20th Century Poetry

When I was 18 I loved old poetry but hardly liked any of the modern stuff at all. Not any more! Here are some of the 20th/21st Century poems I love.

Rather than infringe copyrights myself by putting the texts on my own website, as much as possible, I'm piggybacking on other peoples' infringement of the same copyrights by linking to external sites... If you like the poem, please buy the book it comes from!

I've aimed for links to reliable sites wherever possible, and have generally provided a link to more than one site for any given poem. The links are the plus signs and asterisks on the right.

I could easily have listed three or four times as many poems, but I wanted to be a little more selective than that, and just include my very favorites.

A. E. Housman
He would not stay for me	He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?	*
Adrian Henri
Tonight at Noon	Tonight at noon	+ +
Adrian Mitchell
My Friend the Talking Elevator of Tokyo	The Hotel Elevator speaks to me	*
Watch Your Step - I'm Drenched	In Manchester there are a thousand puddles	+
Alan Jenkins
The Breakfast	That day, I filled the house with fruit,	*
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Love and Sleep	Lying asleep between the strokes of night	+ +
Andrew Motion
On the Table	I would like to make it clear that I have bought	+
Anna Swir
You Died	You really died in me, not when	*
Anne Stevenson
Poem for a Daughter	"I think I'm going to have it,"	*
Beatrice Garland
Undressing	Like slipping stitches	+
Brian Patten
Sometimes it Happens	And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then	+ +
C.P. Cavafy
Come Back	Come back often and take hold of me	+ +
Carol Ann Duffy
Anne Hathaway	The bed we loved in was a spinning world	*
First Love	Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words	+
Valentine	Not a red rose or a satin heart.	+ +
Words, Wide Night	Somewhere on the other side of this wide night	+ +
Caroline Bird
Multitude	An army of you, hiding at the back of my eyes,	*
Catherine Smith
The New Bride	Dying, darling, is the easy bit. Fifty paracetamol,	*
Chase Twichell
The Condom Tree	Pleasure must slip	*
Christopher Logue
Poem	If the night flights keep you awake	*
Colette Bryce
Nevers	Passions never spoken	*
Song for a Stone	You are at the bottom of my mind	*
Song of the Vagrant	I have no ties here, not even you	*
Deryn Rees Jones
Calcium	Because I love the very bones of you,	*
Dorothy Nimmo
Years later	when I see his writing on an envelope, I think	*
Dylan Thomas
In My Craft or Sullen Art	In my craft or sullen art	+ +
Edna St Vincent Millay
Ebb	I know what my heart is like	+ +
Elizabeth Jennings
Absence	I visited the place where last we met	+ +
Erich Fried
Lots of Things	Lots of things	*
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Be Near Me	You who demolish me, you whom I love	+ +
Fleur Adcock
Kissing	The young are walking on the riverbank	*
Hugo Williams
In the Blindfold Hours	In the blindfold hours	*
Saturday Morning	Everyone who made love the night before	+ +
The Ribbon	I thought she'd taken all her things	*
James Fenton
I’ll Explain	It's something you say at your peril	*
In Paris With You	Don’t talk to me of love. I’ve had an earful	+ +
Nothing	I take a jewel from a junk-shop tray	*
James K. Baxter
I have cut from my heart	I have cut from my heart	*
Jenny Joseph
The sun has burst the sky	The sun has burst the sky	+ +
Jo Shapcott
Life	My life as a bat	*
Vegetable Love	I'd like to say the fridge	*
Joyce Sutphen
Naming the Stars	This present tragedy will eventually	+ +
Judith Wright
Age To Youth	The sooty bush in the park	*
Julia Copus
In Defence of Adultery	We don't fall in love: it rises through us	*
Kate Clanchy
Patagonia	I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured	*
Louis MacNeice
Entirely	If we could get the hang of it entirely	+ +
Margaret Atwood
Late Night	Late night and rain wakes me, a downpour	*
Variations on the Word "Sleep"	I would like to watch you sleeping	+ +
Mary Oliver
Wild Geese	You do not have to be good.	+ +
Matthew Sweeney
The Attic	I've finished my mural of you naked,	*
Maura Dooley
What every woman should carry	My mother gave me the prayer to Saint Theresa	*
Maya Angelou
Tears	Tears	*
Michael Ondaatje
The Strange Case	My dog's assumed my alter ego.	*
Miroslav Holub
What the heart is like	Officially the heart	*
Moyra Donaldson
Infidelities	After he'd gone	*
Muriel Rukeyser
Yes	It's like a tap-dance	+
Ogden Nash
To My Valentine	More than a catbird hates a cat	+ +
Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal
Song	Life is ours in vain	+
Pablo Neruda (trans. Merwin)
Tonight I Can Write	Tonight I can write the saddest lines	+ +
Philip Larkin
Maiden Name	Marrying left your maiden name disused	+ +
Untitled	We met at the end of the party	+
Rainer Maria Rilke
You who never arrived	You who never arrived	+ +
Raymond Carver
Late Fragment	And did you get what	+ +
Robert Frost
Fire and Ice	Some say the world will end in fire	+
Moon Compasses	I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause	+ +
Roger McGough
Defying Gravity	Gravity is one of the oldest tricks in the book.	*
Rosemary Tonks
Story of a Hotel Room	Thinking we were safe - insanity.	*
Sasha Moorsom
Jewels in my hand	I hold dead friends like jewels in my hand	*
Sheila Wingfield
Winter	The tree still bends over the lake,	*
Stevie Smith
Pad, pad	I always remember your beautiful flowers	+ +
Sylvia Plath
Mirror	I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.	+ +
Thom Gunn
The Hug	It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined	+ +
Vicki Feaver
Ironing	I used to iron everything	+
Vikram Seth
All You Who Sleep Tonight	All you who sleep tonight	+ +
Protocols	What can I say to you? How can I now retract	+
Vladimir Holan
Meeting in a lift	We stepped into a lift, the two of us alone	+
W. H. Auden
As I walked out one evening	As I walked out one evening	+ +
Few and Simple	Whenever you are thought, the mind	*
If I Could Tell You	Time will say nothing but I told you so	+ +
Lullaby	Lay your sleeping head, my love	+ +
Tell me the truth about love	Some say that love's a little boy	+ +
Weldon Kees
Villanelle	The crack is moving down the wall.	*
Wendy Cope
After The Lunch	On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes,	*
Nine-line Triolet	Here's a fine mess we got ourselves into,	*
William Carlos Williams
This is just to say	I have eaten	+ +

A Page of Modern and Contemporary Poetry