Staff Reports
Thanksgiving is America’s harvest festival — a time to acknowledge the help of family and friends, and a reminder of what a gift it is to be alive. It’s a day to overindulge in the here and now, even as we reflect on the past.
In other words, it’s the perfect holiday for poetry!
While a barn full of winter stock and a home overrun with family and friends does not fit with our popular conception of the poet as solitary brooder, these poems show that the occasion has provided poets — from Harriet Maxwell Converse in the 19th century to Elizabeth Alexander in the 21st — with plenty of food for thought. Whether you’re looking for a pre-meal toast, a scrap of American history, or a late night conversation starter, these poems should provide ample stuffing.
TOASTS AND PRAYERS
A Thanksgiving to God, for his House
By Robert Herrick
Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing
By James Weldon Johnson
The Thanksgivings
By Harriet Maxwell Converse
Thanksgiving
By Edgar Albert Guest
FAMILY, FOOD, AND FELLOWSHIP
Butter
By Elizabeth Alexander
Family Reunion
By Maxine W. Kumin
Perhaps the World Ends Here
By Joy Harjo
Stomackes
By Albert Goldbarth
Thanksgiving Magic
By Rowena Bastin Bennett
Yam
By Bruce Guernsey
Totem
By Eamon Grennan
THE SEASON
My Triumph
By John Greenleaf Whittier
Signs of the Times
By Paul Laurence Dunbar
Thanksgiving Day
By L. Maria Child
The Garden of Proserpine
By Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Pumpkin
By John Greenleaf Whittier
When the Frost is on the Punkin
By James Whitcomb Riley
Zebra
By C.K. Williams
The Gift Outright
By Robert Frost
To Autumn
By John Keats
