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WEEK 2

From PRELUDES

T.S. Eliot

The winter evening settles down

With smells of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

WEEK 3

MOTHER TO SON

Langston Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
BASEBALL

Gail Mazur

for John Limon

The game of baseball is not a metaphor
and I know it’s not really life.
The chalky green diamond, the lovely
dusty brown lanes I see from airplanes
multiplying around the cities
are only neat playing fields.
Their structure is not the frame
of history carved out of forest,
that is not what I see on my ascent.

And down in the stadium,
the veteran catcher guiding the young
pitcher through the innings, the line
of concentration between them,
that delicate filament is not
like the way you are helping me,
only it reminds me when I strain
for analogies, the way a rookie strains
for perfection, and the veteran,
in his wisdom, seems to promise it,
it glows from his upheld glove,

and the man in front of me
in the grandstand, drinking banana
daiquiris from a thermos,
continuing through a whole dinner
to the aromatic cigar even as our team
is shut out, nearly hitless, he is
not like the farmer that Auden speaks
of in Breughel’s Icarus,
or the four inevitable woman-hating
drunkards, yelling, hugging
each other and moving up and down
continuously for more beer

and the young wife trying to understand
what a full count could be
to please her husband happy in
his old dreams, or the little boy
in the Yankees cap already nodding
off to sleep against his father,
program and popcorn memories
sliding into the future,
and the old woman from Lincoln, Maine,
screaming at the Yankee slugger
with wounded knees to break his leg

this is not a microcosm,
not even a slice of life

and the terrible slumps,
when the greatest hitter mysteriously
goes hitless for weeks, or
the pitcher’s stuff is all junk
who threw like a magician all last month,
or the days when our guys look
like Sennett cops, slipping, bumping
each other, then suddenly, the play
that wasn’t humanly possible, the Kid
we know isn’t ready for the big leagues,
leaps into the air to catch a ball
that should have gone downtown,
and coming off the field is hugged
and bottom-slapped by the sudden
sorcerers, the winning team

the question of what makes a man
slump when his form, his eye,
his power aren’t to blame, this isn’t
like the bad luck that hounds us,
and his frustration in the games
not like our deep rage
for disappointing ourselves

the ball park is an artifact,
manicured, safe, “scene in an Easter egg”,
and the order of the ball game,
the firm structure with the mystery
of accidents always contained,
not the wild field we wander in,
where I’m trying to recite the rules,
to repeat the statistics of the game,
and the wind keeps carrying my words away.

WEEK 4

In the Waiting Room
by Elizabeth Bishop

In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo to keep her dentist's appointment and sat and waited for her in the dentist's waiting room. It was winter. It got dark early. The waiting room was full of grown-up people, arctics and overcoats, lamps and magazines. My aunt was inside what seemed like a long time and while I waited I read the National Geographic (I could read) and carefully studied the photographs: the inside of a volcano, black, and full of ashes; then it was spilling over in rivulets of fire. Osa and Martin Johnson dressed in riding breeches, laced boots, and pith helmets. A dead man slung on a pole --"Long Pig," the caption said. Babies with pointed heads wound round and round with string; black, naked women with necks wound round and round with wire like the necks of light bulbs. Their breasts were horrifying. I read it right straight through. I was too shy to stop. And then I looked at the cover: the yellow margins, the date. Suddenly, from inside, came an oh! of pain --Aunt Consuelo's voice-- not very loud or long. I wasn't at all surprised; even then I knew she was a foolish, timid woman. I might have been embarrassed, but wasn't. What took me completely by surprise was that it was me: my voice, in my mouth. Without thinking at all I was my foolish aunt, I--we--were falling, falling, our eyes glued to the cover of the National Geographic, February, 1918. I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world. into cold, blue-black space. But I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them. Why should you be one, too? I scarcely dared to look to see what it was I was. I gave a sidelong glance --I couldn't look any higher-- at shadowy gray knees, trousers and skirts and boots and different pairs of hands lying under the lamps. I knew that nothing stranger had ever happened, that nothing stranger could ever happen. Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone? What similarities-- boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts-- held us all together or made us all just one? How--I didn't know any word for it--how "unlikely". . . How had I come to be here, like them, and overhear a cry of pain that could have got loud and worse but hadn't? The waiting room was bright and too hot. It was sliding beneath a big black wave, another, and another. Then I was back in it. The War was on. Outside, in Worcester, Massachusetts, were night and slush and cold, and it was still the fifth of February, 1918.

Circe's Power
Louise Gluck

I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
Look like pigs.

I'm sick of your world
That lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men;
Undisciplined life
Did that to them. As pigs,

Under the care of
Me and my ladies, they
Sweetened right up.

Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness
As well as my power. I saw

We could be happy here,
As men and women are
When their needs are simple. In the same breath,

I foresaw your departure,
Your men with my help braving
The crying and pounding sea. You think

A few tears upset me? My friend,
Every sorceress is
A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't
Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you

I could hold you prisoner.

WEEK 5

Poems by Jane Kenyon, including "Twilight After Haying" and "Having It Out with Melancholy"

<http://www.poemhunter.com/jane-kenyon/>

Poems by Donald Hall, including "The Long River" and "White Apples"

<http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/hall%20-%20poetry%20reading.html>

Compare this earlier version of the poem with "White Apples"

THE WHITE CLOSED DOOR

1.
When the day arrived I
Pushed your gurney to where
A noiseless orderly
Pressed for an elevator
To drop you down and down
To the operating room.

The telephone rang too soon.
Returned to the hospital,
We heard the exact surgeon
Present a schedule:
In seven months, he said,
Father, you would be dead.

2.
Dying men dig a hole, as if they try
The climate underground before they die.

3.
Dead before Christmas, you only
Returned once, in January:
As I slept in a familiar
Bedroom, wakeful, I heard your clear
Urgent voice call one syllable
Of my name. Wakened I lay still,
Attent and terrified to stare
At the dark bedroom’s white closed door.
Listening, I heard the cold rain
And wind but never you again.

WEEK 8: From Robert Pinsky's "Poet's Choice," Washington Post, 11/12/06: We take for granted that rhyme is a traditional element of English poetry, but it didn't become one until Shakespeare's time. Here Pinsky discusses a poem by Ben Jonson bemoaning this new development.

"Not a poet in an age worth crowning. All good poetry . . . flown." So say some readers about modern poetry, and so, too, says Ben Jonson (1572-1637) about his own time, in his poem "A Fit of Rime Against Rime." Jonson blames rhyme, that vulgar invention that has ruined true poetry. The ancient Greeks and Romans, as he points out, did not use rhyme, except for a rare comic effect of deliberate, silly jangling. (Milton in "Paradise Lost," like Shakespeare in his tragedies, chose unrhymed verse.) Jonson calls rhyme "lazy thou" -- and relishing the paradox, he denounces the despised device in rhyming lines:

A FIT OF RIME AGAINST RIME

Rime the rack of finest wits,

That expresseth but by fits,

True Conceipt.

Spoyling Senses of their Treasure,

Cosening Judgement with a measure,

But false weight.

Wresting words, from their true calling;

Propping Verse, for feare of falling

To the ground.

Joynting Syllabes, drowning Letters,

Fastning Vowells, as with fetters

They were bound!

Soone as lazie thou wert knowne,

All good Poetrie hence was flowne,

And Art banish'd.

Jonson's rhyme for that last phrase is, "And wit vanish'd." He adds, "Not a worke deserving Baies" -- that is, the honor of laurel -- and "Not a lyne deserving praise."

It is amusing to find Shakespeare's great contemporary denouncing the poetry of their time as newfangled, and in particular for using rhyme, a technique that in our own time, for some readers, may seem like tradition itself. That comedy of historical perspective is enriched and complicated by Jonson's ability to rhyme so cleverly, and fluently, in his denunciation. He closes his poem by cursing whoever invented " Tyrant Rime":

He that first invented thee,

May his joynts tormented bee,

Cramp'd for ever;

Still may Syllabes jarre with time,

Still may reason warre with rime,

Resting never.

May his Sense when it would meet

The cold tumor in his feet,

Grow unsounder,

And his Title be long foole,

That in rearing such a Schoole,

Was the founder.

Jonson clearly enjoys pointing out how cramping rhyme is, how it conflicts with reason, to the point of war. He also clearly enjoys contradicting that point by using the hated jingle-jangle with apparent ease and athletic grace. His phrase "the cold tumor in his feet" associates actual, physical stumbling with ineffective metrical feet. The poem is a reminder that poetry is physical and must be heard. To detect the difference between Robert Frost and a rhyming hack -- or between William Carlos Williams and a free-verse hack -- we need to listen.

(Ben Jonson's poem "A Fit of Rime Against Rime" is available in collections of his poetry.)

Week 11: Here's another example of a found poem. Steven Cramer collected words from soldiers quoted in local newspapers and made a collage of their many voices.

HERE

By Steven Cramer

We are kept kind of busy for the most part
I’m glad to have a chance for even this

Santa came to see us riding on a tank
A guy dropped a grenade off a roof about four feet away
Luckily
it was a crappy Egyptian grenade some big shot
is coming here to visit

Christmas was weird remember

after we opened presents Mom would make cinnamon rolls

I guess there really are good things happening

I tell you what
I’m very excited about life in general
I’m not one for writing
I’m more of a caller
I want to be more than a voice on a phone
I’m sure you’re wondering what it’s like here
I’m healing rather fast and should be back in the fight soon

I thought we were under attack but it was all the Marines saying Happy New Year

The computers are slow today and my time’s just about up
but here are some PICS
So now I have a new job hey babe this is my element
Everything Dad tried to help me avoid

came true

These snipers know where to get us
through the vests

There are lots of dogs here and lizards and flies

If only everybody over there could have such a reality check

As you know the referendum has come and gone
There are no lakes but we do have the Euphrates River
The quality of life is improving
We’ll be getting some revenge very soon

Other than that things here are going by slowly

Remember time is a gift

Alright I got to get going I’ll see you soon love you PS tell the guys I said hello

Here's an excerpt from a poem made of fractured proverbs and quotations, from Lloyd Schwartz's third book of poems, Cairo Traffic:

PROVERBS FROM PURGATORY

It was déjà vu all over again.
I know this town like the back of my head.
People who live in glass houses are worth two in the bush.
One hand scratches the other.
A friend in need is worth two in the bush.
. It was déjà vu all over again.