Choose one of the poets from this list, research them online, and choose your favorite poem by them. Comment with the poet's name, your favorite poem of theirs, and why you chose them specifically.
- Emily Dickinson
- Countee Cullen
- ee cummings
- lucille clifton
- Rita Dove
- William Carlos Williams
- Ezra Pound
- Marge Piercy
- Mary Oliver
- Robert Frost
- Elizabeth Bishop
- William Butler Yeats
- Billy Collins
- Theodore Roethke
- Allen Ginsberg
- Sylvia Plath
- Wallace Stevens
- Walt Whitman
- Nikki Giovanni
- Martin Espada
- Max Lucado
- Julia Alvarez
- Yusef Komunyakaa
Wallace Stevens
ReplyDelete"The Snow Man"
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Shel Silverstein
ReplyDeleteTryin' On Clothes
I tried on the farmer's hat,
Didn't fit...
A little too small -- just a bit
Too floppy.
Couldn't get used to it,
Took it off. tryin' on clothes
I tried on the dancer's shoes,
A little too loose.
Not the kind you could use
for walkin'.
Didn't feel right in 'em,
Kicked 'em off.
I tried on the summer sun,
Felt good.
Nice and warm -- knew it would.
Tried the grass beneath bare feet,
Felt neat.
Finally, finally felt well dressed,
Nature's clothes fit me best.
This fits you very well, no pun intended :)
DeleteBilly Collins
ReplyDelete"Flames"
Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.
His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.
His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.
He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.
He is going to show them
how a professional does it.
Sylvia Plath
ReplyDelete"Childless Woman"
The womb Rattles its pod, the moon Discharges itself from the tree with nowhere to go. My landscape is a hand with no lines, The roads bunched to a knot, The knot myself, Myself the rose you acheive--- This body, This ivory Ungodly as a child's shriek. Spiderlike, I spin mirrors, Loyal to my image, Uttering nothing but blood--- Taste it, dark red! And my forest My funeral, And this hill and this Gleaming with the mouths of corpses.
i chose Sylvia Plath because her poems have a lot of meaning in them.
Wow, very dark and deep. Excellent choice. Plath is one of my favorites too.
Delete"Cinderella"
ReplyDeleteThe prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span
The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like wine;
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,
And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince
As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk
She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.
BY: Sylvia Plath
The reason I chose this poet is because we read one of her poems in class before. My favorite poem of hers is this one, Cinderella.
Oh, and I like this poem because it talks about Cinderella. I love the Cinderella movies! Also, because it kind of tells the story of Cinderella. (:
DeleteMy poet is Nikki Giovanni.She seems like a really cool poem writer.I would like to have her as a teacher so she can share with me what experience she had about herself.
ReplyDeleteMy poem can fight,
My poem can sing,
My poem can fly,
But is has no wings.
My poem can wake
You up from your seat,
My poem can ryhme,
And stick to the beat.
My poem can give,
My poem can take,
My poem can tell
The real from the fake.
My poem can see,
My poem makes you read,
My poem isn't food,
But it does fill a need.
And you can! Apply to Virginia Tech for college! OR my alma mater, Mary Baldwin. She teaches there too. Also, at MBC, they have VWIL, which is a college ROTC. It is amazing and you would love it.
DeleteMy Fave poem is by Robert w. service called The cremation of Sam McGee. I like this poem because it is very creative and I like how at the end it grabbed me by surprise! I would never have expected that Sam McGee would have came back to life.
ReplyDelete"After Math" By Sylvia Plath
ReplyDeleteCompelled by calamity's magnet They loiter and stare as if the house Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought Some scandal might any minute ooze From a smoke-choked closet into light; No deaths, no prodigious injuries Glut these hunters after an old meat, Blood-spoor of the austere tragedies.
Mother Medea in a green smock Moves humbly as any housewife through Her ruined apartments, taking stock Of charred shoes, the sodden upholstery: Cheated of the pyre and the rack, The crowd sucks her last tear and turns away.
I enjoy this poem because it speaks to me. I really like Sylvia Plath she's one of my favorite poets
And yet one arrives somehow,
ReplyDeletefinds himself loosening the hooks of
her dress
in a strange bedroom--
feels the autumn
dropping its silk and linen leaves
about her ankles.
The tawdry veined body emerges
twisted upon itself
like a winter wind . . . !
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAM
" Nothing Gold Can Stay "
ReplyDeleteNature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
By: Robert Frost
A Soldier
ReplyDeleteHe is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
Robert Frost
CXXVII
ReplyDeleteTHE BONE that has no marrow;
What ultimate for that?
It is not fit for table,
For beggar, or for cat.
A bone has obligations, 5
A being has the same;
A marrowless assembly
Is culpabler than shame.
But how shall finished creatures
A function fresh obtain?— 10
Old Nicodemus’ phantom
Confronting us again!
By: Emily Dickinson
The Road Not Taken
ReplyDeleteTwo 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 marked 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.
Robert Frost
I chose this poem because i understand it completely and it goes into my life. I have made bad choices but i went the way none of my friends did now im making good grades and am already thinking about my future while they are playing around and not caring, so i took the one less traveled by, so thats made all the diffrence in my life. better friends,grades, and happier parents.
Barbie Doll
ReplyDeleteThis girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.
Marge Piercy
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
ReplyDeleteThere is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
I picked this poem because I like reading Shel Silverstein's poems and books. Not only that it's because this poem means something more to me. This poem signifys the acceptance mayby of growing up and starting a new adventure into adulthood or whatever the case may be. I will always like this poem because it makes me think og the road I face ahead and where I want to go and how far I have to reach it. I think this poem bests explains my strive for success.
Am accused of tending to the past
ReplyDeleteas if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.
Lucille Clifton
Balances by:Nikki Giovanni
ReplyDeletein life
one is always
balancing
like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers
or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)
3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth
our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street
and lately I've begun wondering
if you re trying to tell me something
we used to talk all night
and do things alone together
and i've begun
(as a reaction to a feeling)
balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you
(I actually just picked a author, but when I found this poem I felt I could relate to it. I feel it tells the story of my life.)
Tomes by Billy Collins
ReplyDeleteThere is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
the ones you can turn to anytime,
when the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.
I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist,
but what I prefer on days like these
is to get up from the couch,
pull down The History of the World,
and hold in my hands a book
containing nearly everything
and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes,
eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it
on the black, iron scale
my mother used to keep in her kitchen,
the device on which she would place
a certain amount of flour,
a certain amount of fish.
Open flat on my lap
under a halo of lamplight,
a book like this always has a way
of soothing the nerves,
quieting the riotous surf of information
that foams around my waist
even though it never mentions
the silent labors of the poor,
the daydreams of grocers and tailors,
or the faces of men and women alone in single rooms-
even though it never mentions my mother,
now that I think of her again,
who only last year rolled off the edge of the earth
in her electric bed,
in her smooth pink nightgown
the bones of her fingers interlocked,
her sunken eyes staring upward
beyond all knowledge,
beyond the tiny figures of history,
some in uniform, some not,
marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book.
A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—
There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;
And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;
Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full
And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,
You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,
You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.
Wallace Stevens
NO, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
ReplyDeleteI will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches,
As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.
By: Ezra Pound