Poems

“Read poetry every day of your life ...Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition....What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. ...You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children." -Ray Bradbury

Poem: The Light of a Candle

http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/24-must-share-poems-for-middle-school-and-high-school

Look for figurative language on YouTube.

sonnets:  http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/discovering-traditional-sonnet-forms-830.html?tab=3#tabs

http://www.freakydudebooks.com/pdf/tg_ode.pdf

http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/language/lessonplan.html

http://www.mtlsd.org/mellon/teams/ironbrigade/sonnetunit.asp

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/brisk-bright-approaches-poetry-month-brett-vogelsinger
_____________________________________

http://www.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/e02710/introduction.pdf

Tugboat at Daybreak
https://sites.google.com/site/middleschoolpoetryunit/2-craft-and-structure/determining-the-meaning-of-words/tugboat-at-daybreak

Foul Shot
https://sites.google.com/site/middleschoolpoetryunit/3-integration-of-knowledge-and-ideas/1-analyze-how/foul-shot

Hoods
https://sites.google.com/site/middleschoolpoetryunit/2-craft-and-structure/3-describe/hoods
http://eberhartpoetry.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/6/7/12677529/hoods.pdf

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play/826291
_______________________

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/anthology/7th-grade-poetry-online

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950).  Renascence and Other Poems.  1917.
http://www.bartleby.com/131/1.html   

 iReadPoetry -- Watch for central idea, author's purpose, 

audience, and mood.

Time Somebody Told Me

by Quantedius Hall

Time Somebody Told Me

That I am lovely, good and real

That I am beautiful inside

If they only knew

How that would make me feel.

Time Somebody Told Me

That my mind is quick, smart

and full of wit

That I should keep on trying

and never quit.

Time Somebody Told Me

How they loved and needed me

How my smile is filled with hope

And my spirit sets them free

How my eyes shine, full of light

How good they feel when they hug me tight.

Time Somebody Told Me

So, I had a talk with myself

Just me, nobody else

‘cause it was time

Somebody Told Me.

Sick

Shel Silverstein, 1930 - 1999

“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!”

The light of a candle


Yosa Buson



The light of a candle
               is transferred to another candle—
               spring twilight.

Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe, 1809 - 1849

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
   I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
   Went envying her and me--
Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we--
   Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in heaven above,
   Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea,
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet


Eavan Boland, 1944



How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades, 
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all 
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting 
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe 
what really happened is 

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and 
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of 

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.


Antigonish [I met a man who wasn’t there]


Hughes Mearns



Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away...


Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?


Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967



            Over There,
            World War II.
   
Dear Fellow Americans,
I write this letter
Hoping times will be better
When this war
Is through.
I’m a Tan-skinned Yank
Driving a tank.
I ask, WILL V-DAY
BE ME-DAY, TOO?

I wear a U. S. uniform.
I’ve done the enemy much harm,
I’ve driven back
The Germans and the Japs,
From Burma to the Rhine.
On every battle line,
I’ve dropped defeat
Into the Fascists’ laps.

I am a Negro American
Out to defend my land
Army, Navy, Air Corps—
I am there.
I take munitions through,
I fight—or stevedore, too.
I face death the same as you do 
Everywhere.

I’ve seen my buddy lying
Where he fell.
I’ve watched him dying
I promised him that I would try
To make our land a land
Where his son could be a man—
And there’d be no Jim Crow birds
Left in our sky.

So this is what I want to know:
When we see Victory’s glow,
Will you still let old Jim Crow
Hold me back?
When all those foreign folks who’ve waited—
Italians, Chinese, Danes—are liberated.
Will I still be ill-fated
Because I’m black?

Here in my own, my native land,
Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?
Will Dixie lynch me still
When I return?
Or will you comrades in arms
From the factories and the farms,
Have learned what this war
Was fought for us to learn?

When I take off my uniform,
Will I be safe from harm—
Or will you do me
As the Germans did the Jews?
When I’ve helped this world to save,
Shall I still be color’s slave?
Or will Victory change
Your antiquated views?

You can’t say I didn’t fight
To smash the Fascists’ might.
You can’t say I wasn’t with you
in each battle.
As a soldier, and a friend.
When this war comes to an end,
Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car
Like cattle?

Or will you stand up like a man
At home and take your stand
For Democracy?
That’s all I ask of you.
When we lay the guns away
To celebrate
Our Victory Day
WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?
That’s what I want to know.

            Sincerely,
                GI Joe.


Still I Rise


Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014



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 backyard.

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.


Ants


Ravi Shankar



One is never alone. Saltwater taffy colored 
beach blanket spread on a dirt outcropping 
pocked with movement. Pell-mell tunneling,  

black specks the specter of beard hairs swarm, 
disappear, emerge, twitch, reverse course 
to forage along my shin, painting pathways 

with invisible pheromones that others take 
up in ceaseless streams. Ordered disarray, 
wingless expansionists form a colony mind, 

no sense of self outside the nest, expending 
summer to prepare for winter, droning on
through midday heat. I watch, repose, alone.


Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry


Howard Nemerov, 1920 - 1991



Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow 
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Pied Beauty

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844 - 1889

Glory be to God for dappled things--
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                     Praise Him.

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/anthology/7th-grade-poetry-online

Filling Station

Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979

Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station, 
oil-soaked, oil-permeated 
to a disturbing, over-all 
black translucency. 
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty, 
oil-soaked monkey suit 
that cuts him under the arms, 
and several quick and saucy 
and greasy sons assist him 
(it’s a family filling station), 
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station? 
It has a cement porch 
behind the pumps, and on it 
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork; 
on the wicker sofa 
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide 
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie 
upon a big dim doily 
draping a taboret 
(part of the set), beside 
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant? 
Why the taboret? 
Why, oh why, the doily? 
(Embroidered in daisy stitch 
with marguerites, I think, 
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily. 
Somebody waters the plant, 
or oils it, maybe. Somebody 
arranges the rows of cans 
so that they softly say:
ESSO—SO—SO—SO
to high-strung automobiles. 
Somebody loves us all.

Hoods
Paul B. Janeczko

In black leather jackets,
watching Spider work
the wire coat hanger
into Mrs. Koops car,
they remind me of crows
huddled around a road kill.
Startled,
They looked up,
then back
as Spider,
who nodded once, setting them free
toward me.
I bounded away,
used a parking meter
to whip me around the corner
past Janelli's Market,
the darkened Pine Street Grille,
and the steamed windows
of Sudsy's Modern Laundromat.
I climbed-two at a time
the granite steps
of the Free Public Library
and pushed back thick wooden doors
as the pursuing pack stopped –
sinners at the door of a church.



From the corner table of the reference room
I watched them
pacing,
head turning every time the door opened,
pacing,
until Spider arrived
to draw them away.
I waited, fingering hearts,
initials carved into the table,
grinning as I heard myself telling Raymond
of my death-defying escape.

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine.

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree. 

William Blake

Speak Up

by Janet S. Wong

You're Korean, aren't you?

Yes. 

Why don't you speak Korean?

Just don't, I guess.

Say something Korean.

I don't speak it. 

I can't.

C'mon. Say something. 

Halmoni. Grandmother.

Haraboji. Grandfather.

Imo. Aunt.

Say some other stuff.

Sounds funny.

Sounds strange.

Hey, let's listen to you

for a change.

Listen to me?

Say some foreign words.

But I'm American,

can't you see?

Your family came from 

somewhere else.

Sometime.

But I was born here.

So was I.

Junkyards



by Julian Lee Rayford






You take any junkyard


    and you will see it filled with


    symbols of progress


    remarkable things discarded






What civilization when ahead on


    all its onward-impelling implements


    are given over to the junkyards


    to rust






The supreme implement, the wheel


    is conspicuous in the junkyards






The axles and the levers


    the cogs and the flywheels


    all the parts of dynamos


    all the parts of motors


    fall the parts of rusting. 







When It Is Snowing






by Siv Cedering




When it is snowing

the blue jay

is the only piece of 

sky

in my backyard














Poppies 

by Roy Scheele









The light in them stands as clear as water

drawn from a well

When the breeze moves across them they totter.

You half expect them to spill. 























Every Cat Has a Story

by Naomi Shihab Nye









The yellow one from the bakery

smelled like a cream puff-

she followed us home. 

We buried our faces 

in her sweet fur.




One cat hid her head 

while I practiced violin.

But she came out for piano.

At night she played sonatas

on my quilt.




One cat built a secret nest 

in my socks. 




One sat in the window 

staring up the street all day

while we were at school.




One cat loved 

the radio dial




One cat almost

smiled. 
















Spring Storm





Spring Storm












by Jim Wayne Miller



He comes gusting out of the house, 

the screen door a thunderclap behind him. 




He moves like a black cloud

over the lawn and---stops.




A hand in his mind grabs

a purple crayon of anger

and messes the clean sky.




He sits on the steps, his eye drawing

a mustache on the face in the tree. 




As his weather clears, 

his rage dripping away, 




wisecracks and wonderment

spring up like dandelions.







The Wreck of the Hesperus












The Wreck of the Hesperus

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW



It was the schooner Hesperus,

      That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,

      To bear him company.




Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

      Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

      That ope in the month of May.




The skipper he stood beside the helm,

      His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

      The smoke now West, now South.




Then up and spake an old Sailòr,

      Had sailed to the Spanish Main,

"I pray thee, put into yonder port,

      For I fear a hurricane.




"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,

      And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,

      And a scornful laugh laughed he.




Colder and louder blew the wind,

      A gale from the Northeast,

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

      And the billows frothed like yeast.




Down came the storm, and smote amain

      The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,

      Then leaped her cable's length.




"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,

      And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

      That ever wind did blow."




He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat

      Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

      And bound her to the mast.




"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,

      Oh say, what may it be?"

"'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" —

      And he steered for the open sea.




"O father! I hear the sound of guns,

      Oh say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live

      In such an angry sea!"




"O father! I see a gleaming light,

      Oh say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,

      A frozen corpse was he.




Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,

      With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow

      On his fixed and glassy eyes.




Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

      That savèd she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave

      On the Lake of Galilee.




And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

      Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept

      Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.




And ever the fitful gusts between

      A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf

      On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.




The breakers were right beneath her bows,

      She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew

      Like icicles from her deck.




She struck where the white and fleecy waves

      Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side

      Like the horns of an angry bull.




Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

      With the masts went by the board;

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,

      Ho! ho! the breakers roared!




At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,

      A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair,

      Lashed close to a drifting mast.




The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

      The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,

      On the billows fall and rise.




Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

      In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

      On the reef of Norman's Woe!




Ode to Family Photographs








by Gary Soto



Mama was never good at pictures.




This is a statue of a famous general who lost an arm, 

And this is me with my head fut off. 




This a trash can chained to a gate, 

This is my father with his eyes half-closed.




This a photograph of my sister

And a giraffe looking over her shoulder. 




This is our car's front bumper. 

This is a bird with a pretzel in its beak.

This is my brother Pedro standing on one leg on a rock. 

With a smear of chocolate on his face. 




Mama sneezed when she looked

Behind the camera: the snapshots are blurry,

The angles dizzy as a spin on a merry-go-round.




But we had fun when Mama picked up the camera.

How can I tell?

Each of us laughing hard. 

Can you see: I have candy in my mouth. 


















Abandoned Farmhouse


by Ted Kooser




He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of his bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.




A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child, 

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves 

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole. 

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.




Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars 

in the cellar say he left in nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm - a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls.  Something went wrong, they say.




























Deserted
Farm

By Mark Vinz

Where the
barn stood

the empty
milking stalls rise up

like the
skeleton of an ancient sea beast,

exiled
forever on shores of prairie.



Decaying
timber moans softly in twilight;

the house
collapses like a broken prayer.

Tomorrow the
heavy lilac blossoms will open, 

higher than
the roofbeams, reeling in wind.


“Seeing the World” by Steven Herrick



Every month or so,

when my brother and I

are bored with backyard games

and television, Dad says,

“It’s time to see the world.”



So we climb the ladder to our attic,

push the window open,

and carefully, carefully

scramble onto the roof.



We hang on tight as we scale the heights

to the very top.

We sit with our backs to the chimney

and see the world.



The birds flying below us.

The trees swaying in the wind below us.                     

Our cubbyhouse, meters below us.           

The distant city below us.And then Dad, my brother, and I lie back





look up and watch

the clouds and the sky

and dream

we’re flying

we’re flying.



In summer

with the sun and a gentle breeze

and not a sound anywhere

I’m sure I never want to land.

Street Painting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azolNnTCnMI

Spring is like a perhaps hand









E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962








          III

Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

War Is Kind [excerpt]










Stephen Crane








Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

   Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment
   Little souls who thirst for fight,
   These men were born to drill and die
   The unexplained glory flies above them
   Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom--
   A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

   Swift, blazing flag of the regiment
   Eagle with crest of red and gold,
   These men were born to drill and die
   Point for them the virtue of slaughter
   Make plain to them the excellence of killing
   And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.