Modern Poetry Final Stuff

to elsie

william carlos williams

The feminist movement as at present instituted is Inadequate Women if you want to realize yourselves-you are on the eve of a devastating psychological upheaval-all your pet illu- sions must be unmasked—the lies of centuries have got to go— are you prepared for the Wrench—? There is no half- measure—NO scratching on the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition, will bring about Reform, the only method is Absolute Demolition

"Feminist Movement", Mina Loy

When Ma Rainey Comes to town, Folks from anyplace Miles aroun', From Cape Girardeau, Poplar Bluff, Flocks in to hear Ma do her stuff; Comes flivverin' in, Or ridin' mules, Or packed in trains, Picknickin' fools. . . . That's what it's like, Fo' miles on down, To New Orleans delta An' Mobile town, When Ma hits Anywheres aroun'.

"Ma Rainey", Sterling Brown

1 Nineveh, Tyre Babylon, Not much lef' Of either one. All dese cities Ashes and rust, De win' sing sperrichals Through deir dus'.... Was another Memphis Mongst de olden days, Done been destroyed In many ways... Dis here Memphis It may go Floods may drown it; Tornado blow; Mississippi wash it Down to sea—- Like de other Memphis in History. 2 Watcha gonna do when Memphis on fire, Memphis on fire, Mistah Preachin' Man? Gonna pray to Jesus and nebber tire, Gonna pray to Jesus, loud as I can, Gonna pray to my Jesus, oh, my Lawd! Watcha gonna do when de tall flames roar, Tall flames roar, Mistah Lovin' Man? Gonna love my brwonskin better'n before— Gonna love my baby lak a do right man, Gonna love my brown baby, oh, my Lawd Whatcha gonna do when Memphis falls down, Memphis falls down, Mistah Music Man? Gonna plunk on dat box as long as it soun' Gonna plunk dat box fo' to beat de ban', Gonna tickle dem ivories, oh, my Lawd! Watcha gonna do in de hurrican, In de hurricane, Mistah Workin' Man? Gonna put dem buildings up again, Gonna put em up dis time to stan', Gonna push a wicked wheelbarrow, oh, my Lawd! Watcha gonna do when Memphis near gone, Memphis near gone, Mistah Drinkin' Man? Gonna grab a pint bottle of Mountain Corn, Gonna keep de stopper in my han', Gonna get a mean jag on, oh, my Lawd! Watcha gonna do when de flood roll fas', Flood roll fas', Mistah Gamblin' Man? Gonna pick up my dice fo' one las' pass—- Gonna fade my way to de lucky lan', Gonna throw my las' seven—-oh, my Lawd! 3 Memphis go By Flood or Flame; ------ won't worry All de same—- Memphis go Memphis come back, Ain' no skin Off de ------'s back. All dese cities Ashes, rust.... De win' sing sperrichals Through deir dus'.`

"Memphis Blues", Sterling Brown

Thinking and thanking in our langague are words from one and the same source. Whoever follows out their meaning enters the semantic field of : "recollect", bear in mind, rememberance, devotion. Permit me, from this standpoint ,to thank you.

"Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, by celan

The young men keep coming on The strong men keep coming on. - Sandburg They dragged you from the homeland, They chained you in coffles, They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches, They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease. They broke you in like oxen, They scourged you, They branded you, They made your women breeders, They swelled your numbers with bastards.. They taught you the religion they disgraced. You sang: Keep a-inchin' along Lak a po' inch worm... You sang: By and Bye I'm gonna lay down this heaby load... You sang: Walk togedder, chillen, Dontcha git weary... The strong men keep a-comin' on The strong men get stronger. They point with pride to the roads you built for them, They ride in comfort over the rails you laid for them. They put hammers in your hands And said-Drive so much before sundown. You sang: Ain't no hammah In dis lan' Strikes lak mine, bebby, Stikes lak mine. They copped you in their kitchens, They penned you in their factories, They gave you the jobs that they were too good for, They tried to guarantee happiness to themselves By shunting dirt and misery to you....

"Strong Men", Sterling Brown

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, As a calm darkens among water-lights. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. The day is like wide water, without sound, Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet Over the seas, to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. II Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.

"Sunday Morning", Wallace Stevens

There is a bitter river Flowing through the South. Too long has the taste of its water Been in my mouth. There is a bitter river Dark with filth and mud. Too long has its evil poison Poisoned my blood. I've drunk of the bitter river And its gall coats the red of my tongue, Mixed with the blood of the lynched boys From its iron bridge hung, Mixed with the hopes that are drowned there In the snake-like hiss of its stream Where I drank of the bitter river That strangled my dream: The book studied-but useless, Tool handled-but unused, Knowledge acquired but thrown away, Ambition battered and bruised. Oh, water of the bitter river With your taste of blood and clay, You reflect no stars by night, No sun by day. The bitter river reflects no stars- It gives back only the glint of steel bars And dark bitter faces behind steel bars: The Scottsboro boys behind steel bars, Lewis Jones behind steel bars, The voteless share- cropper behind steel bars, The labor leader behind steel bars, The soldier thrown from a Jim Crow bus behind steel bars, The 150 mugger behind steel bars, The girl who sells her body behind steel bars, And my grandfather's back with its ladder of scars Long ago, long ago- the whip and steel bars- The bitter river reflects no stars. "Wait, be patient," you say. "Your folks will have a better day." But the swirl of the bitter river Takes your words away. "Work, education, patience Will bring a better day-" The swirl of the bitter river Carries your "patience" away. "Disrupter! Agitator! Trouble maker!" you say.

"The Bitter River", Langston Hughes

next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn's early my country 'tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute? He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

'next to of course god America i, ee cummings

Face like chocolate bar full of nuts and sweet. Face like a jack-o'-lantern candle inside. Face like a slice of melon grin that wide.

125th Street, Langston Hughes

what sections of trilogy have a more sustained narrative

2nd and 3rd, not 1st

what is objectivism and who practiced

30s movement that had its roots in imagism; an interest in free verse, concentrated imagery, general concentration of lines, rejection of mythology, rejection of the contemporary political; Oppen practiced

what is a sonnet

ABABCDCDEFEFGG

Ultimately the air Is bare sunlight where must be found The lyric valuables. From disaster Shipwreck, whole families crawled To the tenements, and there Survived by what morality Of hope Which for the sons Ends its metaphysic In small lawns of home

From Disaster, George Oppen

To give a sense of the freshness or vividness of life is a valid purpose for poetry...The poet makes silk dresses out of worms...Poetry is not personal...Poetry is a means of redemption

Adagia, Wallace Stevens

who is paul celan?

survivor of WWII labor camp, interseted in compression/new and renovated vocabulary (originally in German so this makes translation hard)

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Anecdote of the Jar, Wallace Stevens

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Claude McKay, "America"

corn wave swarming with ravens/ which heaven's blue? below? above?/later arrow, that sped out from the soul./Stronger whirring. Nearer glowing. Two worlds touching

Below a painting by Celan

Whose broken window is a cry of art (success, that winks aware as elegance, as a treasonable faith) is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première. Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament. Our barbarous and metal little man. "I shall create! If not a note, a hole. If not an overture, a desecration." Full of pepper and light and Salt and night and cargoes. "Don't go down the plank if you see there's no extension. Each to his grief, each to his loneliness and fidgety revenge. Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there." The only sanity is a cup of tea. The music is in minors. Each one other is having different weather. "It was you, it was you who threw away my name! And this is everything I have for me." Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau, the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty, runs. A sloppy amalgamation. A mistake. A cliff. A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.

Boy Breaking Glass, Gwendolyn Brooks

The toy become the aesthetic archetype As if some patient peasant God had rubbed and rubbed the Alpha and Omega of Form into a lump of metal A naked orientation unwinged and unplumed —the ultimate rhythm has lopped the extremities of crest and claw from the nucleus of flight The absolute act of art conformed to continent sculpture —bare as the brow of Osiris— this breast of revelation an incandescent curve licked by chromatic flames in labyrinths of reflections This gong of polished hyperaesthesia shrills with brass as the aggressive light strikes its significance The immaculate conception of the inaudible bird occurs in gorgeous reticence . . .

Brancusi's Golden Bird, Mina Loy

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Claude McKay, "If We Must Die"

A Midnight Woman to the Bobby

Claude McKay

America

Claude McKay

If We Must Die

Claude McKay

The Harlem Dancer

Claude McKay

The Lynching

Claude McKay

No palm me up, you dutty brute, You' jam mount' mash like ripe bread-fruit; You fas'n now, but wait lee ya, I'll see you grunt under de law. You t'ink you wise, but we wi' see; You not de fus' one fas' wid me; I'll lib fe see dem tu'n you out, As sure as you got dat mash' mout'. I born right do'n beneat' de clack (You ugly brute, you tu'n you' back?) Don' t'ink dat I'm a come-aroun' , I born right 'way in 'panish Town. Care how you try, you caan' do mo' Dan many dat was hyah befo'; Yet whe' dey all o' dem te-day? De buccra dem no kick dem way? Ko 'pon you' jam samplatta nose: 'Cos you wear Mis'r Koshaw clo'es You t'ink say you's de only man, Yet fus' time ko how you be'n 'tan. You big an' ugly ole tu'n-foot Be'n neber know fe wear a boot; An' chigger nyam you' tumpa toe, Till nit full i' like herrin' row. You come from mountain naked-'kin, An' Lard a mussy! you be'n thin, For all de bread-fruit dem be'n done, Bein' 'poil' up by tearin' sun: De coco couldn' bear at all, For, Lard! de groun' was pure white-marl; An' t'rough de rain part o' de year De mango tree dem couldn' bear. An' when de pinch o' time you feel A 'pur you a you' chigger heel, You lef' you' district, big an' coarse, An' come join buccra Police Force. An' now you don't wait fe you' glass But trouble me wid you' jam fas'; But wait, me frien', you day wi' come, I'll see you go same lak a some. Say wha'?—'res' me? —you go to hell! You t'ink Judge don't know unno well? You t'ink him gwin' go sentance me Widout a soul fe witness i'?

Claude McKay, "A Midnight Woman to the Bobby"

Heritage

Countee Cullen

Incident

Countee Cullen

The urns of stillness are empty/In branches/the swelter of speechless songs/chokes black/blunt hourposts/grope toward a strange time

Darkness by Celan

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening/ we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night/ we drink and we drink

Deathfugue by Celan

Early English everlasting / quadrate Rose / paradox-Imperial / trimmed with some travestied flesh / tinted with bloodless duties dewed / with Lipton's teas

English Rose, Mina Loy

From disaster

George Oppen

a language of new york

George Oppen

blood from stone

George Oppen

from a phrase of simone weil's and some words of hegel's

George Oppen

image of the engine

George Oppen

leviathan

George Oppen

monument

George Oppen

of being numerous

George Oppen

survival: infantry

George Oppen

the building of the skyscraper

George Oppen

the mayan ground

George Oppen

the poem

George Oppen

Curie of the laboratory of vocabulary she crushed the tonnage of consciousness congealed to phrases to extract a radium of the word

Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy

what is and who worked with the palimpsests?

HD; reuse of paper, new text on top of old text (a metaphor and a literal object)

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

Harlem, Langston Hughes

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me? So I lie, who all day long Want no sound except the song Sung by wild barbaric birds Goading massive jungle herds, Juggernauts of flesh that pass Trampling tall defiant grass Where young forest lovers lie, Plighting troth beneath the sky. So I lie, who always hear, Though I cram against my ear Both my thumbs, and keep them there, Great drums throbbing through the air. So I lie, whose fount of pride, Dear distress, and joy allied, Is my somber flesh and skin, With the dark blood dammed within Like great pulsing tides of wine That, I fear, must burst the fine Channels of the chafing net Where they surge and foam and fret. Africa?A book one thumbs Listlessly, till slumber comes. Unremembered are her bats Circling through the night, her cats Crouching in the river reeds, Stalking gentle flesh that feeds By the river brink; no more Does the bugle-throated roar Cry that monarch claws have leapt From the scabbards where they slept. Silver snakes that once a year Doff the lovely coats you wear, Seek no covert in your fear Lest a mortal eye should see; What's your nakedness to me? Here no leprous flowers rear Fierce corollas in the air; Here no bodies sleek and wet, Dripping mingled rain and sweat, Tread the savage measures of Jungle boys and girls in love. What is last year's snow to me, Last year's anything?The tree Budding yearly must forget How its past arose or set Bough and blossom, flower, fruit, Even what shy bird with mute Wonder at her travail there, Meekly labored in its hair. One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me? So I lie, who find no peace Night or day, no slight release From the unremittent beat Made by cruel padded feet Walking through my body's street. Up and down they go, and back, Treading out a jungle track. So I lie, who never quite Safely sleep from rain at night-- I can never rest at all When the rain begins to fall; Like a soul gone mad with pain I must match its weird refrain; Ever must I twist and squirm, Writhing like a baited worm, While its primal measures drip Through my body, crying, "Strip! Doff this new exuberance. Come and dance the Lover's Dance!" In an old remembered way Rain works on me night and day. Quaint, outlandish heathen gods Black men fashion out of rods, Clay, and brittle bits of stone, In a likeness like their own, My conversion came high-priced; I belong to Jesus Christ, Preacher of humility; Heathen gods are naught to me. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, So I make an idle boast; Jesus of the twice-turned cheek, Lamb of God, although I speak With my mouth thus, in my heart Do I play a double part. Ever at Thy glowing altar Must my heart grow sick and falter, Wishing He I served were black, Thinking then it would not lack Precedent of pain to guide it, Let who would or might deride it; Surely then this flesh would know Yours had borne a kindred woe. Lord, I fashion dark gods, too, Daring even to give You Dark despairing features where, Crowned with dark rebellious hair, Patience wavers just so much as Mortal grief compels, while touches Quick and hot, of anger, rise To smitten cheek and weary eyes. Lord, forgive me if my need Sometimes shapes a human creed. All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood. Lest a hidden ember set Timber that I thought was wet Burning like the dryest flax, Melting like the merest wax, Lest the grave restore its dead. Not yet has my heart or head In the least way realized They and I are civilized.

Heritage, Countee Cullen

He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living. But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. II You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. III Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

In Memory of WB Yeats, WH Auden

Once riding in old Baltimore, Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, '---.' I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that happened there That's all that I remember.

Incident, Countee Cullen

who was claude mckay?

Jamaican; wrote in Jamacian and hyper-standard English

Reality is a cliché/From which we escape by metaphor/ It is only au pays de la metaphore/ Qu'on est poete

Miscellaneous Notebooks, Wallace Stevens

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.

Musée des Beaux Arts, WH Auden

Still do the southerly Bug waters know,/Mother the wave whose blows wounded you so?/Still does the field with those windmills remember/how gently your heart to its angels surrendered?

Nearness of Graves by Celan

He was born in Alabama. He was bred in Illinois. He was nothing but a Plain black boy. Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy. Drive him past the Pool Hall. Drive him past the Show. Blind within his casket, But maybe he will know. Down through Forty-seventh Street: Underneath the L, And Northwest Corner, Prairie, That he loved so well. Don't forget the Dance Halls— Warwick and Savoy, Where he picked his women, where He drank his liquid joy. Born in Alabama. Bred in Illinois. He was nothing but a Plain black boy. Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy.

Of De Witt Williams on his Way to Lincoln Cemetary, Gwendolyn Brooks

The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed To something else. Its past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and With meditation, speak words that in the ear, In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound Of which, an invisible audience listens, Not to the play, but to itself, expressed In an emotion as of two people, as of two Emotions becoming one. The actor is A metaphysician in the dark, twanging An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, Beyond which it has no will to rise. It must Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

Of Modern Poetry, Wallace Stevens

There are things We live among 'and to see them Is to know ourselves'. Occurrence, a part Of an infinite series, The sad marvels; Of this was told A tale of our wickedness. It is not our wickedness. 'You remember that old town we went to, adn we sat in the ruined window, and we triend to imagine that we belonged to those times...

Of being Numerous, George Oppen

Breathturn IV

Paul Celan

Darkness

Paul Celan

aspen tree

Paul Celan

below a painting

Paul Celan

deathfugue

Paul Celan

nearness of graves

Paul Celan

so you are turned

Paul Celan

speech on the occasion of receiving the literature prize of the free hanseatic city of bremen

Paul Celan

the shofar place

Paul Celan

there was earth inside them

Paul Celan

vinegrowers

Paul Celan

Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky where Watteau hung a lady's slipper. Your knees are a southern breeze -- or a gust of snow. Agh! what sort of man was Fragonard? -- As if that answered anything. -- Ah, yes. Below the knees, since the tune drops that way, it is one of those white summer days, the tall grass of your ankles flickers upon the shore -- Which shore? -- the sand clings to my lips -- Which shore? Agh, petals maybe. How should I know? Which shore? Which shore? -- the petals from some hidden appletree -- Which shore? I said petals from an appletree.

Portrait of a Lady, William Carlos Williams

"Rigor of beauty is the quest. But how will you find beauty when it is locked in the mind past all remonstrance?" To make a start, put of particulars and make them general, rolling up the sum, by defective means — Sniffing the trees, just another dog among a lot of dogs. What else is there? And to do? The .rest-have run out — after the rabbits. Only the lame stands— on three legs. Scratch front and back. Deceive and eat. Dig a musty bone - For the beginning is assuredly the end — since we know nothing, pure and simple, beyond our own complexities. Yet there is no return: rolling up out of chaos, a nine months' wonder, the city the man, an identity — it can't be otherwise — an interpenetration, both ways. Rolling

Preface to "Paterson", William Carlos Williams

Maud went to college. Sadie stayed at home. Sadie scraped life With a fine-tooth comb. She didn't leave a tangle in. Her comb found every strand. Sadie was one of the livingest chits In all the land. Sadie bore two babies Under her maiden name. Maud and Ma and Papa Nearly died of shame. When Sadie said her last so-long Her girls struck out from home. (Sadie had left as heritage Her fine-tooth comb.) Maud, who went to college, Is a thin brown mouse. She is living all alone In this old house.

Sadie and Maud, Gwendolyn Brooks

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; "I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work," And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

September 1, 1939, WH Auden

Yesterday all the past. The language of size Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion Of the counting-frame and the cromlech; Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates. Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards, The divination of water; yesterday the invention Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators. Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants, the fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley, the chapel built in the forest; Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles; The trial of heretics among the columns of stone; Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns And the miraculous cure at the fountain; Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines, The construction of railways in the colonial desert; Yesterday the classic lecture On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle. Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek, The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero; Yesterday the prayer to the sunset And the adoration of madmen. but to-day the struggle. As the poet whispers, startled among the pines, Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright On the crag by the leaning tower: "O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor." And the investigator peers through his instruments At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus Or enormous Jupiter finished: "But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire." And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss. O show us History the operator, the Organiser. Time the refreshing river." And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders The private nocturnal terror: "Did you not found the city state of the sponge, "Raise the vast military empires of the shark And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton? Intervene. O descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend." And the life, if it answers at all, replied from the heart And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city "O no, I am not the mover; Not to-day; not to you. To you, I'm the "Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped; I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be Good, your humorous story. I am your business voice. I am your marriage. "What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will. I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic Death? Very well, I accept, for I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain." Many have heard it on remote peninsulas, On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen's islands Or the corrupt heart of the city. Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower. They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel; They floated over the oceans; They walked the passes. All presented their lives. On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe; On that tableland scored by rivers, Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond To the medicine ad, and the brochure of winter cruises Have become invading battalions; And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom As the ambulance and the sandbag; Our hours of friendship into a people's army. To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the Octaves of radiation; To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing. To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, the photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager election of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle. To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle. To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The consious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder; To-day the expending of powers On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting. To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette, The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert, The masculine jokes; to-day the Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting. The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

Spain, WH Auden

Ma Rainey

Sterling Brown

And the world changed. There had been trees and people, Sidewalks and roads There were fish in the sea. Where did all the rocks come from? And the smell of explosives Iron standing in mud We crawled everywhere on the ground without seeing the earth again We were ashamed of our half life and our misery: we saw that everything had died. And the letters came. People who addressed us thru our lives They left us grasping. And in tears In the same mud in the terrible ground.

Survival: Infantry, George Oppen

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware. Two who are Mostly Good. Two who have lived their day, But keep on putting on their clothes And putting things away. And remembering . . . Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

The Bean Eaters, Gwendolyn Brooks

I AS SEEN BY DISCIPLINES There they are. Thirty at the corner. Black, raw, ready. Sores in the city that do not want to heal. II THE LEADERS Jeff. Gene. Geronimo. And Bop. They cancel, cure and curry. Hardly the dupes of the downtown thing the cold bonbon, the rhinestone thing. And hardly in a hurry. Hardly Belafonte, King, Black Jesus, Stokely, Malcolm X or Rap. Bungled trophies. Their country is a Nation on no map. Jeff, Gene, Geronimo and Bop in the passionate noon, in bewitching night are the detailed men, the copious men. They curry, cure, they cancel, cancelled images whose Concerts are not divine, vivacious; the different tins are intense last entries; pagan argument; translations of the night. The Blackstone bitter bureaus (bureaucracy is footloose) edit, fuse unfashionable damnations and descent; and exulting, monstrous hand on monstrous hand, construct, strangely, a monstrous pearl or grace. III GANG GIRLS A Rangerette Gang Girls are sweet exotics. Mary Ann uses the nutrients of her orient, but sometimes sighs for Cities of blue and jewel beyond her Ranger rim of Cottage Grove. (Bowery Boys, Disciples, Whip-Birds will dissolve no margins, stop no savory sanctities.) Mary is a rose in a whiskey glass. Mary's Februaries shudder and are gone. Aprils fret frankly, lilac hurries on. Summer is a hard irregular ridge. October looks away. And that's the Year! Save for her bugle-love. Save for the bleat of not-obese devotion. Save for Somebody Terribly Dying, under the philanthropy of robins. Save for her Ranger bringing an amount of rainbow in a string-drawn bag. "Where did you get the diamond?" Do not ask: but swallow, straight, the spirals of his flask and assist him at your zipper; pet his lips and help him clutch you. Love's another departure. Will there be any arrivals, confirmations? Will there be gleaning? Mary, the Shakedancer's child from the rooming-flat, pants carefully, peers at her laboring lover .... Mary! Mary Ann! Settle for sandwiches! settle for stocking caps! for sudden blood, aborted carnival, the props and niceties of non-loneliness— the rhymes of Leaning.

The Blackstone Rangers, Gwendolyn Brooks

The Boy died in my alley without my Having Known. Policeman said, next morning, "Apparently died Alone." "You heard a shot?" Policeman said. Shots I hear and Shots I hear. I never see the Dead. The Shot that killed him yes I heard as I heard the Thousand shots before; careening tinnily down the nights across my years and arteries. Policeman pounded on my door. "Who is it?" "POLICE!" Policeman yelled. "A Boy was dying in your alley. A Boy is dead, and in your alley. And have you known this Boy before?" I have known this Boy before. I have known this boy before, who ornaments my alley. I never saw his face at all. I never saw his futurefall. But I have known this Boy. I have always heard him deal with death. I have always heard the shout, the volley. I have closed my heart-ears late and early. And I have killed him ever. I joined the Wild and killed him with knowledgeable unknowing. I saw where he was going. I saw him Crossed. And seeing, I did not take him down. He cried not only "Father!" but "Mother! Sister! Brother." The cry climbed up the alley. It went up to the wind. It hung upon the heaven for a long stretch-strain of Moment. The red floor of my alley is a special speech to me.

The Boy Died in My Alley, Gwendolyn Brooks

In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess, the dancers go round, they go round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (round as the thick- sided glasses whose wash they impound) their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them. Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures, prance as they dance in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.

The Dance, William Carlos Williams

(after the murder, after the burial) Emmett's mother is a pretty-faced thing; the tint of pulled taffy. She sits in a red room, drinking black coffee. he kisses her killed boy. And she is sorry. Chaos in windy grays through a red prairie.

The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till by Gwendolyn Brooks

I owe people letters. Tomorrow I will have coffee with V., and we will bitch about life, and afterwards I plan to be by myself, and write letters. There are things to do and work is a dog begging for a bone, but I will sit down and write letters until I can no longer feel my hand. I will write to you. I will get to you. I will talk to you. I only ask that you wait. The days have been long lately, and your letters keep me strong. They give me hope. Until recently, I haven't really had a chance to explore what that really feels. It fills you up, you know? And there is always light. Not the kind that makes you feel weightless, but there is that, too. I meant, a bright space that doesn't make me think I'm drowning. I meant, there is earth beneath my feet, yes, but above me there is also sky. 2. Isn't it funny what this place has become? I talked to myself for years and suddenly no longer. 3. A conversation today in the car, with my father. We've been having a lot of that these days. He tells me, you have to be brave. He tells me this, knowing that if I did I will probably never look back. I love you, I wanted to say. Probably the most today.

The Flowering of the Rod, HD

Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city.

The Great Figure, William Carlos Williams

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes Blown by black players upon a picnic day. She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, The light gauze hanging loose about her form; To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm Grown lovelier for passing through a storm. Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise, The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze; But looking at her falsely-smiling face, I knew her self was not in that strange place.

The Harlem Dancer, Claude McKay

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, However clear, it would have been deep air, The heaving speech of air, a summer sound Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that, More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As the night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

The Idea of Order at Key West, Wallace Stevens

His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven. His father, by the cruelest way of pain, Had bidden him to his bosom once again; The awful sin remained still unforgiven. All night a bright and solitary star (Perchance the one that ever guided him, Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim) Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char. Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view The ghastly body swaying in the sun: The women thronged to look, but never a one Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.

The Lynching, Claude McKay

You like it under the trees in autumn, Because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves And repeats words without meaning. In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon— The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of things that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be, Desiring the exhilarations of changes: The motive for metaphor, shrinking from The weight of primary noon, The A B C of being, The ruddy temper, the hammer Of red and blue, the hard sound— Steel against intimation—the sharp flash, The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X

The Motive for Metaphor, Wallace Stevens

One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poetnot a Negro poet, "meaning , I believe, "I want to write like a white poet;" meaning subconsciously, "I would like to be write like a white poet;" meaning behind that, "I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in Americathis urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible. ... An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might chose. ... We younger Negro artist who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either . We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Langston Hughes

Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom Taishan is attended of loves under Cythera, before sunrise And he said: "Hay aquí mucho catolicismo—(sounded catolithismo y muy poco reliHion." and he said: "Yo creo que los reyes desparecen" (Kings will, I think, disappear) This was Padre José Elizondo in 1906 and in 1917 or about 1917 and Dolores said: "Come pan, niño," eat bread, me lad Sargent had painted her before he descended (i.e. if he descended but in those days he did thumb sketches, impressions of the Velázquez in the Museo del Prado and books cost a peseta, brass candlesticks in proportion, hot wind came from the marshes and death-chill from the mountains. And later Bowers wrote: "but such hatred, I have never conceived such" and the London reds wouldn't show up his friends (i.e. friends of Franco working in London) and in Alcázar forty years gone, they said: go back to the station to eat you can sleep here for a peseta" goat bells tinkled all night and the hostess grinned: Eso es luto, haw! mi marido es muerto (it is mourning, my husband is dead) when she gave me a paper to write on with a black border half an inch or more deep, say 5/8ths, of the locanda "We call all foreigners frenchies" and the egg broke in Cabranez' pocket, thus making history. Basil says they beat drums for three days till all the drumheads were busted (simple village fiesta) and as for his life in the Canaries... Possum observed that the local portagoose folk dance was danced by the same dancers in divers localities in political welcome... the technique of demonstration Cole studied that (not G.D.H., Horace) "You will find" said old André Spire, that every man on that board (Crédit Agricole) has a brother-in-law "You the one, I the few" said John Adams speaking of fears in the abstract to his volatile friend Mr Jefferson. (To break the pentameter, that was the first heave) or as Jo Bard says: they never speak to each other, if it is baker and concierge visibly it is La Rouchefoucauld and de Maintenon audibly. "Te cavero le budella" "La corata a te" In less than a geological epoch said Henry Mencken "Some cook, some do not cook some things cannot be altered" 'Iugx. . . . . 'emòn potí dwma aòn andra What counts is the cultural level, thank Benin for this table ex packing box "doan yu tell no one I made it" from a mask fine as any in Frankfurt "It'll get you offn th' groun" Light as the branch of Kuanon And at first disappointed with shoddy the bare ram-shackle quais, but then saw the high buggy wheels

The Pisan Cantos, Ezra Pound

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams

Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise, She rises in the sunshine. There she goes, Back to the bars she knew and the repose In love-rooms and the things in people's eyes. Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge. Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.

The Rites for Cousin Vit, Gwendolyn Brooks

She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign. Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief. She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground. The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died. She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music, But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor But a weed-choked field. A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept. The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.

The Shield of Achilles, WH Auden

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Snow Man, Wallace Stevens

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

The Unknown Citizen, WH Auden

Mrs. Coley's three-flat brick Isn't here any more. All done with seeing her fat little form Burst out of the basement door; And with seeing her African son-in-law (Rightful heir to the throne) With his great white strong cold squares of teeth And his little eyes of stone; And with seeing the squat fat daughter Letting in the men When majesty has gone for the day— And letting them out again.

The Vacant Lot, Gwendolyn Brooks

Thoth, Hermes, the stylus, the palette, the pen, the quill endure, though our books are a floor of smouldering ash under our feet; though the burning of the books remains the most perverse gesture and the meanest of man's mean nature, yet give us, they still cry, give us books, folio, manuscript, old parchment will do for cartridge cases; irony is bitter truth wrapped up in a little joke, and Hatshepsut's name is still circled with what they call the cartouche.

The Walls Do Not Fall, HD (Trilogy)

The white flesh quakes to the negro soul Chicago! Chicago! An uninterpretable wail stirs in a tangle of pale snakes to the lethargic ecstasy of steps backing in to primeval goal White man quit his actin' wise colored folk hab de moon in dere eyes Haunted by wind instruments in groves of grace the maiden saplings slant to the oboes and shampooed gigolos prowl to the sobbing taboos. An electric crown crashes the furtive cargoes of the floor. the pruned contours dissolve in the brazen shallows of the dissonance revolving mimes of the encrouching Eros in adolescence The black brute-angels in the human gloves bellow through a monstrous growth of metal trunks and impish musics crumbles the ecstatic loaf before a swooning flock of doves. Caravan colossal absentee the substitute dark rolls to the incandescent memory of love's survivor on this rich suttee seared by the flames of sounds the widowed urn holds impotently your murdered laughter Husband how secretly you cuckold me with death while this cajoling jazz blows with its tropic breath among the echoes of the flesh a synthesis of racial caress The seraph and the ass in the unerring esperanto of the earth converse of everlit delight as my desire receded to the distance of the dead searches the opaque silence of unpeopled space.

The Widow's Jazz, Mina Loy

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

This is Just to Say, William Carlos Williams

The pure products of America go crazy— mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure— and young slatterns, bathed in filth from Monday to Saturday to be tricked out that night with gauds from imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character but flutter and flaunt sheer rags—succumbing without emotion save numbed terror under some hedge of choke-cherry or viburnum— which they cannot express— Unless it be that marriage perhaps with a dash of Indian blood will throw up a girl so desolate so hemmed round with disease or murder that she'll be rescued by an agent— reared by the state and sent out at fifteen to work in some hard-pressed house in the suburbs— some doctor's family, some Elsie— voluptuous water expressing with broken brain the truth about us— her great ungainly hips and flopping breasts addressed to cheap jewelry and rich young men with fine eyes as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth while the imagination strains after deer going by fields of goldenrod in the stifling heat of September Somehow it seems to destroy us It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car

To Elsie, William Carlos Williams

We are voyagers, discoverers of the not-known, the unrecorded; we have no map; possibly we will reach haven, heaven.

Tribute to the Angels, HD (trilogy)

Vinegrowers dig up dig under the darkhoured watch, depth for depth, you read, the invisible one commands the wind to stay in bounds, you read, the Open Ones carry the stone behind the eye, it recognizes you, on a Sabbath.

Vinegrowers by Celan

Musee des Beaux Arts

WH Auden

Spain

WH Auden

Writing

WH Auden

in memory of wb yeats

WH Auden

september 1, 1939

WH Auden

the shield of achilles

WH Auden

the unknown citizen

WH Auden

what is the context of "trilogy"

WWII/combating fascism; HD's earlier imagist work (compression)

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

We Real Cool, Gwendolyn Brooks

All those whose success in life depends neither upon a job which satisfies some specific and unchanging social need, like a farmer's, nor, like a surgeon's upon some craft which he can be taught by others and improve by practice, but upon 'inspiration,' the lucky hazard of ideas, live by their wits, a phrase which carries a slightly pejorative meaning. Every 'original' genius, be he an artist or a scientist, has something a bit shady about him, like a gambler or a medium.

Writing, WH Auden

a city of corporations/glassed/in dreams/and images-/and the pure joy/of the mineral fact

a language of new york by oppen

I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but I say it's fine How they don't have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman. That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate). But I say it's fine. Honest, I do. And I'd like to be a bad woman, too, And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

a song in the front yard, gwendolyn brooks

what does long form poetry do

allows poets to include history, creation of personal relationship between reader and work

how does hd use parenthesis in "trilogy"

an aside

anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn't he danced his did. Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn't they reaped their same sun moon stars rain children guessed(but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone's any was all to her someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down) one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain

anyone lived in a pretty how town, ee cummings

What was the harlem renaissance

arts movement (literature, music, visual art, etc)

Aspenn tree, your leaves glance white into the darkness/my mother's hair never turned white/ dandelion, so green in the Ukraine./my fair-haired movther did not come home

aspen tree by celan

thoughs on oppen's "of being numerous"

atrocity as something powerful and ordinary; location as a uniting force amongst diversity; language as a staging of a relationship; identity is not stable; closeness to others but emotional distance; trapped, isolated in the singularity

what does Canto I cover

beginning of poem: covers odysseus's journey, sees the influence of TS Eliot, lots of description for once, establishes use of repetition/circumnavigation in poem

in the door/long legged, tall/a weight of bone and flesh to her-/her eyes catch-/carrying bundles. o!/ everything i am is/us come home

blood from stone by oppen

thoughts on "Memphis Blues"?

call and response structure (reflection of work songs, religious practice, jazz); phonetic writing/vernacular seen as non-standard and reflects the body of those who went through the lived experience

thoughts on "the boy died in my alley"

capitalization of boy=concept of group rather than singular, marking as important/honored OR devalues to make the life annonymous (reflects the struggle of the poem's speaker)

what religious imagery is seen in "trilogy"

christianity, egypthian/greek myth, etc; all human religions as a link of cultures/blending old with new

who is oppen?

closer to a contemporary poet, started writing in the 20s (that's why he's considered to be modern rather than contemporary) before he took a 25 year break; critiqued capitalism and was part of objectivism

thoughts on celan's deathfuge

composed while in prison: "black milk" section is a corruption of something good/natural (repeated to show how often corruption/unnatural stuff was in the camps, shows exhaustion); "he" is a nazi guard w/ a wife and home, shows the humanity of the person doing inhumane acts and makes the acts harder to dismiss; lack of translation shows poem was originally in German and that war makes some words/experiences untranslatable

What was claude mckay's relationship with america

conflicted

why was the harlem renaissance called the harlem renaissance

focus on harlem bc of the great migration

what did the use of dialects in harlem renaissance poetry do?

defamiliarized non-vernacular speakers, reflected human speech

what is the focus of "the flowering of the rod"

focus on the idea of memory/the ways in which ideas live across time

anyone lived in a pretty how town

ee cummings

i sing of olaf glad and big

ee cummings

may i feel said he

ee cummings

my sweet old etcetera

ee cummings

next ot of course god america i

ee cummings

pity this busy monster manunkind

ee cummings

the cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

ee cummings

thoughts on "we real cool"

enjambment creates space for weird rythym and cliffhanger; thought-provoking

what makes the pisan cantos special

epic without a hero; unfinished; follows Dante's inferno

thoughts on auden's "musee des beaux arts"

everyday life juxtaposed against tragedy and we can't respond to every tragedy; children have a higher engagement with surroundings and can thus feel it better; description allows the reader to engage directly with the suffering; use of painting further allows engagement with the suffering

who is HD?

expat who lived in europe for WWII (trauma theory!), wanted to respond to the percieved idiocy of poetry during wartime

the pisan cantos

ezra pound

how did white publishers react to the harlem renaissance

fetishized/marginalized tons of harlem renaissance work

why did oppen take a 25 yr break from poetry

found war poetry/propaganda poetry to be unhelpful/judgemental

in back deep the jewel/the treasure/no liquid/pride of the living life's liquid

from a phrase of simone weil's and some words of hegel's by oppen

free!

from disaster by oppen

thoughts on the cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

furnished soul-unchallenged soul/lifestyle; unbeautiful=had the opportunity to be beautiful but didn't; daughter= pushing aside the next generation, knitting=comfortable, don't know who they knit for

how did claude mckay gender america

gendered as female: a twisted mother role

thoughts on the last quatrain of the ballad of emmet till

grief-stricken mother and the historical scene as focus rather than till himself (only 2 lines on till's death in the poem); emphasis on red/black/grey (reflection of imagery of till in media); more to till's life than just his death (this is only the last part); ballads are traditionally oral history (america's history)

Sadie and maud

gwendolyn brooks

a song in the front yard

gwendolyn brooks

boy breaking glass

gwendolyn brooks

of de witt williams on his way to lincoln cemetary

gwendolyn brooks

the bean eaters

gwendolyn brooks

the blackstone rangers

gwendolyn brooks

the boy died in my alley

gwendolyn brooks

the last quatrain of the ballad of emmett till

gwendolyn brooks

the rites for cousin vit

gwendolyn brooks

the vacant lot

gwendolyn brooks

we real cool

gwendolyn brooks

the flowering of the rod

hd

the walls do not fall

hd

tribute to the angels

hd

how are parenthesis used in the flowering of the rod

hierarchy of information portrayal: parenthesis are lower on the totem pole (in this case, personal is lower than divine description)

thoughts on pity this poor monster manunkind

huge use of enjambment (makes messages stark), victim=manunkind (victim of own progress), curve=encompassing the whole world

i sing of Olaf glad and big whose warmest heart recoiled at war: a conscientious object-or his wellbelovéd colonel(trig westpointer most succinctly bred) took erring Olaf soon in hand; but--though an host of overjoyed noncoms(first knocking on the head him)do through icy waters roll that helplessness which others stroke with brushes recently employed anent this muddy toiletbowl, while kindred intellects evoke allegiance per blunt instruments-- Olaf(being to all intents a corpse and wanting any rag upon what God unto him gave) responds,without getting annoyed "I will not kiss your ****ing flag" straightway the silver bird looked grave (departing hurriedly to shave) but--though all kinds of officers (a yearning nation's blueeyed pride) their passive prey did kick and curse until for wear their clarion voices and boots were much the worse, and egged the firstclassprivates on his rectum wickedly to tease by means of skilfully applied bayonets roasted hot with heat-- Olaf(upon what were once knees) does almost ceaselessly repeat "there is some shit I will not eat" our president,being of which assertions duly notified threw the yellowsonofabitch into a dungeon,where he died Christ(of His mercy infinite) i pray to see;and Olaf,too preponderatingly because unless statistics lie he was more brave than me:more blond than you.

i sing of Olaf glad and big, ee cummings

likely as not a ruined head gasket/spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft/bearing knocking at the roots of the thing like a pile-driver

image of the engine by oppen

Thoughts on Claude McKay's "the lynching"?

inhumanity of white onlookers as robotic watchers; religious illusion of Jesus in the lynched man; strong political action bc talking about lynching at the time was super taboo

Who is Sterling Brown?

interested in subjects that were historically innapropriate to write about (systematic racism)

125th street

langston hughes

harlem

langston hughes

the bitter river

langston hughes

the negro artist and the racial mountain

langston hughes

what is the main point of celan's essay (name it!)

language is a vehicle for coming to an understanding about reality/helping others do the same in the future

truth also is the pursuit of it:/like happiness, and it will not stand/even the verse begins to eat away/in the acid/pursuit, pursuit;/a wind moves a little

leviathan by oppen

may i feel said he (i'll squeal said she just once said he) it's fun said she (may i touch said he how much said she a lot said he) why not said she (let's go said he not too far said she what's too far said he where you are said she) may i stay said he (which way said she like this said he if you kiss said she may i move said he is it love said she) if you're willing said he (but you're killing said she but it's life said he but your wife said she now said he) ow said she (tiptop said he don't stop said she oh no said he) go slow said she (cccome?said he ummm said she) you're divine!said he (you are Mine said she)

may i feel said he, ee cummings

what does tribute to the angels focus on

limitations of language: change in words over time is important, need fragments of all languages to try to get a good idea and these fragments also lead to other things; can't name everything bc limited language, naming as a form of control (jewel example)

What was the harlem renaissance marked by

maked by emphasis of racial consciousness

how nature is referenced in "trilogy"

nature as magic, relation to meditation, human/nature is an ideal relationship, nature juxtaposed against war

brancusi's golden bird

mina loy

english rose

mina loy

feminist manifesto

mina loy

gertrude stein

mina loy

the widow's jazz

mina loy

public silence indeed is nothing/so we confront the fact with stage craft/and the available poses/ of greatness

monument by oppen

my sweet old etcetera aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister Isabel created hundreds (and hundreds)of socks not to mention fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that I would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

my sweet old etcetera, ee cummings

what twas the style of writing during the harlem renaissance

no single style of writing bc very diverse, but could be categorized somewhere between formalism and modernism; often incorporated dialects

there are things/we live among 'and to see them/is to know ourselves/occurrence, a part/ of an infinite series

of being numerous by oppen

use of references in the pisan cantos

often obsucre references, tons of other languages, classical edu necessary for comprehension

how is writing referenced in "trilogy"

relationship between writing and immortality, writing as being powerful, writing as being limited when confronted with conveying the eternal

how to compare "the lynching" and "the bitter river"?

religious vs. natural imagery, racism as sin vs. racism as unnatural

pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness --- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go

pity this busy monster, manunkind by ee cummings

what is an epic and who made this particular definition?

poem that includes history according to Pound

who was gwendolyn brooks?

poet prodigy, focus on inter-city black life, representation of minority voices, late postmodern/early contemporary, very precise diction a lá imagism

thoughts of celan's "ashglory"

poetry as memorial ("nobody bears witness for the witness", limited to a singular experience

thoughts on auden's "writing"

poetry is not magic, poetry cannot be perfect, poetry should be authentic (it is a shame when inauthentic poetry is praised)

hwat part of dante's inferno does the pisan cantos embody

purgatory/paradise

what sort of language does "trilogy" use

pushes back on simplicity by using aesthetic language (aka against the sterility of language even though aesthetic language can be misleading)

what is the "racial mountain" in langston hughes's "the negro artist and the racial mountain"?

racial mountain=racial prejudice's influence on art/the idea that art is a certain thing in a community or in the artist herself (social condition of seeing white art as the only art/white success as the only success

thoughts on celan's "nearness of graves"

rhymes (closer to childhood bc topic is his mother), focus on landscape as an important part of Nazi environmentalism (land and language have been tainted by WWII), asking questions as a form of healing

some facts on the pisan cantos

self-contained, biographical (pound kind of as hero/anti-hero), written while in prison for fascism (anti-capitalist and anti-semitic views are clear), translations are done from memory; challenged the idea that we should read w/out context

what is karnak?

set of ancient ruins in egypt that are referenced in trilogy; 2 ruined cities that still remain, which helps frame the narrative

?????

so you are turned by celan

thoughts on langston hughes's "the bitter river"?

symbol of water represents the location of the Mississippi lynching and the poisonous racism/violence forced on black americans; uses figurative structure of repetition "bitter" and "tired" and "bars" to reflect the product of bitterness/violence everyday;

memphhis blues

sterling brown

strong men

sterling brown

and the world changed/there had been trees and people,/sidewalks and raods/there were fish in the sea/where did all the rocks come from?/and the smell of explosives/iron standing in mud/we crawled everywhere on the ground without seeing the earth agian

survival: infantry by oppen

free! (i think?)

survival: infantry by oppen

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds (also, with the church's protestant blessings daughters,unscented shapeless spirited) they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead, are invariably interested in so many things— at the present writing one still finds delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles? perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D .... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above Cambridge if sometimes in its box of sky lavender and cornerless, the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls, ee cummings

the steel worker on the girder/learned not to loook down, and does his work/and there are words we have learned/not to look at/not to look for substance/below them. but we are on the verge/of vertigo

the building of the skyscraper by oppen

who is the woman who appears a ton in tribute to the angels?

the divine feminine, esp. Mary (their power can't be captured in words)

...and whetehr they are beautiful or not there will be/no one to guard them in the days to come.../we mounted teh red cardinal birds and the jeweled/ornaments/and the handful of precious stones in our fields...

the mayan ground by oppen

how shall i light/this room that measures years/and years not miracles nor were we/judged but a direction/ of things in us burning burning for we are not/still nor is this place a wind

the poem by oppen

the shofar place/deep in the glowing/text-void,/at torch height,/in the timehole:/hear deep in /with your mouth

the shofar place by celan

There was earth inside them, and/they dug/ they dug and dug, and so/their day went past, their night. And they did not praise god,/ who, so they heard, wanted all this,/who, so they heard, witnessed all this

there was earth inside them by celan

what are the three sections of trilogy

the walls do not fall, tribute to the angels, the flowering of the rod

what was the great migration

urbanization movement to the east coast/rust belt for jobs by african americans

who was ee cummings

volunteer ambulance driver during wwi, openly doubted the war, expat, worked both visual art and poetry, big on the inverview style and visually unique, themes of love, nature, and war, experimented with syntax

adagia

wallace stevens

anecdote of the jar

wallace stevens

misscellaneous notebooks

wallace stevens

of modern poetry

wallace stevens

sunday morning

wallace stevens

the idea of order at key west

wallace stevens

the motive for metaphor

wallace stevens

the snow man

wallace stevens

thoughts on auden's "shield of achilles"

war poem; has reflections of WWII (no romanticization of war), cyclical nature of war and hurts both on and off battlefield--life itself contains small battles

was questions were being explored during the harlem renaissance?

what was the best way to get civil rights for african americans (trickle down? vocations?)

portrait of a lady

william carlos williams

preface to paterson

william carlos williams

the dance

william carlos williams

the great figure

william carlos williams

the red wheelbarrow

william carlos williams

this is just to say

william carlos williams

who was langston hughes?

work focused on the authenticity of the present moment (not necessairly realist)

who was ezra pound?

writer/editor, did loose translations

Thoughts on Claude McKay's "If we must die"?

written as response to anti-black riots of 1919, sonnet rhyme scheme with different ideas in different stanzas (comparison between people and animals, glorification of violence)

who was auden?

wrote during 20s and 30s, super prolific modernist response to early 1900s (which was also modernist but in a different way); sees poetry not as magical but as a technical art (still into the aesthetic of langauge tho); focused on both social and hard science; leftist despite eventually editing most of his personal political beliefs from his poetry; later adds religious vibez to poem

do the stanzas shorten in "trilogy"

yes: 3 to 2 stanzas shows constant engagement/barrage of poetry

is trilogy a wwii poem?

yes: cannibalization of cities for the wra effort, "incident" is bombing, rails for guns, written in parenthesis to show an aside