Columbia Granger's World of Poetry - Featured Poems

Venus Transiens by Amy Lowell

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

     Tell me, 
    
     Was Venus more beautiful 
    
     Than you are, 
    
     When she topped 
    
     The crinkled waves, 
    
     Drifting shoreward 
    
     On her plaited shell? 
    
     Was Botticelli's vision 
    
     Fairer than mine, 
    
     And were the painted rosebuds 
    
     He tossed his lady 
    
     Of better worth 
    
     Than the words I blow about you 
    
     To cover your too great loveliness 
    
     As with a gauze 
    
     Of misted silver?

     For me, 
    
     You stand poised 
    
     In the blue and buoyant air, 
    
     Cinctured by bright winds, 
    
     Treading the sunlight. 
    
     And the waves which precede you 
    
     Ripple and stir 
    
     The sands at my feet.

Guilt, Desire and Love by James Baldwin

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

     At the dark street corner 
    
     where Guilt and Desire 
    
     are attempting to stare 
    
     each other down 
    
     (presently, one of them 
    
     will light a cigarette 
    
     and glance in the direction 
    
     of the abandoned warehouse) 
    
     Love came slouching along, 
    
     an exploded silence 
    
     standing a little apart 
    
     but visible anyway 
    
     in the yellow, silent, steaming light, 
    
     while Guilt and Desire wrangled, 
    
     trying not to be overheard 
    
     by this trespasser.

     Each time Desire looked towards Love, 
    
     hoping to find a witness, 
    
     Guilt shouted louder 
    
     and shook them hips 
    
     and the fire of the cigarette 
    
     threatened to burn the warehouse down. 
    
     Desire actually started across the street, 
    
     time after time, 
    
     to hear what Love might have to say, 
    
     but Guilt flagged down a truckload 
    
     of other people 
    
     and knelt down in the middle of the street 
    
     and, while the truckload of other people 
    
     looked away, and swore that they 
    
     didn't see nothing 
    
     and couldn't testify nohow, 
    
     and Love moved out of sight, 
    
     Guilt accomplished upon the standing body 
    
     of Desire 
    
     the momentary, inflammatory soothing 
    
     which seals their union 
    
     (for ever?) 
    
     and creates a mighty traffic problem.

Appointment, An by William Butler Yeats

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

     Being out of heart with government 
    
    I took a broken root to fling
    
    Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,
    
    Taking delight that he could spring;
    
    And he, with that low whinnying sound
    
    That is like laughter, sprang again
    
    And so to the other tree at a bound.
    
    Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,
    
    Nor heavy knitting of the brow
    
    Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb
    
    And threw him up to laugh on the bough;
    
    No government appointed him.

Glimpse, A by Walt Whitman

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

     A glimpse through an interstice caught, 
    
     Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a corner, 
    
     Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand, 
    
     A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest, 
    
     There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

Pillory, The by Renée Vivien

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

For a long time, I was nailed to the pillory,

And some women, seeing me suffering, laughed.

Then, some men took mud in their hands

With which to spatter my temple and cheeks.

The sobs welled up in me, swelling like waves,

But my pride made me choke back the tears.

No one said, ‘She is perhaps less evil than

We suspect, she is perhaps a poor soul.’

The square was public and everyone had come,

And the women laughed in their naive way.

They tossed fruits back and forth to the tune of songs,

And the wind brought to me the sound of their words.

I felt the violent anger steal over me.

Silently, I learned to hate them.

Their insults cut deep, like the thorns of a nettle . . .

When they finally cut me loose, I left.

I went away at the mercy of the wind, and since then

My face is like the face of one dead.

Auden by William Harmon

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

    Already the routine ritual paragraphs appear,
    
     Prefabricated obituaries that distort
    
    Important names and transpose dates and continents
    
     Until the modest busy life is modified
    
    Into a civic fiction, as false as the photograph
    
     Becomes to the face, as the poet's body, untended
    
    For a day or two, will become to the unkept spirit.

     Sit still: we are ready because he readied us,
    
    Delivering for forty years the old homily,
    
     That the human business of poetry is human business—
    
    Not ego-flattering or self-pity or any other squalid
    
     Cheap operation of Personality, but rather
    
    The sort of act most prosaic and most difficult:
    
     To take note, pay attention, and remember.

    Grammar (the science of fun and the moon) regards
    
     In gross accustomed springs and autumns
    
    The didactic cadences, fresh and radiant, of
    
     Antic-antique syntax radically irregular but right
    
    For charismatic archaisms, musical tools, articles
    
     Of machinery and faith, imaginary
    
    Universes organized as madly formal gardens
    
    Whose harvest feeds
    
    Our extravagantly
    
    Unkempt hungers.

Simplify Me When I'm Dead by Keith Douglas

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

Remember me when I am dead

and simplify me when I'm dead.

    As the processes of earth
    
    strip off the colour of the skin:
    
    take the brown hair and blue eye

    and leave me simpler than at birth,
    
    when hairless I came howling in
    
    as the moon entered the cold sky.

    Of my skeleton perhaps,
    
    so stripped, a learned man will say
    
    "He was of such a type and intelligence," no more.

    Thus when in a year collapse
    
    particular memories, you may
    
    deduce, from the long pain I bore

    the opinions I held, who was my foe
    
    and what I left, even my appearance
    
    but incidents will be no guide.

    Time's wrong-way telescope will show
    
    a minute man ten years hence
    
    and by distance simplified.

    Through that lens see if I seem
    
    substance or nothing: of the world
    
    deserving mention or charitable oblivion,

    not by momentary spleen
    
    or love into decision hurled,
    
    leisurely arrive at an opinion.

Remember me when I am dead

and simplify me when I'm dead.

At the Wedding March by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

     God with honour hang your head,
    
     Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
    
     With lissome scions, sweet scions,°
    
     Out of hallowed bodies bred.

     Each be other's comfort kind:
    
     Deep, deeper than divined,
    
     Divine charity, dear charity,
    
     Fast you ever, fast bind.

     Then let the March tread our ears:
    
     I to him turn with tears°
    
    Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
    
    Deals triumph and immortal years.

Master Charge Blues by Nikki Giovanni

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

     Its wednesday night baby 
    
     and i'm all alone 
    
     wednesday night baby 
    
     and i'm all alone 
    
     sitting with myself 
    
     waiting for the telephone

     wanted you baby 
    
     but you said you had to go 
    
     wanted you yeah 
    
     but you said you had to go 
    
     called your best friend 
    
     but he can't come 'cross no more

     did you ever go to bed 
    
     at the end of a busy day 
    
     look over and see the smooth 
    
     where your hump usta lay 
    
     feminine odor and no reason why 
    
     i said feminine odor and no reason why 
    
     asked the lord to help me 
    
     he shook his head “not i”

     but i'm a modern woman baby 
    
     ain't gonna let this get me down 
    
     i'm a modern woman 
    
     ain't gonna let this get me down 
    
     gonna take my master charge 
    
     and get everything in town

“It Is Marvellous . . ” by Elizabeth Bishop

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

    It is marvellous to wake up together
    
    At the same minute; marvellous to hear
    
    The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
    
    To feel the air clear
    
    As if electricity had passed through it
    
    From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
    
    All over the roof the rain hisses,
    
    And below, the light falling of kisses.

    An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
    
    It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
    
    If lightning struck the house now, it would run
    
    From the four blue china balls on top
    
    Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
    
    And we imagine dreamily
    
    How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
    
    Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;

    And from the same simplified point of view
    
    Of night and lying flat on one's back
    
    All things might change equally easily,
    
    Since always to warn us there must be these black
    
    Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
    
    The world might change to something quite different,
    
    As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
    
    Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.

Hour of Stars by Federico García Lorca

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

    The silence of the night
    
    on the staff
    
    of the infinite.

    I go out into the street naked
    
    ripe with poems
    
    lost.
    
    The black, riddled
    
    by cricket song,
    
    has this will-o'-the-wisp
    
    dead
    
    from the sound.
    
    That musical light
    
    that is perceived by the spirit.

The skeletons of a thousand butterflies

sleep in my place.

There are young mad breezes

over the river.

Sleeping, turning in turn like planets by Adrienne Rich

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

     Sleeping, turning in turn like planets 
    
     rotating in their midnight meadow: 
    
     a touch is enough to let us know 
    
     we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep: 
    
     the dream-ghosts of two worlds 
    
     walking their ghost-towns, almost address each other. 
    
     I've wakened to your muttered words 
    
     spoken light- or dark-years away 
    
     as if my own voice had spoken. 
    
     But we have different voices, even in sleep, 
    
     and our bodies, so alike, are yet so different 
    
     and the past echoing through our bloodstreams 
    
     is freighted with different language, different meanings— 
    
     though in any chronicle of the world we share 
    
     it could be written with new meaning 
    
     we were two lovers of one gender, 
    
     we were two women of one generation.

Supermarket in California, A by Allen Ginsberg

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

      What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
    
      In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! 
    
      What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

      I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. 
    
      I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? 
    
      I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. 
    
      We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

      Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? 
    
      (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) 
    
      Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. 
    
      Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? 
    
      Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

After a Romantic Day by Thomas Hardy

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:23:59 -0400

       The railway bore him through
    
     An earthen cutting out from a city:
    
       There was no scope for view,
    
     Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon
    
       Fell like a friendly tune.

       Fell like a liquid ditty,
    
     And the blank lack of any charm
    
       Of landscape did no harm.
    
     The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,
    
       And moon-lit, was enough
    
     For poetry of place: its weathered face
    
     Formed a convenient sheet whereon
    
     The visions of his mind were drawn.

Summering in Wildwood, NJ by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:24:00 -0400

in a few days, i’ll be on a beach

so bright i can see the sun through my fingers,

each thin vein lit

up blue like a heron’s leg.

this poem is not so much about a beach

as it is about arriving,

blowing stop signs

until the coast affirms

that lines are always changing,

and the tide tells me

my body can morph

as many times as it needs.