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
As You Never Bothered to Return My Call	August Kleinzahler	10/01/2013
Waiting for Rain	Ellen Bass	09/30/2013
Sonnet-To Science	Edgar Allan Poe	09/29/2013
In a Boat	D. H. Lawrence	09/28/2013
For Crying Out Loud	Terrance Hayes	09/27/2013
Worst Things First	Mark Bibbins	09/26/2013
No mode of excitement is absolutely colorless	Mónica de la Torre	09/25/2013
My Childhood	Matthew Zapruder	09/24/2013
The Translator's Dilemma	Ann Lauterbach	09/23/2013
The Maldive Shark	Herman Melville	09/22/2013