Favorite Poem Project

Poet	Poem
Akhmatova, Anna	Akhmatova, “The Sentence”
Angelou, Maya	Angelou, “Caged Bird”
Ashbery, John	Ashbery, “The Improvement”
Auden, W.H.	Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”
Bishop, Elizabeth	Bishop, “At the Fishhouses”
Bishop, Elizabeth	Bishop, “One Art”
Blok, Aleksandr	Hannham, “The Night, the Street, the Streetlamp…”
Boland, Eavan	Boland, “The Emigrant Irish”
Bolina, Jaswinder	Bolina, “Make Believe”
Brooks, Gwendolyn	Brooks, “We Real Cool”
Burgos, Julia de	Burgos, “Ay, Ay, Ay, de la Grifa Negra”
Crane, Hart	Crane, “At Melville’s Tomb”
Cullen, Countee	Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”
Dickinson, Emily	Dickinson, “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” (#288)
Drayton, Michael	Drayton, “Since There’s No Help”
Dunbar, Paul Laurence	Dunbar, “The Party”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	Emerson, “Concord Hymn”
Frost, Robert	Frost, “For Once, Then, Something”
Frost, Robert	Frost, “OUT, OUT—”
Frost, Robert	Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Glück, Louise	Glück, “Lamentations”
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von	Goethe, “The Holy Longing”
Harjo, Joy	Harjo, “Fishing”
Heaney, Seamus	Heaney, “Death of a Naturalist”
Hopkins, Gerard Manley	Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”
Housman, A. E.	Housman, “Diffugere Nives”
Hughes, Langston	Hughes, “Merry-Go-Round”
Hughes, Langston	Hughes, “Minstrel Man”
Jones, Evan	Jones, “The Song of the Banana Man”
Khayyam, Omar	Khayyam, from “The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam”
Kipling, Rudyard	Kipling, “If—”
Komunyakaa, Yusef	Komunyakaa, “Facing It”
Kunitz, Stanley	Kunitz, “Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation”
Levertov, Denise	Levertov, “Settling”
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth	Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life”
Machado, Antonio	Machado, “Caminante, no hay camino/ Traveler, There Is No Road”
Marvell, Andrew	Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Menkiti, Ifeanyi	Menkiti, “When This Is Done”
Milton, John	Milton, From: Lycidas
Mistral, Gabriela	Mistral, “Piececitos/Little Feet”
Nemerov, Howard	Nemerov, “The Makers”
Neruda, Pablo	Neruda, “Soneto XVII/Sonnet XVII”
O'Hara, Frank	O’Hara, “POEM”
Owen, Wilfred	Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Parker, Pat	Parker, “Let Me Come to You Naked”
Plath, Sylvia	Plath, “Nick and the Candlestick”
Plath, Sylvia	Plath, “Polly’s Tree”
Po, Li	靜夜思 (On a Quiet Night)
Rimbaud, Arthur	Rimbaud, “Le Dormeur du Val/The Sleeper in the Valley”
Ritsos, Yannis	Ritsos, “Our Land”
Roethke, Theodore	Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz”
Roethke, Theodore	Roethke, “The Sloth”
Roethke, Theodore	Roethke, “The Waking”
Sassoon, Siegfried	Sassoon, “Absolution”
Sexton, Anne	Sexton, “Said the Poet to the Analyst”
Shakespeare, William	Shakespeare, “Sonnet 29”
Stevens, Wallace	Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West”
Stevens, Wallace	Stevens, “The Snow Man”
Stevenson, Robert Louis	Stevenson, “Block City”
Szymborska, Wisława	Szymborska, “Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition”
Tagore, Rabindranath	Tagore, From: Gitanjali
Tate, James	Tate, “The Lost Pilot”
Thayer, Ernest Lawrence	Thayer, “Casey at the Bat”
Walker, Margaret	Walker, “For My People”
Whitman, Walt	Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
Whitman, Walt	Whitman, From: Song of Myself (50 & 52)
Whitman, Walt	Whitman, From: Song of the Open Road
Yeats, William Butler	Yeats, “Politics”
Yeats, William Butler	Yeats, “When You Are Old”
Yoshitada, Sone No	Yoshitada, “Untitled Tanka”
Zawgee	Zawgee, “The Way of the Water-Hyacinth”

Save the Date: March 26-27, 2026

Please join the BU Center for the Humanities and the Favorite Poem Project for Pedestrian Cinemas. An illuminated projector will display ten short videos of regular people sharing and discussing their favorite poems on the 800 Commonwealth Avenue building.

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Featured Lesson Plan: Listening for Tone

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Favorite Poem Project

Americans Saying Poems They Love

Save the Date: March 26-27, 2026

Featured Lesson Plan: Listening for Tone

More Lesson Plans

Support the Favorite Poem Project