October 2026 packs a lot into thirty-one days for poets — first-book prizes, single-poem contests, translation awards, and a few big travel opportunities all close this month. Below is a curated roundup of poetry contests October 2026 and related calls we verified on official contest or publisher pages. Always double-check guidelines (fees, eligibility, and formatting) before … [Read more...] about Poetry Submission Deadlines October 2026
A Song For Occupations, By: Walt Whitman
1 A song for occupations!In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find the developments,And find the eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen!Were all educations practical and ornamental well display’d out of me, what would it amount to?Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to?Were I to you as the boss … [Read more...] about A Song For Occupations, By: Walt Whitman
Song Of The Redwood-Tree, By: Walt Whitman
1 A California song,A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air,A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing,A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense. Farewell my brethren,Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters,My time has ended, my term … [Read more...] about Song Of The Redwood-Tree, By: Walt Whitman
Song Of The Exposition, By: Walt Whitman
1 (Ah little recks the laborer,How near his work is holding him to God,The loving Laborer through space and time.) After all not to create only, or found only,But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, … [Read more...] about Song Of The Exposition, By: Walt Whitman
Song Of The Broad-Axe, By: Walt Whitman
1 Weapon shapely, naked, wan,Head from the mother’s bowels drawn,Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown,Resting the grass amid and upon,To be lean’d and to lean on. Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades, sights and sounds.Long varied train of an emblem, … [Read more...] about Song Of The Broad-Axe, By: Walt Whitman
A Song Of Joys, By: Walt Whitman
O to make the most jubilant song!Full of music—full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!Full of common employments—full of grain and trees. O for the voices of animals—O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song! O the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning!It is not enough … [Read more...] about A Song Of Joys, By: Walt Whitman