Introduction to Poetry Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. Saturday At The Canal Gary Soto I was hoping to be happy by seventeen. School was a sharp check mark in the roll book, An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team Was going to win at night. The teachers were Too close to dying to understand. The hallways Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus, A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday, Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard On a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there, Hitchhike under the last migrating birds And be with people who knew more than three chords On a guitar. We didn't drink or smoke, But our hair was shoulder length, wild when The wind picked up and the shadows of This loneliness gripped loose dirt. By bus or car, By the sway of train over a long bridge, We wanted to get out. The years froze As we sat on the bank. Our eyes followed the water, White‐tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town. Blackberries By Yusef Komunyakaa They left my hands like a printer's Or thief's before a police blotter & pulled me into early morning's Terrestrial sweetness, so thick The damp ground was consecrated Where they fell among a garland of thorns. Although I could smell old lime‐covered History, at ten I'd still hold out my hands & berries fell into them. Eating from one & filling a half gallon with the other, I ate the mythology & dreamt Of pies & cobbler, almost Needful as forgiveness. My bird dog Spot Eyed blue jays & thrashers. The mud frogs In rich blackness, hid from daylight. An hour later, beside City Limits Road I balanced a gleaming can in each hand, Limboed between worlds, repeating one dollar. The big blue car made me sweat. Wintertime crawled out of the windows. When I leaned closer I saw the boy & girl my age, in the wide back seat Smirking, & it was then I remembered my fingers Burning with thorns among berries too ripe to touch. Slamdunk By Yusef Komunyakaa Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's Insignia on our sneakers, We outmaneuvered the footwork Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot Swish of strings like silk Ten feet out. In the roundhouse Labyrinth our bodies Created, we could almost Last forever, poised in midair Like storybook sea monsters. A high note hung there A long second. Off The rim. We'd corkscrew Up & dunk balls that exploded The skullcap of hope & good Intention. Bug‐eyed, lanky, All hands & feet . . . sprung rhythm. We were metaphysical when girls Cheered on the sidelines. Tangled up in a falling, Muscles were a bright motor Double‐flashing to the metal hoop Nailed to our oak. When Sonny Boy's mama died He played nonstop all day, so hard Our backboard splintered. Glistening with sweat, we jibed & rolled the ball off our Fingertips. Trouble Was there slapping a blackjack Against an open palm. Dribble, drive to the inside, feint, & glide like a sparrow hawk. Lay ups. Fast breaks. We had moves we didn't know We had. Our bodies spun On swivels of bone & faith, Through a lyric slipknot Of joy, & we knew we were Beautiful & dangerous. My Papa's Waltz Theodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. Those Winter Sundays Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early And put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices? Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt David Bottoms On the rough diamond, the hand‐cut field below the dog lot and barn, we rehearsed the strict technique of bunting. I watched from the infield, the mound, the backstop as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs and shoulders squared toward the pitcher. You could drop it like a seed down either base line. I admired your style, but not enough to take my eye off the bank that served as our center‐field fence. Years passed, three leagues of organized ball, no few lives. I could homer into the gardens beyond the bank, into the left‐field lot of Carmichael Motors, and still you stressed the same technique, the crouch and spring, the lead arm absorbing just enough impact. That whole tiresome pitch about basics never changing, and I never learned what you were laying down. Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap, let this be the sign I'm getting a grip on the sacrifice. The One Girl at the Boys Party Sharon Olds When I take my girl to the swimming party I set her down among the boys. They tower and bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek, her math scores unfolding in the air around her. They will strip to their suits, her body hard and indivisible as a prime number, they'll plunge in the deep end, she'll subtract her height from ten feet, divide it into hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine in the bright blue pool. When they climb out, her ponytail will hang its pencil lead down her back, her narrow silk suit with hamburgers and french fries printed on it will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will see her sweet face, solemn and sealed, a factor of one, and she will see their eyes, two each, their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes, one each, and in her head she'll be doing her sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body. To a Daughter Leaving Home Linda Pastan When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away on two round wheels, my own mouth rounding in surprise when you pulled ahead down the curved path of the park, I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up, while you grew smaller, more breakable with distance, pumping, pumping for your life, screaming with laughter, the hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye. From Clearances 3 By Seamus Heaney When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses. So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives‐‐ Never closer the whole rest of our lives. Mother of the Groom by Seamus Heaney What she remembers Is his glistening back In the bath, his small boots in the ring of boots at her feet. Hands in her voided lap, she hears a daughter welcomed. It's as if he kicked when lifted and slipped her soapy hold. Once soap would ease off the wedding ring that's bedded forever now in her clapping hand. Cartoon Physics, part 1 Nick Flynn Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know that the universe is ever‐expanding, inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies swallowed by galaxies, whole solar systems collapsing, all of it acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning the rules of cartoon animation, that if a man draws a door on a rock only he can pass through it. Anyone else who tries will crash into the rock. Ten‐year‐olds should stick with burning houses, car wrecks, ships going down ‐‐ earthbound, tangible disasters, arenas where they can be heroes. You can run back into a burning house, sinking ships have lifeboats, the trucks will come with their ladders, if you jump you will be saved. A child places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus, & drives across a city of sand. She knows the exact spot it will skid, at which point the bridge will give, who will swim to safety & who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff he will not fall until he notices his mistake. The History Teacher Billy Collins Trying to protect his students' innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as "How far is it from here to Madrid?" "What do you call the matador's hat?" The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan. The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses, while he gathered up his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off. A Barred Owl Richard Wilbur The warping night air having brought the boom Of an owl's voice into her darkened room, We tell the wakened child that all she heard Was an odd question from a forest bird, Asking of us, if rightly listened to, "Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you?" Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear, Can also thus domesticate a fear, And send a small child back to sleep at night Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw. Please read the writing prompt below, study the poem with the prompt in mind, and then write a well‐developed essay based on a close reading of the poem. Remember: time is limited. Do not attempt to rewrite your essay. Analyze how Jiles uses figurative language (such as: metaphor, imagery, connotation and denotation) to convey the attitude of the speaker and the message of this poem. Be sure to support your ideas with specific examples from the poem. Paper Matches My aunts washed dishes while the uncles squirted each other on the lawn with garden hoses. Why are we in here, I said, and they are out there. That’s the way it is, said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled‐up one. I have the rages that small animals have, being small, being animal. Written on me was a message, “At Your Service” like a book of paper matches. One by one we were taken out and struck. We come bearing supper, our heads on fire. —Paulette Jiles