Collection

July 4th Poems

Cookouts, fireworks, and history lessons recounted in poems, articles, and audio.

BY Becca Klaver

Created 1776, The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration explained why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom
Created 1776, The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration explained why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom

For Independence Day, we bring you this wide-ranging selection of poems, articles, blog posts, and podcasts. These poets form a chorus of many Americas.

Poems
  • This famous Statue of Liberty sonnet famously welcomes “homeless, tempest-tost” newcomers.
  • The poet tallies harsh realities that sometimes follow the Statue of Liberty's greeting.
  • The identities and meanings of America explored in metaphors.
  • In Whitman’s vision, American workers sing “what belongs to him or her and to none else.”
  • The poet recounts the oddities of a traditional American July 4th cookout with his immigrant parents.
  • This poem lists so many things that our country is still waiting for.
  • This famous poem begins “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. / America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. / I can’t stand my own mind.”
  • Optimism wrestles with frustration in Susan Hahn’s fin-de-siècle anthem.
  • On the reasons to love an adopted country.
  • Why not share this poem which proclaims, “Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...”
  • Acknowledging the United States’ fraught past, Claude McKay confesses, “I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.”
  • The poet worries that America “does not actually care.”
  • A poem about Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), a black man appointed to the commission that surveyed and laid out Washington, D.C.
  • Like Rita Dove, Myra Sklarew pays homage to African Americans who helped build Washington, DC.
  • A quiet poem that shows that not everyone celebrates this holiday the same way.
  • An analytical critique of our annual fireworks ceremonies, using wartime vocabulary.
Audio & Podcasts
  • A reading of Brown’s Fourth of July poem.
  • Alexander on how the Derek Walcott-toting, June Jordan-quoting president will affect poets and poetry.
  • Walt Whitman and the politics of the Civil War.
Blog Posts
Articles
Poetics Essay
  • An historical examination of the trajectory of African American poetry, beginning with Lucy Terry, a slave, in 1746, and continuing through Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar to the rising generation of African American poets in the 1950s and 60s.
Teaching Resource