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Freshman Lit Honors
Mrs. Wiggins
POETRY
RESPONSES
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Table of Contents
Still I Rise – Maya Angelou …………………………………………………………3
Dream Deferred – Langston Hughes……………………………………………...4
Poem – Bill Knott ………………………………………………………………….....4
Forgetfulness – Billy Collins …………………………………….………...………..5
Did I Miss Anything? – Tom Wayman ……………………………………………..6
Success is counted sweetest – Emily Dickinson…………………………………7
Boy at the Window – Richard Wilbur……………………………………………….7
Anagrammer – Peter Pereira………………………………………………………..8
Alzheimer’s – Kelly Cherry ………………………………………………….............9
City Trees – Edna St. Vincent Millay ………………………………………………10
The World Is Not a Pleasant Place to Be – Nikki Giovanni……………………...10
Hope – Lisel Mueller ………………………………………………………………....11
Penelope – Dorothy Parker ……………………………………………………….....12
Dusting – Julia Alvarez ……………………………………………………………….12
Lost – Carl Sandburg……………………………………………………….…………13
Lost – David Wagoner…………………………………………………………………13
Pull the Next One Up – Marc Smith…………………………………………………..14
Acceptance Speech – Lynn Powell …………………………………………………..15
The Negro Speaks of Rivers – Langston Hughes…………………………………..16
Mother to Son – Langston Hughes…………………………………………………...16
American Hero – Essex Hemphill…………………………………..………………...17
December Moon – May Sarton………………………………………………………..18
Fight – Laurel Blossom…………………………………………………………………19
Takeoff – Timothy Steele……………………………………………………………….19
A Place For Everything – Louis Jenkins……………………………………………….20
the mississippi river empties into the gulf – Lucille Clifton…………………………..20
Sick – Shel Silverstein…………………………………………………………………...21
Mirror – Sylvia Plath……………………………………………………………………...22
Mending Wall – Robert Frost…………………………………………………………….23
The Journey – Mary Oliver………………………………………………………………24
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Still I Rise
Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
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Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Poem
Bill Knott
Fingerprints look like ripples
because time keeps dropping
another stone into our palm.
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Forgetfulness
Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
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Did I Miss Anything?
Tom Wayman
Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered
but it was one place
And you weren't here
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Success is counted sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
Boy at the Window
Richard Wilbur
Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a God-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to paradise.
The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,
He melts enough to drop from one soft eye
A trickle of the purest rain, a tear
For the child at the bright pane surrounded by
Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.
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Anagrammer
Peter Pereira
If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives
and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.
If you believe the letters themselves
contain a power within them,
then you understand
what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.
The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.
That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.
That if you could just rearrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions:
you’d understand how the Titanic
turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.
How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.
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Alzheimer’s
Kelly Cherry
He stands at the door, a crazy old man
Back from the hospital, his mind rattling
like the suitcase, swinging from his hand,
That contains shaving cream, a piggy bank,
A book he sometimes pretends to read,
His clothes. On the brick wall beside him
Roses and columbine slug it out for space, claw the mortar.
The sun is shining, as it does late in the afternoon
in England, after rain.
Sun hardens the house, reifies it,
Strikes the iron grillwork like a smithy
and sparks fly off, burning in the bushes-the rosebushes-While the white wood trim defines solidity in space.
This is his house. He remembers it as his,
Remembers the walkway he built between the front room
and the garage, the rhododendron he planted in back,
the car he used to drive. He remembers himself,
A younger man, in a tweed hat, a man who loved
Music. There is no time for that now. No time for music,
The peculiar screeching of strings, the luxurious
Fiddling with emotion.
Other things have become more urgent.
Other matters are now of greater import, have more
Consequence, must be attended to. The first
Thing he must do, now that he is home, is decide who
This woman is, this old, white-haired woman
Standing here in the doorway,
Welcoming him in.
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City Trees
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The trees along this city street,
Save for the traffic and the trains,
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
As trees in country lanes.
And people standing in their shade
Out of a shower, undoubtedly
Would hear such music as is made
Upon a country tree.
Oh, little leaves that are so dumb
Against the shrieking city air,
I watch you when the wind has come,—
I know what sound is there.
The World Is Not a Pleasant Place to Be
Nikki Giovanni
the world is not a pleasant place
to be without
someone to hold and be held by
a river would stop
its flow if only
a stream were there
to receive it
an ocean would never laugh
if clouds weren’t there
to kiss her tears
the world is not
a pleasant place to be without
someone
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Hope
Lisel Mueller
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
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Penelope
Dorothy Parker
In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.
Dusting
Julia Alvarez
Each morning I wrote my name
on the dusty cabinet, then crossed
the dining table in script, scrawled
in capitals on the backs of chairs,
practicing signatures like scales
while Mother followed squirting
linseed from a burping can
into a crumpled-up flannel.
She erased my fingerprints
from the bookshelf and rocker,
polished mirrors on the desk
scribbled with my alphabets.
My name was swallowed in the towel
with which she jeweled the table tops.
The grain surfaced in the oak
and the pine grew luminous.
But I refused with every mark
to be like her, anonymous.
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Lost
Carl Sandburg
DESOLATE and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.
Lost
David Wagoner
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
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Pull the Next One Up
Marc Smith
When you get to the top of the
mountain
Pull the next one up.
Then there'll be two of you
Roped together at the waist
Tired and proud, knowing the
mountain,
Knowing the human force it took
To bring both of you there.
And when the second one has
finished
Taking in the view,
Satisfied by the heat and
perspiration under the wool,
Let her pull the next one up;
Man or woman, climber of
mountains.
Pull the next hand over
The last jagged rock
To become three.
Two showing what they've already
seen.
And one knowing now the wellbeing with being
Finished with one mountain,
With being able to look out a long
way
Toward other mountains.
Feeling a temptation to claim victory
As if mountains were human toys to
own.
When you ask how high is this
mountain
With a compulsion to know
Where you stand in relationship to
other peaks,
Look down to wherefrom you came
up
And see the rope that's tied to your
waist
Tied to the next man's waist,
Tied to the next woman's waist,
Tied to the first man's waist,
To first woman's waist ... and pull the
rope!
Never mind the flags you see
flapping on conquered pinnacles.
Don't waste time scratching
inscriptions into the monolith.
You are the stone itself.
And each man, each woman up the
mountain,
Each breath exhaled at the peak,
Each glad-I-made-it ... here's-myhand,
Each heartbeat wrapped around
the hot skin of the sun-bright sky,
Each noise panted or cracked with
laughter,
Each embrace, each cloud that
holds everyone
in momentary doubt ...
All these are inscriptions of a human
force that can
Conquer conquering hand over
hand pulling the rope
Next man up, next woman up.
Sharing a place, sharing a vision.
Room enough for all on all the
mountain peaks.
Force enough for all
To hold all the hanging bodies
Dangling in the deep recesses of the
mountain's belly
Steady ... until they have the
courage ...
Until they know the courage ...
Until they understand
That the only courage there is is
To pull the next man up
Pull the next woman up
Pull the next up
Up
Up.
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Acceptance Speech
Lynn Powell
The radio's replaying last night's winners
and the gratitude of the glamorous,
everyone thanking everybody for making everything
so possible, until I want to shush
the faucet, dry my hands, join in right here
at the cluttered podium of the sink, and thank
my mother for teaching me the true meaning of okra,
my children for putting back the growl in hunger,
my husband, primo uomo of dinner, for not
begrudging me this starring role—
without all of them, I know this soup
would not be here tonight.
And let me just add that I could not
have made it without the marrow bone, that blood—
brother to the broth, and the tomatoes
who opened up their hearts, and the self-effacing limas,
the blonde sorority of corn, the cayenne
and oregano who dashed in
in the nick of time.
Special thanks, as always, to the salt—
you know who you are—and to the knife,
who revealed the ripe beneath the rind,
the clean truth underneath the dirty peel.
—I hope I've not forgotten anyone—
oh, yes, to the celery and the parsnip,
those bit players only there to swell the scene,
let me just say: sometimes I know exactly how you feel.
But not tonight, not when it's all
coming to something and the heat is on and
I'm basking in another round
of blue applause.
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The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown
deep like rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown
deep like rivers.
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.
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American Hero
Essex Hemphill
I have nothing to lose tonight.
All my men surround me, panting,
as I spin the ball above our heads
on my middle finger.
It’s a shimmering club light
and I’m dancing, slick in my sweat.
Squinting, I aim at the hole
fifty feet away. I let the tension go.
Shoot for the net. Choke it.
I never hear the ball
slap the backboard. I slam it
through the net. The crowd goes wild
for our win. I scored
thirty-two points this game
and they love me for it.
Everyone hollering
is a friend tonight.
But there are towns,
certain neighborhoods
where I’d be hard pressed
to hear them cheer
if I move on the block.
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December Moon
May Sarton
Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did I hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.
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Fight
Laurel Blossom
That is the difference between me and you.
You pack an umbrella, #30 sun goo
And a red flannel shirt. That's not what I do.
I put the top down as soon as we arrive.
The temperature's trying to pass fifty-five.
I'm freezing but at least I'm alive.
Nothing on earth can diminish my glee.
This is Florida, Florida, land of euphoria,
Florida in the highest degree.
You dig in the garden. I swim in the pool.
I like to wear cotton. You like to wear wool.
You're always hot. I'm usually cool.
You want to get married. I want to be free.
You don't seem to mind that we disagree.
And that is the difference between you and me.
Takeoff
Timothy Steele
Our jet storms down the runway, tilts up, lifts:
We’re airborne, and each second we see more—
Outlying hangars, wetlands with a pond
That flashes like sheened silver and, beyond,
An estuary and the frozen drifts
Of breakers wide and white along a shore.
One watches, cheek in palm. How little weight
The world has as it swiftly drops away!
How quietly the mind climbs to this height
As now, the seat-belt sign turned off, a flight
Attendant rises to negotiate
The steep aisle to a curtained service bay.
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A Place For Everything
Louis Jenkins
It’s so easy to lose track of things. A screwdriver, for instance.
“Where did I put that? I had it in my hand just a minute ago.” You
wander vaguely from room to room, having forgotten, by now,
what you were looking for, staring into the refrigerator, the bathroom mirror… “I really could use a shave….”
Some objects seem to disappear immediately while others never
want to leave. Here is a small black plastic gizmo with a serious
demeanor that turns up regularly, like a politician at public functions. It seems to be an “integral part,” a kind of switch with screw
holes so that it can be attached to something larger. Nobody
knows what. This thing’s use has been forgotten but it looks so important that no one is willing to throw it in the trash. It survives by
bluff, like certain insects that escape being eaten because of their
formidable appearance.
My father owned a large, three-bladed, brass propeller that he
saved for years. Its worth was obvious, it was just that it lacked an
immediate application since we didn’t own a boat and lived hundreds of miles from any large bodies of water. The propeller survived all purges and cleanings, living, like royalty, a life of lonely
privilege, mounted high on the garage wall.
the mississippi river empties into the gulf
Lucille Clifton
and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow.
it is the great circulation
of the earth’s body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing, every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.
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Sick
Shel Silverstein
"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut--my eyes are blue-It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!"
22
Mirror
Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
23
Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
24
The Journey
Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -determined to save
the only life you could save.