Sylvia Plath: For a fatherless son - Mrs. Rapert's Websiterapertenglishwhs.weebly.com/.../2/0/2/9/20297705/moder… · Web viewPhilip Larkin (1922 ... The world tells me I am its

AP Lit. Modern Poetry1

Sylvia Plath: For a fatherless son (1932-1963)

You will be aware of an absence, presently,Growing beside you, like a tree,A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree ---Balding, gelded by lightning--an illusion,And a sky like a pig's backside, an utter lack of attention.But right now you are dumb.And I love your stupidity,The blind mirror of it. I look inAnd find no face but my own, and you think that's funny.It is good for meTo have you grab my nose, a ladder rung.One day you may touch what's wrong ---The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush.Till then your smiles are found money.

Sylvia Plath: A Life

Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.Here's yesterday, last year ---Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vastWindless threadwork of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stirThough nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.The inhabitants are light as cork,Every one of them permanently busy.

At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.Never trespassing in bad temper:Stalling in midair,Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy

As Victorian cushions. This familyOf valentine faces might please a collector:They ring true, like good china.

Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.The light falls without letup, blindingly.

A woman is dragging her shadow in a circleAbout a bald hospital saucer.It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paperAnd appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.She lives quietly

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a pictureShe has one too many dimensions to enter.Grief and anger, exorcised,Leave her alone now.

The future is a grey seagullTattling in its cat-voice of departure.Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,Crawls up out of the sea.


Anne Sexton: Housewife (1928-1974)

Some women marry houses.It's another kind of skin; it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.The walls are permanent and pink.See how she sits on her knees all day, faithfully washing herself down.Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonahinto their fleshy mothers.A woman is her mother.That's the main thing.

Anne Sexton: Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,haunting the black air, braver at night;dreaming evil, I have done my hitchover the plain houses, light by light:lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.A woman like that is not a woman, quite.I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,closets, silks, innumerable goods;fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:whining, rearranging the disaligned.A woman like that is misunderstood.I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,waved my nude arms at villages going by,learning the last bright routes, survivorwhere your flames still bite my thighand my ribs crack where your wheels wind.A woman like that is not ashamed to die.I have been her kind.


Anne Sexton: Lullaby

It is a summer evening.The yellow moths sagagainst the locked screensand the faded curtainssuck over the window sillsand from another buildinga goat calls in his dreams.This is the TV parlorin the best ward at Bedlam.The night nurse is passingout the evening pills.She walks on two erasers,padding by us one by one.My sleeping pill is white.It is a splendid pearl;it floats me out of myself,my stung skin as alienas a loose bolt of cloth.I will ignore the bed.I am linen on a shelf.Let the others moan in secret;let each lost butterflygo home. Old woolen head,take me like a yellow mothwhile the goat calls hush-a-bye.


Edna St Vincent Millay: Passer Mortuus Est (1892-1950)

Death devours all lovely things;Lesbia with her sparrowShares the darkness,—presentlyEvery bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rainDries the sheer libation,And the little petulant handIs an annotation.

After all, my erstwhile dear,My no longer cherished,Need we say it was not love,Now that love is perished?

Edna St Vincent Millay: Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.


Marianne Moore (1887-1972): What Are Years

What is our innocence,what is our guilt? All arenaked, none is safe. And whenceis courage: the unanswered question,the resolute doubt, -dumbly calling, deafly listening-thatin misfortune, even death,encourage othersand in it's defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He sees deep and is glad, whoaccededs to mortalityand in his imprisonment risesupon himself as the sea in a chasm, struggling to befree and unable to be,in its surrenderingfinds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,behaves. The very bird,grown taller as he sings, steelshis form straight up. Though he is captive,his mighty singingsays, satisfaction is a lowlything, how pure a thing is joy.This is mortality,this is eternity.

Marianne Moore: Nevertheless

you've seen a strawberrythat's had a struggle; yetwas, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-fish for the multitudeof seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruitwithin the fruit - locked inlike counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that killsthe little rubber-plant -leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow in frozen ground. Once wherethere was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,a root shot down to growin earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakesor a ram's-horn root some-times. Victory won't come

to me unless I goto it; a grape tendrilties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - sothe bound twig that's under-gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes itsmenace, the strong over-comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sapwent through that little threadto make the cherry red!


Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd floundering like a man in fire or lime.--Dim, through the misty panes and thick green lightAs under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen: The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,And took the fire with him, and a knife.And as they sojourned both of them together,Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,and builded parapets and trenches there,And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,Neither do anything to him. Behold,

A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.But the old man would not so, but slew his son,And half the seed of Europe, one by one.


E.E. Cummings (1894-1962): Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth silver stallionand break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus

he was a handsome manand what i want to know ishow do you like your blueeyed boyMister Death

E.E. Cummings: I carry your heart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)i am never without it(anywherei go you go,my dear; and whatever is doneby only me is your doing,my darling)i fearno fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i wantno world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)and it's you are whatever a moon has always meantand whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the budand the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which growshigher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

E.E. Cummings: Hate blows a bubble of despair

hate blows a bubble of despair intohugeness world system universe and bang-fear buries a tomorrow under woeand up comes yesterday most green and young

pleasure and pain are merely surfaces(one itself showing,itself hiding one)life's only and true value neither islove makes the little thickness of the coin

comes here a man would have from madame deathnevertheless now and without winter spring?

she'll spin that spirit her own fingers withand give him nothing (if he should not sing)

how much more than enough for both of usdarling. And if i sing you are my voice,


Robert Graves (1895-1985): Warning to Children

Children, if you dare to thinkOf the greatness, rareness, muchnessFewness of this precious onlyEndless world in which you sayYou live, you think of things like this:Blocks of slate enclosing dappledRed and green, enclosing tawnyYellow nets, enclosing whiteAnd black acres of dominoes,Where a neat brown paper parcelTempts you to untie the string.In the parcel a small island,On the island a large tree,On the tree a husky fruit.Strip the husk and pare the rind off:In the kernel you will seeBlocks of slate enclosed by dappledRed and green, enclosed by tawnyYellow nets, enclosed by whiteAnd black acres of dominoes,Where the same brown paper parcel -Children, leave the string alone!For who dares undo the parcelFinds himself at once inside it,On the island, in the fruit,Blocks of slate about his head,Finds himself enclosed by dappledGreen and red, enclosed by yellowTawny nets, enclosed by blackAnd white acres of dominoes,With the same brown paper parcelStill untied upon his knee.And, if he then should dare to thinkOf the fewness, muchness, rareness,Greatness of this endless onlyPrecious world in which he sayshe lives - he then unties the string.

Robert Graves: On Portents

If strange things happen where she is,So that men say that graves openAnd the dead walk, or that futurityBecomes a womb and the unborn are shed,Such portents are not to be wondered at,Being tourbillions in Time madeBy the strong pulling of her bladed mindThrough that ever-reluctant element.


Philip Larkin (1922-1985): Deceptions

"Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regainconsciousness until the next morning. I was horrified todiscover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable,and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt."

--Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

Even so distant, I can taste the grief,Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.The sun's occasional print, the brisk briefWorry of wheels along the street outsideWhere bridal London bows the other way,And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,Forbids the scar to heal, and drivesShame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dareConsole you if I could. What can be said,Except that suffering is exact, but whereDesire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?For you would hardly careThat you were less deceived, out on that bed,Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stairTo burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

Philip Larkin: Next, Please

Always too eager for the future, we

Pick up bad habits of expectancy.Something is always approaching; every dayTill then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clearSparkling armada of promises draw near.How slow they are! And how much time they waste,Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalksOf disappointment, for, though nothing balksEach big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead wit golden titsArching our way, it never anchors; it's

No sooner present than it turns to past.Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unloadAll good into our lives, all we are owedFor waiting so devoutly and so long.But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.


Pablo Neruda (1904-1973): I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You I do not love you except because I love you;I go from loving to not loving you,From waiting to not waiting for youMy heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;I hate you deeply, and hating youBend to you, and the measure of my

changing love for youIs that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consumeMy heart with its cruelRay, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one whoDies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

______________________________________________________________________________

Pablo Neruda Walking Around It so happens I am sick of being a man.And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie housesdried up, waterproof, like a swan made of feltsteering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nailsand my hair and my shadow.It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelousto terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.It would be greatto go through the streets with a green knifeletting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming

with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestineshanging over the doors of houses that I hate,and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,there are mirrorsthat ought to have wept from shame and terror,there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilicalcords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,my rage, forgetting everything,I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:underwear, towels and shirts from which slowdirty tears are falling.


Adrienne Rich: (1929-present) Splittings

My body opens over San Francisco like the day-light raining down each pore crying the change of lightI am not with her I have been waking off and onall night to that pain not simply absence butthe presence of the past destructiveto living here and now Yet if I could instructmyself, if we could learn to learn from paineven as it grasps us if the mind, the mind that livesin this body could refuse to let itself be crushedin that grasp it would loosen Pain would have to standoff from me and listen its dark breath still on mebut the mind could begin to speak to painand pain would have to answer:

We are older nowwe have met before these are my hands before your eyesmy figure blotting out all that is not mineI am the pain of division creator of divisionsit is I who blot your lover from youand not the time-zones nor the milesIt is not separation calls me forth but Iwho am separation And rememberI have no existence apart from you

2.I believe I am choosing something newnot to suffer uselessly yet still to feelDoes the infant memorize the body of the motherand create her in absence? or simply cryprimordial loneliness? does the bed of the streamonce diverted mourning remember wetness?But we, we live so much in theseconfigurations of the past I chooseto separate her from my past we have not sharedI choose not to suffer uselesslyto detect primordial pain as it stalks toward meflashing its bleak torch in my eyes blotting outher particular being the details of her loveI will not be divided from her or from myself

by myths of separationwhile her mind and body in Manhattan are more with methan the smell of eucalyptus coolly burning on these hills

3.The world tells me I am its creatureI am raked by eyes brushed by handsI want to crawl into her for refuge lay my headin the space between her breast and shoulderabnegating power for loveas women have done or hidingfrom power in her love like a manI refuse these givens the splittingbetween love and action I am choosingnot to suffer uselessly and not to use herI choose to love this time for oncewith all my intelligence

Adreinne Rich: Delta

If you have taken this rubble for my pastraking though it for fragments you could sellknow that I long ago moved ondeeper into the heart of the matter

If you think you can grasp me, think again:my story flows in more than one directiona delta springing from the riverbedwith its five fingers spread


Goeffrey Hill: (1932-present) September Song

born 19.6.32 - deported 24.9.42

Undesirable you may have been, untouchableyou were not. Not forgottenor passed over at the proper time.

As estimated, you died. Things marched,sufficient, to that end.Just so much Zyklon and leather, patentedterror, so many routine cries.

(I have madean elegy for myself itis true)

September fattens on vines. Rosesflake from the wall. The smokeof harmless fires drifts to my eyes.

This is plenty. This is more than enough.

Geoffrey Hill : Ovid in the Third Reich

non peccat, quaecumque potest peccasse negare,

solaque famosam culpa professa facit.—(Amores, III, xiv)

I love my work and my children. GodIs distant, difficult. Things happen.Too near the ancient troughs of bloodInnocence is no earthly weapon.

I have learned one thing: not to look downSo much on the damned. They, in their sphere,Harmonize strangely with the divineLove. I, in mine, celebrate the love-choir.


Louise Gluck (1943-present): Happiness

A man and a woman lie on a white bed.It is morning. I thinkSoon they will waken.On the bedside table is a vaseof lilies; sunlightpools in their throats.I watch him turn to heras though to speak her namebut silently, deep in her mouth--At the window ledge,once, twice,a bird calls.And then she stirs; her bodyfills with his breath.

I open my eyes; you are watching me.Almost over this roomthe sun is gliding.Look at your face, you say,holding your own close to meto make a mirror.How calm you are. And the burning wheelpasses gently over us.

Loiuse Gluck: Portrait

A child draws the outline of a body.She draws what she can, but it is white all through,she cannot fill in what she knows is there.Within the unsupported line, she knowsthat life is missing; she has cutone background from another. Like a child,she turns to her mother.

And you draw the heartagainst the emptiness she has created.

Loiuse Gluck: The Fear of Burial

In the empty field, in the morning,the body waits to be claimed.The spirit sits beside it, on a small rock--nothing comes to give it form again.

Think of the body's loneliness.At night pacing the sheared field,its shadow buckled tightly around.Such a long journey.

And already the remote, trembling lights of the villagenot pausing for it as they scan the rows.How far away they seem,the wooden doors, the bread and milklaid like weights on the table


The Possibility by Fenton

The lizard on the wall, engrossed,The sudden silence from the woodAre telling me that I have lostThe possibility of good.

I know this flower is beautifulAnd yesterday it seemed to be,It opened like a crimson hand.It was not beautiful to me.

I know that work is beautiful.It is a boon. It is a good.Unless my working were a wayOf squandering my solitude.

And solitude was beautifulWhen i was sure that I was strong.I thought it was a mediumIn which to grow, but I was wrong.

The jays are swerving in the wood.The lizard moves with ugly speed.The flower closes like a fist.The possibility recedes.

Fireflies of the Sea by Fenton

Dip your hand in the water.Watch the current shine.See the blaze trail from your fingers, Trail from your fingers,Trail from mine.There are fireflies on the island And they cluster in one tree And in the coral shallows There are fireflies of the sea.

Look at the stars reflected Now the sea is calmAnd the phosphorus exploding, Flashing like a starburstWhen you stretch your arm.When you reach down in the water It's like reaching up to a tree,To a tree clustered with fireflies, Fireflies of the sea.

Wind by Fenton

This is the wind, the wind in a field of corn. Great crowds are fleeing from a major disaster Down the green valleys, the long swaying wadis, Down through the beautiful catastrophe of wind.

Families, tribes, nations, and their livestock Have heard something, seen something. An expectation Or a gigantic misunderstanding has swept over the hilltop Bending the ear of the hedgerow with stories of fire and sword.

I saw a thousand years pass in two seconds. Land was lost, languages rose and divided. This lord went east and found safety. His brother sought Africa and a dish of aloes.

Centuries, minutes later, one might ask How the hilt of a sword wandered so far from the smithy. And somewhere they will sing: 'Like chaff we were borne In the wind. ' This is the wind in a field of corn.

http://fallslikesnow.blogspot.com/2006/12/possibility.html


Woebegone by Yusef Komunyakaa

We pierce tongue& eyebrow, foreskin& nipple, as if threading wisheson gutstring. Gold bead& question mark hookinto loopholes & slipthrough. We kisslike tiny branding irons.Loved ones guard wordsof praise, & demigods mortgagenighttime. Beneath bruisedglamor, we say, "I'll showhow much I love byhow many scars I wear."As we steal the lastdrops of anger, what can weinherit from Clarksdale's bluetenements? Medieval & modern,one martyr strokes anothertill Torquemada rises.We trade bouquetsof lousewort, not for the redblooms & loud perfume,but for the lovely spikes.

Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,hiding inside the black granite.I said I wouldn't,dammit: No tears.I'm stone. I'm flesh.My clouded reflection eyes melike a bird of prey, the profile of nightslanted against morning. I turnthis way--the stone lets me go.I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference.I go down the 58,022 names,half-expecting to findmy own in letters like smoke.I touch the name Andrew Johnson;I see the booby trap's white flash.Names shimmer on a woman's blousebut when she walks awaythe names stay on the wall.Brushstrokes flash, a red bird'swings cutting across my stare.The sky. A plane in the sky.A white vet's image floatscloser to me, then his pale eyeslook through mine. I'm a window.He's lost his right arminside the stone. In the black mirrora woman's trying to erase names:No, she's brushing a boy's hair.


ALL IS NOT LOST WHEN DREAMS ARE by Thylias Moss

1.The dreams float like votive liliesthen melt.

It is the way they singgoing down that I envy and to hear it

I could not rescue them. A dirgereaches my ears like a corkscrew of smokeAnd it sits behind my eyes like a piano rollSome say this is miracle waterNone say dreams made it so

2.Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good forAnd flew out of the streamIt was not dreamingIt had no ambition but confusion

In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sunand its eye turns white and pops out like a pearlwhen it's broiled

The Titanic is the one that got away.

TORNADOS by Thylias Moss

Truth is, I envy themnot because they dance; I out jitterbug themas I'm shuttled through and through legsstrong as looms, weaving time. Theydo black more justice than I, frenzyof conductor of philharmonic and electricity, hairon end, result of the charge when horns and strings releasethe pent up Beethoven and Mozart. Ions played

instead of notes. The movement is not wrath, not hormone swarm becauseI saw my first forming above the church a surrogatesteeple. The morning of my first baptism andsalvation already tangible, funnel for the spiritcoming into me without losing a drop, my blackguardian angel come to rescue me before all the words

get out, I looked over Jordan and what did I see coming forto carry me home. Regardez, it all comes back, even the firstgrade French, when the tornado stirs up the past, bewitched spoonlost in its own spin, like a roulette wheel that won'tbe steered like the world. They drove me underground,tornado watches and warnings, atomic bomb drills. Adult storms so I had to leave the room. Truth is

the tornado is a perfect nappy curl, tightly wound,spinning wildly when I try to tamper with its nature, shunningthe hot comb and pressing oil even though if absolutely straightI'd have the longest hair in the world. Bouffant tornadiccrown taking the royal path on a trip to town, stroll downTornado Alley where it intersects Memory Lane. Smoky spirit-clouds, shadows searching for what cast them.


Aware by Denise Levertov

When I found the doorI found the vine leavesspeaking among themselves in abundantwhispers.My presence made themhush their green breath,embarrassed, the wayhumans stand up, buttoning their jackets,acting as if they were leaving anyway, as ifthe conversation had endedjust before you arrived.I likedthe glimpse I had, though,of their obscuregestures. I liked the soundof such private voices. Next timeI'll move like cautious sunlight, openthe door by fractions, eavesdroppeacefully.

Untitled by Denise Levertov

Scraps of moonbobbing discarded on broken waterbut sky-mooncomplete, transcendingall violationHere she seems to be talking to herself aboutthe shape of a life:Only OnceAll which, because it wasflame and song and granted usjoy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit, turns out to have been what it wasthat once, only; every invitationdid not begina series, a build-up: the marvelousdid not happen in our lives, our storiesare not drab with its absence: but don'texpect to return for more. Whatever morethere will be will be

unique as those were unique. Tryto acknowledge the next song in its body-halo of flames as utterlypresent, as now or never.

In Mind by Denise Levertov

There's in my mind a womanof innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured and smelling ofapples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hairis light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean withoutostentation--

but she hasno imagination

And there's aturbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.


The Buried Train by Robert Bly

Tell me about the train that people say got buriedBy the avalanche--was it snow?--It wasIn Colorado, and no one saw it happen.There was smoke from the engine curling up

Lightly through fir tops, and the engine sounds.There were all those people reading--someFrom Thoreau, some from Henry Ward Beecher.And the engineer smoking and putting his head out.

I wonder when that happened. Was it afterHigh School, or was it the year we were two?We entered this narrow place, and we heard the soundAbove us--the train couldn't move fast enough.

It isn't clear what happened next. Are you and IStill sitting there in the train, waiting for the lightsTo go on? Or did the real train get really buried;So at night a ghost train comes out and keeps going...

Snowbanks North of the House by Robert Bly

Those great sweeps of snow that stop suddenly sixfeet from the house ...Thoughts that go so far.The boy gets out of high school and reads no morebooks;the son stops calling home.The mother puts down her rolling pin and makes nomore bread.And the wife looks at her husband one night at aparty, and loves him no more.The energy leaves the wine, and the minister fallsleaving the church.It will not come closerthe one inside moves back, and the hands touchnothing, and are safe.

The father grieves for his son, and will not leave theroom where the coffin stands.He turns away from his wife, and she sleeps alone.

And the sea lifts and falls all night, the moon goes onthrough the unattached heavens alone.

The toe of the shoe pivotsin the dust ...And the man in the black coat turns, and goes backdown the hill.No one knows why he came, or why he turned away,and did not climb the hill.


PHILLIP LEVINE (—1 POEM)

“He Would Never Use One Word Where

None Would Do,” Philip Levine

If you said “Nice day,” he would look up

at the three clouds riding overhead,

nod at each, and go back to doing what-

ever he was doing or not doing.

If you asked for a smoke or a light,

he’d hand you whatever he found

in his pockets: a jackknife, a hankie –

usually unsoiled — a dollar bill,

a subway token. Once he gave me

half the sandwich he was eating

at the little outdoor restaurant

on La Guardia Place. I remember

a single sparrow was perched on the back

of his chair, and when he held out

a piece of bread on his open palm,

the bird snatched it up and went back to

its place without even a thank you,

one hard eye staring at my bad eye

as though I were next. That was in May

of ’97, spring had come late,

but the sun warmed both of us for hours

while silence prevailed, if you can call

the blaring of taxi horns and the trucks

fighting for parking and the kids on skates

streaming past silence. My friend Frankie

was such a comfort to me that year,

the year of the crisis. He would turn

up his great dark head just going gray

until his eyes met mine, and that was all

I needed to go on talking nonsense

as he sat patiently waiting me out,

the bird staring over his shoulder.

“Silence is silver,” my Zaydee had said,

getting it wrong and right, just as he said

“Water is thicker than blood,” thinking

this made him a real American.

Frankie was already American,

being half German, half Indian.

Fact is, silence is the perfect water:

unlike rain it falls from no clouds

to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,

to give heart to the thin blades of grass

fighting through the concrete for even air

dirtied by our endless stream of words.


WALLACE STEVENS (2 PAGES—1 POEM)

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace StevensI

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.


XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.


W.B. SNODGRASS (—2 POEMS)

Song

By W. D. Snodgrass Sweet beast, I have gone prowling, a proud rejected manwho lived along the edges catch as catch can;in darkness and in hedges I sang my sour toneand all my love was howling conspicuously alone.

I curled and slept all day or nursed my bloodless woundsuntil the squares were silent where I could make my tunessingular and violent. Then, sure as hearers cameI crept and flinched away. And, girl, you've done the same.

A stray from my own type, led along by blindness,my love was near to spoiled and curdled all my kindness.I find no kin, no child; only the weasel's ilk.Sweet beast, cat of my own stripe, come and take my milk.

A Locked House

By W. D. Snodgrass As we drove back, crossing the hill, The house still Hidden in the trees, I always thought— A fool’s fear—that it might have caught Fire, someone could have broken in. As if things must have been Too good here. Still, we always found It locked tight, safe and sound.

I mentioned that, once, as a joke; No doubt we spoke Of the absurdity To fear some dour god’s jealousy Of our good fortune. From the farm

Next door, our neighbors saw no harm Came to the things we cared for here. What did we have to fear?

Maybe I should have thought: all Such things rot, fall— Barns, houses, furniture. We two are stronger than we were Apart; we’ve grown Together. Everything we own Can burn; we know what counts—some such Idea. We said as much.

We’d watched friends driven to betray; Felt that love drained away Some self they need. We’d said love, like a growth, can feed On hate we turn in and disguise; We warned ourselves. That you might

despise Me—hate all we both loved best— None of us ever guessed.

The house still stands, locked, as it stood Untouched a good Two years after you went. Some things passed in the settlement; Some things slipped away. Enough’s left That I come back sometimes. The theft And vandalism were our own. Maybe we should have known.

W.D. Snodgrass, “A Locked House” from Selected Poems, 195

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-d-snodgrass

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-d-snodgrass


CARL SANDBURG (—3 POEMS)

The Harbor

By Carl Sandburg Passing through huddled and ugly walls, By doorways where women haggard Looked from their hunger-deep eyes, Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands, Out from the huddled and ugly walls, I came sudden, at the city's edge, On a blue burst of lake, Long lake waves breaking under the sun On a spray-flung curve of shore; And a fluttering storm of gulls, Masses of great gray wings And flying white bellies Veering and wheeling free in the open.

Source: Poetry (March 1914).

A.E.F.

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart, The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust. A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it. The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty. And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall. Forefingers and thumbs will point casually toward it. It will be spoken among half-forgotten, whished-to-be-forgotten things. They will tell the spider: Go on, you're doing good work.

Carl Sandburg

And This Will Be All....

And this will be all?And the gates will never open again?And the dust and the wind will play around the rusty door hinges and the songs of October moan, Why-oh, why-oh?

And you will look to the mountainsAnd the mountains will look to youAnd you will wish you were a mountainAnd the mountain will wish nothing at all?This will be all?The gates will never-never open again?

The dust and the wind onlyAnd the rusty door hinges and moaning OctoberAnd Why-oh, why-oh, in the moaning dry leaves,This will be all?

Nothing in the air but songsAnd no singers, no mouths to know the songs?You tell us a woman with a heartache tells you it is so?This will be all?

Carl Sandburg

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carl-sandburg


SHERYL LUNA—(—2 POEMS)

Lowering Your Standards for Food Stamps

By Sheryl Luna Words fall out of my coat pocket,soak in bleach water. I touch everyone’sdirty dollars. Maslow’s got everything on me.Fourteen hours on my feet. No breaks.No smokes or lunch. Blank-eyed movements:trash bags, coffee burner, fingers numb.I am hourly protestations and false smiles.The clock clicks its slow slowing.Faces blur in a stream of hurried soccer games,sunlight, and church certainty. I have nopoem to carry, no material illusions.Cola spilled on hands, so sticky fingered,I’m far from poems. I’d write of politicians,refineries, and a border’s barbed wire,but I am unlearning America’s languageswith a mop. In a summer-hot redpolyester top, I sell lotto tickets. Cars wait for

gasbillowing black. Killing time has new meaning.A jackhammer breaks apart a life. The slow

globespirals, and at night black space has me dizzy.Visionaries off their meds and wacked outmeth heads sing to me. A panicky fear of

robberyand humiliation drips with my sweat.Words some say are weeping twilight and

sunrise.I am drawn to dramas, the couple arguing, the

manheadbutting his wife in the parking lot.911: no metered aubade, and nobody butmyself to blame.

Shock and Awe

By Sheryl Luna Tightened jaw, I did not love.Flashback of myself jerked about,legs high above my head, menlaughing, I came to sea drifts,movement and crashing. I found I amnot so far from God exploding.Gifting, a friend once said, is why we live.Seven storks still and white on a gold lake.My lazy eye glances back to that originalsplit, myself high above myself.Whiplashed into forgetting, I didn’t knowhours from minutes. I was hypervigilant forcatastrophes. My head raging then numb.The early garden bare, and now,shocked with sudden memory,I return to changing sky hues,blooms of lilac bursting along sidewalks.Lazy in the grass, I free myself of guilt,imagine musicians in the park, us overcomingourselves. My eyes open before stars.Holy these leaves, these skies.What is torn opens for the light.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sheryl-luna

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sheryl-luna


OCEAN VUONG (2 PAGES—2 POEMS)

Aubade with Burning City

By Ocean Vuong

South Vietnam, April 29, 1975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” as a code to begin Operation Frequent Wind, the ultimate evacuation of American civilians and Vietnamese refugees by helicopter during the fall of Saigon.

Milkflower petals on the street like pieces of

a girl’s dress.

May your days be merry and bright ...

He fills a teacup with champagne, brings it to her lips.

Open, he says. She opens. Outside, a

soldier spits out his cigarette as footsteps fill the square like stones

fallen from the sky. May all your Christmases be

white as the traffic guard unstraps his holster.

His hand running the hem

of her white dress. His black eyes. Her black hair. A single candle. Their shadows: two

wicks.

A military truck speeds through the intersection, the sound of children

shrieking inside. A bicycle hurled

through a store window. When the dust rises, a black dog

lies in the road, panting. Its hind legs

crushed into the shine

of a white Christmas.

On the nightstand, a sprig of magnolia expands like a secret heard

for the first time.

The treetops glisten and children listen, the chief of police

facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola.

A palm-sized photo of his father soaking

beside his left ear.

The song moving through the city like a widow.

A white ... A white ... I’m dreaming of a curtain of snow

falling from her shoulders.

Snow crackling against the window. Snow shredded

with gunfire. Red sky.

Snow on the tanks rolling over the city walls.

A helicopter lifting the living just out of reach.

The city so white it is ready for ink.

The radio saying run run run.

Milkflower petals on a black dog like pieces of a girl’s dress.

May your days be merry and bright. She is saying

something neither of them can hear. The hotel rocks

beneath them. The bed a field of ice

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ocean-vuong


cracking.

Don’t worry, he says, as the first bomb brightens

their faces, my brothers have won the war

and tomorrow ...

The lights go out.

I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming ... to hear

sleigh bells in the snow ...

In the square below: a nun, on fire, runs silently toward

her god —

Open, he says. She opens.

DetoNation

By Ocean Vuong There’s a joke that ends with — huh?It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father insideyour lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is — afterward.To even write the word father

is to carve a portion of the dayout of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough light to drown inbut never enough to enter the bones

& stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boybroken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry

anymore. So I ran into the night.The night: my shadow growing

toward my father.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ocean-vuong


LYNN XU (—2 POEMS)

Earth Light: IBY LYNN XU

Doors open and shut.

We’ve come to the place where nothing shines.

I hear eternity

Is self-forgetting. Interiors warm with the

nightmare of guests and poetry

And you. Everything darkly

Reverent years of reading about death eluded.

Bled

Back from the ear sidestepping your bullets

bloom in on ye lay

Rock. Rud. Spread

So swiftly tastes like mud. Dredged mud off

The corpse sled hushed down woodsmoke.

Said the stars thrum on Marie

Marie. Hold on tight.

In the depths of outer space

Is man.

Lullaby [For Charles Baudelaire]BY LYNN XU

Lie me down to heal in sleep, do not let me

wake

In sin, the tongue

Cancels another year, another painted storm

In the coral caves, some pious poet

Drunk on vapors

Swatting tomb-bats in the nightwood, would

that

Wayward bark sunned white

Be also thunder, a hill of bones drumming—

thud

Thud, a wake

Of buzzards braiding into the loosening skull—

the redoubled fists

Of students like an island in the bramble

chained—I have been told

To reason, lawless, empty, without rights—

But I am old

Not age, I have been told

To match its columns by our footfall, prophet

—I am not

The straw or garland of our Sirens, not the

brow

Of holly, nor the warble

Of any lark

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lynn-xu

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lynn-xu


MARK STRAND (2 PAGES-3 POEMS)

Coming to ThisBY MARK STRAND

We have done what we wanted.

We have discarded dreams, preferring the

heavy industry

of each other, and we have welcomed grief

and called ruin the impossible habit to break.

And now we are here.

The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.

The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.

The wine waits.

Coming to this

has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is

taken away.

We have no heart or saving grace,

no place to go, no reason to remain.

My LifeBY MARK STRAND

The huge doll of my body

refuses to rise.

I am the toy of women.

My mother

would prop me up for her friends.

“Talk, talk,” she would beg.

I moved my mouth

but words did not come.

My wife took me down from the shelf.

I lay in her arms. “We suffer

the sickness of self,” she would whisper.

And I lay there dumb.

Now my daughter

gives me a plastic nurser

filled with water.

“You are my real baby,” she says.

Poor child!

I look into the brown

mirrors of her eyes

and see myself

diminishing, sinking down

to a depth she does not know is there.

Out of breath,

I will not rise again.

I grow into my death.

My life is small

and getting smaller. The world is green.

Nothing is all.

Mark Strand: Seven Poems

For Antonia

1At the edgeof the body’s nightten moons are rising.

2A scar remembers the wound.The wound remembers the pain.Once more you are crying.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mark-strand

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mark-strand


3When we walk in the sunour shadows are like barges of silence.

4My body lies downand I hear my ownvoice lying next to me.

5The rock is pleasureand it opensand we enter itas we enter ourselveseach night.

6When I talk to the windowI say everythingis everything

7I have a keyso I open the door and walk in.It is dark and I walk in.It is darker and I walk in.

(Poetry, 1970)

Documents

Sylvia Plath: For a fatherless son - Mrs. Rapert's Websiterapertenglishwhs.weebly.com/.../2/0/2/9/20297705/moder… · Web viewPhilip Larkin (1922 ... The world tells me I am its