English 10AA

Fall 2017

Launching Unit: Poetry

Cronk

…Think for a moment about the occasions when you spoke well. Seldom was it because you first

got the beginning just right. Usually it was a matter of halting or even garbled beginnings, but

you kept going and your speech finally became coherent and powerful. There is a lesson here

for writing: trying to get the beginning just right is a formula for failure—and probably a secret

tactic to make yourself give up writing. --Peter Elbow, Writing without Teachers

When we allow ourselves to become vulnerable, to take chances, and to risk our pride, that is

when we find our own glory. --Richard Corman

I get my ideas from living my life wide-eyed and awake. I sit on the edge of chairs; I pay

attention to where I am. --Drew Lamm

It is hard for me to separate my development as a reader of poems from my career as a poet.

If my readings have any sensitivity, it is because I have paid close attention to how my own

poems worked, and to which ways and to what extent I might improve them. --

Mark Strand, On Becoming a Poet

Talk with a little luck in it: that’s what poetry is—just let the words take you where you want

to go. You’ll be invited; things will happen; your life will have more in it than other people’s lives

have. --William Stafford

I think of myself as focusing a camera lens as I write, always striving to make the picture

clearer, sharper, more detailed. --Martin Espada

Session One: Colonial Era Poetry & Intro to Poetry

“Verses upon the Burning of our House,

July 10th, 1666”

Anne Bradstreet, 1666

In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow near I did not look, I wakened was with thund’ring noise And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice. That fearful sound of “fire” and “fire,” Let no man know is my Desire. I, starting up, the light did spy, And to my God my heart did cry To straighten me in my Distress And not to leave me succourless. Then, coming out, behold a space The flame consume my dwelling place. And when I could no longer look, I blest His name that gave and took, That laid my goods now in the dust. Yea, so it was, and so ‘twas just. It was his own, it was not mine, Far be it that I should repine; He might of all justly bereft But yet sufficient for us left. When by the ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast And here and there the places spy Where oft I sate and long did lie. Here stood that trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best. My pleasant things in ashes lie

And them behold no more shall I. Under thy roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy Table eat a bit. No pleasant talk shall ‘ere be told Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle e'er shall shine in Thee, Nor bridegroom‘s voice e'er heard shall be. In silence ever shalt thou lie, Adieu, Adieu, all’s vanity. Then straight I ‘gin my heart to chide, And did thy wealth on earth abide? Didst fix thy hope on mould'ring dust? The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? Raise up thy thoughts above the sky That dunghill mists away may fly. Thou hast a house on high erect Frameed by that mighty Architect, With glory richly furnished, Stands permanent though this be fled. It‘s purchased and paid for too By Him who hath enough to do. A price so vast as is unknown, Yet by His gift is made thine own; There‘s wealth enough, I need no more, Farewell, my pelf, farewell, my store. The world no longer let me love, My hope and treasure lies above.

“Meditation 1”

Edward Taylor, 1682

What Love is this of thine, that Cannot bee In thine Infinity, O Lord, Confinde, Unless it in thy very Person see, Infinity, and Finity Conjoyn'd? What hath thy Godhead, as not satisfide Marri'de our Manhood, making it its Bride?

Oh, Matchless Love! filling Heaven to the brim! O're running it: all running o're beside This World! Nay Overflowing Hell; wherein For thine Elect, there rose a mighty Tide! That there our Veans might through thy Person bleed, To quench those flames, that else would on us feed.

Oh! that thy Love might overflow my Heart!

To fire the same with Love: for Love I would.

But oh! my streight'ned Breast! my Lifeless Sparke!

My Fireless Flame! What Chilly Love, and Cold?

In measure small! In Manner Chilly! See.

Lord blow the Coal: Thy Love Enflame in mee.

“To My Dear and Loving Husband”

Anne Bradstreet, 1641

If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay; The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let’s so persever, That when we live no more, we may live ever.

“Valentine for Ernest Mann” Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952 You can’t order a poem like you order a taco. Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two” and expect it to be handed back to you on a shiny plate. Still, I like your spirit. Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them. Once I knew a man who gave his wife two skunks for a valentine. He couldn’t understand why she was crying. “I thought they had such beautiful eyes.” And he was serious. He was a serious man who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly just because the world said so. He really liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them as valentines and they became beautiful. At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding in the eyes of skunks for centuries crawled out and curled up at his feet. Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us we find poems. Check your garage, the off sock in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite. And let me know.

“Artifact” Claudia Emerson For three years you lived in your house just as it was before she died: your wedding portrait on the mantel, her clothes hanging in the closet, her hair still in the brush. You have told me you gave it all away then, sold the house, keeping the confirmation cross she wore, her name in cursive chased on the gold underside, your ring in the same box, those photographs you still avoid, and the quilt you spread on your borrowed bed— small things. Months after we met, you told me she had made it, after we had slept already beneath its loft and thinning, raveled pattern, as though beneath her shadow, moving with us, that dark, that soft.

Session Tw0: The “Connecticut Wits” (18th Century Poetry) & Litany Poetry/Prompts

“The First American Congress”

Joel Barlow

Columbus looked; and still around them spread, From south to north, th' immeasurable shade; At last, the central shadows burst away, And rising regions open'd on the day. He saw, once more, bright Del'ware's silver stream, And Penn's throng'd city cast a cheerful gleam; The dome of state, that met his eager eye, Now heav'd its arches in a loftier sky. The bursting gates unfold: and lo, within, A solemn train in conscious glory shine. The well-known forms his eye had trac'd before, In diff'rent realms along th' extended shore; Here, grac'd with nobler fame, and rob'd in state, They look'd and mov'd magnificently great. High on the foremost seat, in living light, Majestic Randolph caught the hero's sight: Fair on his head, the civic crown was plac'd, And the first dignity his sceptre grac'd. He opes the cause, and points in prospect far, Thro' all the toils that wait th' impending war -- But, hapless sage, thy reign must soon be o'er, To lend thy lustre, and to shine no more. So the bright morning star, from shades of ev'n, Leads up the dawn, and lights the front of heav'n, Points to the waking world the sun's broad way, Then veils his own, and shines above the day. And see great Washington behind thee rise, Thy following sun, to gild our morning skies; O'er shadowy climes to pour the enliv'ning flame, The charms of freedom and the fire of fame. Th' ascending chief adorn'd his splendid seat, Like Randolph, ensign'd with a crown of state; Where the green patriot bay beheld, with pride, The hero's laurel springing by its side; His sword, hung useless, on his graceful thigh, On Britain still he cast a filial eye; But sov'reign fortitude his visage bore, To meet their legions on th' invaded shore. Sage Franklin next arose, in awful mien,

And smil'd, unruffled, o'er th' approaching scene; High, on his locks of age, a wreath was brac'd, Palm of all arts, that e'er a mortal grac'd; Beneath him lies the sceptre kings have borne, And crowns and laurels from their temples torn. Nash, Rutledge, Jefferson, in council great, And Jay and Laurens op'd the rolls of fate. The Livingstons, fair Freedom's gen'rous band, The Lees, the Houstons, fathers of the land, O'er climes and kingdoms turn'd their ardent eyes, Bade all th' oppressed to speedy vengeance rise; All pow'rs of state, in their extended plan, Rise from consent to shield the rights of man. Bold Wolcott urg'd the all-important cause; With steady hand the solemn scene he draws; Undaunted firmness with his wisdom join'd, Nor kings nor worlds could warp his stedfast mind. Now, graceful rising from his purple throne, In radiant robes, immortal Hosmer shone; Myrtles and bays his learned temples bound, The statesman's wreath, the poet's garland crown'd: Morals and laws expand his liberal soul, Beam from his eyes, and in his accents roll. But lo! an unseen hand the curtain drew, And snatch'd the patriot from the hero's view; Wrapp'd in the shroud of death, he sees descend The guide of nations and the muses' friend. Columbus dropp'd a tear. The angel's eye Trac'd the freed spirit mounting thro' the sky. Adams, enrag'd, a broken charter bore, And lawless acts of ministerial pow'r; Some injur'd right in each loose leaf appears, A king in terrors and a land in tears; From all the guileful plots the veil he drew, With eye retortive look'd creation through; Op'd the wide range of nature's boundless plan, Trac'd all the steps of liberty and man; Crowds rose to vengeance while his accents rung, And Independence thunder'd from his tongue.

“The Country Clown”

John Trumbull

Bred in distant woods, the clown

Brings all his country airs to town;

The odd address, with awkward grace,

That bows with half-averted face;

The half-heard compliments, whose note

Is swallow'd in the trembling throat;

The stiffen'd gait, the drawling tone,

By which his native place is known;

The blush, that looks by vast degrees,

Too much like modesty to please;

The proud displays of awkward dress,

That all the country fop express:

The suit right gay, though much belated,

Whose fashion's superannuated;

The watch, depending far in state,

Whose iron chain might form a grate;

The silver buckle, dread to view,

O'ershadowing all the clumsy shoe;

The white-gloved hand, that tries to peep

From ruffle, full five inches deep;

With fifty odd affairs beside,

The foppishness of country pride.

Poor Dick! though first thy airs provoke

The obstreperous laugh and scornful joke

Doom'd all the ridicule to stand,

While each gay dunce shall lend a hand;

Yet let not scorn dismay thy hope

To shine a witling and a fop.

Blest impudence the prize shall gain,

And bid thee sigh no more in vain.

Thy varied dress shall quickly show

At once the spendthrift and the beau.

With pert address and noisy tongue,

That scorns the fear of prating wrong

'Mongst listening coxcombs shalt thou shine,

And every voice shall echo thine.

“The Smooth Divine”

Timothy Dwight

There smiled the smooth Divine, unused to wound

The sinner's heart with hell's alarming sound.

No terrors on his gentle tongue attend;

No grating truths the nicest ear offend.

That strange new-birth, that methodistic grace,

Nor in his heart nor sermons found a place.

Plato's fine tales he clumsily retold,

Trite, fireside, moral seesaws, dull as old,-

His Christ and Bible placed at good remove,

Guild hell-deserving, and forgiving love.

'Twas best, he said, mankind should cease to sin:

Good fame required it; so did peace within.

Their honors, well he knew, would ne'er be driven;

But hoped they still would please to go to heaven.

Each week he paid his visitation dues;

Coaxed, jested, laughed; rehearsed the private news;

Smoked with each goody, thought her cheese excelled;

Her pipe he lighted, and her baby held.

Or placed in some great town, with lacquered shoes,

Trim wig, and trimmer gown, and glistening hose,

He bowed, talked politics, learned manners mild,

Most meekly questioned, and most smoothly smiled;

At rich men's jests laughed loud, their stories praised,

Their wives' new patterns gazed, and gazed, and gazed;

Most daintly on pampered turkeys dined,

Nor shrunk with fasting, nor with study pined:

Yet from their churches saw his brethern driven,

Who thundered truth, and spoke the voice of heaven,

Chilled trembling guilt in Satan's headlong path,

Charmed the feet back, and roused the ear of death.

'Let fools,' he cried, 'starve on, while prudent I

Snug in my nest shall live, and snug shall die.'

“Where I'm From”

George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride. I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening, it tasted like beets.) I am from the forsythia bush the Dutch elm whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.

I'm from fudge and eyeglasses, from Imogene and Alafair. I'm from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons, from Perk up! and Pipe down! I'm from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb and ten verses I can say myself.

I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch, fried corn and strong coffee. From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger, the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box

spilling old pictures,

a sift of lost faces

to drift beneath my dreams.

I am from those moments--

snapped before I budded --

leaf-fall from the family tree.

Session Two Cont.: Other Notable 18th Century Poets

“On Being Brought from Africa to America”

Phillis Wheatley

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

"Their colour is a diabolic die."

Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,

May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

“A Hymn to Evening”

Phillis Wheatley

SOON as the sun forsook the eastern main

The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;

Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,

Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.

Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,

And through the air their mingled music floats.

Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are

spread!

But the west glories in the deepest red:

So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,

The living temples of our God below!

Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,

And draws the sable curtains of the night,

Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,

At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd;

So shall the labours of the day begin

More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.

Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes.

“Emancipation from British Dependence”

Philip Freneau

Libera nos, Domine — Deliver us, O Lord,

Not only from British dependence, but also,

FROM a junto that labor for absolute power,

Whose schemes disappointed have made them look

sour;

From the lords of the council, who fight against

freedom

Who still follow on where delusion shall lead 'em.

From groups at St. James's who slight our Petitions,

And fools that are waiting for further submissions;

From a nation whose manners are rough and abrupt,

From scoundrals and rascals whom gold can corrupt.

From pirates sent out by command of the king

To murder and plunder, but never to swing;

From Wallace, and Graves, and Vipers and Roses,

Whom, if Heaven pleases, we'll give bloody noses.

From the valiant Dunmore, with his crew of banditti

Who plunder Virginians at Williamsburg city,

From hot-headed Montague, mighty to swear,

The little fat man with his pretty white hair.

From bishops in Britain, who butchers are grown,

From slaves that would die for a smile from the throne,

From assemblies that vote against Congress'

proceedings,

(Who now see the fruit of their stupid misleadings).

From Tryon, the mighty, who flies from our city,

And swelled with importance, disdains the committee;

(But since he is pleased to proclaim us his foes,

What the devil care we where the devil he goes.)

From the caitiff, Lord North, who would bind us in

chains,

From our noble King Log, with his toothful of brains,

Who dreams, and is certain (when taking a nap)

He has conquered our lands as they lay on his map.

From a kingdom that bullies, and hectors, and swears,

I send up to Heaven my wishes and prayers

That we, disunited, may freemen be still,

And Britain go on — to be damn'd if she will.

Session Three: American Romantic Poetry & Memory Poetry

“Alone”

Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

“Ultima Thule: The Tide Rises, The Tide

Falls”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveller hastens toward the town,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Efface the footprints in the sands,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

The day returns, but nevermore

Returns the traveller to the shore,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

“The Gladness of Nature”

William Cullen Bryant

Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,

When our mother Nature laughs around;

When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,

And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;

The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,

And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,

And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,

And here they stretch to the frolic chase,

And there they roll on the easy gale.

There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,

There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,

There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,

And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles

On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,

On the leaping waters and gay young isles;

Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.

“God Bless the Flag”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Washed in the blood of the brave and the blooming,

Snatched from the altars of insolent foes,

Burning with star-fires, but never consuming,

Flash its broad ribbons of lily and rose.

Vainly the prophets of Baal would rend it,

Vainly his worshippers pray for its fall;

Thousands have died for it, millions defend it,

Emblem of justice and mercy to all;

Justice that reddens the sky with her terrors,

Mercy that comes with her white-handed train,

Soothing all passions, redeeming all errors,

Sheathing the sabre and breaking the chain.

Borne on the deluge of all usurpations,

Drifted our Ark o'er the desolate seas,

Bearing the rainbow of hope to the nations,

Torn from the storm-cloud and flung to the breeze!

God bless the Flag and its loyal defenders,

While its broad folds o'er the battle-field wave,

Till the dim star-wreath rekindle its splendors,

Washed from its stains in the blood of the brave!

“Theme For English B” Langston Hughes 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? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page: It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York too.) Me---who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white--- yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American. Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me--- although you're older---and white--- and somewhat more free. This is my page for English B.

“The Copper Beech” Marie Howe Immense, entirely itself, it wore that yard like a dress, with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone. One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell darkening the sidewalk. Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches, I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy, watching it happen without it happening to me.

“Hurry” Marie Howe We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown? Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her, Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry— you walk ahead of me. You be the mother. And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says, hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

“Alone” Philip Levine Sunset, and the olive grove flames on the far hill. We descend into the lunging shadows of goat grass, and the air deepens like smoke. You were behind me, but when I turned there was the wrangling of crows and the long grass rising in the wind and the swelling tips of grain turning to water under a black sky. All around me the thousand small denials of the day rose like insects to the flaming of an old truth, someone alone following a broken trail of stones toward the deep and starless river.

“An Afternoon in the Stacks” William Stafford Closing the book, I find I have left my head inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound, words adjusting themselves to their meaning. Long passages open at successive pages. An echo, continuous from the title onward, hums behind me. From in here the world looms, a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences carved out when an author traveled and a reader kept the way open. When this book ends I will pull it inside-out like a sock and throw it back in the library. But the rumor of it will haunt all that follows in my life. A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

“Eight Ball” Claudia Emerson It was fifty cents a game beneath exhausted ceiling fans, the smoke’s old spiral. Hooded lights burned distant, dull. I was tired, but you insisted on one more, so I chalked the cue—the bored blue—broke, scratched. It was always possible for you to run the table, leave me nothing. But I recall the easy shot you missed, and then the way we both studied, circling—keeping what you had left me between us.

“Stable” Claudia Emerson One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail above the door, still losing its luck, and a work-collar swings, an empty old noose. The silence waits, wild to be broken by hoofbeat and heavy harness slap, will founder but remain; while, outside, above the stable, eight, nine, now ten buzzards swing low in lazy loops, a loose black warp of patience, bearing the blank sky like a pall of wind on mourning wings. But the bones of this place are long picked clean. Only the hayrake's ribs still rise from the rampant grasses.

“A Blind Woman” Ted Kooser She had turned her face up into a rain of light, and came on smiling. The light trickled down her forehead and into her eyes. It ran down into the neck of her sweatshirt and wet the white tops of her breasts. Her brown shoes splashed on into the light. The moment was like a circus wagon rolling before her through puddles of light, a cage on wheels, and she walked fast behind it, exuberant, curious, pushing her cane through the bars, poking and prodding, while the world cowered back in a corner.

“A Birthday Card” Ted Kooser In her eighties now, and weak and ill with emphysema, my aunt sends me a birthday card—a tossing ocean with clipper sihp—and wishes me well at firty-four. She’s included a note—hard-bitten in ballpoint, with a pen that sometimes skips whole words but never turns back—to tell me her end of the news: how the steroids have softened her spine, how every X ray shows more shattered bone. Her hasty words skip in and out, their little grooves washed clean of ink, the message rising and falling like short-wave radio, sending this hurried S.O.S., with love.

“I Like For You To Be Still” Pablo Neruda I like for you to be still It is as though you are absent And you hear me from far away And my voice does not touch you It seems as though your eyes had flown away And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth As all things are filled with my soul You emerge from the things Filled with my soul You are like my soul A butterfly of dream And you are like the word: Melancholy I like for you to be still And you seem far away It sounds as though you are lamenting A butterfly cooing like a dove And you hear me from far away And my voice does not reach you Let me come to be still in your silence And let me talk to you with your silence That is bright as a lamp Simple, as a ring You are like the night With its stillness and constellations Your silence is that of a star As remote and candid I like for you to be still It is as though you are absent Distant and full of sorrow So you would've died One word then, One smile is enough And I'm happy; Happy that it's not true

“A Dog Has Died”

Pablo Neruda TRANSLATED BY ALFRED YANKAUER

My dog has died. I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine. Some day I'll join him right there, but now he's gone with his shaggy coat, his bad manners and his cold nose, and I, the materialist, who never believed in any promised heaven in the sky for any human being, I believe in a heaven I'll never enter. Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits for my arrival waving his fan-like tail in friendship. Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth, of having lost a companion who was never servile. His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine withholding its authority, was the friendship of a star, aloof, with no more intimacy than was called for, with no exaggerations: he never climbed all over my clothes filling me full of his hair or his mange, he never rubbed up against my knee like other dogs obsessed with sex. No, my dog used to gaze at me, paying me the attention I need, the attention required to make a vain person like me understand that, being a dog, he was wasting time, but, with those eyes so much purer than mine, he'd keep on gazing at me with a look that reserved for me alone all his sweet and shaggy life, always near me, never troubling me, and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail as we walked together on the shores of the sea in the lonely winter of Isla Negra where the wintering birds filled the sky and my hairy dog was jumping about full of the voltage of the sea's movement: my wandering dog, sniffing away with his golden tail held high, face to face with the ocean's spray. Joyful, joyful, joyful, as only dogs know how to be happy with only the autonomy of their shameless spirit. There are no good-byes for my dog who has died, and we don't now and never did lie to each other. So now he's gone and I buried him, and that's all there is to it.

“Love Sonnet XVII” Pablo Neruda I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; So I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Session Four: Transcendentalist Poetry & “Autobiographical” Poetry

“The Apology”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think me not unkind and rude,

That I walk alone in grove and glen;

I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook;

Each cloud that floated in the sky

Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,

For the idle flowers I brought;

Every aster in my hand

Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,

But 'tis figured in the flowers,

Was never secret history,

But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field

Homeward brought the oxen strong;

A second crop thine acres yield,

Which I gather in a song.

“Nature”

Henry David Thoreau

O Nature! I do not aspire

To be the highest in thy choir, -

To be a meteor in thy sky,

Or comet that may range on high;

Only a zephyr that may blow

Among the reeds by the river low;

Give me thy most privy place

Where to run my airy race.

In some withdrawn, unpublic mead

Let me sigh upon a reed,

Or in the woods, with leafy din,

Whisper the still evening in:

Some still work give me to do, -

Only - be it near to you!

For I'd rather be thy child

And pupil, in the forest wild,

Than be the king of men elsewhere,

And most sovereign slave of care;

To have one moment of thy dawn,

Than share the city's year forlorn.

“Winged Sphinx”

Margaret Fuller

Through brute nature upward rising,

Seed up-striving to the light,

Revelations still surprising,

My inwardness is grown insight.

Still I slight not those first stages,

Dark but God-directed Ages;

In my nature leonine

Labored & learned a Soul divine;

Put forth an aspect Chaste, Serene,

Of nature virgin mother queen;

Assumes at last the destined wings,

Earth & heaven together brings;

While its own form the riddle tells

That baffled all the wizard spells

Drawn from intellectual wells,

Cold waters where truth never dwells:

--It was fable told you so;--

Seek her in common daylight's glow.

***********************************************************************************************

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” Emily Dickinson “Hope” is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all— And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard— And sore must be the storm— That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm— I’ve heard it in the chillest land— And on the strangest Sea— Yet—never—in Extremity, It asked a crumb—of me.

“The Journey” Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life you could save.

“Introduction to Poetry” By 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.

“Wild Geese” Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

“The Summer Day” Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

“Love After Love” Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

“Song of the Builders” Mary Oliver On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God - a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.

“On Turning Ten” Billy Collins The whole idea of it makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-- a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number. It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.

“I Ask You” Billy Collins

What scene would I want to be enveloped in more than this one, an ordinary night at the kitchen table, floral wallpaper pressing in, white cabinets full of glass, the telephone silent, a pen tilted back in my hand? It gives me time to think about all that is going on outside-- leaves gathering in corners, lichen greening the high grey rocks, while over the dunes the world sails on, huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake. But beyond this table there is nothing that I need, not even a job that would allow me to row to work, or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4 with cracked green leather seats. No, it's all here, the clear ovals of a glass of water, a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin, not to mention the odd snarling fish in a frame on the wall, and the way these three candles-- each a different height-- are singing in perfect harmony. So forgive me if I lower my head now and listen to the short bass candle as he takes a solo while my heart thrums under my shirt-- frog at the edge of a pond-- and my thoughts fly off to a province made of one enormous sky and about a million empty branches.

Session Five: Other Notable mid- to late-19th Century Poetry & “Found” Poetry

“O Captain! My Captain!”

Walt Whitman

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

“Because I Could Not Stop For Death—“

Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –

The Dews drew quivering and Chill –

For only Gossamer, my Gown –

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible –

The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses' Heads

Were toward Eternity –

“We Wear the Mask”

Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

Session Six: Pre-Modernist and Imagist Poetry & Observational Poetry

“Richard Cory”

Edwin Arlington Robinson

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.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Robert Frost

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.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

“In a Station of the Metro”

Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

petals on a wet, black bough.

“N. Y.”

Ezra Pound

My City, my beloved, my white! Ah, slender,

Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.

Delicately upon the reed, attend me!

Now do I know that I am mad,

For here are a million people surly with traffic;

This is no maid.

Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one.

My City, my beloved,

Thou art a maid with no breasts,

Thou art slender as a silver reed.

Listen to me, attend me!

And I will breathe into thee a soul,

And thou shalt live for ever.

“The Pond”

Amy Lowell

Cold, wet leaves

Floating on moss-coloured water,

And the croaking of frogs-

Cracked bell-notes in the twilight.

“The Coal Picker”

Amy Lowell

He perches in the slime, inert,

Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.

The oil upon the puddles dries

To colours like a peacock's eyes,

And half-submerged tomato-cans

Shine scaly, as leviathans

Oozily crawling through the mud.

The ground is here and there bestud

With lumps of only part-burned coal.

His duty is to glean the whole,

To pick them from the filth, each one,

To hoard them for the hidden sun

Which glows within each fiery core

And waits to be made free once more.

Their sharp and glistening edges cut

His stiffened fingers. Through the smut

Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.

Wet through and shivering he kneels

And digs the slippery coals; like eels

They slide about. His force all spent,

He counts his small accomplishment.

A half-a-dozen clinker-coals

Which still have fire in their souls.

Fire! And in his thought there burns

The topaz fire of votive urns.

He sees it fling from hill to hill,

And still consumed, is burning still.

Higher and higher leaps the flame,

The smoke an ever-shifting frame.

He sees a Spanish Castle old,

With silver steps and paths of gold.

From myrtle bowers comes the plash

Of fountains, and the emerald flash

Of parrots in the orange trees,

Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.

He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke

Bears visions, that his master-stroke

Is out of dirt and misery

To light the fire of poesy.

He sees the glory, yet he knows

That others cannot see his shows.

To them his smoke is sightless, black,

His votive vessels but a pack

Of old discarded shards, his fire

A peddler's; still to him the pyre

Is incensed, an enduring goal!

He sighs and grubs another coal.

“Blackberry Eating” Galway Kinnell I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words like strengths and squinched, many-lettered, on-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry-eating in late September.

“Rain” Naomi Shihab Nye A teacher asked Paul what he would remember from third grade, and he sat a long time before writing "this year somebody tutched me on the sholder" and turned his paper in. Later she showed it to me as an example of her wasted life. The words he wrote were large as houses in a landscape. He wanted to go inside them and live, he could fill in the windows of "o" and "d" and be safe while outside birds building nests in drainpipes knew nothing of the coming rain.

“The Black Snake” Mary Oliver When the black snake

flashed onto the morning road,

and the truck could not swerve--

death, that is how it happens.

Now he lies looped and useless

as an old bicycle tire.

I stop the car

and carry him into the bushes.

He is as cool and gleaming

as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet

as a dead brother.

I leave him under the leaves

and drive on, thinking

about death: its suddenness,

its terrible weight,

its certain coming. Yet under

reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones

have always preferred.

It is the story of endless good fortune.

It says to oblivion: not me!

It is the light at the center of every cell.

It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward

happily all spring through the green leaves before

he came to the road.

“To a Poor Old Woman” William Carlos Williams munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her

“The Red Wheelbarrow” William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

“Rosa” Rita Dove How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready. That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat. Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash. How she stood up when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.

“Shooting” Raymond Carver

I wade through wheat up to my belly,

cradling a shotgun in my arms.

Tess is asleep back at the ranch house.

The moon pales. Then loses face completely

as the sun spears up over the mountains.

Why do I pick this moment

to remember my aunt taking me aside that time

and saying, What I am going to tell you now

you will remember every day of your life?

But that's all I can remember.

I've never been able to trust memory. My own

or anyone else's. I'd like to know what on earth

I'm doing here in this strange regalia

It's my friend's wheat--this much is true.

And right now, his dog is on point.

*

Tess is opposed to killing for sport,

or any other reason. Yet not long ago she

threatened to kill me. The dog inches forward.

I stop moving. I can't see or hear

my breath any longer.

Step by tiny step, the day advances. Suddenly,

the air explodes with birds.

Tess sleeps through it. When she wakes,

October will be over. Guns and talk

of shooting behind us.

Session Seven: Modernist Poetry & Harlem Renaissance Poetry

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

T. S. Eliot

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-

panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin

— (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought

in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and

snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— If one, settling a pillow by her head Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled

streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that

trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a

screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.” No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the

beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

“The Lonely Street”

William Carlos Williams

School is over. It is too hot to walk at ease. At ease in light frocks they walk the streets to while the time away. They have grown tall. They hold pink flames in their right hands. In white from head to foot, with sidelong, idle look-- in yellow, floating stuff, black sash and stockings-- touching their avid mouths with pink sugar on a stick-- like a carnation each holds in her hand-- they mount the lonely street.

“The Fog”

Carl Sandburg

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

“The Grass”

Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work-- I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.

“Love is Not All”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution's power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

“Advice to a Young Girl”

Sara Teasdale

No one worth possessing

Can be quite possessed;

Lay that on your heart,

My young angry dear;

This truth, this hard and precious stone,

Lay it on your hot cheek,

Let it hide your tear.

Hold it like a crystal

When you are alone

And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.

Long, look long and you will be blessed:

No one worth possessing

Can be quite possessed.

“There Will Come Soft Rain”

Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

“From the Dark Tower”

Countee Cullen

We shall not always plant while others reap

The golden increment of bursting fruit,

Not always countenance, abject and mute,

That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;

Not everlastingly while others sleep

Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,

Not always bend to some more subtle brute;

We were not made to eternally weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,

White stars is no less lovely being dark,

And there are buds that cannot bloom at all

In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,

And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

“America”

Claude McKay

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.

“Fragment”

James Weldon Johnson

The hand of Fate cannot be stayed,

The course of Fate cannot be steered,

By all the gods that man has made,

Nor all the devils he has feared,

Not by the prayers that might be prayed

In all the temples he has reared.

See! In your very midst there dwell

Ten thousand thousand blacks, a wedge

Forged in the furnaces of hell,

And sharpened to a cruel edge

By wrong and by injustice fell,

And driven by hatred as a sledge.

A wedge so slender at the start--

Just twenty slaves in shackles bound--

And yet, which split the land apart

With shrieks of war and battle sound,

Which pierced the nation's very heart,

And still lies cankering in the wound.

Not all the glory of your pride,

Preserved in story and in song,

Can from the judging future hide,

Through all the coming ages long,

That though you bravely fought and died,

You fought and died for what was wrong.

'Tis fixed--for them that violate

The eternal laws, naught shall avail

Till they their error expiate;

Nor shall their unborn children fail

To pay the full required weight

Into God's great, unerring scale.

Think not repentance can redeem,

That sin his wages can withdraw;

No, think as well to change the scheme

Of worlds that move in reverent awe;

Forgiveness is an idle dream,

God is not love, no, God is law.

“Harlem [Dream Deferred]”

Langston Hughes

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?

“Democracy”

Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come

Today, this year

Nor ever

Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right

As the other fellow has

To stand

On my two feet

And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,

Let things take their course.

Tomorrow is another day.

I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.

I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom

Is a strong seed

Planted

In a great need.

I live here, too.

I want freedom

Just as you.

“The Weary Blues”

Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

He did a lazy sway ....

He did a lazy sway ....

To the tune o' those Weary Blues.

With his ebony hands on each ivory key

He made that poor piano moan with melody.

O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man's soul.

O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--

"Ain't got nobody in all this world,

Ain't got nobody but ma self.

I's gwine to quit ma frownin'

And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more--

"I got the Weary Blues

And I can't be satisfied.

Got the Weary Blues

And can't be satisfied--

I ain't happy no mo'

And I wish that I had died."

And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stopped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.

He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

Session Eight: e. e. cummings’ Poetry (Modernism Cont.) and Line Breaks in Poetry

(im)c-a-t(mo) b,i;l:e

FallleA ps!fl OattumblI

sh?dr

IftwhirlF (Ul)(IY) &&&

away wanders exact ly;as if not hing had,ever happ ene

D

--e. e. cummings

in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame baloonman whistles far and wee and eddyandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old baloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed baloonMan whistles far and wee --e. e. cummings

there are so many tictoc clocks everywhere telling people what tictoc time it is for tictic instance five toc minutes toc past six tic Spring is not regulated and does not get out of order nor do its hands a little jerking move over numbers slowly we do not wind it up it has no weights springs wheels inside of its slender self no indeed dear nothing of the kind (So when kiss Spring comes we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss lips because tic clocks toc don’t make a toctic difference to kisskiss you and to kiss me) --e. e. cummings

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry --the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids’ flutter which says we are for each other; then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life’s not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis --e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

--e. e. cummings

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 --e. e. cummings

Session Nine B: Mid-Century Formalism & Beat Poetry

(Midcentury Formalist)

“One Art”

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

“Children of Light”

Robert Lowell

Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones

And fenced their gardens with the Redmen's bones;

Embarking from the Nether Land of Holland,

Pilgrims unhouseled by Geneva's night,

They planted here the Serpent's seeds of light;

And here the pivoting searchlights probe to shock

The riotous glass houses built on rock,

And candles gutter by an empty altar,

And light is where the landless blood of Cain

Is burning, burning the unburied grain.

“My Papa’s Waltz”

Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother's countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

(Beat Poets)

“A Supermarket in California”

Allen Ginsburg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the

streets 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!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles

full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,

Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the

meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price

bananas? Are you my Angel?

I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and

followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting

artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does

your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel

absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to

shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in

driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you

have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and

stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

“How to Meditate”

Jack Kerouac

-lights out-

fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous

ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,

the gland inside of my brain discharging

the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as

i hap-down and hold all my body parts

down to a deadstop trance-Healing

all my sicknesses-erasing all-not

even the shred of a 'I-hope-you' or a

Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind

blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought

comes a-springing from afar with its held-

forth figure of image, you spoof it out,

you spuff it off, you fake it, and

it fades, and thought never comes-and

with joy you realize for the first time

'thinking's just like not thinking-

So I don't have to think

any

more'

Session Nine C: Confessional Poetry, Black Arts Movement, & Surrealist/New York School Poetry

“Daddy”

Sylvia Plath

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. You died before I had time—— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—— Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

“Anna Who Was Mad”

Anne Sexton

Anna who was mad,

I have a knife in my armpit.

When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages.

Am I some sort of infection?

Did I make you go insane?

Did I make the sounds go sour?

Did I tell you to climb out the window?

Forgive. Forgive.

Say not I did.

Say not.

Say.

Speak Mary-words into our pillow.

Take me the gangling twelve-year-old

into your sunken lap.

Whisper like a buttercup.

Eat me. Eat me up like cream pudding.

Take me in.

Take me.

Take.

Give me a report on the condition of my soul.

Give me a complete statement of my actions.

Hand me a jack-in-the-pulpit and let me listen in.

Put me in the stirrups and bring a tour group through.

Number my sins on the grocery list and let me buy.

Did I make you go insane?

Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive

through?

Did I open the door for the mustached psychiatrist

who dragged you out like a gold cart?

Did I make you go insane?

From the grave write me, Anna!

You are nothing but ashes but nevertheless

pick up the Parker Pen I gave you.

Write me.

Write.

“Dream Song 14”

John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,

we ourselves flash and yearn,

and moreover my mother told me as a boy

(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored

means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no

inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

Peoples bore me,

literature bores me, especially great literature,

Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes

as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.

And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag

and somehow a dog

has taken itself & its tail considerably away

into mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind: me, wag.

(Black Arts Movement)

“Young Afrikans”

Gwendolyn Brooks

Who take Today and jerk it out of joint have made new underpinnings and a Head. Blacktime is time for chimeful poemhood but they decree a jagged chiming now. If there are flowers flowers must come out to the road. Rowdy!— knowing where wheels and people are, knowing where whips and screams are, knowing where deaths are, where the kind kills are. As for that other kind of kindness, if there is milk it must be mindful. The milkofhumankindness must be mindful as wily wines. Must be fine fury. Must be mega, must be main. Taking Today (to jerk it out of joint) the hardheroic maim the leechlike-as-usual who use, adhere to, carp, and harm. And they await, across the Changes and the spiraling dead, our Black revival, our Black vinegar, our hands, and our hot blood.

“Legacy”

Imamu Amiri Baraka

(For Blues People)

In the south, sleeping against the drugstore, growling under the trucks and stoves, stumbling through and over the cluttered eyes of early mysterious night. Frowning drunk waving moving a hand or lash. Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting a hand rest in shadows. Squatting to drink or pee. Stretching to climb pulling themselves onto horses near where there was sea (the old songs lead you to believe). Riding out from this town, to another, where it is also black. Down a road where people are asleep. Towards the moon or the shadows of houses. Towards the songs’ pretended sea.

“Present”

Sonia Sanchez

This woman vomiting her

hunger over the world

this melancholy woman forgotten

before memory came

this yellow movement bursting forth like

coltrane's melodies all mouth

buttocks moving like palm tress,

this honeycoatedalabamianwoman

raining rhythm to blue/black/smiles

this yellow woman carrying beneath her breasts

pleasures without tongues

this woman whose body waves

desert patterns,

this woman wet with wandering,

reviving the beauty of forests and winds

is telling you secrets

gather up your odors and listen

as she sings the mold from memory.

there is no place

for a soft / black / woman.

there is no smile green enough or

summertime words warm enough to allow my growth.

and in my head

i see my history

standing like a shy child

and i chant lullabies

as i ride my past on horseback

tasting the thirst of yesterday tribes

hearing the ancient/black/woman

me, singing hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya.

hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-y a-ya.

like a slow scent

beneath the sun

and i dance my

creation and my grandmothers gathering

from my bones like great wooden birds

spread their wings

while their long/legged/laughter

stretched the night.

and i taste the

seasons of my birth. mangoes. papayas.

drink my woman/coconut/milks

stalk the ancient grandfathers

sipping on proud afternoons

walk like a song round my waist

tremble like a new/born/child troubles

with new breaths

and my singing

becomes the only sound of a

blue/black/magical/woman. walking.

womb ripe. walking. loud with mornings. walking.

making pilgrimage to herself. walking.

(surrealist movement)

“Song” Frank O’Hara

I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab which is typical and not just of modern life mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves must lovers of Eros end up with Venus muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you how I hate disease, it's like worrying that comes true and it simply must not be able to happen in a world where you are possible my love nothing can go wrong for us, tell me

“This Room”

John Ashbery The room I entered was a dream of this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up. We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.

Session Nine D: Other Notable Mid-to Late-Century Movements and Poets

“A Woman Speaks”

Audre Lorde

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

“The Journey”

Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only think you could do— determined to save the only life you could save.

“Those Winter Sundays” Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

“Man in Space” Billy Collins All you have to do is listen to the way a man sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people and notice how intent he is on making his point even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver, and you will know why the women in science fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine when the men from earth arrive in their rocket, why they are always standing in a semicircle with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart, their breasts protected by hard metal disks.

“First Thanksgiving” Sharon Olds When she comes back, from college, I will see the skin of her upper arms, cool, matte, glossy. She will hug me, my old soupy chest against her breasts, I will smell her hair! She will sleep in this apartment, her sleep like an untamed, good object, like a soul in a body. She came into my life the second great arrival, after him, fresh from the other world—which lay, from within him, within me. Those nights, I fed her to sleep, week after week, the moon rising, and setting, and waxing—whirling, over the months, in a slow blur, around our planet. Now she doesn’t need love like that, she has had it. She will walk in glowing, we will talk, and then, when she’s fast asleep, I’ll exult to have her in that room again, behind that door! As a child, I caught bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds, looked into their wild faces, listened to them sing, then tossed them back into the air—I remember the moment the arc of my toss swerved, and they entered the corrected curve of their departure.

Glossary of Poetic Terms

Alliteration: The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close

proximity. Example: pensive poets, nattering nabobs of negativism.

Allusion: Unacknowledged reference and quotations that authors assume their readers will recognize.

Anaphora: Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of a line throughout a work or the section of

a work.

Assonance: The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close proximity. Example: deep

green sea.

Consonance: the counterpart of assonance; the repetition of consonants in words whose main vowels differ.

Example: shadow meadow; pressed, passed; sipped, supped.

Diction: Diction is usually used to describe the level of formality that a speaker uses.

Diction (formal or high): Proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language. This type of

language used to be thought the only type suitable for poetry

Neutral or middle diction: Correct language characterized by directness and simplicity.

Diction (informal or low): Relaxed, conversational and familiar language.

Foot (prosody): A measured combination of heavy and light stresses. The numbers of feet are given below.

monometer (1 foot) dimeter (2 feet) trimeter (3 feet) tetrameter (4 feet) pentameter (5 feet) hexameter (6 feet)

heptameter or septenary (7 feet)

Hyperbole (overstatement) and litotes (understatement): Hyperbole is exaggeration for effect; litotes is

understatement for effect, often used for irony.

Image: Images are references that trigger the mind to fuse together memories of sight (visual), sounds

(auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). Imagery refers to images

throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers.

Internal rhyme: An exact rhyme (rather than rhyming vowel sounds, as with assonance) within a line of

poetry: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary."

Metaphor: A comparison between two unlike things, this describes one thing as if it were something else. Does

not use "like" or "as" for the comparison (see simile).

Meter: The number of feet within a line of traditional verse. Example: iambic pentameter.

Onomatopoeia. A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the activity being

described. Example: buzz, slurp.

Personification: Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions.

Rhyme: The repetition of identical concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines.

Example: June--moon.

Eye rhyme: Words that seem to rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently.

Example: bear/fear, dough/cough/through/bough

Slant rhyme: A near rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels.

Example: sun/noon, should/food, slim/ham.

Rhyme scheme: The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each

rhyme at the end of a line of poetry.

Scan (scansion): the process of marking beats in a poem to establish the prevailing metrical pattern. Prosody,

the pronunciation of a song or poem, is necessary for scansion.

Simile. A direct comparison between two dissimilar things; uses "like" or "as" to state the terms of the

comparison.

Stanza: A group of poetic lines corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually

repeating or systematic.

Syntax: Word order and sentence structure.