TODAY'S FEATURED POET

Donald Hall (1928-0) Few contemporary American writers have devoted themselves more fully to the art of poetry than Donald Hall (1928—). Born in New Haven, Connecticut, and educated at Harvard and Oxford, he retired from teaching in 1975 and returned to his family’s farm in New Hampshire, determined to make his living as a freelance man of letters. Among his many works of criticism and poetry are Their Ancient Glittering Eyes (1992), a book dedicated to the lives of poets, and Without (1998), a series of elegies for his wife and fellow poet Jane Kenyon, who died in 1995. More » Poems Ox Cart Man Poem with One Fact

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Only poems currently in the print or online Poetry Out Loud anthologies are eligible for competition. If you have any questions about the eligibility of a particular poem please do not hesitate to contact mail@poetryoutloud.org.

Some poems do have variants, but for the sake of fairness and consistency, we ask students to memorize a poem as it appears in the Poetry Out Loud website or the Poetry Out Loud printed anthology. Teachers and accuracy judges use text from the official Poetry Out Loud anthologies in judging a student's performance.