study poems for pleasure
"The truest and wisest things about human life can normally only be expressed in images"
Ladislaus Boros
craft of poetry| online collections | audio & sound archives | libraries | e-poetry | author websites | festivals | magazines | radio | general poetry websites | blogs | printed anthologies | list of previous poems of the week
find a way that appeals to you
There are many ways of approaching poetry. To experience a wide variety of styles, schedule one of several excellent radio shows into your calendar. Listen to or download one each week. Buy in bookshops and online, or borrow from the library, poetry audiotapes or cds. Bookshops are full of books of poetry for special occasions and circumstances, as well as theme based and traditionally arranged anthologies. Most towns and cities, and some villages, have readings by contemporary poets in pubs and bars. Both the big umbrella organisations, such as The Poetry Society, and the increasing number of literary festivals have readings all the year round. Specialise in a period you like, or a poet, or group of poets. Take a single poem one at a time, and really familiarise yourself with it. Enlist the help of one of several excellent and accessible guides to the craft aspect of poetry. Visit websites dedicated to individual poets. Subscribe to sites that offer poems of the day, week or month. Join in your children's GCSE and A level English poetry modules.
books on the craft of poetry
B.Wormser and D. Capella. Teaching The Art of Poetry, The Moves. (LEA)
B.Wormser and D.Capella. A Surge of Language. Teaching Poetry Day by Day.( Heinemann)
Mary Oliver. Rules for the Dance. A Handbook For Writing and Reading Metrical Verse. (Mariner Books)
Mary Oliver. A Poetry Handbook. A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry.(Harcourt Brace)
Tom Paulin. The Secret Life of Poems. A Poetry Primer.( Faber)
Robert Pinsky. The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide. (FSG)
Mark Strand. The Making Of A Poem
Ruth Padel.The Poem and the Journey (And Sixty Poems to Read Along the Way)( Chatto & Windus/Random House)
John Hollander. Rhyme's Reason.
Alfred Corn. The Poem's Heartbeat.
John Thompson.The Founding of English Meter
Helen Vendler. Poems, Poets, Poetry
list of previous Poems of the Week
contact enquiries@passonapoem.com for more information
Wendell Berry. Sabbaths 2004.V111
Jane Kenyon. Let Evening Come
Emily Dickinson. Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
Derek Walcott. R.T.S.L (1917-1977)
Amy Clampitt. A Catalpa Tree on W.12th Street
Patrick Kavanagh. Canal Bank Walk
W.S.Merwin. To Impatience
Wallace Stevens. from Sunday Morning
Mary Oliver. Such Singing In The Wild Branches
Robert Hayden. Those Winter Sundays
Les Murray. An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
William Shakespeare. from Act 111. scene 3. Henry V
W.H.Auden. As I Walked Out One Evening
William Blake. The Smile
W.B.Yeats.What Then
Mechtild of Magdeburg. Of All That God Has Shown Me
Robert Herrick. Lovers, How They Come and Part
Robert Frost. Mending Wall
Wendell Berry. The Yellow-Throated Warbler
John Burnside. By Herodsfoot
Erica Wagner. Picnic's Over
Jorie Graham. The Guardian Angel of the Private Life
Robin Robertson. Entropy
Thomas Hardy. During Wind and Rain
Mark Strand. The Idea
William Carlos Williams. Winter Trees
William Shakespeare. Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind
Robert Frost. Dust of Snow
Denise Levertov. Swan in Falling Snow
Carmen Bugan. The Day We Decided We Would Lie
Hayden Carruth. Onandaga, Early December
Frank O'Hara. Having A Coke With You
Andrew Marvell. The Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return From Ireland
William Eaves. Home
W.S. Merwin. Green Fields
Samuel Daniel. When Men Shall Find Thy Flower
Don Paterson. Waking With Russell
Michael Longley. Laertes
Stevie Smith. Away, Melancholy
Derek Mahon. Lapis Lazuli
Louise Bogan. To Be Sung On Water
William Wordsworth. Lines Written in Early Spring
Josephine Dickinson. My Lover Gave Me Green Leaves
Stevie Smith. The Airy Christ
A.R.Ammons. The City Limits
Robert Frost. Prayer in Spring
Emily Dickinson. Each Life Converges to Some Centre
Jorges Luis Borges. A Poet of the Thirteenth Century translated by William Ferguson
John Clare. I Hid My Love
Baron Wormser. Abandoned Asylum, Northampton, Massachusetts.
George Herbert. Mattens
William Wordsworth. from Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Richard Wilbur. For C
Philip Levine. He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do
Richard Wilbur .The Beautiful Changes
Anthony Hecht. A Hill
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ode To A Skylark
Alice Oswald. A Greyhound In The Evening After A Long Day of Rain
Paul Laurence Dunbar. A Florida Night
Zbigniew Herbert. Report From Paradise
W.B.Yeats. The Cap And Bells
Emily Dickinson. As Imperceptibly As Grief
Baron Wormser. A Quiet Life
W.S.Merwin. To The Light of September
William Stafford. When I Met My Muse
Jorie Graham. To A Friend Going Blind
Henry Vaughan. Religion
Thomas Wyatt. Forget Not Yet. The Lover Beseecheth His Mistress Not To Forget His Steadfast Faith and True Intent
John Burnside. Prayer
Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. In Night When Colours All To Black Are Cast
Louis MacNeice. Thalassa
David Morley. The Ideal
John Dryden. A Song For St Cecilia's Day 1687
W.S.Graham. Loch Thom
William Blake. A Poison Tree
Richard Wilbur. Advice To A Prophet
Mark Strand. Lines For Winter
Maya Angelou. A Poem for Christmas
Wendell Berry. The Wild Geese
Richard Eberhart. The Eclipse
Laura Sheck. Mysteriously Standing
Thomas Dekker. The Happy Heart
William Shakespeare. When That I Was And A Little Tiny Boy
Douglas Dunn. At Cruggleton Castle
Charles Wright. Confessions Of A Song And Dance Man
Sir Edward Dyer. A Modest Love
Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Song
William Dunbar. Lament For The Makaris
Les Murray. Easter 1984
Jean Valentine. Blessed Are Those...
A.R.Ammons. Eyesight
Geoffrey Chaucer. Whan That Aprille With His Shoures Sote
Thomas Traherne. from An Infant-Ey
Emily Dickinson. I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed
Sir Philip Sidney. Astrophel and Stella Sonnet V
George Herbert. Vertue
Louis MacNeice. Meeting Point
W.J.Duff. Old Man's Prayer
Rudyard Kipling. from The River's Song
John Donne. A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
Amy Clampitt. A Hermit Thrush
Wallace Stevens. A Sea Surface Full of Clouds
Emily Dickinson. A Something In A Summer's Day
R.S.Thomas. A Peasant
Edward Thomas. Beauty
Hal Summers. The Seed
Thomas Hardy. The Shadow On The Stone
Ogden Nash. Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else Except Richer
Galway Kinnell. Blackberry Eating
Jorge Luis Borges. The Art of Poetry
Ben Jonson. Section From A Pindaric Ode (The Strophe or Turn)
Emily Dickinson. Of All The Souls That Stand Create
W.J. Duff. Death Of A Gardener
William Shakespeare. That Time Of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold
Dylan Thomas. Foster The Light
T.S. Eliot. from Choruses from 'The Rock' Stanza X
Seamus Heaney. A Dream Of Solstice
e.e.cummings. A Christmas Poem
William Wordsworth. London 1802
Mahmoud Darwish. What Will Remain?
Baron Wormser. Labor
D.H.Lawrence. Nothing To Save
Philip Levine. Bitterness
Jen Hadfield. Thou Shall Want, Want, Want
William Carlos Williams. Ad Infinitum
Seamus Heaney. Sonnet V11 from The Glanmore Sonnets
John Donne. Batter My Heart
Charles Wright. Last Supper
R.S.Thomas. In A Country Church
Edwn Muir. Transfiguration
P.B.Shelley. The Question
U.A.Fanthorpe. The 8th May: How To Recognise It
Danny Abse. Things
Michael LaSorsaSteffen. Hope
John Hartley Williams. Hungarian
Richard Crashaw. An Epitaph Upon Husband And Wife
Gael Turnbull. These Rings that We Exchange
A.R.Ammons. Mansion
Robert Frost. The Oven Bird
W.B.Yeats. (from) Among School Children
Pablo Neruda. Every Day You Play With The Light Of The Universe
Li-Young Lee. the Gift
Robert Hayden. "Summertime And The Living...."
Norman MacCaig. Summer Farm
Robert Duncan. Often I Am Permitted To Return To A Meadow
Emily Dickinson. Heaven Is What I Cannot Reach
William Blake. Love's Secret
Denise Levertov. Sunday Afternoon
Tadeusz Rosewicz. In The Middle Of Life
Eavan Boland. Amber
Wendell Berry. I Go Among Trees And Sit Still
Sir Thomas Wyatt. Who So List To Hounte I Know Where Is An Hynde
Larry Levis. Winter Stars
Kathleen Raine. Spell To Bring Lost Creatures Home
Donald Hall. The Ox Cart Man
Gerard Manley Hopkins. Felix Randal
Yehuda Amichai. Memorial Day for The War Dead
Howard Nemerov. A Spell Before Winter
A.R.Ammons. In View Of The Fact
Rowan Williams. Advent Calendar
Judith Wright. Sonnet For Christmas
W.S.Merwin. For A Coming Extinction
Li-Young Lee. Nativity
Emily Dickinson. Hope Is A Strange Invention
George Mackay Brown. Epiphany Poem
Kevin Hart. Snow
William Shakespeare. Fear No More The Heat O' The Sun
Rafael Campo. Begging For Change In Winter
Adrie Kusserow. Skull Trees, Southern Sudan
Kay Ryan. Patience
William Stafford. An Afternoon In The Stacks
Emily Dickinson. The Sky is low - the Clouds are mean
Theodore Roethke. Cuttings (Late)
William Carlos Williams. Light Hearted William
Neil Aitken. Travelling Through The Prairies, I Think Of My Father's Voice by Neil Aitken
Robin Robertson. Strindberg In Berlin
Zbigniew Herbert. I Would Like To Describe
Judith Wright. Phaius Orchid
Thomas Traherne. A Serious And Pathetical Contemplation Of The Mercies Of God
Andrew Marvell. The Mower Against Gardens
Elizabeth Bishop. Anaphora
Shams Al-Din Hafiz. Returning translated by Coleman Barks
William Carlos Williams. Dedication For A Plot Of Ground
Philip Larkin. Cut Grass
John O'Donohue. Purgatorial
Philippe Jaccottet. Distances
Robinson Jeffers. Hurt Hawks
James Wright. To The Saguaro Cactus Tree In The Desert Rain
Li-Young Lee. Night Mirror
Robert Burns. Corn Rigs Are Bonnie
Gary Snyder. Milton By Firelight
Edwin Morgan. Strawberries
Anne Stevenson. In The Tunnel Of Summers
Ben Jonson. A Celebration Of Charis: IV. Her Triumph
G.M.Hopkins. Hurrahing In Harvest
A R Ammons. Still
Lawrence Sail. Out of Silence
Robert Bringhurst. The Finch
W.S.Merwin. Echoing Light
Wislawa Szymborska. The End And The Beginning
e e cummings love is a place
Don Paterson. Poetry
Yves Bonnefoy. Passer-By, These Are Words
Mahmoud Darwish. I Belong There
Edward Hirsch. Poor Angels
Anthony Hecht. The Transparent Man
Les Murray. Nursing Home
Joseph Langland. Hunters In The Snow: Breughel
Patrick Kavanagh. Advent
George Mackay Brown. A Poem For Shelter
Frances Horowitz. New Year Snow
Michael McKimm. An Invitation
Tomas Transtromer. A Winter Night
Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Wild Turkeys: The Dignity Of The Damned
Mervyn Peake. The Consumptive:Belsen 1945
Denise Levertov. Celebration
W.H.Auden. Their Lonely Betters
Thomas McGrath. Against The False Magicians
Gillian Clarke. Neighbours
Elizabeth Jennings. Rembrandt's Late Self-Portraits
Thomas Hardy. The Going
William Shakespeare. Sonnet LXV
Wallace Stevens. Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself
Elizabeth Jennings. The Nature Of Prayer
R.S.Thomas. Tell Us
George Mackay Brown. The Harrowing Of Hell
John Clare. Summer
Elizabeth Jennings. For Edward Thomas
Alice Oswald. Yellow Iris
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory. Donal Og
Wendell Berry. The Mad Farmer, Flying The Flag Of Rough Branch, Secedes From The Union
Mark Strand. The Continuous Life
Stacie Cassarino. Summer Solstice
Chloe Morrish. Not That It's Loneliness
William Shakespeare. from As You Like It
W.S.Merwin. Turning
Michael Longley. Into Battle
Seamus Heaney. The Railway Children
Jessica Jopp. Why Poetry Cannot Be Skimmed
John Donne. The Good-Morrow
Marianne Moore. The Paper Nautilus
Kona Macphee. View From A Window
W.B.Yeats. The Second Coming
Richard Wilbur. The Writer
W.H.Auden. September 1, 1939
Sir Thomas Wyatt. Patience, Though I Have Not
Billy Collins. The Names
Sir John Davies. Orchestra or A Poem Of Dancing
Emily Dickinson. These Are The Days When Birds Come Back
Stanley Plumly. Naps
Anne Carson. No Port Now
Alice Oswald. from Memorial
Michael Longley. The Leveret
Deborah Digges. The House That Goes Dancing
anthologies
Some volumes on the list are out of print, but are usually available second hand.
Read a review of THE BAREFOOT BOOK OF CLASSIC POEMS for children at the end of this list.
ed.Hayden Carruth. The Voice That Is Great Within Us (Bantam, Doubleday, Dell)
Jack Prelutsky.Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems( Greenwillow Books)
ed.Lynn Strongin. The Sorrow Psalms. A Book of Twentieth century Elegy( Iowa)
ed. Carolyn Forche. Against Forgetting : Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness
Carol Ann Duffy. New and Collected Poems for Children (Faber)
ed. Robin Skelton. Poetry of the Thirties ( Penguin)
ed. Robin. Skelton. Poetry of the Forties (Penguin)
ed. Daniel Karlin. The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse (Penguin)
ed. David Wright.The Mid Century : English Poetry 1940-1960 (Penguin)
ed. R.K.R.Thornton. Poetry of the Nineties (Penguin)
ed. Valentine Cunningham. The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse (Penguin)
ed. Phyllis Levin. The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (Penguin)
ed.Harold Bloom. The Best Poems of the English Language (Harper Collins)
ed.Germaine Greer. Lines of Life. 101 Poems by 101 Women (Faber)
ed. Simon Armitage. Short And Sweet 101 very short poems (Faber)
ed. Christopher Reid. Sounds Good 101 Poems to be Heard (Faber)
ed. . A Quark for Mister Mark. 101 Poems about Science ( Faber)
ed. Ted Hughes. By Heart. 101 Poems to Remember (Faber)
ed. Don Paterson. 101 Sonnets from Shakespeare to Heaney (Faber).
Louis Zukofsky. A Test of Poetry (Wesleyan/New England)
ed. Robert Nye. The Faber Book of Sonnets (Faber)
ed.Rees-Jones. Modern Women Poets (Bloodaxe)
ed.Tod Marshall. Range of Voices. A Collection of Contemporary Poets (EWUP)
G.B.Harrison. A Book of English Poetry (Penguin)
ed.Hass et al. American Poetry. The Twentieth Century. Vols 1,2
ed. Norman Ault. Elizabethan Lyrics (Faber)
Walter de la Mare. Behold, This Dreamer (Faber)
ed.J.D.McClatchy. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
ed. J.M. Cohen The Rider Book of Mystical Verse (Rider)
ed. Huntington Cairns. The Limits of Art. Vols 1,2,3 (Princeton)
ed.BBC. The Nation's Favourite Poems (BBC)
ed. Poems on the Underground
ed. Ivo Mosley. The Green Book of Poetry (Frontier Publishing)
ed. Paul Muldoon. the Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry (Faber)
ed. Robert Bly. The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy.Sacred Poems from Many Cultures (Ecco)
ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine. Six Centuries of Great Poetry (Dell)
ed. Robert Bly. News of The Universe. Poems of Twofold Consciousness (Sierra Club Books )
ed. Czeslaw Milosz. A Book of Luminous Things (Harcourt Brace)
ed. Neil Astley. Staying Alive real poems for unreal times (Bloodaxe)
ed. Charles Williams. The New Book of English Verse (Victor Gollancz)
ed. Harmon. The Classic 100 Poems (Highbridge)
ed.Harmon. The Top 500 Poems (Columbia)
A Book of Narrative Verse (Oxford)
ed.Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee. The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse (Everyman)
ed. Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain.Other. British and Irish Poetry since 1970 (Wesleyan/New England
ed. E.Phelps and G.Summerfield. Four Seasons (Oxford)
ed.Pinsky and Dietz. America's Favourite Poems (Norton)
ed. Hulse,Kennedy,Morley. The New Poetry (Bloodaxe)
ed. Bly, Hillman.Meade. The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart Poems For Men (Harper Perennial)
Wendy Cope. The Funny Side.
ed.Lehman. Great American Prose Poems (Scribner)
ed. Edward Lucie-Smith. The Penguin Book of Elizabethan Verse (Penguin)
ed. Helen Garner. The Metaphysical Poets (Penguin)
ed. Ian Hamilton. Odes (Bloomsbury)
ed. Peter Washington. Love Poems (Everyman)
ed. Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz. Poems To Read (Norton)
ed. Michael Schmidt. The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (Harvill Press Editions)
ed. Jerome Rothenberg. Technicians of The Sacred A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe & Oceania (California)
ed. Paul Matthews. With My Heart in my Mouth - A Poetry Anthology (Rudolf Steiner Press)
ed. Charles Causley. The Sun Dancing (Puffin)
ed. George Macbeth. The Penguin Book of Animal Verse (Penguin)
ed. Michael Chapman. The New Century of South African Verse (AD Donker Publishers)
ed. Rothenberg and Jois. Poems For The Millenium. The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry
Volume One and Volume Two (California)
ed. David Impastato. Upholding Mystery An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry (Oxford)
ed. R.S.Thomas. The Penguin Book of Religious Verse (Penguin)
ed. Walt Taylor. English Sonnets (Longman, Green and Co)
ed. W.H.Auden,J.Garrett The Poet's Tongue.
B. Moses. Poems of Childhood
M.Sweeney. Irish Poems
M.Stephen. Never Such Innocence
Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. The Rattle Bag
Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. The School Bag
The Blackwell Series. Poetry From .....
Methuen. Poems for Everyday
ed. Light And Dust Anthology of Poetry
For children, THE BAREFOOT BOOK OF CLASSIC POEMS , compiled and illustrated by Jackie Morris, introduced by Carol Ann Duffy, would make an incomparable present. Children, god children, grandchildren? They will thank you, and treasure it, for years to come. Buy it for yourself as well - for when they come to stay the night. We never quite forget poems read to us when we are young .
More than 60 poets are represented by both classic works and by other less familiar ones that come as delightful surprises. Over 70 poems, skilfully integrated throughout within Jackie Morris’ beautiful full-page illustrations, are framed by Emily Dickinson’s "There is no frigate like a book" as the front end paper, and by Langston Hughes’ "Hold fast to dreams" as the back end paper, two choices that mirror the inspiration and direction of the anthology.
It is well-rounded and wide-ranging, not only in its choice of poets, but also in its themes, subjects and forms, in tone, and in the sensual pleasures it offers. The texts that face and follow one another on particular pages are always structured and arranged with intelligence and discernment. The signature poem could perhaps be said to be Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Music :
Let me go where'er I will
I hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.
It is not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird,
Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There always, always something sings.
'T is not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cups of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There always, always something sings.
Emerson’s poem is paired with Wordsworth’s indispensable My Heart Leaps Up:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man,
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
The contemporary American poet, Donald Revell, observes of Wordsworth’s short poem in a recent book of essays(*): “a good wish and one of the most guileless poems in the language. Never be embarrassed by purity; it goes far. Piety is simply a matter of life and death. Sole guarantor of good posterity: active innocence; the Child father, not the Father’s child. And whence does it arise? When the pure heart leaps its leap of faith into the eye...”
For Barefoot Books, the safeguarding and championing of the child’s heart and imagination are central to everything they produce. This anthology is no exception. It nurtures and celebrates mystery and fantasy without descending into the whimsical, fosters compassion and sympathy without straying into the political, and honours the perennial and traditional without neglecting the historical. It deserves to, and surely will, become a classic.
(*) Donald Revell. The Art of Attention. A Poet’s Eye. (Graywolf Press)
THE BAREFOOT BOOK OF CLASSIC POEMS. COMPILED AND ILLUSTRATED BY JACKIE MORRIS. INTRODUCED BY CAROL ANN DUFFY.£14.99. ISBN 1-905236-55-7 www.barefootbooks.com
online collections
The Poem Tree. An Online Poetry Anthology
the poetry archive
SPIDERTANGLE : the_book-
audio and sound archives
livepoets.com
the cortland review
poetry slam, Inc.
lyrikline
the factory school digital audio archive
the naropa audio archives
slought networks
ubuweb
libraries
the scottish poetry library (scotland)
the poetry library(britain)
poets house (usa)
e-poetry
the electronic poetry centre
electronic literature organisation
the e-poets network
telepoetics
author websites
festivals
poetry international london
poetry africa ( sa)
magazines
the reader: not devoted specifically to poetry, but recommended by Anne Michaels, poet and novelist - 'What a wonderful magazine The Reader is! It is rare to find a magazine in which the love of literature is so evident', and by Seamus Heaney, "One of the best things to thump through the letter-box. Full of pithy., passionate and precise things...it's a nonpareil gift to the rest of us". For more information, write to The Reader, 19 Abercrombie Square, Liverpool, L69 7ZG. Tel 0151 7942830 email: readers@liv.ac.uk and visit www. the reader.co.uk
jacket (internet only)
contemporary poetry review
raintaxi
slope
southern ocean review (nz)
trout
radio
poetry please ! ( bbc radio 4)
poetry websites
poetryinternational
bartleby
the poetry portal
poetryfoundation
the poetry resource
the poetry kit
poetry daily
blogs