GRADE 10 ENGLISH – POETRY AND PHOTO PACKAGE
The Toronto Star has been publishing their “Pictures of the Decade” this week. I have chosen a few to
accompany some poems to read these holidays. The power of the IMAGE is indisputable. Think about what
powerful image(s) you can create to hand in as your final Media piece. Sometimes, pictures can say more
than words. – Ms. Munro
Photo link: http://thestar.blogs.com/photoblog/
A Ukrainian woman places carnations onto the shields of anti-riot policemen standing outside the presidential office in
Kiev, November 24, 2004. Ukraine's authorities raised the stakes in a face-off with their liberal opposition on
Wednesday as they prepared to announce results of a disputed election that are likely to infuriate thousands of
protesters in the streets. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko
I HEAR AN ARMY
By James Joyce
I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.
They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.
They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?
CARPE DIEM: Poems for Making the Most of Time
“We are food for worms, lads," announces John Keating, the unorthodox English teacher played by Robin Williams in
the 1989 film Dead Poets Society. "Believe it or not," he tells his students, "each and every one of us in this room is
one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die."
The rallying cry of their classroom is "carpe diem," popularized as "seize the day," although more literally translated
from the Latin as "pluck the day," referring to the gathering of moments like flowers, suggesting the ephemeral quality
of life, as in Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," which begs readers to live life to its full
potential, singing of the fleeting nature of life itself:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman
O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and
who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever
renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
Dreams by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
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 on to 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.
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
by Robert Herrick
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
The Layers by Stanley Kunitz
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
CELLAR DOOR.
DONNIE DARKO’S POEM
(this scene appears in the Director’s Cut DVD)
"A storm is coming,"
Frank says,
"A storm that will swallow the children."
And I will deliver them from the kingdom of pain.
I will deliver the children back to their doorsteps.
I'll send the monsters back to the underground.
I'll send them back to a place where
no one else can see them.
Except for me.
Because I am Donnie Darko.
QUOTES FROM GRAHAM GREENE’S WRITING
(author of “The Destructors”)
We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.
If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to
the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
The truth has never been of any real value to any human being—it is a symbol for
mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations, kindness and lies are worth
a thousand truths.
He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness—the sense that that is where we really belong.
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
IN A STATION OF THE METRO
by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) arrives to speak to supporters with his wife Michelle (L) and their
children Malia (2nd L) and Sasha (2nd R) during his election night rally after being declared the winner of the 2008
U.S. Presidential Campaign in Chicago November 4, 2008.
Usain Bolt of Jamaica celebrates winning the men's 200m final of the athletics competition in the National Stadium
at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 20, 2008. Bolt set a new world record with a timing of 19.30 seconds.
REUTERS/Dylan Martinez
Rescue workers carry fatally injured New York City Fire Department Chaplain, Father Mychal Judge, from one of the
World Trade Center towers in New York City, early September 11, 2001. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
An Indian woman mourns the death of her relative (L) who was killed in a tsunami on Sunday in Cuddalore, some 180
kilometres (112 miles) south of the southern Indian city of Madras December 28, 2004. REUTERS/Arko Datta
Muslims attend prayers on the eve of the first day of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan at a mosque in Surabaya,
East Java August 31, 2008. Muslims around the world congregate for special evening prayers called "Tarawih" during
the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. REUTERS/Sigit Pamungkas
Cardinals' cassocks are blown by a gust of wind as they arrive for the funeral mass of the Pope John Paul II at St.
Peter's Basilica in the Vatican April 8, 2005. REUTERS/Max Rossi
EATING POETRY
By Mark Strand
YOU BEGIN
by Margaret Atwood
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and
coming up.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet
and weep.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.
I found most of these poems on
www.poets.org
… Check it out!
An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200
other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon
March 11, 2008. REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos
Severely malnourished Sadiki Basilaki, 9, receives a mug of milk at a catholic mission feeding center in Rutshuru, 70km (50 miles) north of Goma in
eastern Congo, November 13, 2008. Malnutrition rates in Rutshuru, which has seen weeks of fighting between government soldiers and dissident
Tutsi rebels, are almost double emergency thresholds and has worsened a humanitarian disaster that began in the 1990s. REUTERS/Finbarr
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