american poetry

It Was Raining in Delft

Peter Gizzi

The Author to her Book

Anne Bradstreet

By Night when Others Soundly Slept

What to my Saviour shall I give

Who freely hath done this for me?

I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live

And Loue him to Eternity.

Anne Bradstreet

A dialogue between old England and new

Alas, dear Mother, fairest Queen and best,

With honour, wealth, and peace happy and blest,

What ails thee hang thy head, and cross thine arms,

And sit i’ the dust to sigh these sad alarms?

Anne Bradstreet

On Being Brought from Africa to America

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Phyllis Wheatley

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,

Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,

Walt Whitman

A song for occupations

House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing,  
 shingle-dressing,Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by  
 flaggers,

Walt Whitman

Song of myself

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

walt whitman

out of the cradle endlessly rocking

The aria sinking,

All else continuing, the stars shining,

The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,

With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,

On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling,

The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching,

The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying,

Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,

And again death, death, death, death,

walt whitman

To S. M., A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works

And may the charms of each seraphic theme

Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame!

High to the blissful wonders of the skies

Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes.

phyllis wheatley

not heaving from my ribb’d breast only

Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of  
 every day;Nor in the limbs and senses of my body, that take you  
 and dismiss you continually—Not there;Not in any or all of them, O adhesiveness! O pulse of  
 my life!Need I that you exist and show yourself, any more than  
 in these songs.

walt whitman

scented herbage of my breast

O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit  
 you to tell, in your own way, of the heart that  
 is under you;O burning and throbbing—surely all will one day be  
 accomplish'd;

walt whitman

whoever you are holding me now in hand

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,

Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,

Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,

Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious,

walt whitman

democratic vistas

Viewed today from appointed views efficiently overarching, the problem of humanity all over the civilized world is social and religious, and this to be finally met and treated by literature. The priest departs the divine that er0tic comes, never was anything more wanted than today and here in the States, the poet of the modern is wanted or the great that er0tic of the modern.

walt whitman

specimen days

Living in Brooklyn or New York City from this time forward, my life then and still more of the following years was curiously identified with Fulton Ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity and picturesqueness.

walt whitman

amazing grace

john newton

280

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum – 
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb – 

emily dickinson

the Easter flower

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly

         My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,

Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily

         Soft-scented in the air for yards around;

Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!

claude mckay

to one coming north

Like me you'll long for home, where birds' glad song

  Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry,

And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong,

  Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky.

claude mckay

alfonso, dressing to wait at table

Gay kisses to imaginary lasses.

Alfonso’s voice of mellow music thrills

         Our swaying forms and steals our hearts with joy;

And when he soars, his fine falsetto trills

         Are rarest notes of gold without alloy.

But, O Alfonso! wherefore do you sing

         Dream-songs of carefree men and ancient places?

Soon we shall be beset by clamouring

         Of hungry and importunate palefaces.

claude mckay

the tropics in new york

Set in the window, bringing memories

      Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,

And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies

      In benediction over nun-like hills.

claude mckay

preface: the book of American negro poetry

james Weldon johnson

the text of cane

jean toomer

the first american

a new type of man was a’rising in this country

jean toomer

song of the son

for though the sun is setting on a song-lit race of slaves

it has not set

jean toomer

the snow man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

wallace stevens

sunday morning

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

wallace stevens

Sea surface full of clouds

Wallace Stevens

The idea of order at key west

Wallace Stevens

The well dressed man with a beard

Wallace Stevens

The auroras of autumn

Wallace Stevens

Kral Majales

Allen Ginsberg

Preface to a twenty volume suicide note

Amiri baraka

America

Allen Ginsberg

Ode to joy

Frank O’Hara

A step away from them

Frank O’Hara

Personism: a manifesto

Frank O’Hara

The instruction manual

John Ashbery

Into the dusk-charged air

John Ashbery

Clepsydra

John Ashbery

38

The one with hella indentations

layli long solider

You are in the dark, in the car…

Claudia Rankine