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.
 
 
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