The Giant Book of Poetry (2006)
Page 2
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