152

Transcription

1 151

2 152

3 153

4 154

5 155

6 156

7 I Know I m Not Sufficiently Obscure I know I m not sufficiently obscure to please the critics nor devious enough. Imagery escapes me. I cannot find those mild and gracious words to clothe the carnage. 5 Blood is blood and murder s murder. What s a lavender word for lynch? Come, you pale poets, wan, refined and dreamy: here is a black woman working out her guts in a white man s kitchen 10 for little money and no glory. How should I tell that story? There is a black boy, blacker still from death, face down in the cold Korean mud. Come on with your effervescent jive 15 vibrant explain to him why he ain t alive. Reword our specific discontent into some plaintive melody, a little whine, a little whimper, not too much and no rebellion! 20 God, no! Rebellion s much too corny. You deal with finer feelings, very subtle an autumn leaf hanging from a tree I see a body! -Ray Durem 157

8 Meeting at Night The gray sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i the slushy sand. Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each! Robert Browning ( ) 158

9 The Widow s Lament in Springtime Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them. William Carlos Williamson ( ) 159

10 Those Winter Sundays Sundays too my father got up early And put his clothes on in the blueback 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? Robert Hayden ( ) 160

11 I Felt a Funeral in My Brain I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading treading till it seemed That Sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum, Kept beating beating till I thought My Mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead again. Then Space began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here. And then a Plank in Reason broke And I dropped down, and down, And hit a World at every plunge, And Finished knowing, then. Emily Dickenson ( ) 161

12 AP Poetry Essay: Imagery Read the following poem carefully, paying particular attention to the physical intensity of the language. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the poet uses imagery to describe the scene and establish mood, thereby leading the reader to a comprehensive understanding of the poem. You may also wish to include some analysis of diction. The One Girl at the Boys Party When I take my girl to the swimming party I set her down among the boys. They tower and bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek, her math scores unfolding in the air around her. They will strip to their suits, her body hard and 5 indivisible as a prime number, they ll plunge in the deep end, she ll subtract her height from ten feet, divide it into hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine 10 in the bright blue pool. When they climb out, her ponytail will hang its pencil lead down her back, her narrow silk suit with hamburgers and French fries printed on it will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will 15 see her sweet face, solemn and sealed, a factor of one, and she will see their eyes, two each, their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes, one each, and in her head she ll be doing her 20 wild multiplying, as the drops sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body. Sharon Olds (1983) 162

13 Metaphors I m a riddle in nine syllables. An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf s big with its yeasty rising. Money s new-minted in this fat purse. I m a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I ve eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there s no getting off. Silvia Plath 163

14 It sifts from leaden sieves It sifts from leaden sieves, It powders all the wood. It fills with alabaster wool The wrinkles of the road. It makes an even face Of mountain and of plain Unbroken forehead from the east Unto the east again. It reaches to the fence, It wraps it rail by rail Till it is lost in fleeces; It deals celestial veil To stump and stack and stem A summer s empty room Acres of joints where harvests were, Recordless,º but for them. unrecorded It ruffles wrists of posts As ankles of a queen, Then stills its artisans like ghosts, Denying they have been. Emily Dickinson ( ) 164

15 165

16 166

17 To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun, The higher he s a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he s to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time; And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may forever tarry. Robert Herrick ( ) 167

18 The Chimney Sweeper When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep! weep! weep! So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. There s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, That curled like a lamb s back, was shaved; so I said, Hush, Tom! Never mind it, for, when your head s bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair. And so he was quiet, and that very night, As Tom was asleeping, he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free; Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in the river, and shine in the sun. Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind; And the Angel told Tom, if he d be a good boy, He d have God for his father, and never want joy. And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm; So if all do their duty they need not fear harm. William Black ( ) 168

19 That night when joy began That night when joy began Out narrowest veins to flush, We waited for the flash Of morning s leveled gun. But morning let us pass, And day by day relief Outgrows his nervous laugh, Grown credulous of peace, As mile by mile is seen No trespasser s reproach, And love s best glasses reach No fields but are his own. W.H. Auden ( ) The Fall of the House of Usher During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. 169 Edgar Allan Poe ( )

20 God s Grandeur The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man s smudge and shares man s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings. Gerard Manley Hopkins ( ) 170

21 Much madness is divinest sense Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye, Much sense, the starkest madness Tis the majority In this, as all, prevail: Assent, and you are sane; Demur, you re straightway dangerous And handled with a chain Incident Emily Dickenson ( ) Once riding in old Baltimore Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, Nigger. I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that happened there That s all that I remember. Countee Cullen ( ) 171

22 One Perfect Rose A single flow r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet One perfect rose. I knew the language of the floweret; My fragile leaves, it said, his heart enclose. Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose. Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it s always just my luck to get One perfect rose. Ozymandias - Dorothy Parker ( ) I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. - Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ) 172

23 in the inner city in the inner city or like we call it home we think a lot about uptown and the silent nights and the houses straight as dead men and the pastel lights and we hang on to our no place happy to be alive and in the inner city or like we call it home Lucille Clifton (b. 1936) 173

24 The State When they killed my mother it made me nervous; I thought to myself, it was right: Of course she was crazy, and how she ate! And she died, after all, in her way, for the State. But I minded: how queer it was to stare At one of them not sitting there. When they drafted Sister I said all night, It s healthier there in the fields ; And I d think, Now I m helping to win the War, When the neighbors came in, as they did, with my meals. And I was, I was; but I was scared With only one of them sitting there. When they took my cat for the Army Corps Of Conservation and Supply, I thought of him there in the cold with the mice And I cried, and I cried, and I wanted to die. They were there, and I saw them, and that is my life. Now there s nothing. I m dead, and I want to die. Randall Farrell ( ) 174

25 Southern Cop Let us forgive Ty Kendricks. The place was Darktown. He was young. His nerves were jittery. The day was hot. The Negro ran out of the alley. And so Ty shot. Let us understand Ty Kendricks. The Negro must have been dangerous, Because he ran; And here was a rookie with a chance To prove himself a man. Let us condone Ty Kendricks If we cannot decorate. When he found what the negro was running for, It was too late; And all we can say for the Negro is It was unfortunate. Let us pity Ty Kendricks. He has been through enough, Standing there, his big gun smoking, Rabbit-scared, alone, Having to hear the wenches wail And the dying Negro moan. Sterling A. Brown ( ) 175

26 176