Only poems in the Poetry Out Loud print or online anthologies are eligible for competition. Due to copyright issues and the need to periodically refresh the Poetry Out Loud anthology, some poems have been retired. The following poems have been removed from the anthology and are ineligible for the 2012-2013 season.
- Adding It Up by Philip Booth
- After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa by Robert Hass
- Agoraphobia by Linda Pastan
- Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100 by Martín Espada
- Altruism by Molly Peacock
- Ancapagari by Carolyn Forché
- Ancestor by Jimmy Santiago Baca
- Aubade by Edith Sitwell
- aunt jemima by Lucille Clifton
- Authority by W.S. Merwin
-
The Bad Old Days by Kenneth Rexroth
- Baseball by Gail Mazur
- Beat! Beat! Drums! by Walt Whitman
- Beautiful Black Men by Nikki Giovanni
- Beauty by Tony Hoagland
- Becune Point by Derek Walcott
- The Bells of San Blas by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Birches by Robert Frost
- Booker T. and W.E.B. by Dudley Randall
- Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Taylor
- Come Up from the Fields, Father by Walt Whitman
- The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
- Detroit, Tomorrow by Phillip Levine
- A Display of Mackerel by Mark Doty
- Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland
- Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears by Maurice Kilwein Guevara
- A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe
- Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats
- The Evening of the Mind by Donald Justice
- Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
- Father's Old Blue Cardigan by Anne Carson
- Fever 103° by Sylvia Plath
- The Fire Fetched Down by George Bradley
- The Flea by John Donne
- For Fiddle-de-de by John Hollander
- For My People by Margaret Walker
- Forgetfulness by Billy Collins
- Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden
- Freeway 280 by Lorna Dee Cervantes
- The Glove and the Lions by Leigh Hunt
- Hate Poem by Julie Sheehan
- Hearing your words, and not a word among them by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds
- I Grant You Ample Leave by George Eliot
- The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens
- If— by Rudyard Kipling
- Interior at Petworth: From Turner by Rosanna Warren
- Iowa City: Early April by Robert Hass
-
The Kiss by W.S. DiPiero
- Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye by Gerald Stern
-
The Lifeguard by James Dickey
- Lincoln, Man of the People by Edwin Markham
- Lincoln by Delmore Schwartz
- Lissadell by Wendy Cope
- Litany by Billy Collins
- Ma Rainey by Sterling A. Brown
- Madmen by Billy Collins
- The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop
- A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown by Walt Whitman
- The Meaning of the Shovel by Martín Espada
- Meditations on the South Valley: Part XX by Jimmy Santiago Baca
- The Minefield by Diane Thiel
- the mother by Gwendolyn Brooks
- Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
- Mr. Edwards and the Spider by Robert Lowell
- Mrs. Krikorian by Sharon Olds
- The Net by Babette Deutsch
- Next Day by Randall Jarrell
- O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
- The Old Swimmin’ Hole by James Whitcomb Riley
- On Hurricane Jackson by Alan Dugan
- The Orange by Wendy Cope
- Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
- Playing Dead by Andrew Hudgins
- Progressive Health by Carl Dennis
- Report to Crazy Horse by William E. Stafford
- Rhapsody by Frank O’Hara
- Rough Music by Deborah Digges
- Salomé by Ai
- Scary Movies by Kim Addonizio
- The Secret of the Machines by Rudyard Kipling
- Sentimental by Albert Goldbarth
- Shirt by Robert Pinsky
- The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert Service
- Siren Song by Margaret Atwood
- The Slave Auction by France Ellen Watkins Harper
- Somewhere to Paris by Richard Blanco
- A Song for Soweto by June Jordan
- Song for the Last Act by Louise Bogan
- Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXX: My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun by William Shakespeare
- The Spider by Richard Eberhart
- The Spirit Is Too Blunt an Instrument by Anne Stevenson
- Spring Letter by Carl Dennis
- Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
- A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
- Switchblade by Michael Ryan
- Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Teaching English from an Old Composition Book by Gary Soto
- Theme for English B by Langston Hughes
- To My Mother by Wendell Berry
- To Spareness by Jane Hirshfield
- Touch Me by Stanley Kunitz
- The Truth about Small Towns by David Baker
- Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward by Anne Sexton
- Vita Nova by Louise Glück
- Walking Down Park by Nikki Giovanni
- War is Kind by Stephen Crane
- What For by Garret Hongo
- What Work Is by Philip Levine
- Who Understands Me but Me by Jimmy Santiago Baca
- Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O’Hara
- Wild Peaches by Elinor Wylie
- Windigo by Louise Erdrich
- Winter by Marie Ponsot
- Writ on the Steps of Puerto Rican Harlem by Gregory Corso
- The Writer by Richard Wilbur
