"Vintage" by Amy Lowell

The message aside, which I can certainly echo, "Vintage" is a poem packed with sensory details, so the reader can't help but to picture each and every line as a woman stares at the night sky and plots her revenge.
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"Vintage"

I will mix me a drink of stars, --
Large stars with polychrome needles,
Small stars jetting maroon and crimson,
Cool, quiet, green stars.
I will tear them out of the sky,
And squeeze them over an old silver cup,
And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it,
So that my drink shall be bubbled with ice.
It will lap and scratch
As I swallow it down;
And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire,
Coiling and twisting in my belly.
His snortings will rise to my head,
And I shall be hot, and laugh,
Forgetting that I have ever known a woman.

-Amy Lowell

"A Girl" by Ezra Pound

A poem whose meaning has always been hotly debated, I like to imagine Ezra Pound wrote "A Girl" about his daughter and his connection with her.
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"A Girl"

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast-
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

-Ezra Pound

"I Am Not Yours" by Sara Teasdale

I love this poem by Sara Teasdale because the speaker comes to the realization that, although she is not the object of a certain man's affections, she longs to be loved by him just the same, something to which many victims of unrequited love can relate.
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"I Am Not Yours"

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

-Sara Teasdale

"Tonight No Poetry Will Serve" by Adrienne Rich

I love the combination of personification and parts of speech. Maybe because I'm an English nerd, but this poem by Adrienne Rich is impeccable.
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"Tonight No Poetry Will Serve"

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid

later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

Syntax of rendition:

verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action

verb force-feeds noun
submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb disgraced goes on doing

now diagram the sentence

-Adrienne Rich

"We Leave To-Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of my favorite writers also wrote one of my favorite poems with beautiful word choice about an evening departure at sea.
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"We Leave To-Night"

We leave to-night . . .
Silent, we filled the still, deserted street,
A column of dim gray,
And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat
Along the moonless way;
The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet
That turned from night and day.

And so we linger on the windless decks,
See on the spectre shore
Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks . . .
Oh, shall we then deplore
Those futile years!

See how the sea is white!
The clouds have broken and the heavens burn
To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light
The churning of the waves about the stern
Rises to one voluminous nocturne,
. . . We leave to-night.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins

I love teaching this poem to students because it causes them to understand that in order to truly understand a poem, you have to examine it from all angles, but they shouldn't look too deeply into a poem that they message its message.
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"Introduction to Poetry" 

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-Billy Collins

"Before You Knew You Owned It" by Alice Walker

This poem inspires me to live bigger by living smaller, becoming a more giving and generous person who cares less about my selfish wants and more about the needs of others. A great lesson indeed.
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"Before You Knew You Owned It"

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

-Alice Walker