Poem-a-Day

The only daily poetry series publishing new work by today’s poets.

Poem-a-day

A Poet

If I could be brave enough and live long enough I could crawl inside the life of every man, woman and child in America. After I had gone within them I could be born out of them. I could become something the like of which has never been seen before. We would see then what America is like.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 22, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson — Courtesy of Wikimedia

Previous Poems

Title	Author	Date
El Rastro	Orlando Ricardo Menes	10/04/2018
One Sweet Braid Down She Back	Cheryl Boyce-Taylor	10/03/2018
Out of the Woods	Krista Franklin	10/02/2018
Unmarked	Tim Seibles	10/01/2018
A September Night	George Marion McClellan	09/30/2018
The Past Is the Present	Marianne Moore	09/29/2018
now i’m bologna	José Olivarez	09/28/2018
Minneapolipstick	Rachel McKibbens	09/27/2018
Lies I Tell	Sara Borjas	09/26/2018
The Prophetess Sojourner Truth Discusses the Two Different Versions of Her Most Well-Known Speech, One Nearly Unknown and One Very Beloved Yet Mostly Untrue	Honorée Fanonne Jeffers	09/25/2018