Icwu poetry

Icy Cold Warm Ups POETIC VARIETY

Earl.demott@vbschools.com | English 9/GSWLA 9 | 2017

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

1 Wislawa Szymborska 2 Wole Soyinka 3 Rita Dove 4 William Carlos Williams 5 Edgar Allen Poe 6 Deborah Paredez

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Wislawa Szymborska

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Born: 2 July 1923, Bnin (now Kórnik), Poland Died: 1 February 2012, Kraków, Poland Residence at the time of the award: Poland Prize motivation: "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality" Life Wisława Szymborska was born in Bnin (now part of Kórnik), close to the city of Poznań, Poland. She was the youngest in a family of two daughters. Szymborska began writing short stories and songs as a child, and made her poetic debut in 1945. She married Adam Wlodek and the pair lived in a writers' collective in Krakow. The couple divorced in 1954, but remained friends. Alongside her writing career Wisława Szymborska has also held various positions working for literary journals, such as Zycie Literackie and Pismo, and as a translator of older French poetry.

Work Wisława Szymborska's poetry addressed existential questions. It is unique among its kind and does not easily lend itself to categorization. Wisława Szymborska strives to illuminate the deepest problems of human existence, surrounded by the transitoriness of the now and everyday life. She weaves in the machinery of eternity in a momentary experience of the here and now. Her poetry is characterized by a simplified, "personal" language that is unlike contemporary language, often with a little twist at the end, with a striking combination of spirituality, ingenuity, and empathy. : "Wislawa Szymborska - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 5 Sep 2017. <http://www.nobelprize.org/no bel_prizes/literature/laureates/1996/szymborska-facts.html>

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Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka Nigerian writer, notable especially as a playwright and poet; he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first person in Africa to be so honored.

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Born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, Soyinka studied in Nigeria and the UK, working later with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.

Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993â&#x20AC;&#x201C;98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the "Nadeco Route" on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US. Soyinka the first African laureate when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.

He was described as one "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". Reed Way Dasenbrock writes that the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Soyinka is "likely to prove quite controversial and thoroughly deserved." He also notes that "it is the first Nobel Prize awarded to an African writer or to any writer from the 'new literatures' in English that have emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire." His Nobel acceptance speech, "This Past Must Address Its Present", was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's speech was an outspoken criticism of apartheid and the politics of racial segregation imposed on the majority by the Nationalist South African government.

In November 1994, Soyinka fled from Nigeria through the border with Benin and then to the United States. In 1996 his book The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis was first published. In 1997 he was charged with treason by the government of General Sani Abacha. The International Parliament of Writers (IPW) was established in 1993 to provide support for writers victimized by persecution. Soyinka became the organization's second president from 1997 to 2000. In 1999 a new volume of poems by Soyinka, entitled Outsiders, was released. His play King Baabu, premiered in Lagos in 2001, a political satire on the theme of African dictatorship. In 2002 a collection of his poems, Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, was published by Methuen. In April 2006, his memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn was published. In 2006 he cancelled his keynote speech for the annual S.E.A. Write Awards Ceremony in Bangkok to protest the Thai military's successful coup against the government.

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Rita Dove â&#x20AC;&#x153;We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. That is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.â&#x20AC;?

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Writer Rita Dove was the youngest person and the first African American to be appointed Poet Laureate Consultant by the Library of Congress. She has also won the Pulitzer for her book Thomas and Beulah.

Born on August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio, African-American poet Rita Dove loved poetry and music from a young age. She was an exceptional student and was invited to the White House as a Presidential Scholar out of high school. She studied in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship, later teaching creative writing at Arizona State University. She has won numerous awards for her work, including a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for the book of poetry Thomas and Beulah. Other books from Dove include Mother Love and Sonata Mulattica.

Born in Akron, Ohio on August 28, 1952, Rita Dove developed a love for learning and literature at an early age in a household that encouraged reading. She was honored as a Presidential Scholar, being ranked as one of the top 100 high school students in the nation, and as a National Merit Scholar attended Ohioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Miami University, graduating in 1973 summa cum laude. She subsequently studied abroad in Germany before returning to the states and earning her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.

She met fellow writer Fred Viebahn, also of Germany, in the mid-1970s while he was studying at the Univ. of Iowa. The two wed in 1979 and went on to have a daughter, Aviva.

Dove established a fine career in academia, eventually teaching at the University of Virginia and becoming an esteemed, award-winning poet. She published chapbooks early in her career and made her mark with collections like The Yellow House on the Corner (1980) and Museum (1983). Dove is known not only for the layered eloquence of her language and ideas but also for portraying portions of the black experience in America, both on a personal and collective front.

In 1986 she published Thomas and Beulah, a semi-autobiographical look at the lives of her grandparents that won the poetry Pulitzer Prize the following year.

Other books include Grace Notes (1989) and Mother Love (1995), while her 1999 work On the Bus With Rosa Parks was hailed as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times.

In May of 1993, Dove was named the poet laureate of the United States, a post held previously by bards like Robert Penn Warren and Joseph Brodsky. She was the first African American appointed to the position as well as the first woman and the

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youngest, at 41 years old. (African-American writers Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn Brooks were both Library of Congress Consultants in Poetry, which was replaced by the Poet Laureate Consultant title in 1985.)

In 1996, after her laureate post had ended, Dove received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton, the same year in which she received the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities.

In addition to her poetry, Dove has penned prose, as seen with the short-story collection Fifth Sunday (1985), the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992) and the essay collection The Poet’s World (1995). She has also written the play The Darker Face of the Earth (1994), and collaborated as a lyricist with a variety of composers.

Dove has served as an editor as well, helming The Best American Poetry 2000 and 2011’s Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry; the latter was released the same year as Dove’s critically acclaimed book-length poem Sonatta Mulattica, about biracial classical violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower.

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4

William Carlos Williams

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On September 17, 1883, William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey.

He began writing poetry while a student at Horace Mann High School, at which time he made the decision to become both a writer and a doctor. He received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound.

Pound became a great influence on his writing, and in 1913 arranged for the London publication of Williams’s second collection, The Tempers. Returning to Rutherford, where he sustained his medical practice throughout his life, Williams began publishing in small magazines and embarked on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright.

Following Pound, he was one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement, though as time went on, he began to increasingly disagree with the values put forth in the work of Pound and especially Eliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions. Continuing to experiment with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh—and singularly American— poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.

His influence as a poet spread slowly during the 1920s and 1930s, overshadowed, he felt, by the immense popularity of Eliot’s “The Waste Land”; however, his work received increasing attention in the 1950s and 1960s as younger poets, including Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, were impressed by the accessibility of his language and his openness as a mentor. His major works include Kora in Hell (1920), Spring and All (1923), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), the five-volume epic Paterson (1963, 1992), and Imaginations (1970).

Williams’s health began to decline after a heart attack in 1948 and a series of strokes, but he continued writing up until his death in New Jersey on March 4, 1963.

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Edgar Allen Poe

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On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia.

John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and later to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, he moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia in Baltimore, Maryland.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married Virginia, who was fourteen years old at the time. Over the next ten years, Poe would edit a number of literary journals including the Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including “The Fall of the House of Usher," “The Tell-Tale Heart," “The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and “The Raven.” After Virginia’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe’s lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies.

Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen years translating Poe into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

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Deborah Paredez

(born December 19, 1970) is an American poet,

scholar, and cultural critic.

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She is the author of the poetry collection, This Side of Skin, and the critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory. She is Co-Founder and Co-Director of CantoMundo, a national organization that supports Latino poets and poetry.She lives in New York City where she is a professor of creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University.

Personal Life Paredez was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She has lived and worked in Seattle, Chicago, Crested Butte, Oaxaca City, Austin, Paris, and New York City.

Professional Life Paredez earned a BA in English Literature from Trinity University in 1993 and a doctorate from the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama (IPTD) program at Northwestern University in 2002. She has taught at Vassar College (2000-2003), University of Texas at Austin (2003-2016), Université Sorbonne nouvelle (2014), and Columbia University (2015-present).

Along with Norma Elia Cantú, Pablo Martinez, Celeste Mendoza, and Carmen Tafolla, Paredez cofounded CantoMundo in 2009. She writes essays about American performance, Latina/o culture, and divas. Her poetry is influenced by contemporary American poets including Natasha Trethewey, Sharon Olds, and A.E. Stallings.

Published Work Her poetry collection, This Side of Skin, was published by Wings Press in 2002. Her scholarly book, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory, was published by Duke University Press in 2009 and was the recipient of the National Association of Chicana/o Studies Book Award-Honorable Mention and the Latino Studies Book Award-Honorable Mention.

Her essays and poems have appeared in Poetry, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poet Lore, Crab Orchard Review,Callaloo, and Theatre Journal. Her work has also been anthologized in The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast (Snake Nation Press 2014), Beyond El Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America (NYU Press 2010), Women and Migration in the US-Mexico Borderlands (Duke University Press 2007), The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona University Press 2007), Floricanto Sí! A Collection of Latina Poetry (Penguin 1998), and Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry (Riverhead 1995).

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POEMS 1 Szymborska Possibilities The Three Oddest Words The Joy of Writing On Death, Without Exaggeration Utopia Golden Anniversary Hitlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s First Photograph Nothing Twice Love At First Sight Hatred

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Possibilities I prefer movies.

I prefer cats.

I prefer the oaks along the Warta.

I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.

I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind.

I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.

I prefer the color green.

I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame for everything.

I prefer exceptions.

I prefer to leave early.

I prefer talking to doctors about something else.

I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.

I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries that can be celebrated every day.

I prefer moralists who promise me nothing.

I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.

I prefer the earth in civvies.

I prefer conquered to conquering countries.

I prefer having some reservations.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.

I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.

I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.

I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.

I prefer desk drawers.

I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here to many things I've also left unsaid.

I prefer zeroes on the loose to those lined up behind a cipher.

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.

I prefer to knock on wood.

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.

By Wislawa Szymborska From "Nothing Twice", 1997 Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh Copyright Š Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

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The Three Oddest Words When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing, I make something no non-being can hold.

By Wislawa Szymborska Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh Copyright Š Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

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The Joy of Writing Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?

For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?

Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?

Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.

Silence - this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word "woods."

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what's here isn't life.

Other laws, black on white, obtain.

The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities, full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.

Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.

Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall, not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.

Is there then a world where I rule absolutely on fate?

A time I bind with chains of signs?

An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.

The power of preserving.

Revenge of a mortal hand.

By Wislawa Szymborska From "No End of Fun", 1967 Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh Copyright Š Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

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On Death, without Exaggeration It can't take a joke, find a star, make a bridge.

It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming, building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow, it has the final word, which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done that are part of its trade: dig a grave, make a coffin, clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing, it does the job awkwardly, without system or skill.

As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs, but look at its countless defeats, missed blows, and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough to swat a fly from the air.

Many are the caterpillars that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods, tentacles, fins, tracheae, nuptial plumage, and winter fur show that it has fallen behind with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.

Babies' skeletons grow.

Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent is himself living proof that it's not.

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There's no life that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment.

Death always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door.

As far as you've come can't be undone.

By Wislawa Szymborska From "The People on the Bridge", 1986 Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh Copyright Š Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

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Utopia Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple, sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It. The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista: the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.

Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.

Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited, and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

By Wislawa Szymborska From "A large number", 1976 Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh Copyright Š Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

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GoldenAnniversary They must have been different once, fire and water, miles apart, robbing and giving in desire, that assault on one another’s otherness.

Embracing, they appropriated and expropriated each other for so long that only air was left within their arms, transparent as if after lightning.

One day the answer came before the question.

Another night they guessed their eyes’ expression by the type of silence in the dark.

Gender fades, mysteries molder, distinctions meet in all-resemblance just as all colors coincide in white.

Which of them is doubled and which missing?

Which one is smiling with two smiles?

Whose voice forms a two-part canon?

When both heads nod, which one agrees?

Whose gesture lifts the teaspoon to their lips?

Who’s flayed the other one alive?

Which one lives and which has died entangled in the lines of whose palm?

They gazed into each other’s eyes and slowly twins emerged.

Familiarity breeds the most perfect of mothers— it favors neither of the little darlings, it scarcely can recall which one is which.

On this festive day, their golden anniversary, a dove, seen identically, perched on the windowsill.

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Hitler's First Photograph And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?

That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers little boy!

Will he grow up to be an LL.D.?

Or a tenor in Vienna's Opera House?

Whose teensy hand is this, whose little ear and eye and nose?

Whose tummy full of milk, we just don't know: printer's, doctor's, merchant's, priest's?

Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander?

To garden, to school, to an office, to a bride, maybe to the Burgermeister's daughter?

Precious little angel, mommy's sunshine, honeybun, while he was being born a year ago, there was no dearth of signs on the earth and in the sky: spring sun, geraniums in windows, the organ-grinder's music in the yard, a lucky fortune wrapped in rosy paper, then just before the labor his mother's fateful dream: a dove seen in dream means joyful news, if it is caught, a long-awaited guest will come.

Knock knock, who's there, it's Adolf's heartchen knocking.

A little pacifier, diaper, rattle, bib, our bouncing boy, thank God and knock on wood, is well, looks just like his folks, like a kitten in a basket, like the tots in every other family album.

Shush, let's not start crying, sugar, the camera will click from under that black hood.

The Klinger Atelier, Grabenstrasse, Braunau, and Braunau is small but worthy town, honest businesses, obliging neighbors, smell of yeast dough, of gray soap.

No one hears howling dogs, or fate's footsteps.

A history teacher loosens his collar and yawns over homework.

--- Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavenagh, translators , from The People on the Bridge

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NothingTwice Nothing can ever happen twice.

In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber, if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce, you can’t repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung

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into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you’re here with me, I can’t help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be?

Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow?

It’s in its nature not to stay: Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we’re different (we concur) just as two drops of water are.

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Love at First Sight They’re both convinced that a sudden passion joined them.

Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure that there’d been nothing between them.

But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways— perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?

I want to ask them if they don’t remember— a moment face to face in some revolving door? perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd? a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?— but I know the answer.

No, they don’t remember.

They’d be amazed to hear that Chance has been toying with them now for years.

Not quite ready yet to become their Destiny, it pushed them close, drove them apart, it barred their path, stifling a laugh, and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals, even if they couldn’t read them yet.

Perhaps three years ago or just last Tuesday a certain leaf fluttered

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from one shoulder to another?

Something was dropped and then picked up.

Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished into childhoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells where one touch had covered another beforehand.

Suitcases checked and standing side by side.

One night, perhaps, the same dream, grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

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HATRED See how efficient it still is, how it keeps itself in shape— our century’s hatred.

How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.

How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

It is not like other feelings.

At once both older and younger.

It gives birth itself to the reasons that give it life.

When it sleeps, it’s never eternal rest.

And sleeplessness won’t sap its strength; it feeds it.

One religion or another— whatever gets it ready, in position.

One fatherland or another— whatever helps it get a running start.

Just also works well at the outset until hate gets its own momentum going.

Hatred. Hatred.

Its face twisted in a grimace of erotic ecstasy.

Oh these other feelings, listless weaklings.

Since when does brotherhood draw crowds?

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Has compassion ever finished first?

Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?

Only hatred has just what it takes.

Gifted, diligent, hard-working.

Need we mention all the songs it has composed?

All the pages it has added to our history books?

All the human carpets it has spread over countless city squares and football fields?

Let’s face it: it knows how to make beauty.

The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.

Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.

You can’t deny the inspiring pathos of ruins and a certain bawdy humor to be found in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.

Hatred is a master of contrast—between explosions and dead quiet, red blood and white snow.

Above all, it never tires of its leitmotif—the impeccable executioner towering over its soiled victim.

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It’s always ready for new challenges.

If it has to wait awhile, it will.

They say it’s blind. Blind?

It has a sniper’s keen sight and gazes unflinchingly at the future as only it can.

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POEMS 2 Soyinka Telephone Conversation Procession One â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Hanging Day Night I Think It Rains Civilian and Soldier

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Telephone Conversation The price seemed reasonable, location Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived Off premises. Nothing remained But self-confession. 'Madam' , I warned, 'I hate a wasted journey - I am African.'

Silence. Silenced transmission of pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came, Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.

'HOW DARK?'...I had not misheard....'ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?' Button B. Button A. Stench Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered Omnibus squelching tar.

It was real! Shamed By ill-mannered silence, surrender Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis'ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT' Revelation came 'You mean- like plain or milk chocolate?'

Her accent was clinical, crushing in its light Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted I chose. 'West African sepia'_ and as afterthought.

'Down in my passport.' Silence for spectroscopic Flight of fancy, till truthfulness chaged her accent Hard on the mouthpiece 'WHAT'S THAT?' conceding 'DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.' 'Like brunette.'

'THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?' 'Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet.

Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, causedFoolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned My bottom raven black- One moment madam! - sensing Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap About my ears- 'Madam,' I pleaded, 'wouldn't you rather See for yourself?'

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Procession One â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hanging Day Hanging day.

A hollow earth Echoes footsteps of the grave procession.

Walls in sunspots Lean to shadow of the shortening morn.

Behind an eyepatch lushly blue.

The wall of prayer has taken refuge In a piece of blindness, closed.

Its grey recessive deeps.

Fretful limbs.

And glances that would sometimes Conjure up a drawbridge Raised but never lowered between Their gathering and my sway Withdraw, as all the living world Belie their absence in a feel of eyes Barred and secret in the empty home.

Of shuttered windows, i know the heart.

Has journeyed far from present.

Tread. Drop. Dread Drop. Dead.

What may I tell you? What reveal?

I who before them peered unseen Who stood one-legged on the untrodden Verge- lest I should not return.

That I received them? That I wheeled above and flew beneath them.

And brought him on his way.

And came to mine, even to the edge Of the unspeakable encirclement?

What may I tell you of the five Bell-ringers on the ropes to chimes.

Of silence?

What tell you of rigours of the law?

From watchtowers on stunned walls.

Raised to stay a siege of darkness What whisper to their football thunders.

Vanishing to shrouds of sunlight?

Let not man speak of justice, guilt Far away, blood-stained in their Tens of thousands, hands that damned.

These wretches to the pit triumph But here, alone the solitary deed.

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Night Your hand is heavy, Night, upon my brow.

I bear no heart mercuric like the clouds, to dare.

Exacerbation from your subtle plough.

Woman as a clam, on the sea's cresent.

I saw your jealous eye quench the sea's Flouorescence, dance on the pulse incessant Of the waves. And I stood, drained Submitting like the sands, blood and brine Coursing to the roots. Night, you rained Serrated shadows through dank leaves Till, bathed in warm suffusion of your dappled cells Sensations pained me, faceless, silent as night thieves.

Hide me now, when night children haunt the earth I must hear none! These misted cells will yet Undo me; naked, unbidden, at Night's muted birth.

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I think it rains I think it rains That tongues may loosen from the parch Uncleave roof-tops of the mouth, hang Heavy with knowledge I saw it raise The sudden cloud, from ashes.

Settling They joined in a ring of grey; within, The circling spirit.

O it must rain These closures on the mind, blinding us In strange despairs, teaching Purity of sadness.

And how it beats Skeined transperencies on wings Of our desires, searing dark longings In cruel baptisms.

Rain-reeds, practised in The grace of yielding, yet unbending From afar, this, your conjugation with my earth Bares crounching rocks.

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Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels.

Be ageless as dark peat, but only that rain's Fingers, not the feet of men, may wash you over.

Long wear the sun's shadow; run naked to the night.

Peppers green and red—child—your tongue arch To scorpion tail, spit straight return to danger's threats Yet coo with the brown pigeon, tendril dew between your lips.

Shield you like the flesh of palms, skyward held Cuspids in thorn nesting, in sealed as the heart of kernel— A woman's flesh is oil—child, palm oil on your tongue Is suppleness to life, and wine of this gourd From self-same timeless run of runnels as refill Your pod lings, child, weaned from yours we embrace Earth's honeyed milk, wine of the only rib.

Now roll your tongue in honey till your cheeks are Swarming honeycombs—your world needs sweetening, child.

Cam woodround the heart, chalk for flight Of blemish—see? it dawns!—antimony beneath Armpits like a goddess, and leave this taste Long on your lips, of salt, that you may seek None from tears. This, rain-water, is the gift Of gods—drink of its purity, bear fruits in season.

Fruits then to your lips: haste to repay The debt of birth. Yield man-tides like the sea And ebbing, leave a meaning of the fossil led sands.

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Civilian And Soldier My apparition rose from the fall of lead, Declared, 'I am a civilian.' It only served To aggravate your fright. For how could I Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is Your quarrel of this world.

You stood still For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson Of your traing sessions, cautioning Scorch earth behind you, do not leave A dubious neutral to the rear. Reiteration Of my civilian quandary, burrowing earth From the lead festival of your more eager friends Worked the worse on your confusion, and when You brought the gun to bear on me, and death Twitched me gently in the eye, your plight And all of you came clear to me.

I hope some day Intent upon my trade of living, to be checked In stride by your apparition in a trench, Signalling, I am a soldier. No hesitation then But I shall shoot you clean and fair With meat and bread, a gourd of wine A bunch of breasts from either arm, and that Lone question - do you friend, even now, know What it is all about?

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POEMS 3 Dove Flirtation Testimonial Reverie in Open Air Banneker Secret Garden American Smooth

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Flirtation After all, there’s no need to say anything at first. An orange, peeled and quartered, flares like a tulip on a wedgewood plate Anything can happen.

Outside the sun has rolled up her rugs and night strewn salt across the sky. My heart is humming a tune I haven’t heard in years!

Quiet’s cool flesh— let’s sniff and eat it.

There are ways to make of the moment a topiary so the pleasure’s in walking through.

Rita Dove, “Flirtation” from Museum (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1983). Copyright © 1983 by Rita Dove.

Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: The Poetry Anthology 1912-2002 (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002)

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Testimonial Back when the earth was new and heaven just a whisper, back when the names of things hadn't had time to stick; back when the smallest breezes melted summer into autumn, when all the poplars quivered sweetly in rank and file . . . the world called, and I answered.

Each glance ignited to a gaze.

I caught my breath and called that life, swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.

I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame.

How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?

Back when everything was still to come, luck leaked out everywhere.

I gave my promise to the world, and the world followed me here.

Rita Dove, "Testimonial" from On the Bus With Rosa Parks. Copyright Š 1999 by Rita Dove.

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Reverie in Open Air I acknowledge my status as a stranger: Inappropriate clothes, odd habits Out of sync with wasp and wren.

I admit I don’t know how To sit still or move without purpose.

I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.

But this lawn has been leveled for looking, So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green.

Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids?

My feet are the primitives here.

As for the rest—ah, the air now Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing But news of a breeze.

Source: Poetry (Poetry Foundation, 2003)

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Banneker What did he do except lie under a pear tree, wrapped in a great cloak, and meditate on the heavenly bodies?

Venerable, the good people of Baltimore whispered, shocked and more than a little afraid. After all it was said he took to strong drink.

Why else would he stay out under the stars all night and why hadn’t he married?

But who would want him! Neither Ethiopian nor English, neither lucky nor crazy, a capacious bird humming as he penned in his mind another enflamed letter to President Jefferson—he imagined the reply, polite and rhetorical.

Those who had been to Philadelphia reported the statue of Benjamin Franklin before the library his very size and likeness.

A wife? No, thank you.

At dawn he milked the cows, then went inside and put on a pot to stew while he slept. The clock he whittled as a boy still ran. Neighbors woke him up with warm bread and quilts.

At nightfall he took out his rifle—a white-maned figure stalking the darkened breast of the Union—and shot at the stars, and by chance one went out. Had he killed?

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I assure thee, my dear Sir! Lowering his eyes to fields sweet with the rot of spring, he could see a government’s domed city rising from the morass and spreading in a spiral of lights....

Notes: Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), first black man to devise an almanac and predict a solar eclipse accurately, was also appointed to the commission that surveyed and laid out what is now Washington, D.C. Rita Dove, “Banneker” from Museum (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1983). Copyright © 1983 by Rita Dove.

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The Secret Garden I was ill, lying on my bed of old papers, when you came with white rabbits in your arms; and the doves scattered upwards, flying to mothers, and the snails sighed under their baggage of stone . . .

Now your tongue grows like celery between us: Because of our love-cries, cabbage darkens in its nest; the cauliflower thinks of her pale, plump children and turns greenish-white in a light like the ocean’s.

I was sick, fainting in the smell of teabags, when you came with tomatoes, a good poetry.

I am being wooed. I am being conquered by a cliff of limestone that leaves chalk on my breasts.

Rita Dove, “The Secret Garden” from Yellow House on the Corner (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1989).

Copyright ©1989 by Rita Dove.

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American Smooth We were dancing—it must have been a foxtrot or a waltz, something romantic but requiring restraint, rise and fall, precise execution as we moved into the next song without stopping, two chests heaving above a seven-league stride—such perfect agony, one learns to smile through, ecstatic mimicry being the sine qua non of American Smooth.

And because I was distracted by the effort of keeping my frame (the leftward lean, head turned just enough to gaze out past your ear and always smiling, smiling), I didn’t notice how still you’d become until we had done it (for two measures? four?)—achieved flight, that swift and serene magnificence, before the earth remembered who we were and brought us down.

Rita Dove, “American Smooth” from American Smooth. Copyright © 2004 by Rita Dove.

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POEMS 4 Williams Complete Destruction Winter Trees Danse Russe Queen Anneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lace To Elsie The Red Wheelbarrow This Is Just To Say

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CompleteDestruction It was an icy day.

We buried the cat, then took her box and set fire to it

in the back yard.

Those fleas that escaped earth and fire died by the cold.

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WinterTrees All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.

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Danse Russe If I 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,— Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

William Carlos Williams, “Danse Russe” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939, edited by Christopher MacGowan. Copyright 1938, 1944, 1945 by William Carlos Williams.

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Queen-Anne’s Lace Her body is not so white as anemony petals nor so smooth—nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish. Each part is a blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cluster, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over— or nothing.

William Carlos Williams, “Queen-Anne’s Lace” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 19091939, edited by Christopher MacGowan. Copyright 1938, 1944, 1945 by William Carlos Williams.

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To Elsie The pure products of America go crazy— mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure— and young slatterns, bathed in filth from Monday to Saturday to be tricked out that night with gauds from imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character but flutter and flaunt sheer rags—succumbing without emotion save numbed terror under some hedge of choke-cherry or viburnum— which they cannot express— Unless it be that marriage perhaps with a dash of Indian blood will throw up a girl so desolate

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so hemmed round with disease or murder that she'll be rescued by an agent— reared by the state and sent out at fifteen to work in some hard-pressed house in the suburbs— some doctor's family, some Elsie— voluptuous water expressing with broken brain the truth about us— her great ungainly hips and flopping breasts addressed to cheap jewelry and rich young men with fine eyes as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth while the imagination strains after deer going by fields of goldenrod in the stifling heat of September Somehow it seems to destroy us It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off

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No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car William Carlos Williams, “To Elsie” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939, edited by Christopher MacGowan. Copyright 1938, 1944, 1945 by William Carlos Williams.

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TheRedWheelbarrow so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens.

Copyright Š 1962 by William Carlos Williams.

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ThisIsJustToSay

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

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POEMS 5 Poe To Helen Israfel The Conqueror Worm A Dream Within a Dream Annabelle Lee

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To Helen Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those NicĂŠan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand!

Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy-Land!

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Israfel And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures. —KORAN In Heaven a spirit doth dwell “Whose heart-strings are a lute”; None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell), Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamoured moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven,) Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli’s fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings— The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty, Where Love’s a grown-up God, Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest!

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Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit— Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervour of thy lute— Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely—flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky.

Note to Poetry Out Loud students: This poem begins with an epigraph that must be recited. Omitting the epigraph will affect your accuracy score.

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The Conqueror Worm Lo! ’t is a gala night Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly— Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Wo! That motley drama—oh, be sure It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot, And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout, A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And seraphs sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!

And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

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A Dream Within a Dream Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow: You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep,

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While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

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AnnabelLee It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea: But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee;

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So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me-Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

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For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

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POEMS 6 Paredez Wife’s Disaster Manual Lightening Hecuba on the Shores of Da Nang, 1965 Change of Address St. Joske’s

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Wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Disaster Manual When the forsaken city starts to burn, after the men and children have fled, stand still, silent as prey, and slowly turn back. Behold the curse. Stay and mourn the collapsing doorways, the unbroken bread in the forsaken city starting to burn.

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t flinch. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t join in.

Resist the righteous scurry and instead stand still, silent as prey. Slowly turn your thoughts away from escape: the iron gates unlatched, the responsibilities shed.

When the forsaken city starts to burn, surrender to your calling, show concern for those who remain. Come to a dead standstill. Silent as prey, slowly turn into something essential. Learn the names of the fallen. Refuse to run ahead when the forsaken city starts to burn.

Stand still and silent. Pray. Return.

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Lightening for Deborah Johnson (Akua Njeri) —Composed on the 45th anniversary of Fred Hampton’s murder, Chicago IL—

you didn’t look down or back, spent the fractured minutes studying each crease and curve of the lawmen’s faces so later you could tell how it happened: how you crossed over his body, how you kept your hands up how you didn’t reach for anything not your opened robe— nothing—how they said he’s good and dead PAGE 68

how you crossed over the threshold how you lifted one and then the other slippered foot across the ice how you kept yourself from falling—how your bared belly bore the revolver’s burrowing snout— how how —how when the baby starts to descend, it’s called lightening though it feels like a weight you cannot bear—lightening is when you know it won’t be long before it’s over

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Hecuba on the Shores of Da Nang, 1965

Again the sea-machines creep from the east, their Cronus jaws unlatched and pups expelled.

The scene the same. Again. Again. The sand now boot-lace muck, the rutted shore resigned.

No words will do. Laments will not withstand this thrashing tide. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time for snarling beastspeak. Gnash-rattle. Fracas-snap. Unmuzzled hell-hound chorus unbound from roughened tongues.

Kynos-sema keen-keen lash-kaak nein grind then ground and rot and reek and teeth and grief and gabble ratchet growl: custodian of woe. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t end. Fleets on the reef, horizon buckling. To meet what comes the body cleaves from all that is human.

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Change of Address

Rate your pain the physical therapist instructs and I am trying not to do what they say women do lowballing the number trying hard not to try so hard to be the good patient scattered assurances lining the aisles like dead petals and me left holding nothing but whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been emptied out obviously I am overthinking it when I settle on someplace in the middle six or seven times a week I walk past the street vendor on Broadway and say nothing while eyeing the same pom-topped hat the physical therapist asking me now for the name of that Chinese place where I sometimes go asking for the patient just before me a street vendor in need of a cheap massage as I lay the plain wreckage of my shoulders in the shallow hollows the street vendorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body has left on the padded table in the center of the story I sometimes read to my girl a cap seller sleeps under a treeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shade waking to find the monkeys in the branches above have plundered his wares he waves his hands shakes

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his fists until his rage makes him throw his cap to the ground and the monkeys mimic him and down float his caps his fury finally fulsome enough to restore what he’s lost you’ve got to find another way to move the physical therapist modeling for me the poses to mimic assuring her I won’t move what’s left of the heavy boxes later unpacking the last of them I learn about the woman who once lived here Charlotte who twisted the cap and shook out the pills Charlotte who swallowed and slipped into sleep in her last act of volition here in this bedroom where the westward windows go on longing for dawn and I am trying to move in a new way to pull the mess of sloughed hair from the bathtub drain to move in the space of another’s suffering scrub the caked toothpaste from the sink make a home in the space where suffering may meet its end.

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St. Joske’s

Since before the war there was always work.

In ‘38, Papa sweating all day for the WPA, Mrs. Wright hiring Mama and her sisters to mind the children and the wash—plenty to watch after in white folks’ homes, too much to name.

Took my diploma when they called my name.

Droughton’s Business College trained us for work that spun our rough hands to silk. My wristwatch wound mornings to keep time with the workday, shorthand scrawl etched and sprawling in my mind.

I learned to type and file and smile and write a message in clear script, to get it right the first time, not forget the fancy names of men in suits, to keep it all in mind.

Guarantee Shoe Company, where I worked first, had me stamping bills, but busy days I made sales, rang the register and watched ladies with delicate feet and watches sparkling with jewel-light from their thin wrists write checks in their husband’s names. But come Friday I thought only of the check with my name on it. Treated myself after work to a Joske’s fountain soda, my mind’s burdens lifting like bubbles, wallet mined for jukebox dimes. I’d sit a while to watch the shoppers and the clerks on break from work bent over pie at the counter, a rite

PAGE 73

shared by the weary no matter their names, Formica hewn like a pew on Sunday.

Joske’s was a fancy store in its day.

Perfumed aisles and Persian rugs—had to mind your manners, not give our folks a bad name— fourth-floor Fantasyland’s Santa on watch.

St. Joseph’s Church next store keeping folks right with God, refused to sell when Joske’s worked up its expansion plans. Still came the day they worked their dozers, dollar signs in mind.

We watched that store exert its divine right.

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Writing PROMPTS 1 Considering the poem Hatred, how does Szymborska use personification to explain an emotion. Try your hand at personifying an emotion of your choice.

2. In Procession One – Hanging Day, Soyinka creates a specific tone. What words suggest this tone. Try your hand at a singular tone in a poetic piece.

3. In Rita Dove’s Banneker, a historical figure is poetically recreated through characterization. How does the reader “get to know” Banneker. Try your hand at describing a historical figure in poetic form.

4. William Carlos Williams’ poem This Is Just To Say offers a simple message. What is the underlying message? Try your hand at creating a life lesson through simplicity in a poem that uses ordinary occurances to teach that lesson.

5. In A Dream Within a Dream, Poe creates a musicality to his poetry. How does he do this? Try your own poem that employs some of his techniques.

6. React to Wife’s Disaster Manual. Write a Response poem to it.

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