Pérez E413 Word Poem
WORD POEMS—as you read, think about how these poems celebrate words—sound,
texture, syntax, diction, and meaning.
Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll (1872)
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html
Pérez E413 Word Poem
Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
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 all trades, 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.
Fern Hill
Dylan Thomas (1937)
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
Pérez E413 Word Poem
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
The Hanging Man
Sylvia Plath (1960)
By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.
Pérez E413 Word Poem
from Opposites
Richard Wilbur (1973)
What is the opposite of hat?
It isn’t hard to answer that.
It’s shoes, for shoes and hat together
Protect our two extremes from weather.
Between these two extremes there lies
A middle, which you would be wise
To clothe as well, or you’ll be chilly
And run the risk of looking silly.
********
The opposite of trunk could be
The taproot of a cedar tree.
In terms of elephants, however,
The answer tail is rather clever.
Another answer is when all
Your things are tied up in a ball
And carried on your head, for lack
Of anything in which to pack.
Untitled
Karen Volkman (2002)
Implorers, connivers, dopplegangers, Uncle Illya. Haystacks and flowerbeds disheveled by the hens. Old swollen knees and clenched rheumatic fingers.
Of the outside and its perfidies. Taking her clothes off like peeling an
egg. The ruined village, where rain seeps through roofs—stutters on
the dented pots. It rots the heart. Of what was dug. Of what was silted in
the numb, recumbent dust. Of what was planted by sun-slit and cloudslur. Stitched, begun. The wind stares white-eyed in the field, Aunt Marushka. Space is faceless but it eats us. But it talks. It has red hands, what
made thee. And It is always night somewhere click the indigent clocks.
And, please listen to this sound poem (link on our class website) by performance
poet Tracie Morris:
“From Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful” (2002)
http://mediamogul.seas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Morris/Morris-Tracie_FromSlave-Sho-to-Video-aka-Black-but-Beautiful_2002.mp3