Hey! I just found out that I have to do a 20 minute presentation on a poem of a popular American poet. I’m really not a huge fan of poetry to begin with, so if anybody knows of any good poems, it would be really appreciated. This doesn’t just have to be a thread of suggestions, either. Maybe it can be a discussion of really good poems, too.
Eutychus55 will probably be by soon to hit you with the Do Your Own Damn Homework paddle. Far be it from me to deprive him of his pleasures, but you might take this response as a gentle hint.
That being said, why not do an end-run and pick a REAL popular American poet? Edgar A. Guest, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox?
They both produced reams of claptrap, and made a mint from it. A quick Internet search will put you in touch with their *oeuvre.
Why not go with the best? Robert Frost fits that bill, IMHO. I’d suggest The Witch of Coos, Directive, or one of my personal favorites, Wild Grapes. At any rate you can’t go wrong with Robert Frost. Thoe poems I suggest here could easily fill a 20 minute time slot.
OTH, if you really want to confuse everyone, try Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens.
Good Luck and Have Fun…
Yeah, yeah. I know that I’m going to have to do this assignment all by myself. I really don’t know what’s out there, as far as American Poetry goes, and internet searches keep giving me useless information. I just need to find a relatively interesting poem that I can talk about for 20 minutes.
Try “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams. There’s a lot there.
For a long poem, try T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” or shock your teacher and try Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl.”
As a popular poet, there’s Ogden Nash. Dig up “Life Magazine” a week or two before Superbowl III and pick one of his poems about the invincible Baltimore Colts . . . .
:beating you over the head with a do your own homework shoe:
You have to do a 20 minute presentation but you haven’t been exposed to any poems that you can pick from?
I think you should track down a book called The Norton Anthology of American Poetry, read the entire thing, and then choose the poem most relevant to you. 
Try Theodore Roethke - “My Papa’s Waltz” or “I Knew A Woman” should give you lots of fun.
Mark Strand and W.S. Merwin are terrific American poets.
I recommend Merwin’s book The Carrier of Ladders, for which he won the Pulitzer in 1967, IIRC. I love the style he used in the '60s (his later stuff leaves me dry). You can find his ‘60s-era poetry in a collection called The Second Four Books of Poetry – these are his four best books, in my proud opinion. His poetry is breathtaking, not only symbolic but mythical, quiet, and ominous. Very serious. The Carrier of Ladders is full of subtle terror. You get to the end of a poem and you exhale slowly, wide-eyed. I wish to God I could write like him.
Here is a link to some of his poems: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merwin/merwin.htm
A google search will find you his bio, commentary, etc. He’s won (deservedly) many awards.
Mark Strand won the Nobel prize for poetry in 1999. I prefer his earlier poems, too. Reasons for Moving and Darker are excellent collections. He writes very simply, but with exquisite precision and care. Some of his poems almost sound like stories you’d tell to children, but…not.
Here’s a good link to his bio, commentary, other links, etc.: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/strand/strand.htm
Also, Wallace Stevens, especially his famous “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” is well worth exploring.
The link above that I gave for W.S. Merwin will send you to a page of commentary. I found a link to his poetry, but I’m hesitant to post it because the page doesn’t mention whether or not they had permission to reproduce his poems.
I’ll tell you this, though…my favorite line of Merwin’s is:
…my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.
–from “When You Go Away”
really confuse the teacher- try bukowski or rollins. i think that their stuff is still in print.
i also second all the suggestins made by realitychuck-- great poets!!
also by ts eliot is “old possum’s book of practical cats”, on which the musical “cats” is based. they are a little long, but funny!!!
I would suggest that this site would be of great use for a presentation–it contains, among other things, brief extracts from critics’ writings on various poems:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/
I’m not sure that I’m a big fan of Cary Nelson’s anthology, which the site is intended to promote–it’s got a lot of agitprop crap in it, & its account of the modernist post-Williams/Pound line of American poetry is badly skewed–but it’s worth a look, has some useful inclusions (Melvin Tolson, for instance) & the site is definitely helpful.
My own vote would be that if the original poster is really completely unacquainted with modern American poetry, then texts like Eliot’s The Waste Land or Stevens’ Sunday Morning are not very good places to start–they are famously difficult poems. Popular poets like Frost, E.A. Robinson, Langston Hughes, Edna St Vincent Millay, Sandburg, e.e. cummings &c are a much better first step. --N
Shock the teacher with “Howl”. Please. You want to shock the teacher, and in the process creep out the class, go with The Sheep Child by James Dickey (the guy who wrote Deliverence. Warning: not for those with weak stomachs.
If, on the other hand, you don’t want to get suspended, Frost is a good idea. “Birches”, “Home Burial” and “The Death of the Hired Man” are my favorites.
Emily Dickensen is the greatest American lyric poet, and hers are shorter and very easy to memorize. “Success” is a goldmine of good stuff.
That’s actually the book that we’re using, and there are lots of great poems in it, most of which I’ve heard of and enjoy. The problem is that I have to find one with enough substance to warrant 20 minutes of talking. Oh by the way this is for a college class, so it’s doubtful that I would be suspended for much of anything.
Ew! Farmyard fornication will definitely not get me a good grade in my English class.
What, nobody’s mentioned Poe yet? “The Raven” is one of my personal favorite poems, and several others by him are certainly on my list. If you want something likely to impress your teacher with your historical grounding, you could try Phyllis Wheatly. Or, for something completely different, how about Bob Dylan? A poem is no less a poem for being set to music.
Some other American poets that come to mind:
Carl Sandburg
Shel Silverstein
Maya Angelou
Dr. Seuss (hey, why not?)
Cecil Adams
Francis Scott Key
And a few other poems for whom I can’t recall the author offhand:
The dedication on the Statue of Liberty
“The Cremation of Sam McGee”
“Casey at the Bat”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Frost or Eliott, and either of them is likely to land you a good grade, but consider that half the class is probably going to do something by Frost or Eliott. Myself, I’d try to go for something a bit different. Of course, this depends on your teacher, too: Some don’t reward creativity.
Check out the book “Satan Says” by Sharon Olds. The title poem alone is worth a good 20 minutes, plus it’s contemporary, relevant, and has some really awesome cuss words.
She also has many poems without cuss words, if you prefer. At any rate, and excellent poet with some really hurtful stuff.
HTH
karol
Mary Oliver. The teacher will love you.
Especially this one. A poem of great self-compassion and giving yourself to the greater good of the world.
Also recommended, also by by Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’.
if you really want to elicit groans of pain, check out julia moore, the sweet singer of michigan. truly some of the worst poetry ever written, and published!! samuel clemens was a huge fan of her awful writing.
http://www.wmich.edu/english/txt/Moore/
there is also an annual “julia moore poetry contest” sponsored by the ann arbor library, which has had some absolutely hysterical poems written for it. but of course, those haven’t been published by “great american poets”, so you probably couldn’t use them.
This is short and sweet:
**
silence
.is
a
looking
bird:the
turn
ing;edge,of
life
(inquiry before snow**
- e.e.cummings