The Far Field
by Theodore Roethke | 
Garbage
by A. R. Ammons | 
Lighthead
by Terrance Hayes | 
The Bridge
by Hart Crane | 
Actual Air
by David Berman | 
Spring and All
by William Carlos Williams | 
Words Under the Words
by Naomi Shihab Nye | 
The Lives of the Heart
by Jane Hirshfield | 
The Art of Drowning
by Billy Collins | 
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
by Oscar Wilde | 
Sappho
by Bliss Carman | 
Loose Woman
by Sandra Cisneros | 
The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot | 
The Leaf and the Cloud
by Mary Oliver | 
Questions About Angels
by Billy Collins | 
Devotions
by Mary Oliver | 
Thirst
by Mary Oliver | 
Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver | 
A Thousand Mornings
by Mary Oliver | 
House of Light
by Mary Oliver |
Forty poems deal with the bonds between people and the natural world, the writing experience, and the importance of silence