From Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background by Wayne Koestenbaum (coincidentally reflected in Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, 2019).

From Ethos, 1960.

"I am but a small-winged bird: / But I will conquer the big world / As the bee-martin beats the crow, / by attacking it always from Above."  From Poem Outlines by Sidney Lanier, 1908.

"Assignment: stay at a motel in a town without attractions.  Choose your town carefully—make sure it has no attractions."  From Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background by Wayne Koestenbaum.

If I were born a fish—

     but then,

No use to wish: Men

     must be Men.

From Eric's Book of Beasts, illustrated by Shimada Sekko, 1912.

From Ethos, 1952.

What a great way to end a poem:

Then sit, Cat!

Like a plaster sister of the cat that

Owned the house

A million aeons of a sunslicked second

Before.

From Ethos, 1959.

From Unknown, 1940.

Irving Layton, quoted in The Martlet, 1965.

From Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background by Wayne Koestenbaum.

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," in Flora Macdonald's 1935 yearbook.

"'The first sunrise / there is a cloud / like a cloud in a picture.' —Shusai."  From St. Joseph's 1972 yearbook.

This poem is a Googlewhack.  "Black stones a-blazing!  What shall Susan do?  Crack a dozen gray stones and make a little stew."  From St. Nicholas, 1886.

Here's a precursor to the Coen brothers' Raising Arizona, about a baby named after a state; the final line of the film concerns Utah: "If not Arizona, then a land not too far away, where all parents are strong and wise and capable and all children are happy and beloved. I don't know. Maybe it was Utah."  From Purple Parrot, 1923.

Great asterisk to mark the "poetic license."  This is the very first grammatical irregularity we've noticed that a yearbook editor was also aware of.  From Rhode Island State's 1907 yearbook.

"The days linger on through [sic] the halls are sealed speechless as though they were some hugh [sic] necropolis."  From Lenoir Rhyne's 1974 yearbook.

Thermometers have feelings, too.  From St. Nicholas, 1915.

This poem is a Googlewhack.  "My pretty glass tower's afire on top; t'will burn for three hours and then it will stop.  While it's afire my book shall be read.  But I'll put out the flame when I jump into bed."  From St. Nicholas, 1886.

From The Redwood magazine (Santa Clara), 1903.

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1916.