Modern and Postmodern Poetry Gaithersburg High School Summer Reading Program

2014

Ms. Bourque

To complete your summer reading assignment, follow these instructions: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Read all of the following poems. Select four poems that you like the best. Complete one poetry response form for each of the four poems you select. Find one additional poem on your own, read it, and fill out a poetry response form for that poem. The fifth poem can be one from this packet, one you already know and love, or a new one that you find through independent reading. 5. Bring this packet, including your five completed poetry response forms, to the summer reading seminars in September.

Contents “A Girl Ago” ………………………………………………………………….……………………….. Lucie Brock-Broido ……………………………… 3 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246818 “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town”……………………………………………………. e.e. cummings ……………………………………. 4 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15403 “Blood” ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Naomi Shihab Nye ………………………………. 5 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16411 “Boy at the Window”……………………………………………………………………………… Richard Wilbur…………………………………….. 6 http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/boy-at-the-window/ “Cartoon Physics, Part 1”……………………………………………………………………….. Nick Flynn……………………………………………. 7 http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/038.html “Did I Miss Anything?”……………………………………………………………………………. Tom Wayman………………………………………. 8 http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/013.html “Facing It”………………………………………………………………………………………………. Yusef Komunyakaa………………………………. 9 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15830 “For My Daughter”…………………………………………………………………………………. David Ignatow……………………………………… 10 http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/064.html “I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land”……………………………………………. Rita Dove ……………………………………………. 11 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/30842 “Introduction to Poetry”………………………………………………………………………… Billy Collins………………………………………….. 12 http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/001.html “My Dad, In America”…………………………………………………………………………….. Shann Ray……………………………………………. 12 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/245138 “Near the Wall of a House”……………………………………………………………………. Yehuda Amichai ………………………………….. 13 http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/074.html “Remora, Remora” ………………………………………………………………………………… Thomas Lux ………………………………………….13 http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/022.html “Tendency Toward Vagrancy”………………………………………………………………… Philip Nikolayev ……………………………………14 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/247204 “The Rolling Saint”…………………………………………………………………………………. Aimee Nezhukumatathil………………………. 15 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245518 “The Taxi”………………………………………………………………………………………………. Amy Lowell …………………………………………. 16 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171722 “To The One Who Is Reading Me”………………………………………………………….. Jorge Luis Borges…………………………………. 16 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243616 “Tombo”………………………………………………………………………………………………… W.S. Di Piero ………………………………………. 17 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246296 “Watching the Mayan Women” ……………………………………………………………. Luisa Villani …………………………………………. 18 http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/067.html “Your World”…………………………………………………………………………………………..Georgia Douglas Johnson…………………….. 19 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246766 2

“A Girl Ago” Lucie Brock-Broido

No feeding on wisteria. No pitch-burner traipsing In the nettled woods. No milk in metal cylinders, no Buttering. No making small contusions on the page But saying nothing no one has not said before. No milkweed blown across your pony-coat, no burrs. No scent of juniper on your Jacobean mouth. No crush Of ink or injury, no lacerating wish. Extinguish me from this. I was sixteen for twenty years. By September I will be a ghost And flickering in unison with all the other fireflies in Appalachia, Blinking in the swarm of it, and all at once, above And on a bare branch in a shepherd's sky. No Dove. There is no thou to speak of.

Lucie Brock-Broido, "A Girl Ago" from Stay, Illusion. Copyright © 2013 by Lucie Brock-Broido. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Published with arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. Source: Stay, Illusion (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013)

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“Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” e.e. cummings anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn’t he danced his did Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same sun moon stars rain children guessed(but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone’s any was all to her someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down) one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain From Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1923, 1931, 1935, 1940, 1951, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976, 1978, 1979 by George James Firmage.

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“Blood” Naomi Shihab Nye

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands," my father would say. And he’d prove it, cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter stared. In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. I changed these to fit the occasion. Years before, a girl knocked, wanted to see the Arab. I said we didn’t have one. After that, my father told me who he was, “Shihab”—“shooting star”— a good name, borrowed from the sky. Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?” He said that’s what a true Arab would say. Today the headlines clot in my blood. A little Palestinian dangles a toy truck on the front page. Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root is too big for us. What flag can we wave? I wave the flag of stone and seed, table mat stitched in blue. I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, neither of his two languages can reach it. I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, to plead with the air: Who calls anyone civilized? Where can the crying heart graze? What does a true Arab do now?

From 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye, published by Greenwillow Books (2002). Originally published in Yellow Glove by Naomi Shihab Nye, published by Breitenbush Books. Copyright © 1986 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved.

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“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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“Cartoon Physics, Part 1” Nick Flynn

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know that the universe is ever-expanding, inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies swallowed by galaxies, whole solar systems collapsing, all of it acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning the rules of cartoon animation, that if a man draws a door on a rock only he can pass through it. Anyone else who tries will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds should stick with burning houses, car wrecks, ships going down -- earthbound, tangible disasters, arenas where they can be heroes. You can run back into a burning house, sinking ships have lifeboats, the trucks will come with their ladders, if you jump you will be saved. A child places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus, & drives across a city of sand. She knows the exact spot it will skid, at which point the bridge will give, who will swim to safety & who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff he will not fall until he notices his mistake.

from Some Ether, 2000 Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn. Copyright 2000 by Nick Flynn. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

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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 percent of the grade for this term and assigned some reading due today on which I’m about to hand out a quiz worth 50 percent 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 suddenly 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 the 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 experience 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 From Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993, 1993 Harbour Publishing Copyright 1993 Tom Wayman. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

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“Facing It” Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn’t, dammit: No tears. I’m stone. I’m flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. I turn that way--I’m inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap’s white flash. Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet’s image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I’m a window. He’s lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman’s trying to erase names: No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

From Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa. Copyright © 1988 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.

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“For My Daughter” David Ignatow

When I die choose a star and name it after me that you may know I have not abandoned or forgotten you. You were such a star to me, following you through birth and childhood, my hand in your hand. When I die choose a star and name it after me so that I may shine down on you, until you join me in darkness and silence together.

from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems 1934-1994 Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn. Copyright 1993 by David Ignatow. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

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“I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land” Rita Dove

Life's spell is so exquisite, everything conspires to break it. - Emily Dickinson It wasn't bliss. What was bliss but the ordinary life? She'd spend hours in patter, moving through whole days touching, sniffing, tasting . . . exquisite housekeeping in a charmed world. And yet there was always more of the same, all that happiness, the aimless Being There. So she wandered for a while, bush to arbor, lingered to look through a pond's restive mirror. He was off cataloging the universe, probably, pretending he could organize what was clearly someone else's chaos. That's when she found the tree, the dark, crabbed branches bearing up such speechless bounty, she knew without being told this was forbidden. It wasn't a question of ownership— who could lay claim to such maddening perfection? And there was no voice in her head, no whispered intelligence lurking in the leaves—just an ache that grew until she knew she'd already lost everything except desire, the red heft of it warming her outstretched palm.

Source: Poetry (October 2002).

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“Introduction to Poetry” Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996 University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark. Permissions information.

or press an ear against its hive.

Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

“My Dad, In America” Shann Ray

Source: Poetry (January 2013).

Your hand on my jaw but gently and that picture of you punching through snow to bring two deer, a gopher, and a magpie to the old Highwalker woman who spoke only Cheyenne and traced our footprints on leather she later chewed to soften. We need to know in America there is still blood for forgiveness. Dead things for the new day. 12

“Near the Wall of a House” Yehuda Amichai

Near the wall of a house painted to look like stone, I saw visions of God. A sleepless night that gives others a headache gave me flowers opening beautifully inside my brain. And he who was lost like a dog will be found like a human being and brought back home again. Love is not the last room: there are others after it, the whole length of the corridor that has no end.

from Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai. Edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell (1986). HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY Copyright 1986 by Yehuda Amichai. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

“Remora, Remora” Thomas Lux

Clinging to the shark is a sucker shark, attached to which and feeding off its crumbs is one still tinier, inch or two, and on top of that one, one the size of a nick of gauze; smaller and smaller (moron, idiot, imbecile, nincompoop) until on top of that is the last, a microdot sucker shark, a filament’s tip – with a heartbeat – sliced off, and the great sea all around feeding his host and thus him. He’s too small to be eaten himself (though some things swim with open mouths) so he just rides along in the blue current, the invisible point of the pyramid, the top beneath all else.

From The Cradle Place Houghton Mifflin, 2004 Copyright 2004 Thomas Lux. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

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“Tendency Toward Vagrancy” Philip Nikolayev

I’ve long had what Soviet psychiatrists called “a tendency toward vagrancy.” At four I would run away from home repeatedly for a whole day, alone or sometimes with a friend named Boris of like age. Knew full well we “just can’t do this,” but nudge for nudge and wink for wink, we’d board the trolleybus #10, I think, buy tickets at four kopeks each from our gleanings and savings of the week, stick them into the ticket punch on the wall, watch the chad fall as you pulled, and ride all across Kishinev in half an hour to get off near that unforgettable restaurant built in the likeness of a huge wine barrel. We peered inside, it was cool. Then we had options: go and splash in the local artificial lake (I couldn’t swim yet), wonder in between along the banks, catching frogs to take home in a glass jar to populate a small construction pond (why did we always use my shirt to do this?), or go and explore the local flea market, which was not at all safe to do, but even at four it’s nice to have options. (One guy sold what we thought was a gun, we asked him and he confirmed it.)

Those were days of cholera epidemics in Moldova. We’d buy peasant-cooked fodder corn on the cob when we got hungry, haggled with old ladies over pennies. We wouldn’t catch the return trolley until sunset. Then it’s always the same picture: the wicket creaks open, the landlord’s mutant barks through froth, my wet shirt clings. I step out of the dark toward my mother waiting by the door of our “temporary house” on Kaluga Street, which was a bit of a dirt road, probably still is. She has been crying, takes me inside. Room and kitchen (no bathroom or running water): the room had a brick stove, the kitchen a dirt floor (with mice and sometimes grass) and a white washstand — these lines are all that has survived of them. There was great beauty in their squalor. She has been crying, takes me inside, says she will scold me later. I know it will be soon. First she must call the cops to tell them I’ve been found. Of course, back then I didn’t understand anything: neither how a poet harms his mother, nor how alienated (thank you, Marx, for that term) one can be from the start, and free in the grip of that greatest paradox of all — a happy Soviet childhood.

Philip Nikolayev, “Tendency Toward Vagrancy” from Letters from Aldenderry. Copyright © 2006 by Philip Nikolayev. Reprinted by permission of Philip Nikolayev. Source: Letters from Aldenderry (Salt Publishing, 2006)

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“The Rolling Saint” Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Lotan Baba, a holy man from India, rolled on his side for four thousand kilometers across the country in his quest for world peace and eternal salvation. —Reuters

He started small: fasting here and there, days, then weeks. Once, he stood under a banyan tree for a full seven years, sitting for nothing—not even to sleep. It came to him in a dream: You must roll on this earth, spin your heart in rain, desert, dust. At sunrise he’d stretch, swab any cuts from the day before, and lay prone on the road while his twelve men swept the ground in front of him with sisal brooms. Even monkeys stopped and stared at this man rolling through puddles, past storefronts where children would throw him pieces of butter candy he’d try and catch in his mouth at each rotation. His men swept and sang, swept and sang of jasmine-throated angels and pineapple slices in kulfi cream. He rolled and rolled. Sometimes in his dizzying spins, he thought he heard God. A whisper, but still.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "The Rolling Saint" from Miracle Fruit. Copyright © 2003 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Reprinted by permission of Tupelo Press. Source: Miracle Fruit (Tupelo Press, 2003)

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“The Taxi” Amy Lowell

“To The One Who Is Reading Me” Jorge Luis Borges

When I go away from you

You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver

The world beats dead

(those forces that control your destiny)

Like a slackened drum.

the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be

I call out for you against the jutted stars And shout into the ridges of the wind. Streets coming fast,

your irreversible time is that river in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read his brevity? A marble slab is saved

One after the other, Wedge you away from me, And the lamps of the city prick my eyes So that I can no longer see your face.

for you, one you won’t read, already graved with city, epitaph, dates of the dead. And other men are also dreams of time,

Why should I leave you,

not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust

To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the

like you; the universe is Proteus.

night?

Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead, the fatal shadow waiting at the rim. Know this: in some way you’re already dead.

Amy Lowell, “The Taxi” from The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Copyright © 1955 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright © renewed 1983 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Brinton P. Roberts, and G. D'Andelot, Esquire. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Translated from the Spanish by Tony Barnstone Source: Poetry (March 2012).

Source: Selected Poems of Amy Lowell (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002)

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“Tombo” W.S. Di Piero In Safeway yesterday, a young man sat on the floor, pulled off   his shoes, granted audience to us, his fellow seekers, and picked his naked feet. He smiled, our brother, at the story he told of   deliverance at the hand of   Master Tombo, lord and creator, whose round energy lives in us surrounds us surrounds our milk our butter our eggs: see Him there, in the Slurpee glaze upon the freezer case? In that elder by the yogurt shelves? I believed his happiness and coveted a tidy universe. He picked his feet while a child whimpered by the melons, her nanny’s mango aura made the cold blown air touch my brain, I smelled myself in my aging body and felt my silly bones collapse again. I wanted Tombo’s dispensation to save this faint believer and the indifferent world that rivers through and past me. Down my aisle lavender respired from the flower stall and Security spoke kind words to our prophet. Oh I love and hate the fickle messy wash of speech and flowers and winds and the tides and crave plain rotund stories to justify our continuity. To the Maya corn was god, spilled blood made corn grow, the blood gods shed watered needy ground and became People who worshipped the corn. Tombo’s grace carries us, convinced, from one inarticulate incoherent moment to the next. Tonight the wet streets and their limelight sigh. Orion turns, burning, unchanged again. Bread rises somewhere and its ovens scent the trees. My poor belief   lives in the only and all of   the slur of   what these are, and what these are streams toward loss in moments we live through. As children we were lost in our opaque acts but fresh and full in time. I remember how I touched a girlish knee, how one boy broke another’s face, how we all stood in hard gray summer rain so it would run down the tips of noses to our tongues. Source: Poetry (September 2013).

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“Watching the Mayan Women” Luisa Villani

I hang the window inside out like a shirt drying in a breeze and the arms that are missing come to me Yes, it's a song, one I don't quite comprehend although I do understand the laundry. White ash and rain water, a method my aunt taught me, but I'll never know how she learned it in Brooklyn. Her mind has gone to seed, blown by a stroke, and that dandelion puff called memory has flown far from her eyes. Some things remain. Procedures. Methods. If you burn a fire all day, feeding it snapped branches and newspapers— the faces pressed against the print fading into flames-you end up with a barrel of white ash. If you take that same barrel and fill it with rain, let it sit for a day, you will have water that can bring brightness to anything. If you take that water, and in it soak your husband's shirts, he'll pause at dawn when he puts one on, its softness like a haunting afterthought. And if he works all day in the selva, he'll divine his way home in shirtsleeves aglow with torchlight.

“Selva” means forest or jungle

from Hayden's Ferry Review, Issue 26, Spring / Summer 2000 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Copyright 2000 by Luisa Villani. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

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“Your World” Georgia Douglas Johnson

Your world is as big as you make it. I know, for I used to abide In the narrowest nest in a corner, My wings pressing close to my side.

But I sighted the distant horizon Where the skyline encircled the sea And I throbbed with a burning desire To travel this immensity.

I battered the cordons around me And cradled my wings on the breeze, Then soared to the uttermost reaches With rapture, with power, with ease!

Source: Words with Wings: A Treasury of African-American Poetry and Art (HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001)

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Poetry Response Form 1

Name _________________________________

Title of Poem _____________________________________ Name of Poet _____________________________________

Topic What is the poem about? Speaker Who is the speaker / narrator? Message What is the main idea being conveyed?

Diction Which words or brief phrases most effectively convey the poem’s meaning?

Tone What is the speaker’s attitude toward the topic or message of the poem?

Reflection Why do I like this poem? What does it remind me of? How does it make me feel? How does it relate to my life? What does it make me think about?

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Poetry Response Form 2

Name _________________________________

Title of Poem _____________________________________ Name of Poet _____________________________________

Topic What is the poem about? Speaker Who is the speaker / narrator? Message What is the main idea being conveyed?

Diction Which words or brief phrases most effectively convey the poem’s meaning?

Tone What is the speaker’s attitude toward the topic or message of the poem?

Reflection Why do I like this poem? What does it remind me of? How does it make me feel? How does it relate to my life? What does it make me think about?

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Poetry Response Form 3

Name _________________________________

Title of Poem _____________________________________ Name of Poet _____________________________________

Topic What is the poem about? Speaker Who is the speaker / narrator? Message What is the main idea being conveyed?

Diction Which words or brief phrases most effectively convey the poem’s meaning?

Tone What is the speaker’s attitude toward the topic or message of the poem?

Reflection Why do I like this poem? What does it remind me of? How does it make me feel? How does it relate to my life? What does it make me think about?

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Poetry Response Form 4

Name _________________________________

Title of Poem _____________________________________ Name of Poet _____________________________________

Topic What is the poem about? Speaker Who is the speaker / narrator? Message What is the main idea being conveyed?

Diction Which words or brief phrases most effectively convey the poem’s meaning?

Tone What is the speaker’s attitude toward the topic or message of the poem?

Reflection Why do I like this poem? What does it remind me of? How does it make me feel? How does it relate to my life? What does it make me think about?

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Poetry Response Form 5

Name _________________________________

Title of Poem _____________________________________ Name of Poet _____________________________________

Topic What is the poem about? Speaker Who is the speaker / narrator? Message What is the main idea being conveyed?

Diction Which words or brief phrases most effectively convey the poem’s meaning?

Tone What is the speaker’s attitude toward the topic or message of the poem?

Reflection Why do I like this poem? What does it remind me of? How does it make me feel? How does it relate to my life? What does it make me think about?

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