Ineligible Poems
Only poems in the Poetry Out Loud print or online anthologies are eligible for competition.
Due to copyright issues and the need to periodically refresh the Poetry Out Loud anthology,
some poems have been retired. The following poems have been removed from the anthology
and are ineligible for the 2015-2016 season.
Adding It Up by Philip Booth
Agoraphobia by Linda Pastan
Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100 by Martín Espada
The Alphabet by Karl Shapiro
'Alone' by Edgar Allan Poe
Altruism by Molly Peacock
Ancapagari by Carolyn Forché
Ancestor by Jimmy Santiago Baca
And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas
The Applicant by Sylvia Plath
An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin
Aubade by Edith Sitwell
aunt jemima by Lucille Clifton
Authority by W.S. Merwin
Baseball by Gail Mazur
Baudelaire by Delmore Schwartz
Beat! Beat! Drums! by Walt Whitman
Beautiful Black Men by Nikki Giovanni
Beauty by Tony Hoagland
Becune Point by Derek Walcott
The Bells of San Blas by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Birches by Robert Frost
Birthday Poem by Al Young
The Blackstone Rangers by Gwendolyn Brooks
The Blues Don't Change by Al Young
Booker T. and W.E.B. by Dudley Randall
Buckroe after the Season by Virginia Adair
Buried at Springs by James Schuyler
Calling Him Back from Layoff by Bob Hicok
The Canonization by John Donne
Carmel Point by Robinson Jeffers
Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Taylor
Celebration for June 24 by Thomas McGrath
Come Up from the Fields, Father by Walt Whitman
Conversation by Ai
The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
Detroit, Tomorrow by Phillip Levine
Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland
Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears by Maurice Kilwein Guevara
A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe
Duende by Tracy K. Smith
Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats
Ego by Denise Duhamel
The Empty Dance Shoes by Cornelius Eady
The End of Science Fiction by Liesel Mueller
The Evening of the Mind by Donald Justice
Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
Father's Old Blue Cardigan by Anne Carson
Fermanagh Cave by Sherod Santos
Fever 103° by Sylvia Plath
Fierce Girl Playing Hopscotch by Alice Fulton
The Fire Fetched Down by George Bradley
The Flea by John Donne
For Fiddle-de-de by John Hollander
For My People by Margaret Walker
Forgetfulness by Billy Collins
Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden
Freeway 280 by Lorna Dee Cervantes
Glass by A.R. Ammons
The Glove and the Lions by Leigh Hunt
The Great Blue Heron by Carolyn Kizer
Happiness by Paisley Rekdal
Hate Poem by Julie Sheehan
Hearing your words, and not a word among them by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Heaven by Cathy Song
Her Kind by Anne Sexton
Himself by Thomas Lynch
A Hundred Bolts of Satin by Kay Ryan
I am the People, the Mob by Carl Sandburg
I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds
I Grant You Ample Leave by George Eliot
The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens
If— by Rudyard Kipling
Immigrant Picnic Gregory Djanikian
In My Craft or Sullen Art by Dylan Thomas
Incident by Countee Cullen
Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace by Joy Harjo
Interior at Petworth: From Turner by Rosanna Warren
Iowa City: Early April by Robert Hass
Isla by Virgil Suarez
Janet Waking by John Crowe Ransom
Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand
The Kiss by W.S. DiPiero
Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye by Gerald Stern
Late Echo by John Ashbery
The Lifeguard by James Dickey
Like Rousseau by Amiri Baraka
Lincoln, Man of the People by Edwin Markham
Lincoln by Delmore Schwartz
Lissadell by Wendy Cope
Litany by Billy Collins
Ma Rainey by Sterling A. Brown
Madmen by Billy Collins
The Man with the Hoe by Edwin Markham
The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown by Walt Whitman
The Meaning of the Shovel by Martín Espada
Meditations on the South Valley: Part XX by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Mechanism by A.R. Ammons
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
The Minefield by Diane Thiel
the mother by Gwendolyn Brooks
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
The Mower by Philip Larkin
Mr. Edwards and the Spider by Robert Lowell
Mrs. Krikorian by Sharon Olds
Musical Moment by Virgina Adair
The Natural Child by Helen Leigh
The Net by Babette Deutsch
The New World by Amiri Baraka
News by Thomas Traherne
Next Day by Randall Jarrell
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
The Old Swimmin’ Hole by James Whitcomb Riley
On Hurricane Jackson by Alan Dugan
On Pickiness by Rodney Jones
On What Planet by Kenneth Rexroth
The Orange by Wendy Cope
Ovation by Carol Muske-Dukes
The Painter by John Ashbery
Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
Playing Dead by Andrew Hudgins
Poem with One Fact by Donald Hall
The Poet at Seventeen by Larry Levis
The Pomegranate and the Big Crowd by Alberto Rios
Progressive Health by Carl Dennis
Report to Crazy Horse by William E. Stafford
Rhapsody by Frank O’Hara
Reverie in Open Air by Rita Dove
Rock and Hawk by Robinson Jeffers
The Room by Conrad Aiken
Rough Music by Deborah Digges
Salomé by Ai
Saturday's Child by Countee Cullen
Scary Movies by Kim Addonizio
The Secret of the Machines by Rudyard Kipling
Sentimental by Albert Goldbarth
Sestina: Like by A.E. Stallings
Sheet Music by Bridget Kelly
Shine, Perishing Republic by Robinson Jeffers
Shirt by Robert Pinsky
The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert Service
Siren Song by Margaret Atwood
The Slave Auction by France Ellen Watkins Harper
Somewhere to Paris by Richard Blanco
A Song for Soweto by June Jordan
Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds by William Shakespeare
Sonnet CXXX: My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun by William Shakespeare
The Spider by Richard Eberhart
Spring Letter by Carl Dennis
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
Strange Meeting by WIlfred Owen
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
Switchblade by Michael Ryan
Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Teaching English from an Old Composition Book by Gary Soto
Theme for English B by Langston Hughes
These Poems, She Said by Robert Bringhurst
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
Thoughts in a Zoo by Countee Cullen
To My Mother by Wendell Berry
To Spareness by Jane Hirshfield
The Treasure by Robinson Jeffers
The Truth about Small Towns by David Baker
Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward by Anne Sexton
Vigil Strange I I Kept on the Field one Night by Walt Whitman
Walking Down Park by Nikki Giovanni
War is Kind by Stephen Crane
What For by Garret Hongo
What Work Is by Philip Levine
When All My Five and Country Senses See by Dylan Thomas
Who Understands Me but Me by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O’Hara
Wild Peaches by Elinor Wylie
Windigo by Louise Erdrich
Writ on the Steps of Puerto Rican Harlem by Gregory Corso
The Writer by Richard Wilbur