Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest

Transcription

1 Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest

2 Writ On The Steps Of Puerto Rican Harlem There s a truth limits man A truth prevents his going any farther The world is changing The world knows it s changing Heavy is the sorrow of the day The old have the look of doom The young mistake their fate in that look That is truth But it isn t all truth By Gregory Corso Life has meaning And I do not know the meaning Even when I felt it were meaningless I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning It wasn t all frolic poesy There were dues to pay Summoning Death and God I d a wild dare to tackle Them Death proved meaningless without Life Yes the world is changing But Death remains the same It takes man away from Life The only meaning he knows And usually it is a sad business This Death I d an innocence I d a seriousness I d a humor save me from amateur philosophy I am able to contradict my beliefs I am able able Because I want to know the meaning of everything Yet sit I like a brokenness Moaning: Oh what responsibility I put on thee Gregory Death and God Hard hard it s hard 第 2 页

3 I learned life were no dream I learned truth deceived Man is not God Life is a century Death an instant 第 3 页

4 Forgetfulness By Billy Collins The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. 第 4 页

5 Bilingual/Bilingüe My father liked them separate, one there, one here (alláy aquí), as if aware by Rhina P. Espaillat that words might cut in two his daughter s heart (el corazón) and lock the alien part to what he was his memory, his name (su nombre) with a key he could not claim. English outside this door, Spanish inside, he said, y basta. But who can divide the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from any child? I knew how to be dumb and stubborn (testaruda); late, in bed, I hoarded secret syllables I read until my tongue (mi lengua) learned to run where his stumbled. And still the heart was one. I like to think he knew that, even when, proud (orgulloso) of his daughter s pen, he stood outside mis versos, half in fear of words he loved but wanted not to hear. 第 5 页

6 Sonnet CXXX: My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing like the Sun My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. by William Shakespeare 第 6 页

7 Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all, when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians: this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, this man, superb in love and logic, this man shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing. 第 7 页

8 I Am Waiting I am waiting for my case to come up for a rebirth of wonder for someone to really discover America and wail for the discovery of a new symbolic western frontier by Lawrence Ferlinghetti for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy for the final withering away of all governments and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder I am waiting for the Second Coming for a religious revival to sweep thru the state of Arizona for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored for them to prove that God is really American to see God on television piped onto church altars if only they can find the right channel 第 8 页

9 to tune in on for the Last Supper to be served again with a strange new appetizer and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder I am waiting for my number to be called for the Salvation Army to take over for the meek to be blessed and inherit the earth without taxes for forests and animals to reclaim the earth as theirs for a way to be devised to destroy all nationalisms without killing anybody for linnets and planets to fall like rain for lovers and weepers to lie down together again in a new rebirth of wonder I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed and I am anxiously waiting for the secret of eternal life to be discovered by an obscure general practitioner for the storms of life to be over to set sail for happiness for a reconstructed Mayflower to reach America with its picture story and tv rights sold in advance to the natives for the lost music to sound again in the Lost Continent 第 9 页

10 in a new rebirth of wonder I am waiting for the day that maketh all things clear and I am awaiting retribution for what America did to Tom Sawyer for Alice in Wonderland to retransmit to me her total dream of innocence for Childe Roland to come to the final darkest tower for Aphrodite to grow live arms at a final disarmament conference in a new rebirth of wonder I am waiting to get some intimations of immortality by recollecting my early childhood for the green mornings to come again youth s dumb green fields come back again for some strains of unpremeditated art to shake my typewriter to write the great indelible poem for the last long careless rapture and I am perpetually waiting for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn to catch each other up at last and embrace and I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder 第 10 页

11 The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for mammoth. Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. But when the Man-Moth pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection. He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb. Up the façades, his shadow dragging like a photographer s cloth behind him he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage to push his small head through that round clean opening and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light. (Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits, he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly. The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed, without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort. He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards. Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams. Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie 第 11 页

12 his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window, for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison, runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers. If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you re not paying attention he ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink. 第 12 页

13 Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins Glory be to God for dappled things For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings; Landscape plotted and pieced fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. 第 13 页

14 Danse Russe If when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees, if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so! If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades, by William Carlos Williams Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household? 第 14 页