1
Anthology of Modern American Poetry
[edited by Cary Nelson, published by Oxford UP, 2000]
Table of Contents
WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
One's Self I Sing
I Hear America Singing
As Adam Early in the Morning
For You O Democracy
I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
A Glimpse
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)
258 (There's a certain Slant of light,)
280 (I felt a Funeral, in my Brain)
303 (The Soul selects her own Society)
341 (After great pain, a formal feeling comes--)
465 (I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--)
508 (I'm ceded--I've stopped being Theirs)
520 (I started Early--Took my Dog--)
585 (I like to see it lap the Miles--)
601 (A still--Volcano--Life--)
613 (They shut me up in Prose--)
657 (I dwell in Possibility--)
712 (Because I could not stop for Death)
754 (My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--)
1072 (Title divine--is mine!)
1129 (Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--)
1705 (Volcanoes be in Sicily)
EDWIN MARKHAM (1852-1940)
The Man With the Hoe
SADAKICHI HARTMANN (1867-1944)
Cyanogen Seas Are Surging
Tanka I
Tanka III
EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1868-1950)
Lucinda Matlock
Petit, the Poet
Seth Compton
Cleanthus Trilling
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON (1869-1935)
The House on the Hill
Richard Cory
The Clerks
Miniver Cheevy
The Mill
Mr. Flood's Party
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871-1938)
O Black and Unknown Bards
The Creation
The White Witch
PAUL LAWRENCE DUNBAR (1872-1906)
We Wear the Mask
When Malindy Sings
Sympathy
The Haunted Oak
LOLA RIDGE (1871-1941)
Stone Face
AMY LOWELL (1874-1925)
September, 1918
The Letter
Venus Transiens
Madonna of the Evening Flowers
The Weather-Cock Points South
Opal
Wakefulness
Grotesque
The Sisters
New Heavens for Old
GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946)
Patriarchal Poetry
ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
Mending Wall
Home Burial
After Apple-Picking
The Wood-Pile
The Road Not Taken
Birches
The Oven Bird
An Old Man's Winter Night
The Hill Wife
Fire and Ice
Good-By and Keep Cold
The Need of Being Versed In Country Things
Design
The Witch of Conulls
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Gathering Leaves
In a Disused Graveyard
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Desert Places
Two Tramps In Mud Time
Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
Never Again Would Birds' Song Be The Same
The Gift Outright
ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON (1875-1935)
I Sit and Sew
CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967)
Chicago
Subway
Muckers
Child of the Romans
Nigger
Buttons
Planked Whitefish
Cool Tombs
Grass
Fog
Elizabeth Upstead
Man, The Man-Hunter
VACHEL LINDSAY (1879-1931)
The Congo
The Child-heart in the Mountains
Celestial Flowers of Glacial Park
The Virginians Are Coming Again
WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955)
Sea Surface Full of Clouds
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Floral Decoration for Bananas
Anecdote of the Jar
Disillusionment of Ten O'clock
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
The Snow Man
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Peter Quince at the Clavier
Sunday Morning
The Death of a Soldier
The Idea of Order at Key West
Mozart, 1935
A Postcard from the Volcano
Study of Two Pears
Of Modern Poetry
The Course of a Particular
The Plain Sense of Things
As You Leave the Room
A Clear Day and No Memories
Of Mere Being
ANGELINA WELD GRIMKÉ (1880-1958)
The Black Finger
Tenebris
Fragment
GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON (1880-1966)
The Heart of a Woman
Common Dust
MINA LOY (1882-1966)
Songs to Joannes
ANNE SPENCER (1882-1975)
White Things
Lady, Lady
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963)
The Young Housewife
Portrait of a Lady
Queen-Anne's-Lace
The Widow's Lament in Springtime
The Great Figure
Spring and All
To Elsie
The Red Wheelbarrow
Young Sycamore
The Descent of Winter
This is Just to Say
Proletarian Portrait
The Yachts
The Descent
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, Book I
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
EZRA POUND (1885-1972)
A Pact
In a Station of the Metro
Portrait d'une Femme
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
from THE CANTOS:
I (And then went down to the ship)
IX (One year floods rose)
XLV , (With Usura)
LXXXI (Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom)
CXVI (Came Neptunus)
Notes for CXVII (I have tried to write paradise)
H.D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) (1886-1961)
Oread
Mid-day
Sea Rose
Garden
The Helmsman
Eurydice
Helen
from The Walls Do Not Fall
1
6
ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887-1962)
Shine, Perishing Republic
Hurt Hawks
November Surf
The Purse-Seine
Fantasy
Cassandra
Vulture
Birds and Fishes
MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972)
Poetry
An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish
The Fish
Sojourn in the Whale
A Grave
Silence
Peter
Marriage
An Octopus
No Swan So Fine
The Pangolin
Bird-Witted
The Paper Nautilus
Spenser's Ireland
T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Gerontion
The Waste Land
The Hollow Men
Journey of the Magi
from Four Quartets:
Burnt Norton
JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888-1974)
Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter
Dead Boy
CLAUDE MCKAY (1889-1948)
The Harlem Dancer
To The White Fiends
If We Must Die
The Lynching
The Tropics in New York
The White City
America
Outcast
Mulatto
The Negro's Tragedy
Look Within
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950)
First Fig
I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed
Love is not blind
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree
Well, I Have Lost You
Love is not all
Justice Denied in Massachusetts
Say That We Saw Spain Die
I Forgot for a Moment
ARCHIBALD MacLEISH (1892-1982)
Ars Poetica
The End of the World
DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)
Unfortunate Coincidence
Résumé
One Perfect Rose
GENEVIEVE TAGGARD (1894-1948)
Everyday Alchemy
With Child
Up State----Depression Summer
Mill Town
Ode in Time of Crisis
To the Negro People
To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
E.E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962)
Thy fingers make early flowers of
in Just-
O sweet spontaneous
Buffalo Bill's
Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal
"next to of course god america i
my sweet old etcetera
i sing of Olaf glad and big
Space being (don't forget to remember) Curved
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
anyone lived in a pretty how town
JEAN TOOMER (1894-1967)
from Cane
Reapers
November Cotton Flower
Portrait in Georgia
Her Lips Are Copper Wire
CHARLES REZNIKOFF (1894-1976)
from Testimony: The United States (1885-1915) :
Negroes
from Holocaust :
Massacres
HERMAN SPECTOR (1895-1959)
Wiseguy Type
V.J. JEROME (1896-1965)
A Negro Mother to Her Child
JOHN WHEELWRIGHT (1897-1940)
Plantation Drouth
JOSEPH FREEMAN (1897-1965)
(Our age has Caesars, though they wear silk hats)
LUCIA TRENT (1897-1977)
Breed, Women, Breed
Black Men
Parade the Narrow Turrets
LOUISE BOGAN (1897-1970)
Medusa
The Crows
Women
Cassandra
The Dragonfly
HARRY CROSBY (1898-1929)
Photoheliograph (For Lady A.)
Pharmacie Du Soleil
from Short Introduction to the Word
Tattoo
HART CRANE (1899-1932)
October-November
Black Tambourine
Chaplinesque
Episode of Hands
Porphyro in Akron
Voyages I
from The Bridge
Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge
Ave Maria
The River
Cape Hatteras
Atlantis
The Mango Tree
ALLEN TATE (1899-1979)
Ode to the Confederate Dead
MELVIN B. TOLSON (1900?-1966)
Dark Symphony
Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
YVOR WINTERS (1900-1968)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
STERLING A. BROWN (1901-1989)
Scotty Has His Say
Memphis Blues
Slim in Atlanta
Slim in Hell
Rent Day Blues
Old Lem
Sharecroppers
Southern Cop
Choices
LAURA (RIDING) JACKSON (1901-1991)
Helen's Burning
The Wind Suffers
Elegy in a Spider's Web
ANGEL ISLAND: POEMS BY CHINESE IMMIGRANTS, 1910-1940
(As a traveller in wind and dust)
(Instead of remaining a citizen of China)
(I am distressed that we Chinese are detained)
(America has power, but not justice)
(The low builing with three beams)
(The dragon out of water is humiliated by ants)
(The silvery red shirt is half covered with dust)
Poem by One Named Xu, From Xiangshan, Consoling Himself
Leaving behind my writing brush
KENNETH FEARING (1902-1961)
Dear Beatrice Fairfax
$2.50
Dirge
Denouement
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)
Negro
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
The Weary Blues
The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)
To the Dark Mercedes of "El Palacio de Amor"
Mulatto
Justice
Fire
White Shadows
Christ in Alabama
Three Songs About Lynching:
Silhouette
Flight
Lynching Song
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria
Goodbye Christ
Ballad of Roosevelt
Park Bench
Let America Be America Again
Letter from Spain
The Bitter River
Ku Klux
Shakespeare in Harlem
Madam and the Phone Bill
Ballad of the Landlord
Harlem
Late Corner
Dinner Guest: Me
The Backlash Blues
Bombings in Dixie
ARNA BONTEMPS (1902-1973)
A Black Man Talks of Reaping
Southern Mansion
GWENDOLYN BENNETT (1902-1981)
To a Dark Girl
Heritage
COUNTEE CULLEN (1903-1946)
Incident
For a Lady I Know
Yet Do I Marvel
Near White
Tableau
Heritage
From the Dark Tower
LORINE NIEDECKER (1903-1970)
Paen to Place
KAY BOYLE (1903-1993)
A Communication to Nancy Cunard
CARL RAKOSI (b. 1903)
The Menage
AQUA LALUAH (1904-1950)
Lullaby
LOUIS ZUKOFSKY (1904-1978)
To My Wash Stand
Mantis
A Song for the Year's End
Because Tarzan Triumphs (from Light)
Non Ti Fidar
JOHN BEECHER (1904-1980)
Report to the Stockholders
Beaufort Tides
Engagement at the Salt Fork
KENNETH REXROTH (1905-1982)
The Love Poems of Marichiko
ROBERT PENN WARREN (1905-1989)
Bearded Oaks
Evening Hawk
Heart of Autumn
STANLEY KUNITZ (b. 1905)
The Wellfleet Whale
The Snakes of September
JOSEPH KALAR (1906-1972)
Papermill
RICHARD WRIGHT (1908-1960)
We of the Streets
THEODORE ROETHKE (1908-1963)
Cuttings
Cuttings (later)
Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze
from The Lost Son:
The Flight
I Knew a Woman
North American Sequence:
The Longing
Meditation at Oyster River
Journey to the Interior
The Long Waters
The Far Field
The Rose
GEORGE OPPEN (1908-1984)
Image of the Engine
In Alsace
Exodus
EDWIN ROLFE (1909-1954)
Asbestos
Season of Death
First Love
Elegia
After Tu Fu (A.D. 713-770)
Now the Fog
A Letter to the Denouncers
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been
A Poem to Delight My Friends Who Laugh at Science-Fiction
In Praise Of
Little Ballad for Americans----1954
CHARLES OLSON (1910-1970)
Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele
Cole's Island
SOL FUNAROFF (1911-1942)
The Bull in the Olive Field
The Man At The Factory Gate
Goin Mah Own Road
ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979)
The Fish
The Man-Moth
At the Fishhouses
Filling Station
Questions of Travel
The Armadillo
In the Waiting Room
Pink Dog
Crusoe in England
One Art
WILLIAM EVERSON (1912-1994)
A Canticle to the Waterbirds
TILLIE LERNER OLSEN (b. 1912)
I Want You Women Up North To Know
MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980)
The Book of the Dead
The Minotaur
(To be a Jew in the Twentieth century)
Rite
The Poem As Mask
Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)
Poem White Page/ White Page Poem
ROBERT HAYDEN (1913-1980)
Middle Passage
Runagate Runagate
A Letter from Phillis Wheatley
Night, Death, Mississippi
Aunt Jemima of the Ocean Waves
No. 1 (from Elegies for Paradise Valley)
The Dogwood Trees
O Daedalus, Fly Away Home
CHARLES HENRI FORD (b. 1913)
Plaint
Flag of Ecstasy
WELDON KEES (1914-1955)
Travels in North America
RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965)
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
A Front
Losses
Second Air Force
Protocols
JAPANESE AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMP HAIKU, 1942-1944
Shiho Okamoto (Being arrested)
Sadayo Taniguchi (Hand-cuffed and taken away)
Kyotaro Komuro (Lingering summer heat)
Komuro (Passed guard tower)
Okamoto (In the shade of summer sun)
Shonan Suzuki (Withered grass on ground)
Hakuro Wada (Young grass red and shriveled)
Hyakuissei Okamoto (Dandelion has bloomed)
Shizuku Uyemaruko (On certain days)
Wada (Released seagull)
Ryokuin Matsui (Sprinkling water outside)
Komuro (Want to be with children)
Wada (Even the croaking of frogs)
Hangetsu Tsunekawa (Sentry at main gate)
Shokoshi Saga (Thin shadow of tule reed)
Tokuji Hirai (Looking at summer moon)
Suzuki (Moon shadows on internment camp)
Hirai (Early moon has set)
Suiko Matsushita (Rain shower from mountain)
Neiji Ozawa (Desert rain falling)
Senbinshi Takaoka (Frosty morning)
Jyosha Yamada (Black clouds instantly shroud)
Takaoka (Winter wind)
Hekisamei Matsuda (Doll without a head)
Sei Sagara (Suddenly awakened)
Hyakuissei Okamoto (Jeep patrolling slowly)
Shizuku Uyemaruko (Grieving within)
Okamoto (In the sage brush)
Matsushita (Oh shells----)
JOHN BERRYMAN (1914-1972)
from The Dream Songs
1 Huffy Henry
4 Filling her compact & delicious body
5 Henry sats
14 Life, friends
22 Of 1826
29 There sat down, once
40 I'm scared a lonely
45 He stared at ruin
46 I am, outside
55 Peter's not friendly.
76 Henry's Confession
382 At Henry's bier
384 The marker slants
WILLIAM STAFFORD (1914-1993)
Traveling Through the Dark
At the Bomb Testing Site
The Indian Cave Jerry Ramsey Found
DUDLEY RANDALL (b. 1914)
Ballad of Birmingham
JOY DAVIDMAN (1915-1960)
This Woman
For the Nazis
MARGARET WALKER (1915-1998)
For My People
RUTH STONE (b. 1915)
In an Iridescent Time
I Have Three Daughters
Pokeberries
American Milk
From the Arboretum
Drought in the Lower Fields
Some Things You'll Need to Know/ Before You Join the Union
THOMAS MCGRATH (1916-1990)
Deep South
Crash Report
First Book of Genesis According to the Diplomats
Ars Poetica: Or: Who Lives in the Ivory Tower?
A Little Song About Charity
Against the False Magicians
After the Beat Generation
Ode for the American Dead in Asia
ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977)
Inauguration Day: January 1953
A Mad Negro Soldier Confined at Munich
Commander Lowell
"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
Man and Wife
Memories of West Street and Lepke
Skunk Hour
For the Union Dead
The Mouth of the Hudson
July in Washington
The March I
The March II
Central Park
GWENDOLYN BROOKS (b. 1917)
a song in the front yard
of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery
Gay Chaps at the Bar
We Real Cool
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
The Blackstone Rangers
To the Diaspora
To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals
The Boy Died in My Alley
Young Afrikans
WILLIAM BRONK (1918-1999)
At Tikal
The Mayan Glyphs Unread
I Thought It Was Harry
Where It Ends
ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988)
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
My Mother Would Be a Falconress
The Torso (Passages 18)
Up Rising (Passages 25)
RICHARD WILBUR (b. 1921)
A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Advice to a Prophet
MONA VAN DUYN (b. 1921)
Toward a Definition of Marriage
JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997)
The Sheep Child
Falling
DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-1997)
The Ache of Marriage
Olga Poems
What Were They Like?
Life at War
ANTHONY HECHT (b. 1923)
A Hill
"More Light! More Light!"
BOB KAUFMAN (1925-1986)
The Biggest Fisherman
Crootey Songo
No More Jazz at Alcatraz
MAXINE KUMIN (b. 1925)
Voices from Kansas
Saga
PAUL BLACKBURN (1926-1971)
At the Well
FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966)
Poem (The eager note on my door)
A Step Away From Them
The Day Lady Died
Why I Am Not a Painter
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing the Delaware At The Museum of Modern Art
Thinking of James Dean
JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995)
An Urban Convalescence
The Broken Home
Willowware Cup
Lost in Translation
ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997)
Love Poem on Theme By Whitman
Howl
Wichita Vortex Sutra
Father Death-Blues
ROBERT CREELEY (b. 1926)
After Lorca
I Know a Man
The Flower
For Love
America
Age
ROBERT BLY (b. 1926)
Looking At New-Fallen Snow From a Train
Counting Small-Boned Bodies
The Dead Seal Near McClure's Beach
A.R. AMMONS (b. 1926)
Corsons Inlet
Gravelly Run
Coon Song
JAMES WRIGHT (1927-1980)
Saint Judas
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
A Blessing
A Centenary Ode: Inscribed to Little Crow, Leader of the Sioux Rebellion in Minnesota, 1862
JOHN ASHBERY (b. 1927)
"They Dream Only of America"
Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
Mixed Feelings
Hop o' My Thumb
Street Musicians
Syringa
Daffy Duck in Hollywood
Paradoxes and Oxymorons
GALWAY KINNELL (b. 1927)
The Porcupine
The Bear
W.S. MERWIN (b. 1927)
The Drunk in the Furnace
It Is March
Caesar
The Room
December Among the Vanished
For the Anniversary of My Death
When The War Is Over
The Asians Dying
For A Coming Extinction
Looking For Mushrooms At Sunrise
The Gardens of Zuni
Beginning
The Horse
Sun And Rain
Berryman
ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974)
Her Kind
The Truth The Dead Know
And One for My Dame
The Room of My Life
PHILIP LEVINE (b. 1928)
The Horse
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
Belle Isle, 1949
They Feed They Lion
Francisco, I'll Bring You Red Carnations
Fear and Fame
On the Meeting of García Lorca and Hart Crane
ADRIENNE RICH (b. 1929)
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Shooting Script
Trying to Talk With a Man
Diving into the Wreck
Twenty-One Love Poems
Power
from An Atlas of the Difficult World
XIII. (Dedications ) I know you are reading this poem
GARY SYNDER (b. 1930)
Riprap
Beneath My Hand and Eye the Distant Hills. Your Body
I Went Into the Maverick Bar
Straight-Creek----Great Burn
Axe Handles
GREGORY CORSO (b. 1930)
Marriage
Bomb
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1931-1991)
Haiku
Hard Rock Returns to Prison From the Hospital For the Criminal Insane
The Idea of Ancestry
A Poem For Myself
For Malcolm, A Year After
Television Speaks
For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide
SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)
Black Rook in Rainy Weather
The Colossus
Tulips