LIT200 Poetry Final
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me.
"A Blessing" by James Wright
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
"A supermarket in California" by Allen Ginsberg
This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
"Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy
You always read about it: the plumber with the twelve children who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story. Or the nursemaid, some luscious sweet from Denmark who captures the oldest son's heart. from diapers to Dior. That story.
"Cinderella" by Anne Sexton
You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you.
"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
"Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen
I've pulled the last of the year's young onions. The garden is bare now. The ground is cold, brown and old. What is left of the day flames in the maples at the corner of my eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.
"Eating Alone" by Li Young Lee
My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't dammit: No tears.
"Facing it" by Yusef Komunyakaa
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore—
"Harlem" by Langston Hughes
I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils.
"Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath
Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements.
"Morning song" by Sylvia Plath
Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up,
"Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont.
"Out, out-" by Robert Frost
Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon,
"Pity me not because the light of day" by Edna St Vincent Millay
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in it after all, a place for the genuine.
"Poetry" by Marianne Moore
Do gorillas have birthdays? Yes. Like the rainbow they happen, like the air they are not observed. Do butterflies make a noise? The wire in the butterfly's tongue hums gold.
"Questions my son asked, answers I ever gave him" by Nancy Willard
Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.
"Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Carpe Diem
"Seize the Day", it is frequent in love poems and expresses that life is fleeting and we should make the most out of present pleasures.
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
"Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" by Robert Frost
like a n***** now, my white friend, M, said after my M.L.K. and Ronald Reagan impersonations, the two of us alone and shirtless in the locker room,
"Talk" by Terrance Hayes
WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night.
"The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche (prose)
To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
"The Gift" by Li Young Lee
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware.
"The bean eaters" by Gwendolyn Brooks
I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
"The negro speaks of rivers" by Langston Hughes
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake
"The peace of wild things" by Wendell Berry
The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple?
"Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes
Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
"Traveling through the dark" by William Stafford
The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel. We real cool. We Left school. We
"We real cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks
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.
"We wear the mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
among the rocks at walnut grove your silence drumming in my bones, tell me your names.
"cemetery, walnut grove plantation, South Carolina, 1989" by Lucille Clifton
these hips are big hips they need space to move around in.
"homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton
Allusion
A figure of speech that echoes or makes a brief reference to a literary or artistic work or a historical figure, event or object.
Verbal Irony
A figure of speech when what is said is nearly the opposite of what is meant
Prose Poem
A poem printed as prose, with the lines wrapping at the right margin instead of in stanzas. (I.e. Carolyn Forche's "The Colonel".)
Dramatic Irony
A situation in which a reader or an audience knows more than the characters involved
Satire
A work or manner within a work that combines a critical attitude with humor and wit with the intention of improving humanity.
Epigraph
In literature, a quotation at the beginning of a poem or on the title page or the beginning of an essay or a chapter in the book.
Refrain
One or more identical or deliberately similar lines repeated throughout a poem, such as the final line or a stanza or a block of lines between stanzas or sections.
Lyric
Originally a poem sung out loud, now a short piece expressing the personal emotion of a single speaker
Juxtaposition
Placement of things side by side or close together for comparison or contrast to create something new from the union.
Confessional poetry
Poetry about personal, private issues that usually speaks directly about the issue without the use of persona (i.e. Sylvia Plath "Daddy".)
Anaphora
Repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses or sentences.
Symbol
Something that is itself and also stands for something else, a prominent or repeated image or action that is present in the poem and can be seen, touch, smelled, heard, tasted or experienced imaginatively but also conveys a cluster of abstract meaning beyond itself. (i.e. William Blake's "Tyger".)
Situational Irony
The mood evoked when an action intended to have a certain effect turns out to have a different and more sinister effect
Rhythm
The patterned "movement" of language created by the choice of words and their arrangement, usually described as fast or slow, smooth or halting, etc.
Alliteration
The repetition of identical consonant sounds in the stressed syllables of words relatively near each other. (Think of the "f" sound in green and careFree, Famous among the barns.)
Voice
The supposed authorial presence in poems that do not obviously employ persona as a distancing device.
Enjambment
When the line continues through into the following line (i.e. William Stafford "Traveling through the Dark", Traveling through the dark/I found a deer/dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.)