POL 2013-14
Impactful Poems
HARD TIMES/LOSS
Abandoned Farmhouse – Ted Kooser
Advice to a Prophet – Richard Wilbur
The Blues Don’t Change – Al Young
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg – Richard Hugo
The Delta – Bruce Bond
The Empty Dance Shoes – Cornelius Eady
Greed – Philip Schultz
Movement Song – Audre Lorde
The Mower – Philip Larkin
Peace Lilies – Cathy Smith Bowers
Self-Inquiry Before the Job Interview – Gary Soto
A Thank-You Note – Michael Ryan
Their Bodies – David Wagoner
They Feed They Lion – Philip Levine
*To Althea, from Prison – Richard Lovelace
Torque – David Rivard
Under the Vulture Tree – David Bottoms
Virtuosi – Lisel Mueller
PATRIOTISM/WAR
*The American Soldier – Philip Freneau
Beautiful Wreckage – W.D. Ehrhart
Camouflaging the Chimera – Yusef Komunyakaa
Hero –Paul Eengle
Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing – James Weldon Johnson
Ode for the American Dead in Asia – Thomas McGrath
The Old Liberators – Robert Hedin
Slant – Suji Kwock Kim
They are Hostile Nations – Margaret Atwood
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night – Walt Whitman
War Ballad – Stanley Moss
HUMANITY/FAMILY
All This and More – Mary Karr
Barber – Larry Bradley
Bent to the Earth – Blas Manuel de Luna
Cartoon Physics Pt. 1 – Nick Flynn
*Chorus Sacerdotum – Fulke Greville
Eddie Priest’s Barbershop and Notary – Kevin Young
The End of Science Fiction – Lisel Mueller
Famous – Naomi Shihab Nye
Father – Edgar Albert Guest
The Gift – Li Young Lee
The Heaven of Animals – James Dickey
A History Without Suffering – E.A. Markham
Memory as a Hearing Aid – Tony Hoagland
On the Existence of the Soul – Patiann Rogers
The Owl – Edward Thomas
Planetarium – Adrienne Rich
Poem About People – Robert Pinsky
Saguaro – Brenda Hillman
Sestina: Like – A.E. Stallings
Written by Himself – Gregory Pardlo
YOUTH/EXPERIENCE
The Campus on the Hill – W.D. Snodgrass
Double Dutch – Gregory Pardlo
Dressing My Daughters – Mark Jarman
Fermanagh Cave – Sherod Santos
*I Remember, I Remember – Thomas Hood
My Brother, the Artist, at Seven – Philip Levine
*The Natural Child – Helen Leigh
Old Men Playing Basketball – B.H. Fairchild
Ovation – Carol Muske-Dukes
Ox Cart Man – Donald Hall
Peach – Jennifer Tonge
The Pomegranate and the Big Crowd – Alberto Rios
*= pre-1900