Introduction to Poetry
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 and Open Form
Stanza Forms
Fixed Forms
A Brief Note: Literary History and Poetic Conventions
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 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
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
Love (III)
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
Edward Taylor (1642-1729)
Huswifery
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 Churchyard71Ch
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
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
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
To the Fringed Gentian
John Keats (1795-1821)
La Belle Dame sans Merci
Ode to a Nightingale
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
When I Have Fears
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
To Helen
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
The Eagle
The Lady of Shallot
Tears, Idle Tears
Ulysses
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
My Last Duchess
Porphyria's Lover
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
A Noiseless Patient Spider
O Captain, My Captain
Song of Myself, 6
Song of Myself, 11
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
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
Wild Nights--Wild Nights
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Up-Hill
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
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 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
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
The Last Words of My English Grandmother
The Red Wheelbarrow
Spring and All
This Is Just to Say
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
John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
Piazza Piece
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)
nobody loses all the time
pity this busy monster,manunkind
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
Jean Toomer (1894-1967)
Georgia Dusk
Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
Women
Hart Crane (1899-1933)
Chaplinesque
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Dream Boogie
Theme for English B
The Weary Blues
Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
Incident
Yet Do I Marvel
A. D. Hope (1907-2000)
Imperial Adam
W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
As I Walked Out One Evening
Musée 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
Sestina
Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
Those Winter Sundays
Dudley Randall (b. 1914)
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
Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)
90 North
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Margaret Walker (b. 1915)
For Malcolm X
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
The Ballad of Chocolate Mabbie
the mother
We Real Cool
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
For the Union Dead
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)
Playboy
The Writer
Year's End
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
Next, Please
Aubade
This Be the Verse
James Dickey (1923-1997)
The Heaven of Animals
Alan Dugan (b. 1923)
Love Song: I and Thou
Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
The Book of Yolek
Third Avenue in Sunlight
Denise Levertov (1923-1999)
The Ache of Marriage
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
Maxine Kumin (b. 1925)
Noted in the New York Times
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
A Supermarket in California
James Merrill (1926-1995)
Casual Wear
W. D. Snodgrass (b. 1926)
Mementos, I
Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)
The Day Lady Died
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)
Animals Are Passing from Our Lives
You Can Have It
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Cinderella
The Truth the Dead Know
Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
From the Wave
Terminal
X. J. Kennedy (b. 1929)
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day
September Twelfth, 2001
Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Diving into the Wreck
Rape
Ted Hughes (b. 1930)
Pike
Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
A Walk
Derek Walcott (b. 1930)
Central America
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
Russel Edson (b. 1935)
Ape
Mary Oliver (b. 1935)
The Black Walnut Tree
Fred Chappell (b. 1936)
Narcissus and Echo
Lucille Clifton (b. 1936)
homage to my hips
wishes for sons
Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
*What’s That Smell in the Kitchen?
Betty Adcock (b. 1938)
*Voyages
Gary Gildner (b. 1938)
First Practice
Robert Phillips (b. 1938)
Compartments
Dabney Stuart (b. 1938)
Discovering My Daughter
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
Siren Song
Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)
The Sacred
Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
Punishment
Ted Kooser (b. 1939)
*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
Robert Hass (b. 1941)
Picking Blackberries with a Friend Who Has Been Reading Jacques Lacan
Simon J. Ortiz (b. 1941)
The Serenity in Stones
Gibbons Ruark (b. 1941)
The Visitor
Gladys Cardiff (b. 1942)
Combing
Charles Martin (b. 1942)
E.S.L.
Sharon Olds (b. 1942)
The One Girl at the Boys Party
Diane Lockward (b. 1943)
*My Husband Discovers Poetry
Ellen Bryant Voight (b. 1943)
Daughter
Wendy Cope (b. 1944)
Rondeau Redoublé
Dick Davis (b. 1945)
A Monorhyme for the Shower
Kay Ryan (b. 1945)
Bestiary
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
B.H. Fairchild (b. 1945)
Body and Soul
Leon Stokesbury (b. 1945)
*The Day Kennedy Died
Marilyn Nelson (b. 1946)
The Ballad of Aunt Geneva
Ai (b. 1947)
Child Beater
Jim Hall (b. 1947)
Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too
Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)
Facing It
Timothy Steele (b. 1948)
Sapphics Against Anger
James Fenton (b. 1949)
God, a Poem
Sarah Cortez (b. 1950)
Tu Negrito
Carolyn Forché (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
Judith Ortiz Cofer (b. 1952)
The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica
Rita Dove (b. 1952)
Adolescence III
Mark Jarman (b. 1952)
After Disappointment
Julie Kane (b. 1952)
*Alan Doll Rap
Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952)
The Traveling Onion
Alberto Ríos (b. 1952)
The Purpose of Altar Boys
Julia Alvarez (b. 1953)
Bilingual Sestina
Harryette Mullen (b. 1953)
Dim Lady
Michael Donaghy (b. 1953)
The River Spate
Kim Addonizio (b. 1954)
*First Poem for You
David Mason (b. 1954)
Song of the Powers
Mary Jo Salter (b. 1954)
Welcome to Hiroshima
Cathy Song (b. 1955)
Stamp Collecting
Ginger Andrews (b. 1956)
Primping in the Rearview Mirror
Catherine Tufariello (b. 1963)
Useful Advice
Sherman Alexie (b. 1966)
The Exaggeration of Despair
Natasha Trethewey (b. 1966)
*Domestic Work, 1937
Suji Kwock Kim (b. 1968)
Occupation
A. E. Stallings (b. 1968)
*Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther
Beth Ann Fennelly (b. 1971)
*Asked for a Happy Memory of Her Father, She Recalls Wrigley Field
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