—Emily Dickinson, in a letter to her Aunt Katie Sweetser, 1880
They'll spend the summer
by Joshua Beckman
They'll spend the summer...
Digging Potatoes, Sebago, Maine
by Amy King
Summer squash and snap-beans gushed...
From October
by Louise Glück
Is it winter again, is it cold again...
Angel of Duluth
by Madelon Sprengnether
I lied a little. There are things I don’t want to tell you...
Done With
by Ann Stanford
My house is torn down...
The Public Garden
by Robert Lowell
Audio only
My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer
by Mark Strand
When the moon appears...
Telling the Bees
by Deborah Digges
It fell to me to tell the bees...
Lucinda Matlock
by Edgar Lee Masters
I went to the dances at Chandlerville...
They'll spend the summer
by Joshua Beckman
They'll spend the summer ...
Mother
by Herman de Coninck
What you do with time...
Poems about Weeds
From Vacant Lot with Pokeweed
by Amy Clampitt
Tufts, follicles, grubstake
They that have power to hurt and will do none (Sonnet 94)
by William Shakespeare
They that have power to hurt and will do none...
Tomorrow
by David Budbill
Tomorrow...
A Red Palm
by Gary Soto
You're in this dream of cotton plants...
Poetry Garden Landmarks
The Poet Homes of Key West
Jessie Porter's exotic garden became the center of Key West society, and artists and writers frequently gathered there, including Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Archibald MacLeish, and Thornton Wilder.
William Carlos Williams's Hometown
Surrounding the poet's home were flower gardens that Williams passionately tended to in his spare time. Many flowers, whether from his garden or in local fields, appear in his poems, including daisies, primroses, Queen Anne's lace, and tulips.
The Carl Sandburg Cottage
The flora around the house were carefully chosen to maintain the appearance of Sandburg's childhood and include daisies, black-eyed Susans, yarrow, and phlox. Behind the cottage, there is a small wooden park with a perennial garden and a red granite boulder known as Remembrance Rock where the ashes of Carl Sandburg and his wife are buried.
The Graves of Poets
Longtime civil rights advocate Dorothy Parker's ashes were scattered in a memorial garden created in her name at the NAACP headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland.
Poems about Flowers
The Satyr's Heart
by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Now I rest my head on the satyr's carved chest...
At Baia
by H. D.
I should have thought...
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
by John Keats
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight...
Blur
by Andrew Hudgins
Storms of perfume lift from honeysuckle...
From Littlefoot
by Charles Wright
This is the bird hour, peony blossoms falling bigger than wren hearts...
To My Mother Waiting on 10/01/54
by Teresa Carson
That October might have begun...
Nothing to Save
by D. H. Lawrence
There is nothing to save, now all is lost...
Without a Philosophy
by Elizabeth Morgan
Toward the end of this summer...
Advice to a Prophet
by Richard Wilbur
When you come, as you soon must, to the street of our city...
The Daffodils
by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud...
Botanica
by Eva Alexandra
They are everywhere—those sunflowers with the coal heart center. They riot...
Come Slowly—Eden!
by Emily Dickinson
Come slowly—Eden...
Spring Snow
by Arthur Sze
A spring snow coincides with plum blossoms...
This Was Once a Love Poem
by Jane Hirschfield
This was once a love poem...
Stanley Kunitz In Conversation
"I terraced our hillside plot of sand facing the bay," explains poet and gardener Stanley Kunitz, "and began to invent a garden that continues to this day to occupy me as a work of imagination still in progress. 'Stanley's Folly' is Elise's name for it. Provincetown, I might add, is a place where one is permitted to indulge in one's follies."