Visualize Poetry Around the WorldWhere I'm From
George Ella Lyon I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride. I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening, it tasted like beets.) I am from the forsythia bush the Dutch elm whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were my own. I'm from fudge and eyeglasses, from Imogene and Alafair. I'm from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons, from Perk up! and Pipe down! I'm from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb and ten verses I can say myself. I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch, fried corn and strong coffee. From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger, the eye my father shut to keep his sight. Under my bed was a dress box spilling old pictures, a sift of lost faces to drift beneath my dreams. I am from those moments-- snapped before I budded -- leaf-fall from the family tree. Earth Day Jane Yolen I am the Earth And the Earth is me. Each blade of grass, Each honey tree, Each bit of mud, And stick and stone Is blood and muscle, Skin and bone. And just as I Need every bit Of me to make My body fit, So Earth needs Grass and stone and tree And things that grow here Naturally. That’s why we Celebrate this day. That’s why across The world we say: As long as life, As dear, as free, I am the Earth And the Earth is me. Jane Yolen, "Earth Day" from The Three Bears Holiday Rhyme Book. Copyright © 1995 by Jane Yolen. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Source: The Three Bears Holiday Rhyme Book (Houghton Mifflin, 1995) Nothing But Flowers David Byrne Here we stand Like an Adam and an Eve Waterfalls The Garden of Eden Two fools in love So beautiful and strong The birds in the trees Are smiling upon them From the age of the dinosaurs Cars have run on gasoline Where, where have they gone? Now, it's nothing but flowers There was a factory Now there are mountains and rivers You got it, you got it We caught a rattlesnake Now we got something for dinner We got it, we got it There was a shopping mall Now it's all covered with flowers You've got it, you've got it If this is paradise I wish I had a lawnmower You've got it, you've got it Years ago I was an angry young man I'd pretend That I was a billboard Standing tall By the side of the road I fell in love With a beautiful highway This used to be real estate Now it's only fields and trees Where, where is the town Now, it's nothing but flowers The highways and cars Were sacrificed for agriculture I thought that we'd start over But I guess I was wrong Once there were parking lots Now it's a peaceful oasis You got it, you got it This was a Pizza Hut Now it's all covered with daisies You got it, you got it I miss the honky tonks, Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens You got it, you got it And as things fell apart Nobody paid much attention You got it, you got it I dream of cherry pies, Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies You got it, you got it We used to microwave Now we just eat nuts and berries You got it, you got it This was a discount store, Now it's turned into a cornfield You got it, you got it Don't leave me stranded here I can't get used to this lifestyle |
Poems of Home: III. Fun for Little Folk
Good King Arthur Anonymous WHEN good King Arthur ruled the land, He was a goodly king; He stole three pecks of barley meal, To make a bag-pudding. A bag-pudding the king did make, And stuffed it well with plums; And in it put great lumps of fat, As big as my two thumbs. The king and queen did eat thereof, And noblemen beside; And what they could not eat that night, The queen next morning fried. |
Black Out Poetry
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee; A poet could not be but gay, In such a jocund company! I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. Suicide in the Trenches Sigfried Sassoon I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again. You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go. STUDENT WHO OBTAINED 0% ON AN EXAM Q1.. In which battle did Napoleon die? * his last battle Q2.. Where was the Declaration of Independence signed? * at the bottom of the page Q3.. River Ravi flows in which state? * liquid Q4.. What is the main reason for divorce? * marriage Q5.. What is the main reason for failure? * exams Q6.. What can you never eat for breakfast? * Lunch & dinner Q7.. What looks like one half of an apple? * The other half Q8.. If you throw a red stone into the blue sea what will it become? *Wet Q9.. How can a man go eight days without sleeping ? * No problem, he sleeps at night. Q10.. How can you lift an elephant with one hand? * You will never find an elephant that has one hand. Q11..If you had three apples and four oranges in one hand and four apples and three oranges in other hand, what would you have ? * Very large hands Q12.. If it took eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men to build it? *No time at all, the wall is already built. Q13.. How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it? *Any way you want, concrete floors are very hard to crack. _ Dover Beach Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. Dystopia Josh Gibbons Smoke pumping into the sky, A Gothic Skyline filled with black Black architecture, Dominating a brooding landscape Clanking cogs grinding, Making an inhuman scream People walking silently, In black uniform lines No individuality survives, Everyone dressed the same, skin pale to the eye Morbidly cold to the touch, Mere machines Blackness permeating everywhere, Flesh providing no warmth I dream of what the world could have been like, Full of colour and life, full of creativity and uniqueness No place to voice my ideas, Dangerous ideas crushed by those in control Part of one collective mind, Merely a subjugated citizen! Every Cat Has a Story by Naomi Shihab Nye The yellow one from the bakery smelled like a cream puff- she followed us home. We buried our faces in her sweet fur. One cat hid her head while I practiced violin. But she came out for piano. At night she played sonatas on my quilt. One cat built a secret nest in my socks. One sat in the window staring up the street all day while we were at school. One cat loved the radio dial One cat almost smiled. This poem takes a new look at a traditional symbol. Eagle Plain Robert Francis The American eagle is not aware he is the American eagle. He is never tempted to look modest. When orators advertise the American eagle's virtues, the American eagle is not listening. This is his virtue. He is somewhere else, he is mountains away but even if he were near he would never make an audience. The American eagle never says he will serve if drafted, will dutifully serve etc. He is not at our service. If we have honored him we have honored one who unequivocally honors himself by overlooking us. He does not know the meaning of magnificent. Perhaps we do not altogether either who cannot touch him. The Spelling Bee By Danielle W. With trembling hands I grip the microphone. I try to plan for the judges demands It’s down to the bone, Him and I My hand twitches toward my holster, like a bad Western, one last final showdown. The judge supplies A word, and I ask for the definition And to my surprise I find I have the ammunition To blow my foe right out of the water And I begin without permission. “S-E-D-I-N-T-A-R-…” “Y” The lights up above the stage blind and burn me, blazing stars. “That is incorrect,” the announcer sighs And shocked I sit At the situation gone awry. If luck permits, I could still have a chance, Curlicues and whorls in neon colors psychedelically whirling and I let my mind admit it. He took his stance, and in hand, his lance, Then he spelled his word. He would advance. This could not have occurred, How could I not? Perhaps I misheard. Numbers Mary Cornish I like the generosity of numbers. The way, for example, they are willing to count anything or anyone: two pickles, one door to the room, eight dancers dressed as swans. I like the domesticity of addition-- add two cups of milk and stir-- the sense of plenty: six plums on the ground, three more falling from the tree. And multiplication's school of fish times fish, whose silver bodies breed beneath the shadow of a boat. Even subtraction is never loss, just addition somewhere else: five sparrows take away two, the two in someone else's garden now. There's an amplitude to long division, as it opens Chinese take-out box by paper box, inside every folded cookie a new fortune. And I never fail to be surprised by the gift of an odd remainder, footloose at the end: forty-seven divided by eleven equals four, with three remaining. Three boys beyond their mothers' call, two Italians off to the sea, one sock that isn't anywhere you look. from Poetry magazine Volume CLXXVI, Number 3, June 2000 Copyright 2000 by The Modern Poetry Association. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). The Bagel David Ignatow I stopped to pick up the bagel rolling away in the wind, annoyed with myself for having dropped it as if it were a portent. Faster and faster it rolled, with me running after it bent low, gritting my teeth, and I found myself doubled over and rolling down the street head over heels, one complete somersault after another like a bagel and strangely happy with myself. from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems 1934-1994 Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn. Copyright 1993 by David Ignatow. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). Every poet has an image of the ideal reader, and the not-so-ideal reader. Selecting a Reader Ted Kooser First I would have her be beautiful, and walking carefully up on my poetry at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, her hair still damp at the neck from washing it. She should be wearing a raincoat, an old one, dirty from not having money enough for the cleaners. She will take out her glasses, and there in the bookstore, she will thumb over my poems, then put the book back up on its shelf. She will say to herself, "For that kind of money, I can get my raincoat cleaned." And she will. from Sure Signs, 1980 University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. Copyright 1980 by Ted Kooser. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). The Poetry of Bad Weather Debora Greger Someone had propped a skateboard by the door of the classroom, to make quick his escape, come the bell. For it was February in Florida, the air of instruction thick with tanning butter. Why, my students wondered, did the great dead poets all live north of us? Was there nothing to do all winter there but pine for better weather? Had we a window, the class could keep an eye on the clock and yet watch the wild plum nod with the absent grace of the young. We could study the showy scatter of petals. We could, for want of a better word, call it “snowy.” The room filled with stillness, flake by flake. Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life indoors could be heard. Not even the songbird of a cell phone chirped. Go home, I wanted to tell the horse on the page. You know the way, even in snow gone blue with cold. from Southwest Review, 2006 Volume 91, Number 1, Page 90 Copyright 2006 by Debora Greger. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins 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. from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996 University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark. Permissions information. Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission. |
Find My Way
Though I dreamed of this day long ago Now my answer is thank you, but no Look, I've barely begun, I'm hardly through I was living in ignorant bliss Till I learned I could be more than this And you know, in a way I owe it all to you I thought losing your love was a blow I could never withstand Look how far I have come without Anyone holding my hand I had to find my way The day you broke my heart You handed me the chance To make a brand new start You helped me find my way There's still so much to learn So many dreams to earn But even if I crash and burn ten times a day I think I'm here to stay I'm gonna find my way William Shakespeare wrote "To thine own self be true And it must follow as the night the day Thought cans't not then be false to any man" I believe this wise statement best applies to a woman, a blonde woman Over the past three years, she taught me and showed us All that being true to yourself never goes out of style Ladies and gentlemen, our valedictorian, Elle Woods The Soldier Rupert Brooke If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. The Grammar Lesson Steve Kowit A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does. An adjective is what describes the noun. In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz" of and with are prepositions. The's an article, a can's a noun, a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does. A can can roll - or not. What isn't was or might be, might meaning not yet known. "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz" is present tense. While words like our and us are pronouns - i.e. it is moldy, they are icky brown. A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does. Is is a helping verb. It helps because filled isn't a full verb. Can's what our owns in "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz." See? There's almost nothing to it. Just memorize these rules...or write them down! A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does. The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz. from In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop, 1995 Tilbury House, Publishers, Gardiner, Maine Copyright 1995 by Steve Kowit. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). The Second Coming W.B. Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? A New Poet Linda Pastan Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower out in the woods. You don't see its name in the flower books, and nobody you tell believes in its odd color or the way its leaves grow in splayed rows down the whole length of the page. In fact the very page smells of spilled red wine and the mustiness of the sea on a foggy day - the odor of truth and of lying. And the words are so familiar, so strangely new, words you almost wrote yourself, if only in your dreams there had been a pencil or a pen or even a paintbrush, if only there had been a flower. from Heroes In Disguise, 1991 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY Copyright 1991 by Linda Pastan. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). Did I Miss Anything? Tom Wayman Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here we sat with our hands folded on our desks in silence, for the full two hours Everything. I gave an exam worth 40 percent of the grade for this term and assigned some reading due today on which I’m about to hand out a quiz worth 50 percent Nothing. None of the content of this course has value or meaning Take as many days off as you like: any activities we undertake as a class I assure you will not matter either to you or me and are without purpose Everything. A few minutes after we began last time a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel or other heavenly being appeared and revealed to us what each woman or man must do to attain divine wisdom in this life and the hereafter This is the last time the class will meet before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth. Nothing. When you are not present how could something significant occur? Everything. Contained in this classroom is a microcosm of human experience assembled for you to query and examine and ponder This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered but it was one place And you weren’t here From Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993, 1993 Harbour Publishing Copyright 1993 Tom Wayman. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). Dust of Snow Robert Frost The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. This is a sonnet about poetry. Poetry Don Paterson In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps one spark of the planet's early fires trapped forever in its net of ice, it's not love's later heat that poetry holds, but the atom of the love that drew it forth from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins; but if it yields a steadier light, he knows the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene. Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water sings of nothing, not your name, not mine. from The White Lie; New and Selected Poetry, 2001 Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn. Copyright 1999 by Don Paterson. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). The Poet Tom Wayman Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook May speak much but makes little sense Cannot give clear verbal instructions Does not understand what he reads Does not understand what he hears Cannot handle “yes-no” questions Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs Has difficulty recalling what he ate for breakfast, etc. Cannot tell a story from a picture Cannot recognize visual absurdities Has difficulty classifying and categorizing objects Has difficulty retaining such things as addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables May recognize a word one day and not the next From In a Small House on the Outskirts of Heaven, 1989 Harbour Publishing Copyright 1989 Tom Wayman. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). The Blue Bowl Jane Kenyon Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole. They fell with a hiss and thud on his side, on his long red fur, the white feathers between his toes, and his long, not to say aquiline, nose. We stood and brushed each other off. There are sorrows keener than these. Silent the rest of the day, we worked, ate, stared, and slept. It stormed all night; now it clears, and a robin burbles from a dripping bush like the neighbor who means well but always says the wrong thing. from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, 1996 Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota Copyright 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). from The White Lie; New and Selected Poetry, 2001 Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn. Copyright 1999 by Don Paterson. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). The Poet Tom Wayman Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook May speak much but makes little sense Cannot give clear verbal instructions Does not understand what he reads Does not understand what he hears Cannot handle “yes-no” questions Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs Has difficulty recalling what he ate for breakfast, etc. Cannot tell a story from a picture Cannot recognize visual absurdities Has difficulty classifying and categorizing objects Has difficulty retaining such things as addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables May recognize a word one day and not the next From In a Small House on the Outskirts of Heaven, 1989 Harbour Publishing Copyright 1989 Tom Wayman. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). The Blue Bowl Jane Kenyon Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole. They fell with a hiss and thud on his side, on his long red fur, the white feathers between his toes, and his long, not to say aquiline, nose. We stood and brushed each other off. There are sorrows keener than these. Silent the rest of the day, we worked, ate, stared, and slept. It stormed all night; now it clears, and a robin burbles from a dripping bush like the neighbor who means well but always says the wrong thing. from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, 1996 Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota Copyright 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information). |