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Best Famous Alaska Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Alaska poems. This is a select list of the best famous Alaska poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Alaska poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of alaska poems.

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Written by David Berman | Create an image from this poem

Self-Portrait At 28

 I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.
It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill" and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you.
I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it.
My childhood hasn't made good material either mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few stand out moments, popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer a certain amount of pride at school everytime they called it "our sun" and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now.
If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf.
As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.
II two I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party.
It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you have learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.
Sometimes I am buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here.
" Oftentimes there is a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image.
I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead a strange wife sleeping beside me.
In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).
I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet, but I've begun to notice that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years.
III three Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is.
How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds of this morning when you were getting ready for work.
I was sitting by the space heater numbly watching you dress and when you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin.
If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduct to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking when you don't know, which is why kids grow ever more stupid.
A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness of a teenager's promise.
Not like I'm dying for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but.
.
.
Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declarations.
I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here.
IV four There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now.
It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid.
I'm not saying it should be this way.
All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones leaving everyone feeling quite nervous and split in two.
We will travel to Mars even as folks on Earth are still ripping open potato chip bags with their teeth.
Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up.
He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.
V five The hill out my window is still looking beautiful suffused in a kind of gold national park light and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything.
I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set.
I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact -- not even a place but an occasion a reality for real things.
Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic or religious with this piece: "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor possibly dreaming of me that part of me that would beat a dog for no good reason no reason that a dog could see.
I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it and if it turns out that what I say is untrue then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one.
VI six I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margarine commercials plainly ruined by Madison Avenue though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore.
Have they moved? Let's get an update on this.
But first I have some business to take care of.
I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together until a bird calls or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head.
You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28.


Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

Homework

 Homage Kenneth Koch


If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
 scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
 the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
 Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
 out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
 Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
 Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
 the tattletail Gray of U.
S.
Central American police state, & put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

A Tall Man

 THE MOUTH of this man is a gaunt strong mouth.
The head of this man is a gaunt strong head.
The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians.
The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans, Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown.
The neck of this man is pith of buffalo prairie, old longing and new beckoning of corn belt or cotton belt, Either a proud Sequoia trunk of the wilderness Or huddling lumber of a sawmill waiting to be a roof.
Brother mystery to man and mob mystery, Brother cryptic to lifted cryptic hands, He is night and abyss, he is white sky of sun, he is the head of the people.
The heart of him the red drops of the people, The wish of him the steady gray-eagle crag-hunting flights of the people.
Humble dust of a wheel-worn road, Slashed sod under the iron-shining plow, These of service in him, these and many cities, many borders, many wrangles between Alaska and the Isthmus, between the Isthmus and the Horn, and east and west of Omaha, and east and west of Paris, Berlin, Petrograd.
The blood in his right wrist and the blood in his left wrist run with the right wrist wisdom of the many and the left wrist wisdom of the many.
It is the many he knows, the gaunt strong hunger of the many.
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

The Sins of Kalamazoo

 THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.
And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
They run to drabs and grays—and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow—and some: We should worry.
Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the map And the passenger trains stop there And the factory smokestacks smoke And the grocery stores are open Saturday nights And the streets are free for citizens who vote And inhabitants counted in the census.
Saturday night is the big night.
Listen with your ears on a Saturday night in Kalamazoo And say to yourself: I hear America, I hear, what do I hear? Main street there runs through the middle of the twon And there is a dirty postoffice And a dirty city hall And a dirty railroad station And the United States flag cries, cries the Stars and Stripes to the four winds on Lincoln’s birthday and the Fourth of July.
Kalamazoo kisses a hand to something far off.
Kalamazoo calls to a long horizon, to a shivering silver angel, to a creeping mystic what-is-it.
“We’re here because we’re here,” is the song of Kalamazoo.
“We don’t know where we’re going but we’re on our way,” are the words.
There are hound dogs of bronze on the public square, hound dogs looking far beyond the public square.
Sweethearts there in Kalamazoo Go to the general delivery window of the postoffice And speak their names and ask for letters And ask again, “Are you sure there is nothing for me? I wish you’d look again—there must be a letter for me.
” And sweethearts go to the city hall And tell their names and say,“We want a license.
” And they go to an installment house and buy a bed on time and a clock And the children grow up asking each other, “What can we do to kill time?” They grow up and go to the railroad station and buy tickets for Texas, Pennsylvania, Alaska.
“Kalamazoo is all right,” they say.
“But I want to see the world.
” And when they have looked the world over they come back saying it is all like Kalamazoo.
The trains come in from the east and hoot for the crossings, And buzz away to the peach country and Chicago to the west Or they come from the west and shoot on to the Battle Creek breakfast bazaars And the speedbug heavens of Detroit.
“I hear America, I hear, what do I hear?” Said a loafer lagging along on the sidewalks of Kalamazoo, Lagging along and asking questions, reading signs.
Oh yes, there is a town named Kalamazoo, A spot on the map where the trains hesitate.
I saw the sign of a five and ten cent store there And the Standard Oil Company and the International Harvester And a graveyard and a ball grounds And a short order counter where a man can get a stack of wheats And a pool hall where a rounder leered confidential like and said: “Lookin’ for a quiet game?” The loafer lagged along and asked, “Do you make guitars here? Do you make boxes the singing wood winds ask to sleep in? Do you rig up strings the singing wood winds sift over and sing low?” The answer: “We manufacture musical instruments here.
” Here I saw churches with steeples like hatpins, Undertaking rooms with sample coffins in the show window And signs everywhere satisfaction is guaranteed, Shooting galleries where men kill imitation pigeons, And there were doctors for the sick, And lawyers for people waiting in jail, And a dog catcher and a superintendent of streets, And telephones, water-works, trolley cars, And newspapers with a splatter of telegrams from sister cities of Kalamazoo the round world over.
And the loafer lagging along said: Kalamazoo, you ain’t in a class by yourself; I seen you before in a lot of places.
If you are nuts America is nuts.
And lagging along he said bitterly: Before I came to Kalamazoo I was silent.
Now I am gabby, God help me, I am gabby.
Kalamazoo, both of us will do a fadeaway.
I will be carried out feet first And time and the rain will chew you to dust And the winds blow you away.
And an old, old mother will lay a green moss cover on my bones And a green moss cover on the stones of your postoffice and city hall.
Best of all I have loved your kiddies playing run-sheep-run And cutting their initials on the ball ground fence.
They knew every time I fooled them who was fooled and how.
Best of all I have loved the red gold smoke of your sunsets; I have loved a moon with a ring around it Floating over your public square; I have loved the white dawn frost of early winter silver And purple over your railroad tracks and lumber yards.
The wishing heart of you I loved, Kalamazoo.
I sang bye-lo, bye-lo to your dreams.
I sang bye-lo to your hopes and songs.
I wished to God there were hound dogs of bronze on your public square, Hound dogs with bronze paws looking to a long horizon with a shivering silver angel, a creeping mystic what-is-it.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Rhyme Of The Restless Ones

 We couldn't sit and study for the law;
 The stagnation of a bank we couldn't stand;
For our riot blood was surging, and we didn't need much urging
 To excitements and excesses that are banned.
So we took to wine and drink and other things, And the devil in us struggled to be free; Till our friends rose up in wrath, and they pointed out the path, And they paid our debts and packed us o'er the sea.
Oh, they shook us off and shipped us o'er the foam, To the larger lands that lure a man to roam; And we took the chance they gave Of a far and foreign grave, And we bade good-by for evermore to home.
And some of us are climbing on the peak, And some of us are camping on the plain; By pine and palm you'll find us, with never claim to bind us, By track and trail you'll meet us once again.
We are the fated serfs to freedom -- sky and sea; We have failed where slummy cities overflow; But the stranger ways of earth know our pride and know our worth, And we go into the dark as fighters go.
Yes, we go into the night as brave men go, Though our faces they be often streaked with woe; Yet we're hard as cats to kill, And our hearts are reckless still, And we've danced with death a dozen times or so.
And you'll find us in Alaska after gold, And you'll find us herding cattle in the South.
We like strong drink and fun, and, when the race is run, We often die with curses in our mouth.
We are wild as colts unbroke, but never mean.
Of our sins we've shoulders broad to bear the blame; But we'll never stay in town and we'll never settle down, And we'll never have an object or an aim.
No, there's that in us that time can never tame; And life will always seem a careless game; And they'd better far forget -- Those who say they love us yet -- Forget, blot out with bitterness our name.


Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Evil Seekers

 We are born with luck
which is to say with gold in our mouth.
As new and smooth as a grape, as pure as a pond in Alaska, as good as the stem of a green bean-- we are born and that ought to be enough, we ought to be able to carry on from that but one must learn about evil, learn what is subhuman, learn how the blood pops out like a scream, one must see the night before one can realize the day, one must listen hard to the animal within, one must walk like a sleepwalker on the edge of a roof, one must throw some part of her body into the devil's mouth.
Odd stuff, you'd say.
But I'd say you must die a little, have a book of matches go off in your hand, see your best friend copying your exam, visit an Indian reservation and see their plastic feathers, the dead dream.
One must be a prisoner just once to hear the lock twist into his gut.
After all that one is free to grasp at the trees, the stones, the sky, the birds that make sense out of air.
But even in a telephone booth evil can seep out of the receiver and we must cover it with a mattress, and then tear it from its roots and bury it, bury it.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry