Poem of the Week Archives
Assistant Dean Sowle


Law school is often a relentlessly analytical enterprise. To help make sure we don't forget that there are other ways of perceiving the world and seeking for truths, I inaugurated a new feature of my Record page, the "Poem of the Week," in Fall 2005.

August 22, 2005
"Forgetfulness," by Billy Collins.

August 29, 2005
"The Three Goals," by David Budbill.

September 5, 2005
"Shirt," by Robert Pinsky (in honor of Labor Day).

September 12, 2005
"Not Only the Eskimos," by Lisel Mueller.

September 19, 2005
"Strange Meeting," by Wilfred Owen, the great war poet who died in the closing days of World War I.

September 26, 2005
"Dirge Without Music," by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

October 3, 2005
"Happiness," by Raymond Carver.

October 10, 2005
"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," by Dylan Thomas.

October 17, 2005
"Fire and Ice," by Robert Frost.

October 24, 2005
"Curriculum Vitae," by Lisel Mueller.

October 31, 2005
"I Died for Beauty," by Emily Dickinson.

November 7, 2005
"In Flanders Field," by Lt. Col. John McCrae. (Thanks to Sue Russell for suggesting this poem.)

November 14, 2005
"The First Dream," by Billy Collins.

November 21, 2005
"Romance," by Edgar Allan Poe. (Thanks to Amy Strege for suggesting this poem.)

December 5, 2005
"Spring and Fall," by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

December 12, 2005
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," by Maya Angelou.

December 19, 2005
"The Woman at the Washington Zoo," by Randall Jarrell.

January 16, 2006
"Chicago," by Carl Sandburg.

January 23, 2006
"Dream Deferred," by Langston Hughes.

January 30, 2006
"The moon has set...", by Sappho.

February 13, 2006
"Dover Beach," by Matthew Arnold.

February 20, 2006
"Sympathy," by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

February 27, 2006
"I Hear American Singing," by Walt Whitman.

March 6, 2006
"Lines," by Martha Collins.

March 20, 2006
Shakespeare's Sonnet 73.

March 27, 2006
"Lesson," by Forrest Hamer.

April 3, 2006
"Gentle Arms of Eden," by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. (In honor of Earth Day later this month. Thanks to Sue Russell for suggesting this poem.)

April 10, 2006
"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond," by e.e. cummings.

April 17, 2006
"A Supermarket in California," by Allen Ginsberg.

April 24, 2006
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree," by W.B. Yeats.

May 8, 2006
"Jabberwocky," by Lewis Carroll.

May 15, 2006
"Observation," by Dorothy Parker.

May 22 and May 29, 2006
"Sheltered Garden," by H.D.

June 5 and June 12, 2006
"Variations on the Word Love," by Margaret Atwood.

June 19 and June 26, 2006
"The Man in the Dead Machine," by Donald Hall (the new poet laureate of the United States).

July 3 and July 10, 2006
"Ode, July 4, 1857," by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

July 17 and July 24, 2006
"The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man," by Wallace Stevens.

July 31 and August 7, 2006
"Off the Record," by Ronald Wallace.

August 14, 2006
"The End of Summer," by Rachel Hadas.

August 21, 2006
"To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph," by Anne Sexton.

September 4, 2006
"A Way to Make a Living," by James Wright.

September 11, 2006
"The Man in the Dead Machine," by Donald Hall.

September 18, 2006
"Sea Fever," by John Masefield.

September 25, 2006
"Chemin de Fer," by Elizabeth Bishop.

October 2, 2006
"Suicide of a Moderate Dictator," by Emma Lazarus.

October 9, 2006
"The Death of a Soldier," by Wallace Stevens.

October 16, 2006

"Eleventh Floor Lies," Justice Warren Wolfson.

October 23, 2006
"The Brain -- is wider than the Sky," Emily Dickinson.

October 30, 2006

"The List of Famous Hats," by James Tate.

November 6, 2006
"The Possessive Case," by Lisel Mueller. (Scroll down a bit to see the poem.)

November 13, 2006
"To be of use," by Marge Piercy.

November 20, 2006
"Days We Would Rather Know," by Michael Blumenthal.

November 27, 2006
"Egg," by C.G. Hanzlicek.

December 4, 2006

"wrist-wrestling father," by Orval Lund. (Scroll down to see the poem.)

December 11, 2006

"There's a certain slant of light," by Emily Dickinson.

December 18, 2006
"Soybeans," by Thomas Alan Orr.

January 22, 2007

"Kentucky River Junction," by Wendell Berry.

January 29, 2007

"The Lawyer's Invocation to Spring," by Henry Howard Brownell. (Thanks to Motty Stone for this week's poem.)