Period 4 Honors American Literature
Poetry Anthology
American Gothic by Grant Wood (1930)
Letters from Maine
1
Yes, I am home again, and alone.
Today wrote letters then took my dog
Out through the sad November woods.
The leaves have fallen while I was away,
The ground is golden while above
The maples are stripped of all color.
The ornamental cherries, red when I left,
Have paled now to translucent yellow.
Yes, I am home again, but home has changed.
And I within this cultivated space
That I have made my own, feel at loss,
Disorientated. All safe doors
Have come unlocked and too much light
Has flooded every room. Where can I go?
Not toward you three thousand miles away
Lost in your own rich life, given me
For an hour.
Read between the lines.
Then meet me in the silence if you can,
The long silence of winter when I shall
Make poems out of nothing, out of loss,
And at times hear you healing laughter.
2
November opens the sky. I look out
On an immense perimeter of ocean, blue
On every side, through the great oak
That screens it off all summer, see surf
Edging the rocks white on the other side.
The November muse who is with me now
Gives me wisdom and laughter, also clarity.
Aware of old age for the first time, accept
That I am old, and this sudden passion must be
ÊA single sharp cry, torn out of me, as when
A few days ago on the ferry to Vancouver
I saw an eagle fly down in a great arc,
His fierce head flashing white among the gulls.
The ardor of seventy years seizes the moment
And must be held free, outside time,
Must learn to bear with the cleared space,
The futureless flame, and use it well,
Must rejoice in the still, quiet air
And this ineluctable solitude.
-Nate Moody
By: Emily Dickinson
I cannot live with YouIt would be LifeAnd Life is over thereBehind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key toPutting up
Our Life- His PorcelainLike a CupDiscarded of the HousewifeQuaint- or BrokeA newer Sevres pleasesOld Ones crackI could not die- with YouFor One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze downYou- Could notAnd I- Could I stand by
And see You- freezeWithout my Right of FrostDeath's privilege?
Nor could I rise- with YouBecause Your Face
Would put on Jesus'That New Grace
On my homesick EyeExcept that You than He
Shone loser byThey'd judge Us- HowFor You- served Heaven- You know,
Or sought toI could notBecause You saturated SightAnd I had no more Eyes
For Sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would beThough My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fameAnd were You- savedAnd I- condemned to be
Where You were notThat self- were Hell to MeSo We must meet apartYou there- I – hereWith just the Door ajar
That Oceans are- and Prayer
And that White SustenanceDespair-Alyssa Cormack
Glow plain- and foreign
These
are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.
The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night
to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought
that spins a dark fire-whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles
to make a man aware of nothing
that he knows, not loneliness
itself—Not a ghost but
would be embraced--emptiness,
despair--(They
whine and whistle) among
the flashes and booms of war;
houses of whose rooms
the cold is greater than can be thought,
the people gone that we loved,
the beds lying empty, the couches
damp, the chairs unused-Hide it away somewhere
out of mind, let it get roots
and grow, unrelated to jealous
ears and eyes--for itself.
In this mine they come to dig--all.
Is this the counterfoil to sweetest
music? the source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped
that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lakewater
splashing--that is now stone.
-Brandon Cushman
Ariel
By: Sylvia Plath
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God's liness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!––The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks–––
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through the air–––
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel–––
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of the morning.
-Olivia Marshburn-Ersek
FIFTEENTH FAREWELL
By: Louise Bogan
I
You may have all things from me, save my breath,
The slight life in my throat will not give pause
For your love, nor your loss, nor any cause.
Shall I be made a panderer to death,
Dig the green ground for darkness underneath,
Let the dust serve me, covering all that was
With all that will be? Better, from time's claws,
The hardened face under the subtle wreath.
Cooler than stones in wells, sweeter, more kind
Than hot, perfidious words, my breathing moves
Close to my plunging blood. Be strong, and hang
Unriven mist over my breast and mind,
My breath! We shall forget the heart that loves,
Through in my body beat its blade, and its fang.
II
I erred, when I thought loneliness the wide
Scent of mown grass over forsaken fields,
Or any shadow isolation yields.
Loneliness was the heart within your side.
Your thought, beyond my touch, was tilted air
Ringed with as many borders as the wind.
How could I judge u gentle or unkind
When all bright flying space was in your care?
Now that I leave you, I shall be made lonely
By simple empty days,-never that chill
Resonant heart to strike between my arms
Again, as though distraught for distance,-only
Levels of evening, now, behind a hill,
Or a late cock-crow from the darkening farms.
-Shannon Clark
Communication
if music is the most universal language
just think of me as the one whole note
if science has the most perfect language
picture me as MC²
since mathematics can speak to the infinite
imagine me as 1 to the first power
what i mean is
one day
i'm gonna grab your love
and you'll be
satisfied
-Jameson Crawford
Ancient Music
By: Ezra Pound
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamn,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm. Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm.
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
-Katelyn Dilorenzo
Mini-Maxim
By: Felicia Lamport, Light Metres
Middle age shines with delightful incandescence
As the only sure cure for persistent adolescense
Bringing Home the Beacon
By: Felicia Lamport, Light Metres
Effulgent indulgence
In scotch or martini
May set off a bulgence
That splits the bikini
-Drew Hopkins
The Road Not Taken
By: Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Lindsey Smith
A Time To Talk
By: Robert Frost
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
-Lindsey Smith
Ghost House
by Robert Frost
I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O'er ruined fences the grapevines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with meThose stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.
-Nate Goodrich
Names
By: Carl Sandburg
There is only one horse on the earth
and his name is All Horses.
There is only one bird in the air
and his name is All Wings.
There is only one fish in the sea
and his name is All Fins.
There is only one man in the world
and his name is All Men,
There is only one woman in the world
and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world
and the child's name is All Children.
There is only one Maker in the world
and His children cover the earth
and they are named All God's Children.
-Leanna Dalfonso
The First Book
By: Rita Dove
Open it.
Go ahead, it wont bite.
Well...maybe a little.
More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.
You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.
Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learning to use
knife and fork? Dig in:
You'll never reach bottom.
It's not like it's the end of the world-just the world as you think
you know it.
-Alex Sturtevant
By: Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
-Rachel Harriman
The Carcajou And
The Kincajou
By: Ogden Nash
They tell me of a distant zoo
Where a caracjou met a kincajou.
Full soon to savage blows they came
From laughing at each other's name.
The agile ajous fought till dark
and carc slew kinc and kinc slew carc,
And beside the conquered kincajou
Lay the carcass of the carcajou.
-Dylan Whitaker
As Adam Early in the Morning
By: Walt Whitman
As Adam early in the morning,
Walking forth from the bower refresh'd with sleep,
Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,
Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.
-Carter Bowers
Perfect
I looked in the mirror today
Perfectly groomed
Perfectly dressed
Perfect little smile
I looked at my resume today
Perfectly straight A's
Class President
Head Cheerleader
Perfect little student
I looked at my family today
Perfect parents
Perfect siblings
Big white house
And money to spare
I looked at my disposition today
Perfectly perky
With sugar-coasted sweetness
That must make others sick
I looked at myself today
Never satisfied with all I have
Always wanting more
Insecure, searching
Hopeless, broken-hearted
Pretentious, superficial
Obsessed with how
I appear to others
Not as perfect
As one would think
My perfection is only as stable
As the blurry image in the mirror
Of a not-so-perfect girl
Who can't even decipher
The source of her own
Imperfect tears.
-Connor Eldrige
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN
By: Emily Dickinson
Pain has an element of plank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
-Audrey Adkison
Theodore Roosevelt
T. R. is spanking a Senator,
T. R. is chasing a bear,
T. R is busting an Awful Trust
And dragging it from its lair.
They're calling T. R. a lot of things
-The men in the private carBut the day-coach likes T. R.
T. R is having a bully time.
His hat's in every ring
He's shooting lions in Africa.
He's shaking hands with a kin.
He's writing books and he's biting crooks,
And his Big Stick swings afar.
No, it isn's really the Judgement Day,
It's simply our T. R.
I wouldn't call him infallible,
But you can understand
Why life was never a dull affair
When T. R ruled the land.
We've had quite a lot of Presidents,
They come from near and far,
-And few have tried to avoid the job- A couple merely annoyed the jobBut no one ever enjoyed the job
With the gusto of T. R.
-Brad Turnbaugh
Father to Son
By: Elizabeth Jennings
I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small. Yet have I killed
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?
We speak like strangers, there's no sign
Of understanding in the air.
This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share.
Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father's house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world. I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love.
Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land.
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.
-Cody Toothaker
In a Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
-Mr. Patterson
By Paul B. Janeczko
I'd've been happy to stay
in the animal tent all day,
but Aunt Betty insisted
we see the show
for the clowns and high-wire acts.
If you ask me,
walking the wire is nothing
compared to working the cage
with six jags and leopards
happy to slash your face
or take your arm.
So I made sure I saw
all the animals before the show.
Betty Lou, the pygmy hippo,
floated in her tank
while one of the cage boysexactly the job I wantwas feeding her
pieces of chocolate.
I swear.
Edith, the giraffe, made my neck hurt
from looking at her face so high.
I kept my distance
from the camels.
I've read they spit.
Even if you were blind and deaf,
you could know by the smell
you were with the animals.
By the time I saw the elephants
Aunt Betty was anxious
to get inside the big top.
Still, I had to stop
and admire them.
Lined up
they seemed to block the sun.
They're saggy animals:
the way their ears flap,
skin hangs,
trunks swing slowly from side to side,
then dart down to scoop a snack of hay.
I reached out
and offered a handful of peanuts.
In a blink they were snorted away.
I laughed
wiped my wet hand
on the seat of my pants.
I would've stayed
but Aunt Betty'd never forgive me
if we were late for the show.
-Sabrina Rowell
By Stephen Crane
God fashioned the ship of the world carefully.
With infinite skill of an all-master
Made He the hull and the sails,
Held He the rudder
Ready for adjustment.
Erect stood He, scanning His work proudly.
Then--at fateful time--a wrong called,
And God turned, heeding.
Lo, the ship, at the opportunity, slipped slyly,
Making cunning noiseless travel down the ways.
So that, forever rudderless it went upon the seas
Going ridiculous voyages,
Making quaint progress,
Turning as with serious purpose
Before stupid winds.
And there were many in the sky
Who laughed at this thing.
-Alex Sturtevant
shadows
and silver
the barracks of business and anguish and tanks of hired blood
the flag of iodine, dust and rage in the center of camp
for the campesinos of Los Cabanas,
the tongue of the American President twisting with nuclear
a municipality of El Salvador an for Philippe Bourgeois
spit
Earth
It is the earth that snarls and slashes with black jaguar
Send the women of your blood like suns
eyes and teeth and incandescent claws
Send the workers of your branches like lightning
the Pharoah
Send the guerillas of your peaks like tigers
and his troops of delicate overcoat and medal delight
Earth
it is the earth that reveals lies and recognizes with
Amid the metropolitan streets
lightning and birds and bare feet and adolescent brows
Amid the alleys of fear
and cheekbones of lava
Amid the Honduran refugee camps
the traitor
Amid the Guatemalan slums
and his wire hands and plantation laws and slave labor
Amid the Argentine cells
it is the earth flowing the dew of brave women
and men on march with rivers and coffee plantations with salt Amid the Lacandon lakes of Chaipas
Amid the municipalities of El Salvador
and fury
Amid the avenues of Chile
it is the earth that determines the new furrows with knives
Amid the thorns of Jamaica
of plants of shining flesh the skin rising
Amid the storms of Haiti
the viper of rhymes and guerrilla war breathing fire
Amid the phosphorescent jungles of Brail
extinguishing the plague the silk web the false tower
Amid the liquid nights of South Africa
it is the earth
Amid fever
that hurls red whips and elastic bodies
Amid death
infinite fingers and invisible legs that fly and smash
To make a quake of victory
the final throne the miniscule lie the throat and
to make a cluster of liberated world
fist of general the boss the shocked supervisor
to make a song in flood
it is the earth with its moss and its deep ovaries and sperm
It is the earth
that spill their honey and sweat and unleash the rain and
It is the earth
purify with their heart
that triumphs.
it is the earth
that recognizes the squadron of planes the uniform of
Earth Chorus
Juan Felipe Herrera