Touch Me by Stanley Kunitz
‘Touch Me’ by Stanley Kunitz is a moving poem about aging, the loss of identity, and desire. It explores what keeps people, and creatures of all varieties, going as they enter the final “season” of their life.
‘Touch Me’ by Stanley Kunitz is a moving poem about aging, the loss of identity, and desire. It explores what keeps people, and creatures of all varieties, going as they enter the final “season” of their life.
The poem ‘Gathering the Bones Together’ describes the grief and trauma that Gregory Orr had to go through after accidentally killing his younger brother.
Although prepared and etched for publication, William Blake dropped ‘A Divine Image’ from Songs of Innocence and Experience in favor of ‘The Human Abstract.’ This poem comes from Songs of Experience and was intended to be the counterpart to ‘The Divine Image.’
‘Clouds at Evening’ by Robinson Jeffers is a beautiful poem that speaks to the earth and considers the value of dreams vs. reality.
‘i thank You God for most this amazing’ by E.E. Cummings is addressed to God and expresses a speaker’s thanks for being allowed to exist in the world.
‘A Wounded Deer—leaps highest’ by Emily Dickinson is a highly relatable poem that speaks about the difference between what someone or something looks like and the truth. She uses the examples of a fatally wounded deer and someone dying of tuberculosis.
‘Singapore’ by Mary Oliver is a highly relatable poem that speaks about life’s struggles and the beauty of mundane and graceful work. It is set in an airport bathroom in Singapore.
‘Old Man’ by Edward Thomas is a thoughtful piece about the loss of memory and a disconnect to one’s past.
‘Quid Pro Quo’ by Paul Mariani is a confessional poem that narrates a speaker’s anger and frustration at God subsequent to his wife’s second miscarriage.
‘Earth Voices’ by Bliss Carman is a clever poem that utilizes personification in order to convey the perspective of the sun, the wind, and the rain.
Quatrain XII from Edward FitzGerald’s famous translation, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, describes how “Wilderness” transforms into “Paradise” with love, poetry, and wine.
‘Credo’ by Robinson Jeffers is a powerful poem that asserts the poet’s beliefs about humanity’s connection to the natural world and explores how they contrast with the main tenants of Transcendentalism.
‘The Map,’ written in 1934, is the signature poem of Elizabeth Bishop that transcends the boundaries of the real and imaginatively inspects the topographical features within a map.
‘The Bear’ by Galway Kinnell is an unforgettable poem that details the physical struggle between a hunter and a bear he’s pursuing as well as the hunter’s spiritual transformation.
‘The Poet’ by Paul Laurence Dunbar depicts how the poet saw himself and the elements of his work that gained popularity during his lifetime.
‘Snowflake,’ a sonnet by William Baer, beautifully captures the journey of a flake of snow from being a vapor to landing on a girl’s “unkissed lips.”
‘Expostulation and Reply’ a ballad, written by William Wordsworth, tells the story of Matthew, dissuading the speaker (William) from idling away his precious time in “wise passiveness” or simply daydreaming.
‘Splendour in the Grass’ by William Wordsworth is an excerpt from the poet’s much longer, ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.’ The excerpt describes aging and where, after their youth has ended, one should seek strength and happiness.
‘Silent Poem’ by Robert Francis is a poem dedicated to the “silent things” one finds in nature and on a rural farm. It is composed of a series of compound words.
‘Gale in April’ by Robinson Jeffers was inspired by a storm that Jeffers observed in April while living on the Pacific coast.
‘Root Cellar’ by Theodore Roethke is a short eleven-line poem that describes a variety of disgusting and smelly plant life that exists within a speaker’s root cellar.
‘The Chambered Nautilus’ by Oliver Wendell Holmes is an interesting and beautiful poem. In it, the poet describes the nautilus and the life of struggle and improvement it engages in.
‘Snow-flakes’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a graceful and melodic poem that describes a snowfall as the sky sharing and shedding its grief.
‘The Harvest Moon’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow describes the way that the light of the harvest moon touches everything. It is an indication that fall is here and that winter is on its way.
‘The Sun Has Burst The Sky’ by Jenny Joseph uses hyperbolic images of nature to describe a speaker’s love for “you.” They suggest that incredible natural events occur because of the intensity of their love.
‘Fear’ by Gabriela Mistral is a passionate poem about a mother’s hopes for her daughter’s future. It includes three stanzas that contain the speaker’s worries about who her daughter may turn into.
‘The Vagabond’ by Robert Louis Stevenson is a poem about one speaker’s desire to live a life close to nature and far from the rules of contemporary society.
Robert Lowell’s poem ‘July in Washington’ shows both sides of a coin, the coin being America. Lowell inserts different expressions and comparisons to make his stand clear to readers.
‘Spring’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay is an interesting poem that takes an original view on spring. It criticizes the season and all it brings with it.
‘The Yellow Dot,’ written in remembrance of poet Jane Kenyon, is about the inevitability of death and God’s despotic ruling over humankind. It was published in Robert Bly’s best-known collection, Morning Poems (1997).