Poems Week 2

Awesome submissions. Reading poems you love makes me love you more. Enjoy!

“Which Loved Her Best?” Anonymous, courtesy of Mary

"I love you, Mother," said little John; Then, forgetting his work, his cap went on. And he was off to the garden swing, And left her the water and wood to bring. "I love you, Mother," said little Nell; "I love you better than tongue can tell." Then she teased and pouted full half the day, Till her mother rejoiced when she went to play. "I love you, Mother," said little Fan; "To-day I’ll help you all I can; How glad I am school doesn't keep!" So she rocked the baby till it fell asleep. Then, stepping softly, she took the broom, And swept the floor and tidied the room. Busy and happy all day was she, Helpful and happy as child could be. "I love you, Mother," again they said, Three little children going to bed. How do you think that Mother guessed Which of them really loved her best?

• So this is a rather folksy poem, but it warms my heart to the extent that I have considered naming my soon to be born daughter Fan. It also reminds me that as wonderful as words are, actions truly speak so much louder.
• Question #1 What are the things in your life that you are perhaps all a little too much talk and a lot less action?
• Question #2 Do you think Jack and Marian are too young for me to make them learn this poem?

“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” Christopher Marlowe 1599, courtesy of Mary

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of th purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” Sir Walter Raleigh 1600, courtesy of Mary

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten
In folly ripe, in season rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

• I first read these poems for Mrs. Payne's AP English class. As a high school girl I remember thinking the Shepherd was so romantic and that as funny and as clever as the "Nymph's" response was, she was a little too hard on the poor guy. Now I say, "good for you girl keep your head on straight."

• Question #1 What is the balance between enjoying the world through rose colored glasses and having a strong sense of reality?

• Question #2 What do you think the shepherds response to the hard headed Nymph might be? Is he turned off by her rejection? Impressed by her strong sense of reality? Or is he more enthralled than ever because of her rejection of him?

“The Lanyard” Billy Collins 2005, courtesy of Melissa

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even

• A few years ago my friend invited me to come to her home and read poetry. I laughed and declined her lame offer. Every month, she would invite me and I would decline. At some point I found out that cookies were involved, so I went to her poetry group. The cookies were good, but I still wasn't into the poetry. One month someone brought a poem by Billy Collins and poetry came alive for me. I understood what he was saying and I loved the way he was saying it. I have since grown fond of poetry and this poem by Mr. Collins is my favorite.
• For Mother's Day one year, I made my mom a lanyard and attached a copy of this poem and a note that said, "Hope this makes us even."

“Poetry” Marianne Moore 1961, courtesy of Shari

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond

all this fiddle.

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one

discovers in

it after all, a place for the genuine.

Hands that can grasp, eyes

that can dilate, hair that can rise

if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because

they are

useful. When they become so derivative as to become

unintelligible,

the same thing may be said for all of us, that we

do not admire what

we cannot understand: the bat

holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless

wolf under

a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse

that feels a flea, the base-

ball fan, the statistician--

nor is it valid

to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make

a distinction

however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the

result is not poetry,

nor till the poets among us can be

"literalists of

the imagination"--above

insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"

shall we have

it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

the raw material of poetry in

all its rawness and

that which is on the other hand

genuine, you are interested in poetry.

· Where do you discover things in your life that are "genuine"?

· Do we ever "admire what we cannot understand?"

“When I Married,” from Letter to My Mother, John Holmes 1952, courtesy of Shari

When I married, I caught up
On the history of the heart.
I stepped into your generation.
That welcoming fort.

That house you kept house in
While I was a child.
Now I am in my open door
Standing, and growing old.

Fond, and kind, and faithful
By a habit of the heart,
You keep with your own quiet
The world from falling apart.

But the world runs down, dust
Falls, the young become the old.
You learned that long ago,
And hold all you have held.

I am my father, and have a son.
Our voices sound the same.
Troubles we may not have alone
Are spelled in our name.

Your face was bone and width your own,
But half of yours is mine
To stare with a a world not wrong,
Not right, but by design

A clearing, a clouding tree of stars
That put down roots and grew.
I live under its shine and shade,
And can what I must do.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost 1923, courtesy of Shari

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.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Source: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)

· What do you "stop" and enjoy?

· What is the mood of this poem for you: Hopeful? Depressing? Reflective? Why?

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” Wallace Stevens 1917, courtesy of Ashley

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling,

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

· It's easy to dismiss this poem as silly or of little value because it at first doesn't seem to be about anything. But it's one of the most famous poems of the Modernist movement in literature--why? Stevens once wrote, "This group of poems is not meant to be a collection of epigrams or ideas, but of sensations." What sensation stands out the most to you? What is your reaction to this poem?

· This poem is also about perspective and reality. Consider the first stanza: are you looking at the blackbird or is the blackbird looking at you?

“Dreams,” Langston Hughes 1950ish, courtesy of Kate

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.

· In the first four lines, Hughes illustrates how necessary dreams are. Dreams offer hope, and without those two factors, progress is hard to come by. In my class (in a historical context), we've talked a lot about how expectations seldom match up with reality, and the different paths that frustration can lead to. When your dreams "go,” where do you go? What moves you forward?

“Warm Summer Sun” Mark Twain 1896, courtesy of Kate

Warm summer sun,

Shine kindly here,

Warm southern wind,

Blow softly here.

Green sod above,

Lie light, lie light.

Good night, dear heart,

Good night, good night.

· Although the groundhog saw his shadow on February 2, I didn't see mine. Provo was sunny and warm(ish) that Tuesday and it got me excited for spring. While I can't wait to spend time outside and wear my new sundress, warmer weather is also a precursor to finals. For me, the coming sunshine turns the dream/nightmare of graduation into a reality.

· What do the warmer months have in store for you this year? Are you ready?