Famous Dakota Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Dakota poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dakota poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dakota poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Heart of Copper

by Edward Dorn
 The Candidate, answering a question
about El Salvador, generalized
by saying he thought
we should support human rights
everywhere they were being abrogated--
South Korea, South Africa
or South Yemen. He didn't have
the moral perspicuity
to mention South Dakota.
Perhaps it's too far north....Read more of this...

Having Lost My Sons I Confront The Wreckage Of The Moon: Christmas 1960

by James Wright
 After dark
Near the South Dakota border,
The moon is out hunting, everywhere,
Delivering fire,
And walking down hallways
Of a diamond.

Behind a tree,
It ights on the ruins
Of a white city
Frost, frost.

Where are they gone
Who lived there?

Bundled away under wings
And dark faces.

I am sick
Of it, and I go on
Living, alone, alone,
Past the charred silos, past the hidden graves
Of Chippewas and Norwegians.

This cold winter
Moon spills...Read more of this...

Italian Music in Dakota

by Walt Whitman
 THROUGH the soft evening air enwrinding all, 
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, 
In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and cornets’ notes, 
Electric, pensive, turbulent artificial, 
(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,
Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here, 
Not to the city’s fresco’d rooms, not to the audience of the opera house,...Read more of this...

Whirls

by Carl Sandburg
 NEITHER rose leaves gathered in a jar—respectably in Boston—these—nor drops of Christ blood for a chalice—decently in Philadelphia or Baltimore.

Cinders—these—hissing in a marl and lime of Chicago—also these—the howling of northwest winds across North and South Dakota—or the spatter of winter spray on sea rocks of Kamchatka....Read more of this...

Outside Fargo North Dakota

by James Wright
 Along the sprawled body of the derailed Great Northern freight car,
I strike a match slowly and lift it slowly.
No wind.

Beyond town, three heavy white horses
Wade all the way to their shoulders
In a silo shadow.

Suddenly the freight car lurches.
The door slams back, a man with a flashlight
Calls me good evening.
I nod as I write good evening, lonely
And sick for home....Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

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