Poetry

Here are two poems I like:

Robinson Jeffers was an eccentric American who, among other heterodox opinions, believed that his country should have stayed out of the Second World War.  Mostly for that reason he has escaped the notice of subsequent generations. A couple of his poems (the magnificent "Hurt Hawks" for instance) can still be found in anthologies but "We Are These People", written at the end of the war, surely qualifies as an unjustly neglected antidote to American exceptionalism. If you want to give it even more contemporary relevance replace "Germany" with "Iraq".

I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars, laughed at the frightened
And forecast victory; never one moment's doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war's column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat—
Or if not in the next, then in the next—therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars, our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors for bits of chocolate.

Here's another American poet, Sara Teasdale. Her poetry always stirs me by the fact that every word seems perfectly  inevitable and the slightest  change would be for the worse (music gets me in the same way). "I Shall Not Care" is a brilliant, bitter lyric.

When I am dead and over me bright April 
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, 
Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted, 
I shall not care. 
 
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful 
When rain bends down the bough, 
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted 
Than you are now.