The Literally, Darling team compiled some of our favorite poems for National Poetry Day. Tweet us your top picks at @litdarling!
Lady Lazarus
by Sylvia Plath
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell
by Marty McConnell
and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
There is Another Sky
by Emily Dickinson
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
But Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By T.S. Elliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Funeral Song
W.H. Auden
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
From The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”
Cylinders
“We fumble for words amidst cinders.”
– Christian Bok
by Rupi Kaur
other women’s bodies
are not our battlegrounds
Birches
by Robert Frost
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
A Dream Within A Dream
by Edgar Allen Poe
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
The Hollow Men
by T.S. Elliot
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Auguries of Innocence
by William Blake
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
If
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
Katie hails from Northern Virginia and spends her spare time blaring Led Zeppelin and trying to bake her way on to the Great British Bake Off one Victoria Sponge at a time. Her life largely consists of arguing with her dogs, running away from home to meander around the UK, and drinking her weight in tea. Occasionally she even makes time to write and edit for a living, but only when forced.
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