Ineligible Poems
Only poems in the Poetry Out Loud print or online anthologies are eligible for competition. Due to
copyright issues and the need to periodically refresh the Poetry Out Loud anthology, some poems
have been retired. The following poems have been removed from the anthology and are
ineligible for the 2011-2012 season.
Adding It Up by Philip Booth
After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa by Robert Hass
Agoraphobia by Linda Pastan
Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100 by Martín Espada
Altruism by Molly Peacock
Ancapagari by Carolyn Forché
Ancestor by Jimmy Santiago Baca
aunt jemima by Lucille Clifton
Authority by W.S. Merwin
The Bad Old Days by Kenneth Rexroth
Baseball by Gail Mazur
Beat! Beat! Drums! by Walt Whitman
Beautiful Black Men by Nikki Giovanni
Beauty by Tony Hoagland
Becune Point by Derek Walcott
The Bells of San Blas by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Birches by Robert Frost
Booker T. and W.E.B. by Dudley Randall
Buried at Springs by James Schuyler
Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Taylor
Come Up from the Fields, Father by Walt Whitman
The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
Dancers Exercising by Amy Clampitt
Detroit, Tomorrow by Phillip Levine
Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland
Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears
by Maurice Kilwein Guevara
Dream Song 14 by John Berryman
A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe
Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats
The Evening of the Mind by Donald Justice
Fable for Blackboard by George Starbuck
Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
Father's Old Blue Cardigan by Anne Carson
Fever 103° by Sylvia Plath
The Fire Fetched Down by George Bradley
The Flea by John Donne
For Fiddle-de-de by John Hollander
For My People by Margaret Walker
Forgetfulness by Billy Collins
Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden
Freeway 280 by Lorna Dee Cervantes
The Glove and the Lions by Leigh Hunt
Hate Poem by Julie Sheehan
I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds
I Grant You Ample Leave by George Eliot
The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens
If— by Rudyard Kipling
Interior at Petworth: From Turner by Rosanna Warren
Iowa City: Early April by Robert Hass
The Kiss by W.S. DiPiero
Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye by Gerald Stern
The Lifeguard by James Dickey
Lincoln, Man of the People by Edwin Markham
Lincoln by Delmore Schwartz
Litany by Billy Collins
Ma Rainey by Sterling A. Brown
Madmen by Billy Collins
The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown by Walt Whitman
Meditations on the South Valley: Part XX by Jimmy Santiago Baca
The Minefield by Diane Thiel
Mirror by James Merrill
the mother by Gwendolyn Brooks
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
Mr. Edwards and the Spider by Robert Lowell
Mrs. Krikorian by Sharon Olds
My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn
Next Day by Randall Jarrell
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
The Old Swimmin’ Hole by James Whitcomb Riley
Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
Playing Dead by Andrew Hudgins
Progressive Health by Carl Dennis
Report to Crazy Horse by William E. Stafford
Rhapsody by Frank O’Hara
Rough Music by Deborah Digges
Salomé by Ai
Scary Movies by Kim Addonizio
The Secret of the Machines by Rudyard Kipling
Sentimental by Albert Goldbarth
Shirt by Robert Pinsky
The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert Service
Siren Song by Margaret Atwood
The Slave Auction by France Ellen Watkins Harper
A Song for Soweto by June Jordan
Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds by William Shakespeare
Sonnet CXXX: My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun by William Shakespeare
The Spider by Richard Eberhart
Spring Letter by Carl Dennis
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
Switchblade by Michael Ryan
Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Syrinx by Amy Clampitt
Teaching English from an Old Composition Book by Gary Soto
That Country by Grace Paley
Theme for English B by Langston Hughes
To My Mother by Wendell Berry
The Truth about Small Towns by David Baker
Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward by Anne Sexton
Vita Nova by Louise Glück
Walking Down Park by Nikki Giovanni
War is Kind by Stephen Crane
What For by Garret Hongo
Who Understands Me but Me by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O’Hara
Wild Peaches by Elinor Wylie
Winter by Marie Ponsot
Writ on the Steps of Puerto Rican Harlem by Gregory Corso