ARTICLE
The Cranberry Cantos
Thanksgiving poems for family and friends.
Illustration: Mark McGinnisThanksgiving 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
A Short History of the Shadow
By Charles Wright
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
COMMENTS (3)
On November 25, 2009 at 10:07 am Nigel Dookhoo wrote:
I absolutely love your list of poems, but I do find one element about the Thanksgiving meal absent. Where are the poems about wine? I do believe that Robert Herrick's poem, "The Welcome to Sack," would make an excellent addition to your list as an homage to that which brings much thanks at Thanksgiving; not to mention, that most traditional event of all family feasts, the cathartic release of grievance -"Purge hence the guilt and kill this quarrelling"; usually, at the dinner table, just before pie. "Call me the son of beer."
On November 25, 2009 at 10:23 am katherine wrote:
Thank you for feeding our souls as well as our stomaches!
On November 25, 2009 at 10:53 am Brooke wrote:
Wonderful....so thankful to read about Poetry Foundation in the LA times, I am currently in a poetry survey class and your site is perfect for our continued education.....I plan to read Keats at my Thanksgiving dinner this year....Thank you so much for sharing with the LA Times!!!!
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