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General resources for poets and poems: Academy of American Poets: <www.poets.org> Poetry Daily: <www.poems.com> Campus poetry readings Fall 2009: Teresa Cader, Monday, Oct. 5, 12:00 noon, W-6-47 Robert Polito, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 4:00 pm, rm TBA
POEMS FOR E301/681
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe (1564-93)
Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs: And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my love.
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)
If all the world and love were young, ?And truth in every shepherd's tongue, ?These pretty pleasures might me move ?To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold? When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,? And Philomel becometh dumb;? The rest complains of cares to come.??
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields? To wayward winter reckoning yields;? A honey tongue, a heart of gall,? Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall,??
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,? Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies? Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten— In folly ripe, in reason rotten.??
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,? Thy coral clasps and amber studs,? All these in me no means can move? To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed, Had joys no date nor age no need,? Then these delights my mind may move? To live with thee and be thy love.
Song By Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72)
Come, live with me and be my love,? And we will all the pleasures prove ?Of peace and plenty, bed and board, ?That chance employment may afford.
I’ll handle dainties on the docks? And thou shalt read of summer frocks: ?At evening by the sour canals? We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.
Care on thy maiden brow shall put? A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot ?Be shod with pain: not silken dress ?But toil shall tire thy loveliness.
Hunger shall make thy modest zone ?And cheat fond death of all but bone— ?If these delights thy mind may move,? Then live with me and be my love.
Raleigh Was Right? William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
We cannot go into the country? for the country will bring us no peace? What can the small violets tell us? that grow on furry stems in ? the long grass amoung lance shaped leaves? Though you praise us ? and call to mind the poets ? who sung of our loveliness it was long ago!? long ago! when country people ?would plow and sow with flowering minds and pockets at ease--?if ever this were true.
Not now. Love itself a flower ? with roots in a parched ground.? Empty pockets make empty heads.? Cure it if you can but ? do not believe that we can live ? today in the country? for the country will bring us no peace
*
PRAYER (1) George Herber (1593-1633)
Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-days world transposing in an hour, A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, Exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest, The milky way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, The land of spices; something understood.
SEPTEMBER 11 Teresa Cader (1947-- )
Understanding something isn't prayer, necessarily.
Cinnamon croissants, hot pretzels speared under glass,? cafe latte behind hostility's headlines. God
in the details: man well-dressed, reversed thunder? from a milky-breathed baby. Engines pitted against
time, take-off code from the air traffic control tower, ?radar plumbing the atmosphere. Slumped in blue jean
bell-bottoms, teens nodding to heavy metal on ear phones.? Hard not to hear. Journey of strangers locked in a tube.
Annals of the absurd faithful, prepared to meet the stars? in a biff of pressured air. Softness of cruising, bliss
of landing, love waiting in the wings, the cockpit.? In ordinary hearts, a slivered wish. Muted joy
at unfastening seatbelts. Paraphrased as relief.? Flying from ice pole to desert to birders' paradise
in privileged pilgrimage, the best cuts of wool.? Storing luggage in the overheads, not knowing
the six days world would be transposed in one hour.
*
THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE (William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963)
At ten AM the young housewife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband's house. I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
THE YOUNG DOCTOR (1916) Clarence Major (1936-- )
He smiles and nods as he drives by thinking perhaps soon she will be pregnant coming to me but he’s wrong. He sees a long line of pregnant women packed like fish in a net bursting out the seams of their dresses. Ah. Give me a cup of tea and a back rub. Blood slime cupids cherubs, no thanks. Give me trees losing their leaves. I’m okay. I pay the ice man and he brings ice into the dark house inserts a block of it into the icebox a dark womb of art, while church bells dong dong scaring the mice. “Then again” as the fish man’s nag comes towing an old wagon of trout, I turn about to see who’s driving by and it’s he, no lazy he, I’m beginning to think driving out of his way maybe at least a mile to smile at me. But no, that’s crazy. Against distant thunder I watch my trout of many blues being wrapped in trodden newspaper and blundered by shaky hands. And I understand.
*
THEME FOR ENGLISH B Langston Hughes (1902-67)
The instructor said,
Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you--- Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It's not easy to know what is true for you or me ? at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what ?I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: ? hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page. ?(I hear New York too.) Me---who? ?Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. ? I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, ?or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach. ? I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like ?the same things other folks like who are other races. ?So will my page be colored that I write? ? Being me, it will not be white. ? But it will be ?a part of you, instructor. ? You are white--- ? yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. ? That's American. ?Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. ?Nor do I often want to be a part of you. ?But we are, that's true! ? As I learn from you,? I guess you learn from me--- ? although you're older---and white--- ? and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
THEME FOR INTERMEDIATE CHINESE Afaa Michael Weaver (1951-- )
Teacher recites and I follow, copying her words Taping the class so I can listen at home and make sentences She says one for every word and I count them In Chinese, building the tones from memories
A child of the Fifties, it is the time of my fifties When I rub my hair and touch only the wrinkly skin That has forgotten hair…I count days as gifts now Homework is a gift and this small flat twelve thousand miles Away, on the other side of forgetting and remembering
I take the MRT subway to my neighborhood Walk past the lady who is not so nice to the faces that warm And brighten when I pass, through the park with children Slides swings and old women under the trees Across the tiles of the walkway to my building to press My security key to the elevator, kiss it softly to say It’s me again as if the key doesn’t know the only black man In the neighborhood
[Chinese character] is the word for “I” and it sounds like woe’s sadness Or whoa, the sound to stop the whirring of things I practice it, writing over and over, rolling on the sound Of the elevated train going by…where everyone knows I is me I meditate on the congregation of genes and wishes That brought me here, counting back the four generations To the first African, naming along the way the Native Americans Europeans the polka dot army of chromosomes and molecules Like tiny space ships that align themselves with mystic glue So that I am the same mystery each day and do not dissolve Into a glob in the midst of Taipei’s rush to go and buy things As I recite alone to myself the Chinese for going and buying
What have I bought in this place where only the inside Can matter and the outside is so many things to so many And where are we? The Chinese sentence for this takes me All night, into the slide of constellations over night markets And the humid cling of music to silence…we are genes We are the art of the mind of some great emptiness above Or here below inside the bulb of a beet, things that grow Underground and thrive on darkness, the humble fullness of light.
*
DESIGN Robert Frost (1874-1963)
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.
STRAY MOTH, ASLEEP Joyce Peseroff (1948-- )
Exotic thumbalina, crayola flame, soft yellow grub with pink antennae, rose and saffron wings shut like tent-flaps, scrap of a girl’s dress, secret as a tulip or wildflower still buttoned at the neck,
on the doorframe all day you’re naked prey, still zonked at half past five—nothing like Frost’s white-on-white papery stiff. An accident dropped from a cloud, your silk parachute opens to no comrade or lover.
What night-blooming thing waits for you? —yet not for you, exactly; wherever you were hijacked from, brothers bunch like clover on a Lamb Festival float, and no 4H Club judge notices a hole in the design.
* <http://www.bartleby.com/118/3.html> <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15719> http://rinabeana.com/poemoftheday/index.php/2008/06/19/mending-sump-by-kenneth-koch/
* <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15535> http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/variations-on-a-theme-by-william-carlos-williams/
* < http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/10255>
GLIMPSE—MID-MORNING
Amherst
What was the secret—a mad simplicity— myopia—sunlight on wide floorboards not besmirched by congress or convocation—
honey and alabaster—furtive or bold as a glance from the bedroom door—
a chosen silence—mote of distilled listening—a bluebird jangling nerves into ecstatic isolation—
framed view of hemlocks rendered skeletal—
What was the passion—an architecture imposed on unclaimed space— a stay against execution—
Why did her room—on the flat world’s edge—a heresy— send galleons to eternity—
The soul selecting temporal handmaidens—material midwives—
My soul on the doorsill—fleeting shadow— attentive to the chamber pot by her bed—rim roiled in August humidity—
or February ice—upon rising—her feet on the floorboards—all stone and cloud.
Teresa Cader
GRENADEYusef Komunyakaa
There’s no rehearsal to turn flesh into dust so quickly. A hair trigger, I did what I did. To see friends turn into ghosts among the reeds, to do deeds that packed the heart with brine & saltpeter was to sing like a bone for dust. All the questions were backed up inside my brain. Questions I didn’t know I had— as if I had stopped at the bloody breach— the stopgap between animal & human being. I did what I did. I called the Vietnamese gooks & dinks so I could kill them. But one night I had to bash in the skull of a dying GI. I was the squad leader, but I didn’t order PFC MacHenry to do what I couldn’t do. Or Private Ortega. I used the butt of my M16, & stars bled on the grass. Was the soldier black? Was he white? I can only say I did what I did because he sounded like a pigeon tied to a hunter’s stool, cooing with his eyes sewn shut. Yusef Komunyakaa One method of killing [Passenger Pigeons] was to blind a single bird by sewing its eyes shut using a needle and thread. This bird's feet would be attached to a circular stool at the end of a stick that could be raised five or six feet in the air, then dropped back to the ground. As the bird attempted to land, it would flutter its wings, thus attracting the attention of other birds flying overhead. When the flock landed near this decoy bird, nets would trap the birds and the hunters would crush their heads between their thumb and forefinger. This has been claimed as the origin of the term stool pigeon, though this etymology is disputed. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon
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