Poetry Essay
For your poetry essay, you will be writing something very similar to the third essay
for the Regents. The only difference is that both of your passages will be poems.
Your Task:
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Choose two poems with similar themes. You may use my suggestions (found
below), or you may choose two of your own poems. You may also use lyrics
for songs, or even one of your own poems. Please include the poems that
you use with your essay.
Determine the “controlling idea” of your two poems. ex: Both of these poems
deal with being a woman/being American/lost love/dreams
Write a thesis statement that explains how your poems approach the
controlling idea. Ex: Both poems celebrate the strength of a woman
Write an organized essay that analyzes the way each poet approaches the
controlling idea. Be sure to include a discussion of the poetic techniques that
are used and to include very specific evidence from BOTH texts. You may
choose how you organize – just make sure that it is organized. You should
have 5-6 well written paragraphs total (including intro and conclusion).
You must turn in a rough draft to me on or before Friday, April 7th. I will then return
this rough draft to you on April 10th so that you can work on a final draft over the
break.
Here are some possibilities for poems/some pairs to use:
Billie Holiday – “Strange Fruit”
Paul Lawrence Dunbar – “The Haunted Oak”
Maya Angelou – “Phenomenal Women”
Jessica Care Moore – “Black Statue of Liberty”
Gwyndolyn Brooks – “the mother”
Katie Ruskin - “I’ve Got Something To Say About This”
Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie - “Forced Entry”
Langston Hughes – “Dreams”
Langston Hughes – “A Dream Deferred”
Willie Perdomo – “Nigger-reecan blues”
Langston Hughes – “Theme for English B”
Willie Perdomo – “Nuyorican School of Poetry”
Paul Lawrence Dunbar – “Sympathy”
Maya Angelou – “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”
Carlos Andres Gomez – “What’s genocide?”
- “Mamma’s boy”
A.E. Houseman – “When I Was One and Twenty”
Ben Johnson – “Karolin’s Song
You may decide to combine any of these poems with each other or with other poems that
you know and like.
Downhearted Blues – Bessie Smith
Gee, but it's hard to love someone when that someone don't love you
I'm so disgusted, heartbroken, too
I've got those down hearted blues
Once I was crazy 'bout a man
He mistreated me all the time
The next man I get he's got to promise to be mine, all mine
If I could only find the man oh how happy I would be
To the good Lord ev'ry night I pray
Please send my man back to me
I've almost worried myself to death wond'ring why he went away
But just wait and see he's gonna want me back some sweet day
Trouble, trouble, I've had it all my days
Trouble, trouble, I've had it all my days
It seems that trouble's going to follow me to my grave
Got the world in a jug, the stopper's in my hand
Got the world in a jug
The stopper's in my hand
Going to hold it, baby, till you come under my command
Say, I ain't never loved but three men in my life
No, I ain't never loved but three men in my life
'T'was my father, brother and the man who wrecked my life
'Cause he mistreated me and he drove me from his door
Yeah, he mistreated me and he drove me from his door
But the good book says you'll reap just what you sow
Oh, it may be a week and it may be a month or two
Yes, it may be a week and it may be a month or two
But the day you quit me honey, it's coming home to you
Oh, I walked the floor and I wrung my hands and cried
Yes, I walked the floor and I wrung my hands and cried
Had the down hearted blues and couldn't be satisfied
Mother to Son – Langston Hughes
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor -Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now -For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
The Lines of You – Guy Johnson
I love the fundamental lines of you
Drawn on your burnished surface of ecru
The sweet arch and slant of your changing brow
The crimson curve of your soft, mobile lips
The angles that your legs in stride allow,
The planes of your breasts, the slope of your hips
Yet for all the physical can imbue
It is what simple flesh could not do
That takes you to where none have been before
Beneath my skin and from the marrow start
To that hidden place, to my very core,
That my mind disowns, there resides my heart.
Your true beauty, down to the bone, runs deep
Beyond mere face, to your soul's private keep.
This man then you touched the heart and sharing,
It was your joy, your desire for living.
The warmth you have, your love and your caring.
the strength you have shown to keep on giving.
Blessed with smiles upon which sunrises crest
You light the darkness deep within my breast
Not daily pain, nor the grim hereafter
Can give me pause or reason have fear
The flames of Hell cannot still my laughter
As long as you, my love, still hold me dear
For with you in my arms, fate's been defied.
Since twas heaven that placed you by my side
A daughter, a sister, mother and wife;
Sweet majesty with whom I'll share my life
Drawn on that burnished surface of ecru
Yes, I love the fundamental lines of you.
The Gift Outright - Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something that we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such she was, such as she would become
On the Pulse of Morning – Maya Angelou
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no more hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
XIII. "When I was one-and-twenty..." - A. E. Housman
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
Karolin's Song – Ben Johnson
THOUGH I am young, and cannot tell,
Either what love, or death is well,
Yet I have heard, yet both bear darts,
And both do aim at human hearts:
And then again, I have been told
Love wounds with heat, as death with cold;
So that I fear, they do but bring
Extremes to touch, and mean one thing.
As in a ruin, we it call
One thing to be blown up, or fall;
Or to our end, like way may have,
By a flash of lightning, or a wave:
So love's inflamed shaft, or brand,
May kill as soon as death's cold hand;
Except love's fires the virtue have
To fright the frost from out the grave.
Sympathy – Paul Lawrence Dunbar
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals-I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting-I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,-When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings-I know why the caged bird sings!