempting to come to terms with suffering from a religious point of view, using his blindness as the example and occasion.
John Milton, Sonnet XVIII: "On the Late Massacre in Piemont"
An unusually overt political statement coming out of the religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics that shook Europe during Milton's time (1608 - 1674).
Octavio Paz, "Proem"
Unfortunately, I could find only one poem by Paz, a giant of 20th-century Spanish-language poetry, on either Poets.org or PoetryFoundation.org (probably due to copyright issues). No one poem can possibly represent his work, which is more varied in style and tone than many poets', but this is one place to start.
Sylvia Plath, "Daddy"
Plath's first work was published in 1960, and she died in 1963, a suicide, yet her work has been very influential on generations of poets.
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"
A classic. Poe was influential both as a short story writer and as a poet. Interestingly, he has in some ways been more influential in France than in the United States, thanks to the respect given him by French writers like Baudelaire and Mallarme.
Ezra Pound, "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"
Pound was one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. This poem is his translation of another very important poet, Li Po of China. This translation was important because of the way Pound uses imagery, juxtaposition and compressed language to evoke meaning, rather than spelling it out as had been done in previous translations.
Adrienne Rich, "Diving Into the Wreck"
Rich is a very influential poet who began writing in the 1950s but whose best-known work (of which this poem is perhaps the most prominent example) is associated with the feminist and gay liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. See the second box on the right side of this page for links to critical discussions of this poem and a comparison between this and Bishop's "At the Fishhouses."
Rainier Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo"
Another hugely influential poet and poem. Rilke was a German-born poet who published between 1895 and 1923.
Alberto Rios, "Refugio's Hair"
Alberto Rios is a contemporary poet from the American southwest. Bio and more poems available at this website and lots more at poetryfoundation.org.
Delmore Schwartz, "The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me"
Schwartz was a poet of the mid-20th century, well loved by other writers, who had a tragic personal life. Another highly respected poet, John Berryman, dedicated one of his books "to the sacred memory of Delmore Schwartz."
Anne Sexton, "The Truth the Dead Know"
Sexton wrote in the 1960s and 70s. She didn't start writing poetry until she was nearly 30 and committed suicide at 46, yet her work is considered some of the most important of that time period.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI: "Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds"
One of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, on one of his favorite themes--love as eternal, if only through art.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet LXXIII: "That Time of Year thou mayst in me Behold"
A sonnet expressing the opposite idea to that in "Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds." In this case, his theme is the impermanence of life and love.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"
Shelley was, like Keats, one of the most influential of the Romantic poets, writing in England in the early 1800s.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples"
Another of Shelley's well-known poems, this one illustrating several of Romanticism's key themes: a feeling of "dejection" or melancholy and the contemplation of one's own death, the poet's alienation from society, taking solace in the beauty of the natural world.
Cathy Song, "Spaces We Leave Empty"
Song's first book was published in 1983. She was born in Hawaii, of Korean and Chinese descent.
Cathy Song, "Stink Eye"
"Stink Eye" develops the poetic possibilities inherent in the spoken language of Chinese, Korean, and Hawaiian speakers of English. It is a monologue (speech by a single speaker) that reveals a young woman's growing awareness of the world.
Wallace Stevens, "The Emperor of Ice Cream"
A major American poet of the first half of the twentieth century, Stevens was known for his highly philosophical poems combining a strong sense of sound (free verse mixed with elements of traditional meter), highly crafted images, and densely developed, often obscure concepts. This is a relatively early poem, famous for its challenging ideas, that displays all these qualities.
Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West"
Another dense, highly musical and highly philosophical Stevens poem. My recommendation is you just read it aloud several times over, paying attention to the rhymes and rhythms and other features of sound, before you worry too much about the meaning.
Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
One of Stevens's best known poems, this is an early one that relies more heavily on pure imagery. The abstract language that will become much more of a presence in his later work is here relatively scarce, although by no means absent. The suggestion of meanings beyond the immediately obvious is just as strong. This poem has affinities with the Japanese haiku tradition, in which vast ideas and emotions are suggested in three lines of compact imagery.
Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
A villanelle, a rhyming poem in which the first and third lines of each 3-line stanza are repeated alternately throughout the poem, and then repeated at the end of the last, 4-line stanza. An example of a very structured form used in a modern setting.
Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
Whitman revolutionized American poetry, though it was years before his work was widely appreciated. In this classic long poem from Leaves of Grass, he delivers wave upon wave of long, chant-like lines in a vision of the poet as the entire universe, embracing all people and the whole physical world. Best read in its entirety to be appreciated, but also worth dipping into at any point just to sample a bit of his power.
William Carlos Williams, "Between Walls"
Williams was one of the main innovators in free verse in the early 20th century; much of American poetry has followed the direction he indicated in his work. This short, powerful piece, like so many of his poems, demonstrates the immense power that can be achieved with minimal imagery and careful attention to the structure of the line.
William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow"
Perhaps Williams's most famous poem, showing how much can be implied with a single, carefully constructed image and expert lineation.
William Carlos Williams, "To a Poor Old Woman"
In this poem Williams plays overtly with the subtleties of meaning that can be achieved through careful lineation; the poem enacts its own revisions as it goes. Again, simple imagery combined with close attention to the line is key to Williams's technique.
William Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much With Us"
Wordsworth was a contemporary of Keats and Shelley, another major figure in the Romantic movement. This well-known poem also exhibits some key features of Romanticism, including a rejection of materialism in favor of spiritual or emotional fulfillment; a preference for nature over urban life, modern society and modern technology; and nostalgia for an imagined earlier age when people had a more complete and authentic relation to the world, each other and themselves.
William Wordsworth, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
Wordsworth's reflection on the beauty of the city of London in the early morning, before the city awakes.
An annotated version of Yeats's "Among School Children"
Here is an annotated version of the poem with pop-up comments on certain key words or lines and links to related readings (some of the sources Yeats refers to, other poems by Yeats, etc.).
William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
This is one of Yeats's best-known poems. It contains the line from which Chinua Achebe got the title for his novel, Things Fall Apart, which in turn Chimamanda Adichie used in composing the first line of Purple Hibiscus: "Things started to fall apart at home..."

Short Readings on Poetry

I've assembled here a small collection of short readings on various aspects of poetry, including comments on poetry from other cultures and brief analyses of certain poems, to provide further insight into what poetry is and how it works.

Ethiopian Poetry
In this excerpt from his autobiography, Notes from the Hyena's Belly, the Ethiopian writer Nega Mezlekia describes the significance of poetry in Ethiopian culture and some of the most important forms.
Sound and form in “This sun on this rubble after rain”
Some observations on poetic form in the poem by Dennis Brutus. You can find the poem itself, without commentary, in the "Poems" folder under "Content" on the class Blackboard site.
Some remarks on "When Black Men's Teeth Speak"
Discussing what I see as the meaning of the poem. The text of the poem itself is available to students in my poetry class through Canvas.

A note on the title: When the poem was first translated, the title was rendered as "When Negro Teeth Speak." That is the title you will see in the poem itself. "Negro" was at the time the preferred English term to refer to Black people. Since then it has been replaced by Black or, in the US, African American. (This poem is about people of Africa, though, so "African American" wouldn't make sense here.) "Negro" is now considered inappropriate and, by some, offensive. In a more recent translation the title has been changed to "When Black Men's Teeth Speak." I have replaced the title here but am keeping the earlier translation because, aside from the change in how the title is perceived, I like it better.

19 Lines That Turn Anguish Into Art
This is a close reading of the poem "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop (second bio here). It discusses the meaning of the poem, then carefully analyzes the form and discusses how the form relates to the meaning. It also gives some background information on Bishop's life that provides more context for the poem.

(Access to New York Times articles is free for Shoreline Community College students. Sign up for a free account. You can read a few articles each month without an account, but after that you have to log in.)

Poetry Criticism

A few selected essays and commentaries. Optional reading.

T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
A very well known essay by one of the most influential poets writing in English in the 20th century.
On "Archaic Torso of Apollo"
A commentary on Rilke's famous poem (which you can link to from the box in the center of the page) by Mark Doty, a contemporary poet and critic. This is a transcript of a talk he gave as part of an online poetry class.
Commentary on "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks
Excerpts from several different sources, including an interview with the poet about the meaning of the poem.
A Brief Guide to Language Poetry
A short description of this school of poetry that appeared in the 1970s and whose practitioners are still writing today.
Commentary on "At the Fishhouses" by Elizabeth Bishop
A dozen different writers share their insights on this poem, ranging in length from a single paragraph to a few pages each.
Commentaries on "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich
Several different writers offer their thoughts on the meaning of this poem, ranging in length from a few sentences to several paragraphs.
Comparing Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses" and Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck"
From the Modern American Poets Site. Both of these poems can be found in the list in the center box on this page, and commentaries on each one individually can be found above. (This article is one of the 12 that are included in the commentaries on "At the Fishhouses.")
Critical commentary on Emily Dickinson
Here you can find links to commentaries on many of Dickinson's poems, including all three of those included on this page.

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ENGL& 113 Intro to Poetry (Oldham) : Poetry

Poetry Websites

Poems and Poets

Short Readings on Poetry

Poetry Criticism