Archive for the 'Poetry' Category

Winter Poems

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Read both poems several times, and then write a response to them.  Be sure also to comment on at least one of your classmates comments in this thread.  Your response should be a paragraph of at least 150 words, should include many specific details from te poems and answer all or some of the following questions:

  • What happens in the poems?
  • What literary devices do I see?
  • What are the literary devices suppose to show or teach the reader? Why might the poet have included them?
  • What are the purposes or underlying meanings of the poems?  Do they have similar purposes?  If so, why are they different? 

January

The days are short
   The sun a spark
Hung thin between
   The dark and dark.

Fat snowy footsteps
   Track the floor
And parkas pile up
   Near the door.

The river is
   A frozen place
Held still beneath
   The trees’ black lace

The sky is low.
   The wind is gray.
The radiator
   Purrs all day.

–John Updike

By Morning

Some for everyone
  plenty

  and more coming

Fresh      dainty      airily      arriving
  everywhere at once

Transparent at first
  each faint slice
  slow       soundlessly tumbling

  then quickly thickly a gracious fleece
  will spread like youth      like wheat
  over the city

Each building will be         a hill
  all sharps made round

  dark worn noisy narrows made still
  wide       flat      clean      spaces

Streets will be      fields
  cars be      fumbling sheep

A deep bright harvest will be seeded
  in a night

By morning we’ll be      children
  feeding on manna

 a new loaf on every doorsill

–May Swenson

(In the Bible, manna was food that was miraculously provided for the Israelites in the wilderness.)

Posted in Poetry | 33 Comments »

Langston Hughes/Gwendolyn Brooks poems

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Read all three poems several times, and then write a response to them.  Be sure also to comment on at least one of your classmates comments in this thread.  Your response should be a paragraph of at least 150 words, should include many specific details from te poems and answer all or some of the following questions:

  • What happens in the poems?
  • What literary devices do I see?
  • What are the literary devices suppose to show or teach the reader? Why might the poet have included them?
  • What are the purposes or underlying meanings of the poems?  Do they have similar purposes?  If so, why are they different? 

I, TOO

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well.
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed.

I, too, am America.

                -Langston Hughes

MOTHER TO SON

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-climbing 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.

                         –Langston Hughes

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June We
Die soon.

                      –Gwendolyn Brooks

Posted in Poetry | 34 Comments »

Shakespearean Sonnets

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Choose one sonnet to memorize and explain your choice, then, compare the two sonnets we read today. How are they similar? How are they different? Be specific and clear in your response .

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Posted in Poetry | 37 Comments »