Poems to be taught/used with Young Adults
(Fall 2013 titles are in bold)
Classics of American and British Poetry
Arnold, Matthew
“The Buried Life”
Arnold, Matthew
“Dover Beach”
Bentley, Elizabeth
“On Education”
Blake, William
“The Clod and the Pebble”
Blake, William
“The Human Aspect”
Blake, William
“Infant Joy”
Blake, William
“London”
Blake, William
“A Poison Tree”
Blake, William
“The Lamb”
Blake, William
“The Tyger”
Bradstreet, Anne
“The Author to Her Book”
Bradstreet, Anne
“Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
“Aurora Leigh”
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
“How Do I Love Thee” (Sonnet 43)
Browning, Robert
“My Last Duchess”
Browning, Robert
“One Way of Love”
Byron, Lord George Gordon
“Between Two Worlds Life Hovers like a Star” in Don Juan
Byron, Lord George Gordon “She Walks in Beauty”
Carroll, Lewis
“The Jabberwocky” (2 other student suggested this poem)
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Constable, Henry
“My Lady’s Presence Makes the Roses Red”
Crane, Stephen
“A Man Said to the Universe”
Crane, Stephen
“Fast Rode the Knight”
Crane, Stephen
“In the Desert”
Crane, Stephen
“War is Kind”
Dennys, Richard
“Untitled”
Dickinson, Emily
“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” (2 other students suggested
this poem)
Dickinson, Emily
“Glowing is Her Bonnet” (#72)
Dickinson, Emily
“I Heard a Fly Buzz” (#465)
Dickinson, Emily
“I’m Nobody! Who Are You?”
Dickinson, Emily
“I Years Had Been from Home” #79
Dickinson, Emily
“Love is Anterior to Life”
Dickinson, Emily
“Much Madness is Divinest Sense”
Dickinson, Emily
“’Nature’ is What We See” (#668)
Dickinson, Emily
“A Route of Evanescence” (#1463)
Dickinson, Emily
“Tell the Truth, but Tell It Slant” (#1263”)
Dickinson, Emily
“The Soul Selects Her Own Society”
Dickinson, Emily
“There is another sky”
Dickinson, Emily
“This World is Not Conclusion”
Donne, John
“The Flea”
Donne, John
“The Good Morrow”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
“Concord Hymn”
Freneau, Philip
“The Wild Honeysuckle”
Hafiz (translator Daniel Ladinsky) “The Sun Never Says”
Halliwell-Phillipps, James
“Solomon Grundy”
Hardy, Thomas
“The Man He Killed”
Hardy, Thomas
“The Oxen”
1
Henley, William Ernest
“Invictus”
Housman, A. E.
“The Loveliest of Trees”
Housman, A.E.
A Shropshire Lad (“When I Was One-and-Twenty”)
Joyce, Robert Dwyer
“The Wind that Shakes the Barley”
Keats, John
“A Thing of Beauty” (“Endymion”)
Keats, John
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
Keats, John
“Ode to a Grecian Urn”
Keats, John
“When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be”
Kipling, Rudyard
“Hyaenas”
Kipling, Rudyard
“If”
Kipling, Rudyard
“The White Man’s Burden”
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
“A Psalm of Life”
Marlowe, Christopher
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Marvell, Andrew
“To His Coy Mistress”
Milton, John
“When I Consider How My Light is Spent”
Poe, Edgar Allan
“A Dream Within a Dream”
Poe, Edgar Allan
“Alone”
Poe, Edgar Allan
“Annabelle Lee”
Poe, Edgar Allan
“Dreamland”
Poe, Edgar Allan
“The Haunted Palace”
Poe, Edgar Allan
“The Raven”
Queen Elizabeth I (Tudor)
“On Monsieur” Departure”
Raleigh, Sir Walter
“Life”
Raleigh, Sir Walter
“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
Rossetti, Christina
“Dreamland”
Rossetti, Christina
“The Goblin Market”
Rumi, Mewlana Jalaluddin “The Guest House”
Rumi, Mewlana Jalaluddin
“Moving Water”
Shakespeare, William
“All the World’s a Stage”
Shakespeare, William
“Sonnet #15”
Shakespeare, William
“Sonnet 18/XVIII (“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”
Shakespeare, William
“Sonnet 29” (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)
Shakespeare, William
“Sonnet 94/XCIV” (“They that have power to hurt and will do none”)
Shakespeare, William
“Sonnet 116” (“Let me not to the marriage of two minds”)
Shakespeare, William
“Sonnet 130” (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”) 1 other
student suggested this poem
Shakespeare, William
excerpt from Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 1, lines 40-54
Shelly, Percy Bysshe
“Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”
Shelly, Percy Bysshe
“Music When Soft Voices Die”
Swift, Jonathan
“The Lady’s Dressing Room”
Tennyson, Alfred Lord “
“Break, Break, Break”
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
“Charge of the Light Brigade”
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
“Locksley Hall”
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
“The Lotus Eaters”
Whitman, Walt
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
Whitman, Walt
“I Hear America Singing”
Whitman, Walt
“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing”
Whitman, Walt
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
Wilde, Oscar
“The Ballad of Reading Gaol”
Wilde, Oscar
“The Grave of Keats”
Wordsworth, William
"Why Art Thou Silent! Is Thy Love a Plant?"
2
Yeats, William Butler
Yeats, William Butler
Yeats, William Butler
Yeats, William Butler
Yeats, William Butler
“In This Strange Labyrinth” (the first significant sonnet sequence
written by a woman)
“Among School Children”
“The Stolen Child”
“The Wild Swans at Coole”
“The Young Man’s Song”
“When You Are Old”
Modern Poetry
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
Apollinaire, Guillaume
Auden, W. H.
Auden, W. H.
Bishop, Elizabeth
Bishop, Elizabeth
Brooks, Gwendolyn
Brooks, Gwendolyn
Brooks, Gwendolyn
Cullen, Countee
Cullen, Countee
Cullen, Countee
cummings, e.e.
cummings, e.e.
cummings, e.e.
cummings, e.e.
cummings, e.e.
cummings, e.e.
Du Bois, W.E.B.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence
Dunbar-Nelson, Alice
Eliot, T.S.
Fauset, Jessie Redmon
Frost, Robert
Frost, Robert
Frost, Robert
Frost, Robert
Frost, Robert
Frost, Robert
Frost, Robert
Frost, Robert
Frye, Mary E.
Ginsberg, Allen
“Alone”
“Human Family”
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
“The Lesson”
“Men”
“On the Pulse of Morning”
“Phenomenal Woman”
“A Pledge to Rescue Our Youth”
“Still I Rise”
“Touched by an Angel”
“Mon Coeur”
“Musée des Beaux Arts”
“The Unknown Citizen”
“One Art”
“Sestina”
“A Song in the Front Yard”
“Truth”
“We Real Cool”
“I Have a Rendezvous with Life”
“If You Should Go”
“Incident”
“anyone lived in a pretty how town”
“dive for dreams”
“i carry your heart with me”
“in just”
“it may not always be so; and I say”
“may my heart always be open to little”
“The Song of Smoke”
“Dreams”
“I Sit and Sew”
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
“Oblivion”
“Acquainted with the Night”
“Apple Picking”
“Birches”
“Design”
“Fire and Ice”
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” (1 other student suggested this poem)
“The Road Not Taken” (7 other students suggested this poem)
“Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening”
“Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”
“Howl”
Wroth, Mary Sidney
3
Ginsberg, Allen
Ginsberg, Allen
Guest, Edgar
Guest, Edgar
Gibran, Kahlil
Hayden, Robert
Henley, Ernest Henley
Hemingway, Ernest
Hemingway, Ernest
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Hughes, Langston
Jarrell, Randall
Jeffers, Robinson
Jeffers, Robinson
Jeffers, Robinson
Kilmer, Joyce
Lawrence, D.H.
Lorca, Federico Garcia
Markham, Edwin
Merton, Thomas
Moore, Marianne
Neruda, Pablo
Neruda, Pablo
Neruda, Pablo
Neruda, Pablo
Neruda, Pablo
Owen, Wilfred
Parker, Dorothy
Parker, Dorothy
Plath, Sylvia
Plath, Sylvia
Plath, Sylvia
Pound, Ezra
Pound, Ezra
Pound, Ezra
Prevert, Jacques
Rawson-Hunt, M. Jolynn
Rilke, Rainer Maria
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
Roethke, Theodore
Roethke, Theodore
Roethke, Theodore
“A Supermarket in California”
“Is About”
“It Couldn’t Be Done”
“No Place To Go”
“The Beauty of Death”
“Those Winter Sundays”
“Invictus”
“Advice to a Son”
“[Blank Verse]”
“April Rain Song”
“Daybreak in Alabama”
“Dreams”
“A Dream Deferred”
“Harlem”
“I, Too, Am America”
“I, Too, Sing America”
“Let America Be America Again”
“Life is Fine”
“Mother to Son”
“Theme for English B”
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
“Credo”
“Divinely Superfluous Beauty”
“Vulture”
“The House with Nobody In It”
“Snake”
“The Little Mute Boy”
“The Tragedy”
“The Need to Win”
“Poetry”
“I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You”
“A Lemon”
“Explico Algunas Cosas” (“I Explain Some Things”)
“Poetry”
“Sonnet XVII” “If I do not love you”
“Dulce et Decorum Est”
“A Dream Lies Dead”
“Resume”
“Daddy”
“Mad Girl’s Love Song”
“Mirror”
“A Girl”
“In a Station of the Metro”
“Portrait d’une Femme”
“Late Rising”
“True Joy”
“The Blindman’s Song”
“Richard Cory”
“The Bat”
“My Papa’s Waltz”
“The Waking”
4
Sandburg, Carl
Sandburg, Carl
Sandburg, Carl
Sandburg, Carl
Sexton, Anne
St. Vincent Millay, Edna
St. Vincent Millay, Edna
Sassoon, Siegfried
Stein, Gertrude
Stevens, Wallace
Stevens, Wallace
Stevenson, Mary
Teasdale, Sara
Thayer, Ernest
Thomas, Dylan
this poem)
Tolkien, J.R.R.
Warren, Robert Penn
Williams, William Carlos
Williams, William Carlos
Williams, William Carlos
“Fog”
“Grass”
“Happiness”
“Iron”
“Courage”
“First Fig”
“What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, And Why”
“They”
Tender Buttons collection: “A New Cup and Saucer,” “A Red
Hat,” “An Umbrella”
The Snow Man”
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
“Footprints in the Sand”
“Barter”
“Casey at the Bat”
“Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night” (1 other student suggested
“All That is Gold Does Not Glitter”
“True Love”
“At the Ball Game”
“The Red Wheelbarrow”
“This is Just to Say”
Contemporary Poetry
Addonizio, Kim
“Dead Girls”
Alexie, Sherman
“The Facebook Sonnet”
Alexie, Sherman
“Ghost, Go, Go,”
Anand, Siddharth
“Choose Your Obsessions”
Andresen, Sophia de Mello Breyner “Portrait of an Unknown Princess”
Anderson, Susan Noyes
“Fly with the Eagle”
Anderson, Susan Noyes
“Musings”
Anderson, Susan Noyes
“Why Me?”
Anzaldúa, Gloria
“To live in the Borderlands means you”
Ashbery, John
“Some Trees”
Atwood, Margaret
“Siren Song”
Baca, Jimmy Santiago
“Fall”
Bateman, Teresa
“A Plump and Perky Turkey”
Bennett, Jen
“A Body of Water”
Bennett, Joshua
“Balaenoptera”
Bland, Henry Meade
“ The Poet’s Wish”
Boland, Eavan
“The Pomegranate”
Bolocon, Rica Jane
“Pretending”
Bukowski, Charles
“Bluebird”
Carver, Raymond
“Your Dog Dies”
Cervantes, Lorna Dee
“Freeway 280”
Chengges, Larry S.
“Listen to Your Heart”
Choyce, Lesley
“I’m Alive, I Believe in Everything”
Cisneros, Sandra
“My Wicked Ways”
Clifton, Lucille
“Eve Thinking”
Clifton, Lucille
“i am accused of tending to the past”
Clifton, Lucille
“Tuesday 9/11/01”
5
Collins, Billy
Collins, Billy
Collins, Billy
Collins, Billy
Collins, Billy
Collins, Martha
Connolly, Geraldine
Cope, Wendy
Cram, Stacie M.
Creeley, Robert
Duvenage, Christelle
Dant, Julie
Delgado, Lalo
Deutsch, Babette
Dove, Rita
Dove, Rita
Drake, Barbara
Edwards, Ruby Latimer
Ensler, Eve
Espaillat, Rhina
Faulds, Danna
Ferril, Thomas Hornsby
Ferris, Beth
Foley, Timothy James
Foley, Timothy James
Ford, Matt
Francisco, Rudy
Gaiman, Neil
Giovanni, Nikki
Gluck, Louise
Gonzales, Rodolfo Corky
Hammad, Suheir
Harper, Frederick Douglas
Harjo, Joy
Harris, Alysia
Harris, Alysia
Heaney, Seamus
Heaney, Seamus
Hecht, Anthony Evan
Hejinian, Lyn
Henry, Major General William
Herbert, Frank
Hongo, Garrett Kaoru
Houghton-Smith, Tabitha
Hughes, Ted
Hughes, Ted
Hughes, Ted
Hunt, Jillian K.
Hutchinson, Joseph
Jewett, Sophie
Jordan, June
“Introduction to Poetry”
“Lanyard”
“On Turning Ten”
“Schoolsville”
“Workshop”
“The Story We Know”
“The Summer I Was Sixteen”
“Lonely Hearts”
“You’ve Helped Me”
“The Rain”
“Nothing Girl”
“Across the Water”
“Stupid America”
“Then and Now”
“Flash Cards”
“Persephone Falling”
“Mother Said”
“The Forgotten Mother”
“Say It” from The Vagina Monologues
“Bra”
“Allow”
“Swallows”
from “Fishing with Floyd”
“A Bit of Inward Reflection”
“A Hatred for Love”
“To the Machines Should They Decide to Take Over”
“Scars”
“Locks”
“Knoxville, Tennessee”
“Gretel in Darkness”
“I am Joaquin”
“First Writing Since”
“Watch Your Mouth”
“The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window”
“Death Poem”
“Joy”
“An Advancement of Learning”
“Digging”
“The End of the Weekend”
“Come October, It’s the Lake, not the Border”
“My Rifle”
“Bene Geserit Litany Against Fear”
“The Legend”
“Standing Tall”
“Lovesong”
“My Brother Bert”
“Roger the Dog”
“Believe in Yourself”
“Artichoke”
“Across the Border”
“Poem about My Rights”
6
Kahf, Mohja
Kenyon, Jane
Keys, Alicia
Kingsley, Emily
Koch, Kenneth
Koriyama, Naoshi
Larkin, Philip
Lee, Li-Young
Levine, Philip
Lewis, Francesca
Lim, Shirley Geok-lin
Lorde, Audre
Luis, Adriel
Lumley, Stephanie
Mali, Taylor
Meinke, Peter
Moffitt, John
Mora, Pat
Mora, Pat
Mora, Pat
Morales, Aurora Levins
Morgan, Angela
Neruda, Pablo
Nesbitt, Kenn
Niedecker, Lorine
Okigbo, Christopher
Olds, Sharon
Oliver, Mary
Oliver, Mary
Ortego, Liza
Oso, Gab
Pastan, Linda
Peerzada, Farrahnaz
Peters, Shellena
Phillips, Robert
Piercy, Marge
Piercy, Marge
Pietri, Pedro
Randklev, Katrina
Red Matrix
Reka, Marinela
Reka, Marinela
Reynolds, Samantha
Roach, Chante
Ryan, Kay
Shibah-Nye, Naomi
Simic, Charles
Simic, Charles
Simic, Charles
Simic, Charles
“My Grandmother Washes her Feet in the Sink of the
Bathroom at Sears”
‘Let Evening Come”
“Still Water” from Tears for Water: Songbook of Poems and Lyrics
“Like Me”
“To My Twenties”
“Unfolding Bud”
“This Be the Verse”
“Early in the Morning”
“Call it Music”
“Always”
“Riding to California”
“Hanging Fire”
“Slip of the Tongue”
“Everytime I Look at the Stars”
“The Impotence of Proofreading”
“Advice to My Son”
“To Look At Any Thing”
“Immigrants”
“Maybe”
“Two Worlds”
“Child of the Americas”
“In Spite of War”
“Para Lavar a un Niño” “To Wash a Child”
“Lunchbox Love Note”
“Far Reach”
“Come Thunder”
“True Love”
“The Sun”
“Wild Geese”
“Somewhere in the Middle”
“The Beautiful Game”
“To a Daughter Leaving Home”
“A Dreamers Perish”
“Unseen Misery”
“Running on Empty”
“Barbie Doll”
“For the Young Who Want To”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“Dear Mom”
“Geometric Fun”
“Explore”
“Magical Shoes”
“Ms. Crystal Meth”
“The Normal Teenager”
“The Turtle”
“The Time”
“Empire of Dreams”
“Fear”
“Fork”
“Mirrors at 4 a.m.”
7
Slavitt, David
“Titanic”
Smith, Stevie
“Not Waving, but Drowning”
Soto, Gary
“Ode to Family Photographs”
Soto, Gary
“Oranges”
Spiegelman, Willard
“Tis Yet to Come”
Stafford, William
“Being a Person”
Stepanek, Matthew Joseph Thaddeus “For Our World”
Strand, Mark
“Eating Poetry”
Tolkien, J. R. R.
“The Return of the King”
Turnage, Rachel
“A Crowded Mind”
Udiah
“Mom”
Updike, John
“Baseball”
Voigt, Ellen Bryant
“Winter Field”
Vonnegut, Kurt
“Requiem”
Wagner, Shelly
“The Boxes”
Walker, Margaret
“Lineage”
Watsky, George
“S for Lisp”
Williams, Miller
“The Shrinking Sestina”
Williams, Saul
“Anti-War Freestyle”
Winters, Yvor
“At the San Francisco Airport”
Wortman, Edith Powell
“Empty Hands”
Yolen, Jane
“Fat is Not a Fairy Tale”
Yolen, Jane
“Knives”
Zamora, Daisy
“Loyal Housewife”
Poetry in Translation
Chitre, Dilip
“Die Gedanken sind Frei”
Kamble, Arun
Sant, Indira
“My Father Travels” (Indian)
(“Thoughts Are Free”)16th Century German poem/song
“Which Language Should I Speak?” (Indian)
“Household Fires”
(Indian)
Children’s Poets
Bagert, Brod
Dahl, Roald
Dahl, Roald
Milne, AA
Moore, Lilian
Prelutsky, Jack
Rylant, Cynthia
Rylant, Cynthia
Seuss, Dr.
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
Silverstein, Shel
“Caterpillars”
“Red Riding Hood”
“Television”
“Spring Morning”
“Mine”
“Homework! Oh Homework!”
The Bird House
“The Hitchhiker”
Oh, The Places You’ll Go (This is a book title)
“A Boy Named Sue”
“An Invitation”
“Crazy Dream”
“The Garden”
“Homework Machine”
“Invisible Boy”
“Listen to the Mustn’ts”
“Messy Room”
“One Inch Tall”
“Sick”
“Whatif
8
Silverstein, Shel
“When I’m Gone”
Silverstein, Shel
“Where the Sidewalk Ends”
Song Lyrics
Amos, Tori
“Winter”
Aguilera, Christina
“Reflection”
Atmosphere
“Bird Sings Why the Caged I Know”
Badu, Erykah
“Apple Tree” (R&B song)
Bareilles, Sara
“Gravity”
The Beatles
“Let It Be” (
Notorious B.I.G.
“Juicy”
Black Eyed Peas
“Where is the Love?”
Black Star
“What’s Beef?”
Bright Eyes
“Amy in the White Coat”
Bright Eyes
“No Lies, Just Love”
Bright Eyes
“Sunrise, Sunset”
Case, Neko
“Furnace Room Lullaby”
Cowboy Junkies
“Blue Moon Revisited” (song for Elvis)
Dylan, Bob
“Forever Young”
Dylan, Bob
“Masters of War”
Dylan, Bob
“The Times They Are a Changing”
Dylan, Bob
“Ugliest Girl in the World”
Dyson, Michael Eric
“Intellectual MCs
Eppard, Joey
“Amaze Disgrace”
Fiasco, Lupe
“All Black Everything”
Five for Fighting
“100 Years”
Flight of the Conchords
“The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room”
Florence and The Machine
“Shake It Out”
Flyleaf
“All Around Me”
The Fray
“Over My Head”
Gimbel, Norman
“Killing Me Softly” (lyrics)
Gruvis Malt
“The Fists of Protocol
Harrison, George
“Something”
Hill, Lauren
“Doo Wop”
Kearney, Mat
“Won’t Back Down”
Krauss, Allison
“Sleep On”
Kweli, Talib
“Love Language” (hip hop song)
Laurie, Jamie
“Handlebars”
Lennon, John
“Imagine”
Lil Wayne (rapper)
“How to Love”
Matchbox 20
“Unwell”
Mathes, Rob & Allen Shamblin “Why” performed by Rascal Flatts
Metallica: James Hetfield
“The Day That Never Comes”
M-1
“Hip Hop”
Nash, Kate
“Birds”
Parton, Dolly
“My Coat of Different Colors”
Queen: Freddie Mercury & Brian May “Is This the World We Created?”
From Rent Jonathan Larson
“Seasons of Love”
Rush: Neil Peart
“The Pass”
Rush: Neil Peart
“Subdivisions”
RyanDan
“Tears of an Angel”
Shakur, Tupac
“And Tomorrow”
9
Shakur, Tupac
Shakur, Tupac
Shakur, Tupac
SheDaisy Lyrics
Simon, Paul
Simon, Paul
Simon, Paul
Simon, Paul
Sinatra, Frank
Spears, Britney
Spektor, Regina
Swift, Taylor
Swift, Taylor
Swift, Taylor
Switchfoot
Thrice
TLC
Underwood, Carrie
Underwood, Carrie
Voegele, Kate
“Dear Mama”
“In the Depths of Solitude”
“The Rose that Grew from Concrete”
“Lucky 4 You (Tonight I’m Just Me)
“American Tune”
“The Boxer”
“The Dangling Conversation”
“Richard Cory”
“My Funny Valentine”
“Not a Girl Not Yet a Woman”
“Samson”
“Fifteen”
“Never Grow Up”
“The Story of Us”
“Souvenirs”
“A Song for Milly Michaelson”
“Unpretty”
“Lessons Learned”
“The Night Before (Life Goes On)”
“It’s Only Life”
Poems for Deaf Students
Bellefleur, Philip
Brooks-Sego, Sandra
Esau, Janet
“Ode to a Deaf Child”
“Silent Hands”
“Soundless World”
Poems Written by Teens
Allison G.
“Liar” (found in Teen Ink Magazine)
Becca D.
“Wallflower Season” (found in Teen Ink Magazine)
Burton, Kimberly
“Leaving Dad”
Cherches, Peter
“Lift Your Right Arm”
Cooper, Mary Mattila
“I Rested in Your Arms”
Faulkner, Alesha
“Have Mercy”
Gabrielle N J.H
“A Letter to You”
Mirikitani, Janice
"Recipe"
Mize, Vicky P
“A Friend”
Scottenfeld, Lisa
“Into the Mold”
(These three poems are from the book, Teen Ink: Our Voices, Our Visions compiled by Stephanie H.
Meyer and John Meyer)
Tichborne, Chidiock
“Elegy, Written with His Own Hand in the Tower Before His Execution”
(an 18-year-old boy who wrote his own elegy before being hanged, drawn & quartered at the Tower of
London)
Inspirational Poems
Hernandez, Tyler
“Live in the Moment”
Poetry Anthologies
Collins, Billy
180 More
Franco, Betsy, editor
You Hear Me? “My Pockets Ain’t That Phat”
Mora, Pat
My Own True Name
“Sugar”
Original
Acosta, Ana
Vyas, Ria
“Spartan Territory”
“World of Today by Me”
10
Wheatley, Julia
Anonymous
“My Life Would Be Easy”
“Crush”
“Don’t Quit”
“Don’t Worry if Your Job is Small”
Websites for Poetry for Teens
http://www.authorsden.com
http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/86
Poems to model writing activities
“That Time”
by Simon Ortiz (Pueblo Native American Poet)
Agnes’ aunt killed the goat.
I held it down, sitting on its belly.
I could feel its whole vibrating life,
the red blood, thinly spurting
in a low arc, and then just flowing.
Brian stood by, his childhands clutched
Agnes’ aunt is a gaunt, thin, Navajo woman,
never married, takes care of Chee,
her dead sister’s husband.
We skinned the goat, cleaned the guts,
and cut up the meat,
and saved the best parts for Chee.
We put the goat’s head in the coals to cook
but the dogs stole it,
and it was half eaten before we found out.
We took the goat meat to a Squaw Dance.
Chee carried it under his arm in a sack,
and he wore his flatbrim hat and a new shirt.
That was that time.
“God’s Grandeur” Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
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