Intro to Poetry Final Exam

For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours; For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

Audre Lorde, "A Litany for Survival"

Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. I seek no favor untouched by blood unrelenting as the curse of love permanent as my errors or my pride I do not mix love with pity nor hate with scorn and if you would know me look into the entrails of Uranus where the restless oceans pound. I do not dwell within my birth nor my divinities who am ageless and half-grown and still seeking my sisters witches in Dahomey wear me inside their coiled cloths as our mother did mourning. I have been woman for a long time beware my smile I am treacherous with old magic and the noon's new fury with all your wide futures promised I am woman and not white.

Audre Lorde, "A Woman Speaks"

I Is the total black, being spoken From the earth's inside. There are many kinds of open. How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open Like a diamond on glass windows Singing out within the crash of passing sun Then there are words like stapled wagers In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart— And come whatever wills all chances The stub remains An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge. Some words live in my throat Breeding like adders. Others know sun Seeking like gypsies over my tongue To explode through my lips Like young sparrows bursting from shell. Some words Bedevil me. Love is a word another kind of open— As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside Take my word for jewel in your open light.

Audre Lorde, "Coal"

There must be some kind of way outta hereSaid the joker to the thief There's too much confusion I can't get no relief Business men, they drink my wine Plowmen dig my earth None will level on the line Nobody offered his word Hey, hey No reason to get excited The thief, he kindly spoke There are many here among us Who feel that life is but a joke But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that And this is not our fate So let us stop talkin' falsely now The hour's getting late, hey

Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower"

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly Before they're forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowin' in the wind Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist Before it is washed to the sea? And how many years can some people exist Before they're allowed to be free? Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head And pretend that he just doesn't see? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowin' in the wind Yes, and how many times must a man look up Before he can see the sky? And how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry? Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows That too many people have died?

Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"

Thought of by you all day, I think of you. The birds sing in the shelter of a tree. Above the prayer of rain, unacred blue, not paradise, goes nowhere endlessly. How does it happen that our lives can drift far from ourselves, while we stay trapped in time, queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift the patter for our days, alter the rhyme we make with loss to assonance with bliss. Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds from earth to heaven after rain. Your kiss, recalled, unstrings, like pearls, this chain of words. Huge skies connect us, joining here to there. Desire and passion on the thinking air.

Carol Ann Duffy, "Rapture"

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet-- One perfect rose. I knew the language of the floweret; "My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose." Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose. Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get One perfect rose.

Dorothy Parker, "One Perfect Rose"

Only the feathers floating around the hat Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore The confusing aspects of the case, And the witnesses ran off to a gang war. So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply "Drowned," but it was wrong: Icarus Had swum away, coming at last to the city Where he rented a house and tended the garden. "That nice Mr. Hicks" the neighbors called, Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once Compelled the sun. And had he told them They would have answered with a shocked, uncomprehending stare. No, he could not disturb their neat front yards; Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake: What was he doing aging in a suburb? Can the genius of the hero fall To the middling stature of the merely talented? And nightly Icarus probes his wound And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn, Constructs small wings and tries to fly To the lighting fixture on the ceiling: Fails every time and hates himself for trying. He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically, And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero; But now rides commuter trains, Serves on various committees, And wishes he had drowned.

Edward Field, "Icarus"

Taxi driver Be my shrink for the hour Leave the meter running It's rush hour So take the streets if you wanna Just outrun the demons, could you? He said, "Allahu akbar" I told him, "Don't curse me" "Bo Bo, you need prayer" I guess it couldn't hurt me If it brings me to my knees It's a bad religion (ooh-ooh) This unrequited love To me, it's nothing but a one-man cult And cyanide in my styrofoam cup I can never make him love me Never make him love me

Frank Ocean, "Bad Religion"

At the factory I worked In the fleck of rubber, under the press Of an oven yellow with flame, Until the border patrol opened Their vans and my boss waved for us to run. "Over the fence, Soto," he shouted, And I shouted that I was an American. "No time for lies," he said, and passes A dollar in my palm, hurrying me Through the back door. Since I was on his time, I ran And became the wag to a short tail of Mexicans-- Ran past the amazed crowds that lined The street and blurred like photographs, in rain. I ran from that industrial road to the soft Houses where people paled at the turn of an autumn sky. What could I do but yell vivas To baseball, milkshakes, and those sociologists Who would clock me As I jog into the next century On the power of a great, silly grin.

Gary Soto, "Mexicans Begin Jogging"

I want to die while you love me, While yet you hold me fair, While laughter lies upon my lips And lights are in my hair. I want to die while you love me, And bear to that still bed, Your kisses turbulent, unspent To warm me when I'm dead. I want to die while you love me Oh, who would care to live Till love has nothing more to ask And nothing more to give? I want to die while you love me And never, never see The glory of this perfect day Grow dim or cease to be!

Georgia Douglas Johnson, "I Want to Die While You Love Me"

You don't return my calls. In a month of missing days Everything thwarts me, even the curls of my hair freeze; My skin sheds, leaving flakes on my wool sweater. We are erratic Both, changing with the weather, but you think of it As an astronomical progression. Last year you called me Your little sunflower. Eleven blizzards later I think of how To get you: calculating mercury, sighting along constellations, Rehearsing the lines of a paid assassin—not know me, my Lord? You cannot choose! I bide time, Hoarse-tongued and blue as poison, the double Line of my eyes gone to slits. I hate like a tooth hurts, At the root. I will startle the bones From their sockets, they will crack like glass And catch in your throat. I will dazzle Your heart from its cage. The lungs will knock and clap Together in the empty place. The applause will make you rattle.

Jane Yeh, "The Revenger's Tragedy"

In drear nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity— The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime. In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would 'twere so with many A gentle girl and boy— But were there ever any Writh'd not of passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in rhyme.

John Keats, "In Drear-Nighted December"

What happens to the leaves after they turn red and golden and fall away? What happens to the singing birds when they can't sing any longer? What happens to their quick wings? Do you think there is any personal heaven for any of us? Do you think anyone, the other side of that darkness, will call to us, meaning us? Beyond the trees the foxes keep teaching their children to live in the valley. So they never seem to vanish, they are always there in the blossom of light that stands up every morning in the dark sky. And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. I would be a fox, or a tree full of waving branches. I wouldn't mind being a rose in a field of roses. Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition. Reason they have not yet thought of. Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what. Or any other foolish question.

Mary Oliver, "Roses, Late Summer"

We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot's house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille, Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, 'The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.' But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

Oscar Wilde, "The Harlot's House"

I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels! I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting— I know why he beats his wing! I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Sympathy"

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask"

At home, the bells were a high light-yellow with no silver or gray just buttercup or sugar-and-lemon. Here bodies are lined in blue against the sea. And where red is red there is only red. I have to be blue to bathe in the sea. Red, to live in the red room with red air to rest my head, red cheek down, on the red table. Above, it was so green: brown, yellow, white, green. My longing for red furious, sexual. There things were alive but nothing moved. Now I live near the sea in a place which has no blue and is not the sea. Gulls flock, leeward then tangent and pigeons bully them off the ground. Hardly alive, almost blind-a hot geometry casts off every color of the world. Everything moves, nothing alive. In the red room there is a sky which is painted over in red but is not red and was, once, the sky. This is how I live. A red table in a red room filled with air. A woman, edged in blue, bathing in the blue sea. The surface like the pale, scaled skin of fish far below or above or away—

Rachel Zucker, "Letter [Persephone to Demeter]"

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled, stooped to pull harder— when, sprung out of the earth on his glittering terrible carriage, he claimed his due. It is finished. No one heard her. No one! She had strayed from the herd. (Remember: go straight to school. This is important, stop fooling around! Don't answer to strangers. Stick with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.) This is how easily the pit opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.

Rita Dove, "Persephone, Falling"

"Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together I've got some real estate here in my bag" So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies And walked off to look for America "Kathy", I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh "Michigan seems like a dream to me now" It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw I've gone to look for America Laughing on the bus Playing games with the faces She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy I said "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera" "Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat" "We smoked the last one an hour ago" So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine And the moon rose over an open field "Kathy, I'm lost", I said, though I knew she was sleeping I'm empty and aching and I don't know why Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike They've all come to look for America All come to look for America All come to look for America

Simon and Garfunkel, "America"

Why is the word pretty so underrated? In November the leaf is pretty when it falls The stream grows deep in the woods after rain And in the pretty pool the pike stalks He stalks his prey, and this is pretty too, The prey escapes with an underwater flash But not for long, the great fish has him now The pike is a fish who always has his prey And this is pretty. The water rat is pretty His paws are not webbed, he cannot shut his nostrils As the otter can and the beaver, he is torn between The land and water. Not 'torn', he does not mind. The owl hunts in the evening and it is pretty The lake water below him rustles with ice There is frost coming from the ground, in the air mist All this is pretty, it could not be prettier. Yes, it could always be prettier, the eye abashes It is becoming an eye that cannot see enough, Out of the wood the eye climbs. This is prettier A field in the evening, tilting up. The field tilts to the sky. Though it is late The sky is lighter than the hill field All this looks easy but really it is extraordinary Well, it is extraordinary to be so pretty. And it is careless, and that is always pretty This field, this owl, this pike, this pool are careless, As Nature is always careless and indifferent Who sees, who steps, means nothing, and this is pretty. So a person can come along like a thief—pretty!— Stealing a look, pinching the sound and feel, Lick the icicle broken from the bank And still say nothing at all, only cry pretty. Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you'll be able Very soon not even to cry pretty And so be delivered entirely from humanity This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty.

Stevie Smith, "Pretty"

We are the disobedient look upon us and despair for we outlast history, time, and memory we are always there We are the unquenchable thirst for justice 5 the bodies that do not bend tongues you cannot straightjacket and eyes that will not be turned blind We are the step you trip on in the night the nightmare you wake from but cannot recall 10 the lump under the rolling hill that reminds you what is buried there We are the disobedient We bear witness and we testify We love despite the lie that we are not worthy We hold despite being told we should hide 15 Yes - we are the disobedient who refuse to die for bodies without eulogies will never remain in their graves we are the ghosts of the unmourned and the spirits of the never-grieved 20 We are the original traitors to the tireless tyrant

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, "Virtue of Disobedience"

Gwine find a beauty shop Cause I ain't a belle. Gwine find a beauty shop Cause I ain't a lovely belle. The boys pass me by, They say I's not so swell. See oder young gals So slick and smart. See dose oder young gals So slick and smart. I jes gwine die on de shelf If I don't mek a start. I hate dat ironed hair And dat bleaching skin. Hate dat ironed hair And dat bleaching skin. But I'll be all alone If I don't fall in. Lord 'tis you did gie me All dis kinky hair. 'Tis you did gie me All dis kinky hair, And I don't envy gals What got dose locks so fair. I like me black face And me kinky hair. I like me black face And me kinky hair. But nobody loves dem, I jes don't tink it's fair. Now I's gwine press me hair And bleach me skin. I's gwine press me hair And bleach me skin. What won't a gal do Some kind of man to win.

Una Marson, "Kinky Hair Blues"

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"

vivid description and portrayal of beauty simply through words.

aesthetics

a central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes

antihero

When poets direct speech to an abstract concept or a person who is not physically present

apostrophe

used to convey the idea that the chief or only aim of a work of art is the self-expression of the individual artist who creates it.

art for art's sake

typically takes on themes such as struggle, despair, and sex.

blues poem

the internal conflict experienced by subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society

double consciousness

refers to the literary and rhetorical trope of summoning up—through words—an impression of a visual stimulus, object, or scene.

ekphrastic poem

a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

euphemism

two or more syllables rhyme

feminine rhyme

often thought of as being the music belonging to 'the people'.

folk music

each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling, for example new and knew.

homophone

the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

irony

one syllable rhymes

masculine rhyme

the jargon or informal speech used by a particular social group.

patois

the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism

postcolonialism

the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

satire