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Welcome Poetry Fans!


All that is great in heaven, or fair on earth,
Unveils its glories to the dreamer's eye

           Johann Goethe

This site is intended for the enjoyment of all those who love poetry. It will develop as you participate. Please contribute by sharing a favorite poem, your original work, or your thoughts on poetry with us and with other poetry fans. You may send your message to editor@poetryfans.com or use the Poetry Submission Form.

In this spirit, we invite you to do as Longfellow did: breathe a song into the air,because you may find it again in the heart of a friend. The Arrow and the Song

As tribute to the election of our wonderful new American President, Barak Obama, a poem from almost one hundred years ago by James Weldon Johnson looking back on the achievement of the Emancipation Proclamation and the still unmet aspirations for racial equality fifty years later. Hopefully Johnson is smiling in heaven.

Fifty Years

As Matthew Arnold wrote, "The same heart beats in every human breast!" Instead of concealing our thoughts and meeting the world "With blank indifference, or  with blame reproved," we should follow our true course and " . . . unlock the heart, and let it speak " Buried Life.

We also have Arnold's Self-Dependence, where we are urged to be true to ourselves.

I am trembling with cold—
I want to feel nothing!
But the sky dances with gold—
It orders me to sing.

Osip Mandelstam

You can read more about Osip Mandelstam, a brave voice against tyranny, at Nextbook.org. But return here to read more great poems.

Here's another example of Mandelstam's stunning anti-Stalinist verse: “Mounds of human heads are wandering into the distance. /  I dwindle among them. Nobody sees me. / But in books much loved, and in children's games / I shall rise from the dead / To say the sun is shining.”

Against Forgetting

If you want to read a great edition of poetry, Poetryfans highly recommends this collection, edited by contemporary poet Carolyn Forché. Selections range from a heartbreaking poem by Paul Celan, to the black comedy of Charles Simic, to a fantastic poem by Bei Dao in which the future is watching us. Great and important poems from around the world abound in this collection. Clicking the title will bring you to the Barnes and Noble link or search for it at your favorite book site.

A beautiful sentiment emerges from Robert Frost's observations and reflections in The Tuft of Flowers.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing . . .
From this hour I ordain myself loosened of limits and imaginary lines

Read this great poem by Walt Whitman, which expresses the wisdom of living without imaginary limits and being open to life's experiences, thus achieving the freedom to create our own destiny. Song of the Open Road


Simultaneous feelings of regret and hope mingle in James Joyce's Ecce Puer about the birth of his son.

Sara Teasdale who  won the first Pulitzer Prize in poetry writes about the cost of Wisdom and the beauty of the world in Barter.

Edgar Allan Poe's reputation grew as his work influenced the French symbolists, who in turn heavily influenced modern poetry. Here is Poe's A Dream Within a Dream.

Where The Mind is Without Fear
Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore had a hope for his native India apt for all nations. To read a biography of Tagore, visit the Nobel E-Museum. For information and sources about other Nobel Prize winners, visit Nobel E-Museum literature page or www.almaz.com.

Christina Rossetti faced the daunting immensity of the world, hanging on to hope in De Profundis.

From Thomas Gray′s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, one of England's most famous poems:

  Full many a flow′r is born to blush unseen,
  And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Don't be that way, Share your poems. Submit poems.
 


I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt

Walt Whitman

Click Here For Our Featured Poem

Edna St. Vincent Millay takes the soul on a wild ride through various stages of disenchantment, despair and delight toward a dramatic renewal of spirit in her poem Renascence. The regular meter and AABB rhyme scheme will guide you easily through the stanzas of this poem.

Has anyone in any language better expressed the human condition than William Shakespeare? If so, let us know. Here is All the World's a Stage, the viewpoint of Jacques in As You Like It. It may be a satirical take on the melancholy spirit, but it sure rings true. This is followed by two Shakespearean sonnets, both about the redemptive power of affection.

The creators of poetryfans.com know the joyous feeling that can come from reaching out to someone through the written word. The long correspondence between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning led to a deep and enduring love between the two poets. Here is one of the world's greatest love sonnets, How Do I Love Thee, written in secret by Elizabeth Barrett Browning for her beloved.

Then read two poems from the other half of literature's greatest one-two punch: A Woman's Last Word and Love in Life.

Another great love poem is John Donne′s The Sun Rising.

Ralph Waldo Emerson had a profound impact on American thought with such works as Self-Reliance (read at Virginia Commonwealth University site), and his spirit is found in poetry from Whitman to Frost to the present day. Compare his Each and All to Frost's poem above.

“Hate hath no harm for love,” so ran the song,  
“And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!'”

Disarmament is a poem about peace and the lasting power of love written by John Greenleaf Whittier.

Sometimes, as Margaret Sangster said, “It isn't the thing you do / It's the thing you leave undone / Which gives you a bit of heartache.” The Sin of Omission.
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Baudelaire, a leader of the French Symbolist movement, explores the soul's transcendence of life's sorrows and vexations in Elevation. This fine translation is by William Aggeler. We also have Baudelaire's Calm, where the poet examines regret, and his tribute to art in The Beacons.

Paul Laurence Dunbar tells us what kind of poems he prefers in A Choice. What kind of poem do you like. Let us know. Also read about the caged bird in Dunbar's Sympathy.

William Wordsworth, the great English romantic poet, made a significant contribution to modern poetry by humanizing and broadening its scope with his use of common language. His love of nature as being reflective of divine force in the world is evident in his work. Start by reading Daffodils (alt. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud").

Tri Budhi Sastrio has written an original poem in tribute to this poem: How a Poem Was Made.

Edgar Lee Masters encourages us to face our destiny with courage because "To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, / But life without meaning is the torture."
George Gray

We also have poems written by visitors to our site. Check out The Phone Call by Tasha from Pune, India or a poem about addiction by Christopher Johnson. Barbara Kelsey's  The Stolen Smile is another fine poem you can find in the Original Poems section or Index.


Use the links to Favorite Poems or Original Poems to read more selections.
 

 

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