Am teaching poetry to my P5s this term and I decided to post these poems for your perusal, enjoyment and thinking.
Hope everybody is well.
Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.
Permissions information.
Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission.
How to Change a Frog Into a Prince
Anna Denise
Start with the underwear.
Sit him down.
Hopping on one leg may stir unpleasant memories.
If he gets his tights on, even backwards, praise him.
Fingers, formerly webbed, struggle over buttons.
Arms and legs, lengthened out of proportion, wait,as you do, for the rest of him to catch up.
This body, so recently reformed, reclaimed,still carries the marks of its time as a frog.
Be gentle.
Avoid the words awkward and gawky.
Do not use tadpole as a term of endearment.
His body, like his clothing, may seem one size too big.
Relax.
There's time enough for crowns.
He'll grow into it.
from The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm's Fairy Tales, 2003Story Line Press, Ashland, OR
Copyright 2002 by Anna Denise.All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
In this short poem, a poet regrets not acknowledging a teacher he once had. This poem should be read twice.
Mentor
Timothy Murphy
For Robert Francis
Had I known, only known when I lived so near,
I'd have gone, gladly gone foregoing my fear of the wholly grown and the nearly great.
But I learned alone, so I learned too late.
from The Formalist, A Journal of Metrical Poetry, Volume 12, Issue 1, 2001University of Evansville, Evansville, IN
Copyright 2001 by Timothy Murphy.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
Before the World Intruded
Michele Rosenthal
Return me to those infant years,
before I woke from sleep,
when ideas were oceans crashing,
my dreams blank shores of sand.
Transport me fast to who I was when breath was fresh as sight,
my new parts — unfragmented —shielded faith from unkind light.
Draw for me a figure whole, so different from who I am.
Show me now
this picture: who I waswhen I began.
Copyright 2003 by Michele Rosenthal.All rights reserved.Reproduced with permission
The Student Theme
Ronald Wallace
The adjectives all ganged up on the nouns,
insistent, loud,
demanding, inexact,
their Latinate constructions flashing.
The pronouns lost their referents:
They were dangling,
lacked the stamina to follow the prepositions' leadin,
on, into, to, toward, for, or from.
They were beset by passive voices and dead metaphors, conjunctions shouting But! or And!
The active verbs were all routinely modified by adverbs, that endlessly and colorlessly raninto trouble with the participles sittingon the margins knitting their brows like gerunds
(dangling was their problem, too).
The author was nowhere to be seen; was off somewhere.
from The Uses of Adversity, 1998University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA
Copyright 1998 by Ronald Wallace.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
God Says Yes To Me
Kaylin Haught
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramaticand she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactlywhat you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is Yes Yes Yes
from The Palm of your Hand, 1995Tilbury House Publishers
Copyright 1995 by Kaylin Haught.
All rights reserved.Reproduced with permission
The Grammar Lesson
Steve Kowit
A noun's a thing.
A verb's the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
of and with are prepositions.
The's an article, a can's a noun,a noun's a thing.
A verb's the thing it does.
A can can roll - or not.
What isn't was or might be, might meaning not yet known.
"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
is present tense.
While words like our and us are pronouns - i.e. it is moldy, they are icky brown.
A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does.
Is is a helping verb.
It helps because filled isn't a full verb.
Can's what our owns in "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz."
See?
There's almost nothing to it. Justmemorize these rules...or write them down!
A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does.
The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.
from In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop, 1995Tilbury House, Publishers, Gardiner, Maine
Copyright 1995 by Steve Kowit.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
A New Poet
Linda Pastan
Finding a new poet is like finding a new wildflower out in the woods.
You don't see its name in the flower books, and nobody you tell believes in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows down the whole length of the page.
In fact the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the seaon a foggy day
- the odor of truth and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,so strangely new, words you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencilor a pen or even a paintbrush,if only there had been a flower.
from Heroes In Disguise, 1991W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
Copyright 1991 by Linda Pastan.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
Gratitude to Old Teachers
Robert Bly
When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked.
But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?
Water that once could take no human weight
-We were students then-holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.
from Eating the Honey of Words, 1999HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY
Copyright 1999 by Robert Bly.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
Every poet has an image of the ideal reader,and the not-so-ideal reader.
Selecting a Reader
Ted Kooser
First, I would have her be beautiful,and walking carefully up on my poetry at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,her hair still damp at the neck from washing it.
She should be wearing a raincoat, an old one, dirty from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there in the bookstore, she will thumb over my poems, then put the book backup on its shelf.
She will say to herself,"For that kind of money, I can get my raincoat cleaned."
And she will.
from Sure Signs, 1980University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Copyright 1980 by Ted Kooser.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
