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## Little Brown Baby
Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh — makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib — you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf — dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
... | My name is Afaa Michael Weaver, and I will be reading “Little Brown Baby” by
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
I am always inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s work. He had such a struggle—he
wrote under censorship and under the pressure of the popular tastes of the
day—and when I think about the evolution of the identity of Africa... |
## The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
... | “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”
proclaims the Mother of Exiles, in words that reverberate today as a
definition of what America offers to the world. The poem was written by the
American-Jewish poet Emma Lazarus, as a donation to an auction of art and
literary works intende... |
## WILD BEASTS
In the front all the weapons were
loaded. We sat there in the dark with
not so much as a whisper. We could hear
sounds outside—skirrs, rasps, the occasional
yap, ting. We were alert, perhaps, too
alert. Ready to shoot a fly for just
being a fly. When you do... | This is a poem by James Tate, entitled “Wild Beasts”. I found it in an
anthology called _State of The Union: 50 Political Poems_ , which was
published by Wave Books. The reader is Amy Gerstler.
So that’s the poem. We’ve been asked to contribute a little commentary. I know
this project is related to the fluctuating ide... |
## Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
1
Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you
are to me!
On the ferry-boa... | Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” was published in 1856 as the “Sun-
Down Poem” in the second edition of _Leaves of Grass_ and had its present
title in 1860. The poem relates to the theme of migration but cannot be
contained by it. In nine sections, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” enacts Whitman’s
challenge to and uni... |
## Heaved from the Earth
after the tornado, a dead moccasin
nailed to the pole
boards scattered across a pasture
lying fierce crosses
jagged in mud
had flung itself
nail and wood
the square-head animal
hurled also in air
or as it raced in wee... | Besmilr Brigham was born in Mississippi in 1913 and died in New Mexico in
2000. She lived most of her life, when she was not roaming and camping, with
her husband Roy and her daughter Heloise in Southwestern Arkansas, outside the
small town of Horatio.
Besmilr Brigham was a writer from childhood, and her writing is an... |
## Sexton Texts Tituba from a Bird Conservatory
— _for Margaret Walker and Molly Means_
Fri., July 2, 7:07 PM
“Eat, the stones a poor man breaks,”
Fri., ... | My name is Camille T. Dungy, and I am going to read a poem by Airea D.
Matthews from her new book, _Simulacra_. The poem is called “Sexton Texts
Tituba from a Bird Conservatory.”
There’s so much about this poem that just delights and astounds me, and truly
makes me believe in the possibility of what American poetry ca... |
## I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But... | I chose that poem because of how striking it was for me, as a gay writer, to
find that in the 19th century a poet like Walt Whitman was already
celebrating, not only love and the need for it, but same-sex love in
particular—what he calls manly love, which I think of as same-sex love, but
also of camaraderie among men. ... |
## Rosebud
There is a place in Montana where the grass stands up two feet,
Yellow grass, white grass, the wind
On it like locust wings & the same shine.
Facing what I think was south, I could see a broad valley
& river, miles into the valley, that looked black & then trees.
To th... | This is Carol Muske-Dukes reading “Rosebud” by Jon Anderson.
The poem “Rosebud” by the late poet Jon Anderson seems both filled with hurt
and despair at the same time as it seems wide in scope; a hymn to history. It
seems he is speaking to the land: in this case, one place in Montana. But this
is not just any place in... |
## II. _
_ from _Amelia_
Amelia was just fourteen and out of the orphan asylum; at her first job—
in the bindery, and yes sir, yes ma’am, oh, so anxious to please.
She stood at the table, her blonde hair hanging about her shoulders,
“knocking up” for Mary and Sadie, the stitche... | Charles Reznikoff was born in New York City in 1894. He lived there all of his
life and died in 1976. He’s often associated with the American Objectivist
poets, including his friend from New York, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen,
Lorine Niedecker.
One of Reznikoff’s great works is called _Testimony_ , one of the great ep... |
## El Zapato
Not the wooden spoon,
primordial source
of sweetness and pain,
flying across the kitchen—
I barely bothered to duck.
Not my father undoing his belt—
I would be gone before he’d whack
the tabletop in a sample _nalgada_ ,
but my mother’s shoe, El Za... | Richard Garcia’s “El Zapato” speaks eloquently about immigration into the US
while never mentioning the subject, let alone the word. I love the casual way
in which Garcia uses Spanish, as if—though he was born in San Francisco and
grew up speaking English—it’s the most natural thing in the world. To him, of
course, wit... |
## Bury Me in a Free Land
Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above ... | Hi. This is D. A. Powell. And this is The Poetry of America. Today is the 15th
day of January, 2013, anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
visionary American, spiritual leader, and civil rights advocate and organizer.
If Dr. King had lived in continued good health he would be 84 years old today.
His ... |
## The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
... | This is Dana Gioia. The poem I would like to read is “The Jewish Cemetery at
New Port” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This is not a very well-known poem
these days, but I consider it one of the great elegies in American literature
and also one of the few great 19th century poems that’s really about the
burden of immigr... |
## Autumn Ritual with Hate Turned Sideways
—i pull the hate
on a rope ladder to the resting zone…
H
H
H
pull the A on down.
A
A
A
Put that sick A to bed. Get well, A. Pinc... | Brenda Hillman is one of America’s crucial contemporary poets, a braider of
diverse strands of the American literary tradition. Firstly, there is her
fiery spiritual engagement, a trait we find initially in the passionate
sermons of early American religious writers and then in the work of her fellow
eccentric seeker Em... |
## 508 (I’m ceded – I’ve stopped being Theirs –)
I’m ceded – I’ve stopped being Theirs –
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I’ve finishe... | It’s said that many of Dickinson’s poems begin where most poems end, in the
“white heat,” and that is the case here. Rather than finding her way to a
radical lift-off at the poem’s conclusion, she _begins_ there—“I’m ceded—”—she
declares—"I’ve stopped being Theirs—.” She is ceded, as land is ceded, as
property is ceded... |
## We Are Not Responsible
We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives.
We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions.
We do not endorse the causes or claims of people begging for handouts.
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.
Your ... | Hello there. This is Douglas Kearney, and I am reading Harryette Mullen’s “We
Are Not Responsible.”
Well, first of all, I love Harryette Mullen. Her work is oftentimes engaged in
what I think of as like a super serious kind of play, whether she’s using tons
of puns or a lot of signifying techniques. Harryette Mullen g... |
## To Elsie
XVIII
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care m... | My name is Edward Hirsch and I’m reading a poem by William Carlos Williams
called “To Elsie”.
This poem was untitled when William Carlos Williams first published it. It was
“Poem Number 18” in _Spring and All_ , which he published in 1923. It was only
until when he published a later _Collected Poems_ that he gave the ... |
## The Bridge
That there are things that can never be the same about
my face, the houses, or the sand, that I was born under the
sign of the sheep, that like Abraham Lincoln I am serious
but also lacking in courage,
That from this yard I have been composing a great speech,
... | I love this poem. I love its curiousness: the things that it finds curious and
the fact that it moves with such curiosity through the world.
It seems to me a deeply American poem in a lot of ways, though what
Americanness is is not easy to say, and the instability of that meaning seems
to me an important part of it.
... |
## The Acts of Youth
And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night
What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs
to dull the senses, what little I have left,
what more can be taken away?
The fear of travelling, of the future without hope
or buoy. I must get away from... | I don’t think this poet would mind having a woman read his work aloud anymore
than this woman would mind a man reading my poetry aloud. John Wieners’ poems
are the means by which he rescues himself. The poems relieve his anguish as
they offer rhythm in the ritual of writing that echoes a lyrical way of
thinking. His li... |
## _from_ The Sri Lankan Loxodrome
in this fundamental sense
I am Mahayana & of Africa
both Sri Lankan & non-Sri Lankan
in that
I am of a newly elected “Radial” width
comprehending my projection of rays
like faceless chromium at twilight
an absence
like “intergala... | Will Alexander’s “The Sri Lankan Loxodrome” imagines the journey of a Sri
Lankan sailor across the Indian Ocean. The sailor, making contact with various
transplanted African communities, is an immigrant from restrictive
constructions of nationality and certainty. For him, migration is a mode and
means of identification... |
## The Tusks of Blood
My chant must enclose hell
And yet here leave behind
Myself of touch and vow;
My hour has come when gales—
The brief song of Greek—
Have found the inner teeth alone.
Here listen, someone is calling—
Why the ugly praise and fate?
Shall I be a j... | I’m going to read a poem today about a mostly unknown poet named Samuel
Greenberg, who was born in Vienna in 1893 and died, twenty-three years later,
in 1917. The poem—aside from being fascinating and brilliant, perhaps a great
poem—is illustrative, also in its way, of the huge wave of immigration coming
from southern ... |
## Swedenborg (from “Tradition”)
Well he saw man created according
to the motion of the elements. He located
the soul: in the blood. Retired
at last––to a house where he paid
window-tax (for increasing the light!).
Lived simply. Gardened. Saw visions.
Nothing for suppe... | Lorine Niedecker was born on May 12, 1903, and died on December 31, 1970. She
lived most of her life in a rural landscape on Black Hawk Island near Fort
Atkinson, Wisconsin. It wouldn’t be out of line to say that she had two homes
in her life: the one by water (“The Brontës had their moors, I have my
marshes,” she once... |
## Drum-Taps
**Beat! Beat! Drums!**
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying,
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happine... | This is J. D. McClatchy, and I’m recording this on June the 11th, 2012, in the
midst of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. These four years the country
is commemorating the terrible events of those days so long ago, and on June
the 11th, 1862, the South was enjoying a series of stinging victories. And I
have in fr... |
## The Other Side of the River
Easter again, and a small rain falls
On the mockingbird and the housefly,
on the Chevrolet
In its purple joy
And the TV antennas huddled across the hillside—
Easter again, and the palm trees hunch
Deeper beneath their burden,
... | This is James Tate reading “The Other Side of the River” by Charles Wright.
[Did this poem deepen or complicate conventional notions of American
identity?]
Well, I … I mean obviously I’m going to say yes, just because it has many
elements throughout it, throughout the poem, that might sound familiar to most
readers o... |
## XIII (Dedications)
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstor... | I'm Jane Hirshfield, reading “(Dedications),” by Adrienne Rich.
“(Dedications)” is the final section of Adrienne Rich's thirteen-part “An
Atlas of the Difficult World.” The full poem is a work of stocktaking, an
inventory both personal and cultural. It was finished almost thirty years ago,
in 1991: the year of the fir... |
## American Coma
I believe in the burned field,
the sailboat on the sill
of a desert farmhouse.
That stars on the undersides of our skulls
can spell the way home
even when the lights have gone out,
the maps again erased.
The fray of a rope. Chafe of my ... | This poem, “American Coma”, is from a book by young, Muskogee Creek poet
Jennifer Elise Foerster called _Leaving Tulsa_. It’s a beautiful book, a new
book of poems, and they really remind me of the urgent vision fueling
Kerouac’s _On the Road_ and, for Muskogee people, we’ve been on the road for
quite a while, from the... |
## Making Peace
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ah... | Hello, this is Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States 2015 to
2017. I want to read you a poem by one of favorite poets, Denise Levertov. It
is titled “Making Peace” from her book _Breathing the Water,_ published in
1997 by New Directions Press.
So now we look at the poem a little bit. Think about it a... |
## Come to the Stone. . .
The child saw the bombers skate like stones across the fields
As he trudged down the ways the summer strewed
With its reluctant foliage; how many giants
Rose and peered down and vanished, by the road
The ants had littered with their crumbs and dead.
... | I locate the intense experience this poem offers me in the plain speech of the
lines. “The people are punishing the people, why?” It’s such plain speech. The
line isn’t in quotation marks. It’s the poem’s speaker or the poet who asks
why, not the child, isn’t it? Still, the line is phrased like a child’s
observation an... |
## Poem out of Childhood
I
Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry :
Not Angles, angels : and the magnificent past
shot deep illuminations into high-school.
I opened the door into the concert-hall
and a rush of triumphant violins answered me
while the syphi... | My name is Linda Gregerson and I’m going to be reading “Poem Out of Childhood”
by Muriel Rukeyser.
In _The Life of Poetry_ , Muriel Rukeyser describes the “first public day” she
remembers: crowds of people filling the streets of New York, confetti and
crying, kissing and noise. Which prompted young Muriel to take out ... |
## Backwater Blues
When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night
When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night
Then trouble's takin' place in the lowlands at night
I woke up this mornin’, can’t even get out of my door
I woke up this mornin’, can’t even get ... | Bessie Smith recorded “Backwater Blues” in 1927, and it became an anthem for
one of the most devastating national disasters in US history. The Mississippi
River flood of 1927 was horrific. About a thousand people lost their lives.
Almost half a million homes were destroyed. Almost a million people became
homeless for a... |
## A Cowboy’s Prayer
_(Written for Mother)_
Oh Lord, I’ve never lived where churches
grow.
I love creation better as it stood
That day You finished it so long ago
And looked upon Your work and called it
good.
I know that others find You in the ligh... | This is Marilyn Nelson, reading “A Cowboy’s Prayer” by Badger Clark.
That was “A Cowboy’s Prayer” by Charles Badger Clark. This poem was first
published in 1906, but it was published many times as anonymous. It had a life
of its own without the name of its author. Badger Clark was so charmed by this
that he had a coll... |
## Howl, Part III
Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I’m with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I’m with you in Rockland
where you’ve mu... | It’s sometimes interesting to look at poetry through the lens of history. In
1955, the year 29-year-old Allen Ginsberg wrote the poem he titled “Howl,”
Marian Anderson became the first African American singer to perform with the
71-year-old metropolitan opera company in New York City. That same year, 1955,
rock ‘n’ rol... |
## A Plain Song for Comadre
Though the unseen may vanish, though insight fails
And doubter and downcast saint
Join in the same complaint,
What holy things were ever frightened off
By a fly's buzz, or itches, or a cough?
Harder than nails
They are, more warmly constant... | Not his most famous poem, and neither short nor long, Richard Wilbur’s “A
Plain Song for Comadre” has nonetheless haunted this reader since I first came
upon it in the 1970s. The poem is partly about the years passing, so I’ll date
it within the context of Wilbur’s life (he lived 96 years, dying in 2017) and
my own lif... |
## The Argonaut
What made anyone think I was a Communist I don’t know. I never went
to any of the Communist meetings. I didn’t know any other Communists.
I didn’t believe in any of their tenets. It’s true, I hunted elk in the
winter. I never actually shot any, but I followed them. And... | James Tate died on July 8th, 2015, at the age of 71. This poem is from his
final volume of poetry, _The Government Lake_. His life as a poet lasted
nearly fifty years, since his first book, _The Lost Pilot_ , won the Yale
Younger Poets award when Jim was 22. Jim was my teacher at the MFA program at
UMass Amherst, and l... |
## Guidelines
If they ask you what you are,
say Arab. If they flinch, don't react,
just remember your great-aunt's eyes.
If they ask you where you come from,
say Toledo. Detroit. Mission Viejo.
Fall Springs. Topeka. If they seem confused,
help them locate these p... | This is Naomi Shihab Nye and I’m reading a poem by Lisa Suhair Majaj called
“Guidelines.”
“Keep your eyes on the colonizer’s maps”—“Guidelines” by Lisa Suhair Majaj, an
Arab-American poet who currently lives in Cyprus with her husband and two
children, is one of my favorite poems about identity. This poem is included ... |
## For My People
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;
For m... | If I could tell you how much I treasure Margaret Walker, if I could tell you
how much I miss her presence, her courage, her strength, her non-compromising
eyes and intellect, I would. But I all I can do is read what she wrote and
left for us, as map, as guide. So that’s what I will do.
This is Nikki Finney, and that w... |
## my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine agai... | My name is Patricia Spears Jones. I will be reading Gwendolyn Brooks’ “my
dreams, my works, must wait till after hell.”
Gwendolyn Brooks will be ever known as the first black American author to win
a Pulitzer Prize, and she was a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.
Her time there served as a model for poet l... |
## February
A chimney, breathing a little smoke.
The sun, I can't see
making a bit of pink
I can't quite see in the blue.
The pink of five tulips
at five p.m. on the day before March first.
The green of the tulip stems and leaves
like something I can't remember,
fi... | I love James Schuyler’s poetry—its effortlessness and grace, its sound, its
thick (and at times gnarly) descriptions. A palpable sense of irreality is
everywhere present in it; his poems combine the attention of an ethnographic
account with the charm of a great dinner guest. Add to this a private reading
of the physica... |
## 9/11
The first person is an existentialist
like trash in the groin of the sand dunes
like a brown cardboard home beside a dam
like seeing like things the same
between Death Valley and the desert of Paran
An earthquake a turret with arms and legs
The seco... | I’m Rae Armantrout and I chose Fanny Howe’s poem, “9/11.” I chose this poem
because it considers the long war we’ve been involved in well since the date
of its title. So I’ll start by reading the poem.
So “9/11” is a psychological, philosophical and political kaleidoscope. It
shakes up our identification and recogniti... |
## Areíto por todos
Me sacaron como apache de la llanura y del viento
me arrojaron como inca de la barca del silencio
pero vengo de la sombra
del pasado y del futuro
me sacaron como indio
pero vuelvo como negro.
Me sacaron como negro del tambor de la esperanza
me... | “Ritual Song for Us All” is my English translation of a poem in Spanish,
titled “Areíto por todos” by César Sánchez Beras, a poet who was born in the
Dominican Republic and, like me, has lived in the United States for many
years.
I've chosen this particular poem to read for the “Poetry of America” Project
because it d... |
## A Step Away From Them
It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
brick... | Hi, my name is Ron Padgett. I’m an American poet, and I’ve been invited by the
Library of Congress to read a poem that somehow deals with the idea of the
“American identity.” I chose a poem by the poet Frank O’Hara, an American who
was born in 1926 and died in 1966, called “A Step Away from Them.” I chose
this poem not... |
## The March into Virginia
Did all the lets and bars appear
To every just or larger end,
Whence should come the trust and cheer?
Youth must its ignorant impulse lend--
Age finds place in the rear.
All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,
The... | I am Rosanna Warren. I am reading the poem, “The March into Virginia Ending in
the First Manassas” by Herman Melville.
This poem appeared in Melville’s collection of poetry _Battle Pieces and
Aspects of the War,_ which he published in August 1866 at the end of the Civil
War. It’s a poem much concerned with identity: N... |
## Owl
the sign for making the most of what you have
on the human hand is a thumb at full right angle to the palm
for the owl it’s two talons forward two back a flexible foot
that crushes the prey and lifts it to the beak to the eyes
which are legally blind this is why the owl
... | My name is Sally Keith and I am a poet living in Washington, DC. Thinking
about it today, it’s February 2018, I would call a great American poem one
able to radically describe one kind of time, or experience, inside of another;
such a poem would be magnificent in innovation but equally delicate, able to
attend to and h... |
## won’t you celebrate with me
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one h... | My name is Sharon Olds and I’m going to read Lucille Clifton’s poem “won’t you
celebrate with me?”
Lucille Clifton: “Won’t you celebrate with me?” Yes we will, Lucille. I love
this poem. I love that the poem is an invitation and it begins almost with a
kind of negative: “Won’t you celebrate with me? Will you celebrate... |
## The Orange Bears
The Orange bears with soft friendly eyes
Who played with me when I was ten,
Christ, before I'd left home they'd had
Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs
Seared by hot slag, their soft trusting
Bellies kicked in, their tongues ripped
Out, and I wen... | This is Tony Hoagland. I’m going to read a poem by Kenneth Patchen, an
American poet. The poem is called “The Orange Bears.”
I love this poem by Kenneth Patchen, and let me tell you a little bit about
him as an American poet. He was born in 1911. He died in 1972. He had a
beautiful early career in which he was publish... |
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