Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Gwendolyn Brooks:
We real cool. We
Flew the coop. We
All showed. We
Crossed the road. We
Ranged wide. To
The other side.
Category: Poets answer age-old questions
Poets answer an age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road? (part 4)
Gil Scott-Heron
The chicken crossing will not be televised
It will not be sponsored by Colonel Sanders or
Brought to you by a contribution to your PBS station
From Chik-Fil-A
The chicken crossing will not be televised
(It might be on YouTube.)
- e. cummings
anychick lived in a pretty how coop
and str e t c h e d
her chicken legs(white feathers
furled in the even
ing breeze)across
the sunset road because(pick peck)she
wanted(peck)to see
the
Capital(they didn’t
have those where she was from).
Poets Answer an Age-Old Question part 3
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a wood, you know,
And I crossed the one filling up with snow,
And now I’m at this frozen lake.
I wonder if there’s some mistake.
I find no corn or seed or grain;
I think I might cross back again.
Poets Answer an Age-Old Question: Why did the chicken cross the road? (part 2)
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best hens of my generation destroyed by butchers, roasted, rotisserie-basted,
wandering across the street at dawn looking for a bawdy cock.
Elizabeth Bishop
The art of crossing isn’t hard to master–
when asphalt’s hot, it helps if you cross faster.
Gertrude Stein
The road
is a road
is a road
is a road
to cross
like a boss
and eat moss.
Click here for part 1 (featuring Dickinson, Whitman, and Shakespeare).
![Poets Answer an Age-Old Question: Why did the chicken cross the road? [Part 1]](http://poetrycrisis.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Chicken-William-Chickspeare-800x510.jpeg)
Poets Answer an Age-Old Question: Why did the chicken cross the road? [Part 1]
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A:
William Shakespeare
To cross or not to cross—that is the question!
Whether ‘tis nobler in the coop to suffer
The pecks and scratches of aggressive chickens
Or set foot upon a dusty roadway
And so, with your toes spread, cross it.
Walt Whitman
O chicken, my chicken
The fearful path is wide
But still you walked across the road
To reach the other side.
Emily Dickinson
Because I could not cross the road
A chicken crossed for me
And pecked the doorbell that would ring
Apartment number three.
