Poems
I’ll keep this page updated with all the poems that I’ve found or been sent. Whenever I can find a poem on the Internet, I’ll link to it so you can immediately check it out. I’ll also begin trying to assign difficulty levels to each poem. (To a seasoned reader of poetry, all these poems are pretty easy. However, I’m thinking about how easy they’ll be for students doing the exercise who may not have read much poetry yet. )
As with everything else about this idea, I’m open to feedback. (Greedy for it, in fact.) Let me know if you think any of these poems should be removed from the list or rated at a different difficulty level, and please, as always, send me your own suggestions!
| title | author | difficulty |
| In a Station of the Metro | Ezra Pound | easy |
| Ode 28 | Basil Bunting | easy |
| Purifying the Language of the Tribe | William Stafford | easy |
| This Is Just to Say | William Carlos William | easy |
| To a Poor Old Woman | William Carlos William | easy |
| Yes | William Stafford | easy |
| A Bitterness | Mary Oliver | medium |
| Ancient Stairway | Denise Levertov | medium |
| Anecdote of the Jar | Wallace Stevens | medium |
| Clam Man | Mary Oliver | medium |
| Considering the Snail | Thom Gunn | medium |
| If You Could Write One Great Poem, What | Robert Pinsky | medium |
| It’s all I have to bring today | Emily Dickinson | medium |
| On the Road to Woodlawn | Theodore Roethke | medium |
| Passing Remark | William Stafford | medium |
| Pathways | Rainer Maria Rilke | medium |
| Poem to be Read at 3 A.M. | Donald Justice | medium |
| Root Cellar | Theodore Roethke | medium |
| Sayings of the Blind | William Stafford | medium |
| Sleep | Wendell Berry | medium |
| Snake | Theodore Roethke | medium |
| Sonnet | Robert Pinsky | medium |
| The Light By The Barn | William Stafford | medium |
| The Pleasures of Merely Circulating | Wallace Stevens | medium |
| The Sacred | Stephen Dunn | medium |
| The World’s Greatest Tricycle Rider | C. K. Williams | medium |
| To Dr. Williams | Carolyn Miller | medium |
| We Dance The Blue Right Out | Susan Sibbet | medium |
| Aviary | Gillian Wegener | harder |
| Danse Russe | William Carlos William | harder |
| Encounter | Czeslaw Milosz | harder |
| Encounter | Mary Oliver | harder |
| Godiva County, Montana | William Stafford | harder |
| No Speech from the Scaffold | Thom Gunn | harder |
| Remembering Brother Bob | William Stafford | harder |
| Sheep in Fog | Sylvia Plath | harder |
| Shells | C. K. Williams | harder |
| So Little | Czeslaw Milosz | harder |
| Sonnet XXI | Rainer Maria Rilke | harder |
| Spring | Mary Oliver | harder |
| The Passport Officer | Basil Bunting | harder |
| Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird | Wallace Stevens | harder |
| Tuesday, 9 A.M. | Carolyn Miller | harder |
| What Was Left Behind | Sharon Olson | harder |
| A Felicitous Life | Czeslaw Milosz | advanced |
| Sixteen Flowers | Gillian Wegener | advanced |
| The Truth | Terry Ehret | advanced |
