The Best Poem Ever – Brian Doyle
What if, says a small child to me this afternoon,
We made a poem without using any words at all?
Wouldn’t that be cool? You could use long twigs,
And feathers, or spider strands, and arrange them
So that people imagine what words could be there.
Wouldn’t that be cool? So there’s a different poem
For each reader. That would be the best poem ever.
The poem wouldn’t be on the page, right? It would
Be in the air, sort of. It would be between the twigs
And the person’s eyes, or behind the person’s eyes,
After the person saw whatever poem he or she saw.
Maybe there are a lot of poems that you can’t write
Down. Couldn’t that be? But they’re still there even
If no one can write them down, right? Poems in
Books are only a little bit of all the poems there are.
Those are only the poems someone found words for.
Poetry
- A Dog Has Died – Pablo Neruda
- A Moment of Silence – Emmanuel Ortiz
- A Quiet Life – Baron Wormser
- A Wreath to the Fish – Nancy Willard
- Alone – Jack Gilbert
- Another Planet – Dunya Mikhail
- Be Kind, Rewind – Neil Silberblatt
- Black Momma Math – Kimberly Jae
- Boplicity or Jimmy Throws a Houseparty for Huey Newton – Daniel B. Summerhill
- Capitol Air – Allen Ginsburg
- Combat Primer – Charles Bukowski
- Crow Blacker Than Ever – Ted Hughes
- Dismiss Whatever Insults Your Own Soul – Walt Whitman
- Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads – Martha Rivera-Garrido
- Failing and Flying – Jack Gilbert
- Feel Mo – Michael Korson
- Footprints In Your Heart – Eleanor Roosvelt
- For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet – Joy Harjo
- Forgetfulness – Billy Collins
- Growing Old – Emma Rosenberg
- Half-light – Dāshaun Washington
- Homesick: A Plea for Our Planet – Andrea Gibson
- How She Heard It – Todd Davis
- How to Slay a Dragon – Rebecca Dupas
- I Talked to a Lady – Tanya Howden
- If You Knew – Ellen Bass
- Instructions before visiting Earth – James McCrae
- KINDNESS – Naomi Shihab Nye
- Love is Not All – Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Men – Maya Angelou
- Millennium Blessing – Stephen Levine
- my brain and heart divorced ~ john roedel
- Ode to Those Who Block Tunnels and Bridges – Sam Sax
- Old Man Eating Alone – Billy Collins
- Relax – Ellen Bass
- Shoveling Snow With Buddha – Billy Collins
- Sleeping in the Forest – Mary Oliver
- Small Stack of Books – Blake Nelson
- Soliloquy of the Solipsist – Sylvia Plath
- Squirrel – Lynn Ungar
- Tangled Up In Blue – Bob Dylan
- The Best Poem Ever – Brian Doyle
- The Caveman’s Lament – Brian Bilston
- The Four Noble Truths – Jake Onami Agnew
- The History of One Tough Motherfucker – Charles Bukowski
- The Layers – Stanley Kunitz
- The Long Boat – Stanley Kunitz
- The Moon is Full Tonight – Billy Collins
- The Shyness – Sharon Olds
- The War Works Hard – Dunya Mikhail
- The World is Both Burning and Blooming – Karen Salmansohn
- To Diego with Love – Frida Kalko
- Tryst with Death – Gina Puorro
- Two poems – Wendell Berry
- Two poems – Yehuda Amichai
- Two-bloods – Rolando Kattan
- Wage Peace – Mary Oliver
- War Primer – Bertholt Brecht
- We are the Trees – J Raymond
- We will meet, don’t be in such a rush – Hala alShrouf
- What I Learned From Listening to a Stutterer – Ellen Zorin
- Who Says Words With My Mouth? – Jalal ad-Din Rumi
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