The death of the hat: a brief history of poetry in 50 objects

Things / Eloise Greenfield.

Early Middle Ages, 400-1000 : A bookworm / Anonymous

A solitary wildgoose / Cui Tu

Grass / Bai Juyi

In praise of a sword given him by his prince / Colman mac Lenini.

High Middle Ages, 1000-1500: Grainfield / Ibn ʹIyād

A just-finishing candle / Rumi

On this summer night / Jusammi Chikako.

The Renaissance, 1500-Late 1600s: Midnight frost / Bashō

from Mercutio's Queen Mab speech / William Shakespeare

So breaks the sun / Ben Jonson

A burnt ship / John Donne

Stick and hat / Emperor Lê Thánh Tông

I spy the three-colored peach blossom / Kim Ku.

The Enlightenment, late 1600s-1785: An hymn to the evening / Phillis Wheatley

Retort on Mordaunt's "The call" / John Scott of Amwell

A red, red rose / Robert Burns.

Romantic Period, 1785-1830: The sick rose / William Blake

To the moon / Charlotte Smith

A riddle, on the letter E / George Gordon, Lord Byron

Mouse's nest / John Clare

I wandered lonely as a cloud / William Wordsworth.

Victorian Period, 1837-1901: The eagle / Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Snow-flakes / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The haunted palace / Edgar Allan Poe

The dismantled ship / Walt Whitman

Street lanterns / Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

My shadow / Robert Louis Stevenson

Cobwebs / Christina Georgina Rossetti

The railway train / Emily Dickinson.

Modern Period, 1900-1945: The red wheelbarrow / William Carlos Williams

The love tree / Countee Cullen

Fan-piece for Her Imperial Lord / Ezra Pound

The cat and the moon / William Butler Yeats

Stars / Langston Hughes

A cloud shadow / Robert Frost

Driftwood / Witter Bynner

Boxes and bags / Carl Sandburg

City trees / Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Postmodern Period, 1945-Present: Manhole covers / Karl Shapiro

Mushrooms / Sylvia Plath

Lament, for Cocoa / John Updike

i thank You God for most this amazing / e.e. cummings

The cat / Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Contemporary: Ode to a stamp album / Pablo Neruda

The summer day / Mary Oliver

A birthday card / Ted Kooser

The death of the hat / Billy Collins

Flash cards / Rita Dove

Famous / Naomi Shihab Nye.