Virgule by Thomas Lux
Virgule by Thomas Lux What I love about this little leaning mark is how it divides without divisiveness. The left or bottom side prying that choice up or out, the right or top side pressing down upon its choice: either/or, his/her. Sometimes called a slash (too harsh), a slant (a little dizzy, but the Dickinson […]
Motel Seedy by Thomas Lux
Motel Seedy by Thomas Lux The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base (a huge red slug with a hole where its heart should be) or chose this print of a butterscotch sunset, must have been abused in art class as children, forced to fingerpaint with a nose, or a tongue. To put […]
Virgule by Thomas Lux
Virgule by Thomas Lux What I love about this little leaning mark is how it divides without divisiveness. The left or bottom side prying that choice up or out, the right or top side pressing down upon its choice: either/or, his/her. Sometimes called a slash (too harsh), a slant (a little dizzy, but the Dickinson […]
Motel Seedy by Thomas Lux
Motel Seedy by Thomas Lux The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base (a huge red slug with a hole where its heart should be) or chose this print of a butterscotch sunset, must have been abused in art class as children, forced to fingerpaint with a nose, or a tongue. To put […]
At the Galleria Shopping Mall by Tony Hoagland
Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear, there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs; one of them singing news about a far-off war, one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood. And here is my niece Lucinda, who is nine and a […]
America by Tony Hoagland
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials, And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think […]
A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland
Windy today and I feel less than brilliant, driving over the hills from work. There are the dark parts on the road when you pass through clumps of wood and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean, but that doesn’t make the road an allegory. I should call Marie and apologize […]
Yankee Doodle by Vachel Lindsay
This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an entertainment on the evening of Washington’s Birthday. Dawn this morning burned all red Watching them […]
The Trap by Vachel Lindsay
She was taught desire in the street, Not at the angels’ feet. By the good no word was said Of the worth of the bridal bed. The secret was learned from the vile, Not from her mother’s smile. Home spoke not. And the girl Was caught in the public whirl. Do you say “She gave […]
The Raft by Vachel Lindsay
The whole world on a raft! A King is here, The record of his grandeur but a smear. Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate That makes the band upon his whims to wait? Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled. Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild Until they shower their pennies […]
The Booker Washington Trilogy by Vachel Lindsay
I. A NEGRO SERMON:—SIMON LEGREE (To be read in your own variety of negro dialect.) Legree’s big house was white and green. His cotton-fields were the best to be seen. He had strong horses and opulent cattle, And bloodhounds bold, with chains that would rattle. His garret was full of curious things: Books of magic, […]
Pure call of the wilderness by Vinko Kalinic
Pure call of the wilderness by Vinko Kalinic Sometime I have a feeling that I’ve lost myself long time ago on this world and that everything is being wrongly set: towns names, the streets names and the people names, signs on the roads, birth certificates and the flags colours. That we learned wrong subjects from […]
Pure call of the wilderness by Vinko Kalinic
Pure call of the wilderness by Vinko Kalinic Sometime I have a feeling that I’ve lost myself long time ago on this world and that everything is being wrongly set: towns names, the streets names and the people names, signs on the roads, birth certificates and the flags colours. That we learned wrong subjects from […]
My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky
My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky I’d tear like a wolf at bureaucracy. For mandates my respect’s but the slightest. To the devil himself I’d chuck without mercy every red-taped paper. But this … Down the long front of coupés and cabins File the officials politely. They gather up passports and I give in My […]
Nocturne by W H Auden
Now through night’s caressing grip Earth and all her oceans slip, Capes of China slide away From her fingers into day And th’Americas incline Coasts towards her shadow line. Now the ragged vagrants creep Into crooked holes to sleep: Just and unjust, worst and best, Change their places as they rest: Awkward lovers like in […]
Years of the Modern. by Walt Whitman
YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform’d! Your horizon rises—I see it parting away for more august dramas; I see not America only—I see not only Liberty’s nation, but other nations preparing; I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see the solidarity of races; I see that force advancing with irresistible power […]
With Antecedents. by Walt Whitman
1 WITH antecedents; With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages; With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am: With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome; With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon; With antique maritime ventures,—with laws, artizanship, wars and […]
With All Thy Gifts. by Walt Whitman
WITH all thy gifts, America, (Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,) Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee—With these, and like of these, vouchsafed to thee, What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving;) The gift of Perfect Women fit for thee—What of that gift of gifts thou lackest? The towering […]
What Best I See In Thee. by Walt Whitman
WHAT best I see in thee, Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways, Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle, Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace, Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia, swarm’d upon, Who walk’d with kings with even pace […]
To Foreign Lands. by Walt Whitman
I HEARD that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle, the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy; Therefore I send you my poems, that you behold in them what you wanted. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster […]
To a President. by Walt Whitman
ALL you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learn’d of Nature—of the politics of Nature, you have not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality; You have not seen that only such as they are for These States, And that what is less than they, must sooner or later lift […]
Thoughts. by Walt Whitman
1 OF these years I sing, How they pass and have pass’d, through convuls’d pains as through parturitions; How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfillment, the Absolute Success, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to […]
States! by Walt Whitman
STATES! Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers? By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms? Away! I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the forces of courts and arms, These! to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held together. The old breath of life, ever new, Here! […]
Starting from Paumanok. by Walt Whitman
1 STARTING from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born, Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother; After roaming many lands—lover of populous pavements; Dweller in Mannahatta, my city—or on southern savannas; Or a soldier camp’d, or carrying my knapsack and gun—or a miner in California; Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet […]
Song of the Universal. by Walt Whitman
1 COME, said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the Universal. In this broad Earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed Perfection. By every life a share, or more or less, None born but it […]
Song of the Redwood-Tree. by Walt Whitman
1 A CALIFORNIA song! A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense. Farewell, my brethren, Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; […]
Song of the Exposition. by Walt Whitman
1 AFTER all, not to create only, or found only, But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded, To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free; To fill the gross, the torpid bulk with vital religious fire; Not to repel or destroy, so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate; To obey, as well […]
Song of the Broad-Axe. by Walt Whitman
1 WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan! Head from the mother’s bowels drawn! Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one! Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown! Resting the grass amid and upon, To be lean’d, and to lean on. Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes—masculine […]
Song at Sunset. by Walt Whitman
SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past! Inflating my throat—you, divine average! You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness, Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection, Natural life of me, faithfully praising things; Corroborating forever the triumph of things. […]
So Long. by Walt Whitman
1 TO conclude—I announce what comes after me; I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the present, depart. I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all, I would raise my voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations. When America does what was promis’d, When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland […]
So Far and So Far, and on Toward the End. by Walt Whitman
SO far, and so far, and on toward the end, Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of me; But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity, Whether I shall dart forth the true rays, the ones that wait unfired, (Did you think the sun was shining its brightest? No—it […]
The Sleepers by Walt Whitman
1 I WANDER all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping. How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still! How quiet they breathe, the little […]
Sing of the Banner at Day-Break. by Walt Whitman
POET. O A NEW song, a free song, Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer, By the wind’s voice and that of the drum, By the banner’s voice, and child’s voice, and sea’s voice, and father’s voice, Low on the ground and high in the air, On the ground where father and child […]
Salut au Monde. by Walt Whitman
1 O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next! Each answering all—each sharing the earth with all. What widens within you, Walt Whitman? What waves and soils exuding? What climes? what persons and lands are here? Who are the infants? some […]
Rise, O Days. by Walt Whitman
1 RISE, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep! Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour’d what the earth gave me; Long I roam’d the woods of the north—long I watch’d Niagara pouring; I travel’d the prairies over, and slept on their breast—I cross’d the Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus; […]
Respondez! by Walt Whitman
RESPONDEZ! Respondez! (The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles; Let that which […]
Prairie-Grass Dividing, The. by Walt Whitman
THE prairie-grass dividing—its special odor breathing, I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, Demand the most copious and close companionship of men, Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings, Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious, Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command—leading, not following, Those […]
Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy. by Walt Whitman
YOU just maturing youth! You male or female! Remember the organic compact of These States, Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man, Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at […]
Poem of Joys. by Walt Whitman
1 O TO make the most jubilant poem! Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death. O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! Full of common employments! full of grain and trees. O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes! O for […]
American Feuillage. by Walt Whitman
AMERICA always! Always our own feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breath’d Cuba! Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes drain’d by the Eastern and […]