Free Poetry eBooks

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Classical Poets

List of Clasical Poets, with links to their poems, from PoemHunter.com. Thanks again to you, PoemHunter.com, from the bottom of my heart!

http://www.poemhunter.com/classics/

Lyrics, Songs and Artists

PoemHunter.com has, just hold your breath, 1,26,006 songs and lyrics! and 10,148 artists!! Yet another thanks to you, PoemHunter.com!!!

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Top 500 Poems

This is another gift to poetry-lovers from PoemHunter.com. Thanks again to Poem Hunter.com.!

Link to 'Top 500 Poems' of PoemHunter.com:

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Top 500 Poets

PoemHunter.com gives a list of Top 500 Poets, with links to their poems, which is simply wonderful. Every poetry-lover should be grateful to them for this wonderful service. My grateful thanks to you, PoemHunter.com!

Link to ' Top 500 Poets' of PoemHunter.com :

http://www.poemhunter.com/p/t/l.asp?p=1&l=Top500

On Poetry-7: Wayne W.Dyer

Poetry is the language of the heart - Wayne W.Dyer

On Poetry-8: P.G.Wodehouse (THE ALARMING SPREAD OF POETRY)

To the thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we are becoming a nation of minor poets. In the good old days poets were for the most part confined to garrets, which they left only for the purpose of being ejected from the offices of magazines and papers to which they attempted to sell their wares. Nobody ever thought of reading a book of poems unless accompanied by a guarantee from the publisher that the author had been dead at least a hundred years. Poetry, like wine, certain brands of cheese, and public buildings, was rightly considered to improve with age; and no connoisseur could have dreamed of filling himself with raw, indigestible verse, warm from the maker.

Today, however, editors are paying real money for poetry; publishers are making a profit on books of verse; and many a young man who, had he been born earlier, would have sustained life on a crust of bread, is now sending for the manager to find out how the restaurant dares try to sell a fellow champagne like this as genuine Pommery Brut. Naturally this is having a marked effect on the life of the community. Our children grow to adolescence with the feeling that they can become poets instead of working. Many an embryo bill clerk has been ruined by the heady knowledge that poems are paid for at the rate of a dollar a line. All over the country promising young plasterers and rising young motormen are throwing up steady jobs in order to devote themselves to the new profession. On a sunny afternoon down in Washington Square one's progress is positively impeded by the swarms of young poets brought out by the warm weather. It is a horrible sight to see those unfortunate youths, who ought to be sitting happily at desks writing "Dear Sir, Your favor of the tenth inst. duly received and contents noted. In reply we beg to state...." wandering about with their fingers in their hair and their features distorted with the agony of composition, as they try to find rhymes to "cosmic" and "symbolism."

And, as if matters were not bad enough already, along comes Mr. Edgar Lee Masters and invents _vers libre_. It is too early yet to judge the full effects of this man's horrid discovery, but there is no doubt that he has taken the lid off and unleashed forces over which none can have any control. All those decent restrictions which used to check poets have vanished, and who shall say what will be the outcome?

Until Mr. Masters came on the scene there was just one thing which, like a salient fortress in the midst of an enemy's advancing army, acted as a barrier to the youth of the country. When one's son came to one and said, "Father, I shall not be able to fulfill your dearest wish and start work in the fertilizer department. I have decided to become a poet," although one could no longer frighten him from his purpose by talking of garrets and starvation, there was still one weapon left. "What about the rhymes, Willie?" you replied, and the eager light died out of the boy's face, as he perceived the catch in what he had taken for a good thing. You pressed your advantage. "Think of having to spend your life making one line rhyme with another! Think of the bleak future, when you have used up 'moon' and 'June,' 'love' and 'dove,' 'May' and 'gay'! Think of the moment when you have ended the last line but one of your poem with 'windows' or 'warmth' and have to buckle to, trying to make the thing couple up in accordance with the rules! What then, Willie?"

Next day a new hand had signed on in the fertilizer department.

But now all that has changed. Not only are rhymes no longer necessary, but editors positively prefer them left out. If Longfellow had been writing today he would have had to revise "The Village Blacksmith" if he wanted to pull in that dollar a line. No editor would print stuff like:

Under the spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands.

The smith a brawny man is he

With large and sinewy hands.

If Longfellow were living in these hyphenated, free and versy days, he would find himself compelled to take his pen in hand and dictate as follows:

In life I was the village smith,

I worked all day But

I retained the delicacy of my complexion

Because

I worked in the shade of the chestnut tree

Instead of in the sun

Like Nicholas Blodgett, the expressman.

I was large and strong

Because

I went in for physical culture

And deep breathing

And all those stunts.

I had the biggest biceps in Spoon River.

Who can say where this thing will end? _Vers libre_ is within the reach of all. A sleeping nation has wakened to the realization that there is money to be made out of chopping its prose into bits. Something must be done shortly if the nation is to be saved from this menace. But what? It is no good shooting Edgar Lee Masters, for the mischief has been done, and even making an example of him could not undo it. Probably the only hope lies in the fact that poets never buy other poets' stuff. When once we have all become poets, the sale of verse will cease or be limited to the few copies which individual poets will buy to give to their friends.

Wikipedia article on "P.G.WODEHOUSE":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.G.Wodehouse
Grateful thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Poem of the day-14: 'My Poems' by E.V.Ramakrishnan

My first poem was a neat one –
The octagonal world trapped
In the geometry of words.
My metaphors were accurate
Like an atomic watch.
I wrote more and less sure of myself
And my prepositions.
I was no more the poet of many beginnings.
I saw time growing
On the tower-clocks of trees
And the sky stuffed with lizards.
My poems were no more neat.
Now I have troubles with my landlord.
I worry over my poems growing thinner.
My last one was
As short as a curse.
I sit and watch
The evening explode into
Roof-tops of boys and a lot of kites.
I hear a boy sing,
“Rose is red;
Grass is green and
Remember me
When I am
Dead, dead, dead.

- Debonair, Dec.1978

Poem of the day-13: 'Today'

Look to this day
For it is the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The vanities and realities of your existence:
The glory of action,
The bliss of growth,
The splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today well lived makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness and
Every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

- The Salvation of the Dawn

Poem of the day-12: 'My Plea' by Margaret Allen

I am a cube, with five bad sides.

I don't condemn your hate or fears.

It is my fault you cannot understand.

Please turn me over and find my other side,

The side that loves and feels for you.

It longs to give you care and understanding

And yet I know not how.

Do not desert me, I'm alone.

I know I have your love and care.

But I cannot receive your feelings yet.

I hate myself for that.

Please give your help just now.

Courtesy: New Poets 71

Poem of the day-11: 'Mind Lost' by Tony Charlton

You cannot find your mind?

Where did you leave it last?

Was it in the rose-garden,

Where you danced for days in perfumed arbours,

Plaited rainbows of dreams in bottomless pits,

Sang songs to the sun and played with the moon?

Yes, perhaps it was.

But your world has gone to sleep.

You must trip alone through the midnight flowers,

Bathe alone in the moon-light beams,

Search alone for your blown-out mind.

The dew of star-light rests upon your brow

And golden haired fire falls across your eyes.

The bird of the morning has spread his wings,
He has winged his age-worn flight

That you may find your mind and

Once more dance in the garden

In the sweet morning of life.

Poem of the day-10: 'The Long-distance Runner' by Jimmy Avasia

This is the man of the night.

When it is dark, his despair finds eloquence.

When it is day, he carries it,

In his dead-pan manner.

He will never display,

This poetic terror on a banner.

This man has always been old.

He has always been aware,

That no future is permanent.

He is the genesis of despair,

Born as it were, in an obituary column.

This man is a whirlpool,

Caught in revolving doors.

He is churned in a circle of self-pity.

He and his life were banished once.

He is searching for bliss.

If it ever comes, it will be anonymous.

This man is, in a sense, destitute.

He wants a dose of happiness,

But they only give him truth.

This man walks to the sea,

Nursing his throat's perennial lump.

But he will not jump.

Courtesy: Debonair, Sep.1979

Poem of the day-9: 'The Vagabond' by John Drinkwater

I know the pools where the grayling rise,

I know the trees where the filberts fall,

I know the woods where the red fox lies,

The twisted elms where the brown owls call

And I've seldom a shilling to call my own,

And there's never a girl I'd marry,

I thank the Lord I am a rolling stone

With never a care to carry.

I talk to the stars as they come and go

On every night from July to June,

I'm free of the speech of the winds that blow,

And I know what weather will sing to what tune.

I sow no seed and I pay no rent,

And I thank no man for his bounties,

But I've a treasure that's never spent,

I am lord of a dozen counties.

Wikipedia article on "JOHN DRINKWATER":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Drinkwater_(playwright)

Preludes 1921-22 by John Drinkwater from Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/p192110.txt

Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.