Poems for Election Day

Here are a few classic American poems gathered for reading around Election Day:

• John Greenleaf Whittier,
  “The Poor Voter on Election Day” (1852)
  
  
• Walt Whitman,
  “For You O Democracy,” from Leaves of Grass (1860)
  
  
• Walt Whitman,
  “Election Day, November 1884,” from Leaves of Grass (1892)
  
  
• Vachel Lindsay,
  “Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket” (1919)
  
  
• William Carlos Williams,
  “The Approaching Hour,” “The Mind’s Games” & “Election Day” (1972)

From the historic 2008 U.S. Presidential election, an evocation of the moment-to-moment waiting of election day itself, written by one of our own About Poetry Forum poets:

• Guy Kettelhack,
  “Selecting Precedents”

And for the day after, a contemporary post-election blues:

• Jim Finnegan,
  “Election Year”