Poems on Poems

Poems on Poems

Inspired by my good friends on NCTE-Talk List who contributed many of the poems hereunder.


Here is a little quote by the famous poetry critic Helen Vendler commenting upon someone else's criticism that "every Ashbery poem is about poetry." :

    In the code language of criticism when a poem is said to be about poetry the word "poetry" is often used to mean: how people construct an intelligibility out of the randomness they experience; how people choose what they love; how people integrate loss and gain; how they distort experience by wish and dream; how they perceive and consolidate flashes of harmony; how they (to end a list otherwise endless) achieve what Keats called a "Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity."


?Poetry by Pablo Neruda
Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish
As For Poets by Gary Snyder
Axe Handles by Gary Snyder
Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry by Howard Nemerov
Beware: Do Not Read This Poem by Ishmael Reed
The Bribe by pat mora
Conservative Poet by Thomas Newton
Dear Reader by James Tate
Eating Poetry by Mark Strand
Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem by Wislawa Szymborska
For Poets by Al Young
Four Poems by Germain Droogenbroodt
A Good Poem by Tom Zart
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman by Wallace Stevens
How Poetry Comes To Me by Gary Snyder
How to Eat a Poem by Eve Merriam
I Leave Bits of Me Everywhere by Karen Swank-Fitch 
I Stop Writing the Poem by Tess Gallagher
Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins
The Joy of Writing by Wislawa Szymborska
kidnap poem by Nikki Giovanni
A Loaf of Poetry by Naoshi Koriyama
My Heart by Frank O'Hara
My Poem by Nikki Giovanni
My Poems by Robert Currie
Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas
Oatmeal by Galway Kinnell
Poem by William Carlos Williams
Poems by Ron Baron
The Poem Wants a Drink by Karen Glenn
A Poem Is A Spider Web by Charles Ghigna
The Poet by Pablo Neruda
The Poet by Lucy Maud Montgomery
A Poet Reading by Edwin Thumboo
The Poet Trying to Surprise God by Peter Meinke
Poetics by Paul Smyth
Poetry by Marianne Moore
Poetry, a Natural Thing by Robert Duncan
Poetry is a Destructive Force by Wallace Stevens
Poetry Reading by Wislawa Szymborska
The Poets' Annual Indigence Report by William Stafford
Poet's Obligation by Pablo Neruda
The Poet's Thought by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Power of Poetry by Tom Zart
An Obsessive Combination of Ontological Inscape, Trickery and Love by Anne Sexton
The Questions Poems Ask by Lawrence Raab
Reply to the Question: "How can you Become a Poet?" by Eve Merriam
Salvage This by Jerry Martien
Several Things by Martha Collins
Sound and Sense by Alexander Pope
Surviving a Poetry Circuit by William Stafford
Teaching the Ape to Write Poetry by James Tate
To The Stone-Cutters by Robinson Jeffers
The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes
Unclaimed Territory by Louisa DeBoo
Who is the Poet by Magnus Krynski
Why I am not a Painter by Frank O'Hara
The Writer by Richard Wilbur
Why I Am a Poet by Donald Caswell
What's A Poem by Charles Ghigna
WHY I LIKE POETRY, NO. 1 by Constantine Ivanov
WHY I LIKE POETRY, NO. 2 by Constantine Ivanov
Words by Edwin Thumboo
Young Poets by Nicanor Parra
Your Poem, Man . . . by Edward Lueders


  • ars poetica a website with poems about poetry, updated daily
  • What poets say about poetry
  • A Poem a Day
  • Poetry Project


    All comments are welcome. Please if you are suggesting a new poem, try to email me the poem. If that is not possible, please give exact title and author, not a guess or sounds like. Thanks.