When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
Walt Whitman walks out of a star lecture to look up at the real night sky — eight lines weighing measured knowledge against pure wonder. Full poem and analysis.
Theme
free-verse
7 poems
free-verse
Grass
In Carl Sandburg’s “Grass” (1918) the grass itself speaks, burying the dead of Austerlitz, Gettysburg, and Verdun until travelers forget the battles ever happened — a quiet, chilling anti-war poem.
Fog
Carl Sandburg’s six-line “Fog” (1916) likens a harbor mist to a cat that sits on silent haunches and then moves on — his most famous short poem and a touchstone of American imagism.
Chicago
Carl Sandburg’s 1914 free-verse portrait of his adopted city hears every accusation against Chicago, grants them, and answers with fierce pride in its labor and rough, unbeatable vitality.
Howl
“Howl” is usually called a raw explosion of rage — but it’s carefully built, moving from the destroyed “best minds” to the machine-god Moloch to a vow of love for the institutionalized friend in “Rockland,” and finally to blessing. Its radical claim: the people society calls mad are its real visionaries — and the obscenity trial it provoked was its thesis tested in court.
Still I Rise
Maya Angelou’s anthem of defiance turns insult into self-possession and one woman’s resilience into a whole people’s. An original analysis of its themes, voice, and legacy — with links to read the full poem.
Song of Myself (Selected Excerpts)
Walt Whitman’s vast act of self-celebration, where a single “I” absorbs the whole world and waits “somewhere” for every future reader. Selected text and analysis.