SC set 1: "The Compleint of Chaucer" (3), "Blame Not My Lute" (29), "Sir Patrick Spens" (46), "The Three Ravens" (57), "Barbara Allen" (58), "Western Wind" (65), "The Apparition" (177), "Ye Flowery Banks" (350),"My Last Duchess" (466).

TW set 1:"Vashti" (45), "The Creation" (73), "Transfer" (116), "Runagate, Runagate" (147), "Where Have You Gone" (217)

MA set 1: "Annabel Lee" (113), "Vigil Strange I Kept" (171), "A Bird Came Down the Walk" (192), "The Tuft of Flowers" (251)
SC set 2: Shakespeare: sonnets 2,3,12,15,18,19,25,27,29, 30, 33, 35, 40, 53, 54,55, 56, 60 (124-32)

TW set 2: "Soon One Mawnin" (6),"Motherless Child" (6), Grimke , 3 poems (82-83), "Ribbons and Lace"(199)

SC set 3: "It is a beauteous evening" (Wordsworth, 363); "Lines: When the Lamp is Shattered" (Shelley, 414); "Tithonus" (Tennyson, 445); "Sailing to Byzantium" (Yeats, 543)
TW set 3: "Mother to Son" (Hughes, 121), "Duke Ellington" (Davis, 129), "The Distant Drum" (Hernton, 272), "Trees" (Fields, 357), "Women" (Walker, 422)
MA set 2:

Dickinson,

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--

Or rather--He passed Us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, my Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle--

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--

Since then--'tis Centuries-and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity--

Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider"

A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how, to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer threat you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Pound, "A Pact"

I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman--
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root--
Let there be commerce between us.

Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California"

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down
the sidestreets under the trees with a headache, self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babes in the tomatoes!-and you, Garcia Lorca*, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
 

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermaarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon* quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe*?
 

*Garcia Lorca (Spanish poet, 1898-1936) wrote an "Ode to Walt Whitman" *Charon ferries dead souls across the River Styx to Hades, which in Greek mythology is the abode of all the dead, not just the evil *Lethe, the river in Hades whose water causes forgetfulness (usually merciful) of one's former life
 

Dickey, "A Dog Sleeping on My Feet"

Being his resting place,
I do not even tense
The muscles of a leg
Or I would seem to be changing.
Instead, I turn the page
Of the notebook, carefully not
Remembering what I have written,
For now, with my feet beneath him
Dying like embers,
The poem is beginning to move
Up through my pine-prickling legs
Out of the night wood,

Taking hold of the pen by my fingers.
Before me the fox floats lightly
On fire with his holy scene.
All, all are running.
Marvelous is the pursuit,
Like a dazzle of nails through the ankles,

Like a twisting shout through the trees
Sent after the flying fox
Through the holes of logs, over streams
Stock-still with the pressure of moonlight.
My killed legs,
My legs of a dead thing, follow,

Quick as pins, through the forest,
And all rushes on into dark
And ends on the brightness of paper.
When my hand, which speaks in a daze
The hypnotized language of beasts,
Shall falter, and fail

Back into the human tongue,
And the dog gets up and goes out
To wander the dawning yard,
I shall crawl to my human bed
And lie there smiling at sunrise,
With the scent of the fox

Burning my brain like an incense
Floating out of the night wood,
Coming home to my wife and my sons
From the dream of an animal,
Assembling the self I must wake to,
Sleeping to grow back my legs.
 

SC Set 4: Campion, "There Is a Garden" (169);Donne, "A Valediction forbidding Mourning (175); Jonson, "Epitaph on S.P."(188); Milton, "On Time" (241); Vaughan "Peace" (271); Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale" (423)

TW Set 4: Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask" (68), Johnson, "O Black and Unknown Bards" (78), Braithwaite, "Del Cascar" (80), Tolson, "Madam Alpha Devine" (105), Cullen, "Heritage"(130)

MA set 3: Whitman, "Song of Myself, part 6" (120), "Song of Myself, parts 25-26" (136), Dickinson, "What Soft, Cherubic Creatures" (194), Crane, "A Newspaper" (231) and "The Wayfarer" (232); Stevens, "Peter Quince at the Clavier" (277)
SC set 5 repeat set 4 (Hurricane Day)

TW set 5 "Nobody Knows the Trouble I see," 7; "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (75); "Tired" (89); "Golgotha Is a Mountain" (126), "And through the Caribbean Sea" (167), "I Am a Black Woman" (216)

MA set 4 "Hamatreya" (56); "A Dream within a Dream" (91); "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" (187); "Critics and Connoisseurs" (374); "The Composer" (509)

STUDENT CHOICE WEEK. Note: don't choose poems from Kowit, since they will almost all be assigned sooner or later any way.

SC set 6 Your selections, to be turned in no later than Friday Sept 24. Each student may suggest one poem that is either in SC (but not if it has already been assigned) or should have been (in that case, of course, provide a copy)-that is, a poem written originally in English, from any English-speaking country except the U.S. On this occasion, the poem should NOT have been written to be sung. If it is in SC, you can just give the name and page on your card; if it isn't, you can turn in a copy instead of your card. In either case you get a point for class participation, as well as credit for class attendance.  SCset6

SC assignment, for Wednesday Sept 30 (some student choices; the others will be used later, and still more suggestions are welcome)

Decker, "Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes (171); Blake, "The Chimney Sweeper" (338); Hunt, "To a Fish" (400); Tennyson, "Sweet and Low" (448); Arnold, "West London" (482); Yeats, "The Wild Swans at Coole" (539); also the following:
 

To Christ our Lord
 

The legs of the elk punctured the snow's crust
And wolves floated lightfooted on the land
Hunting Christmas elk living and frozen;
Inside snow melted in a basin, and a woman basted
A bird spread over coals by its wings and head.

Snow had sealed the windows; candles lit
The Christmas meal. The Christmas grace chilled
The cooked bird, being long-winded and the room cold.
During the words a boy thought, it is fitting
To eat this creature killed on the wing?

He had killed it himself, climbing out
Alone on snowshoes in the Christmas dawn,
The fallen snow swirling and the snowfall gone,
Heard its throat scream as the rifle shouted,
Watched it drop, and fished from the snow the dead.

He had not wanted to shoot. The sound
Of wings beating into the hushed air
Had stirred his love, and his fingers
Froze in his gloves, and he wondered,
Famishing, could he fire? Then he fired.

Now the grace praised his wicked act. At its end
The bird on the plate
Stared at his stricken appetite.
There had been nothing to do but surrender,
To kill and to eat; he ate as he had killed, with wonder.

At night on snowshoes on the drifting field
He wondered again, for whom had love stirred?
The stars glittered on the snow and nothing answered.
Then the Swan spread her wings, cross of the cold north,
The pattern and mirror of the acts of earth.
    (Galway Kinnell, 1960)
 

TW set 6 Your selections, as above, except that the poems should have been written in English by an African-American or-for this occasion-or other ethnic American, including Native Americans, or other poets of the "African diaspora" (e.g., Caribbean poets), and again, it should NOT have been written to be sung. Don't worry, songs will get their chance. Please turn these in by Friday Sept 24, if possible; otherwise, by Monday Sept 27. You may choose poems from TW if they have not been previously assigned.

TW Set 6
McKay, "Tiger" (92); Hughes, "Theme for English B"(122); Lane, "Midnight Song" (222); Knight, "Haiku 1-9"(265); and the following:

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 spring 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 back yard?

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 rise.
(Maya Angelou)

MA set 5. As above. by Sept 27 or at latest Sept 29, but choose poems written by Americans (of any ethnicity); you may choose poems from MA if they have not been previously assigned.
Longfellow, "The Rope Walk," (84); Poe, "The Raven" (102); Lindsay, "The Bronco that Would Not Be Broken" (258); Millay, "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" (430); and the following:

#280
I felt a funeral, in my brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading--treading--till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through--

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum--
Kept beating--beating--till I thought
My mind was going numb--

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space--began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here--

And then a Plan in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down--
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing--then--
    (Emily Dickinson)

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then--
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love.  At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow.  I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality.  With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts.  Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles.  The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
    (Sylvia Plath, 1960)

Catchup week-October 6, 8, 11-is over, but you may still ask to discuss previous poems.
 

SC set 8: Lyly, "Cupid and Campaspe" (103): King, "Sic Vita" (218); Pope, "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" (306), Shelley, "Ozymandias" (406); Bronte, "How Still, How Happy" (469);
 

Wicks, Susan:Landing [from The Clever Daughter (1996), Faber and Faber]

TW set 8 :  Tolson, "Uncle Rufus" (103); Brooks, "The Mother" (169); Fabio, "I would be for you Rain"(237); Patterson, "To a Weathercock" (252); Aubert, "All Singing in a Pie" (254); Dent, "Time Is a Motor" (268); and the following:
 

Africa

Then gravely a voice answered me:
Impetuous son, that young and robust tree
That tree over there
Splendidly alone midst white faded flowers
It is Africa your Africa that springs up again
Springs up patiently obstinately
And whose fruits ripen with
The bitter flavor of freedom.
    (David Diop)
 

MA set 7
Three poems from Desert Fathers, Uranium Daughters, by Debora Greger.  Penguin Poets, 1996.

Northwest Passage

The portage, as I remember,
was long and not the last, and treacherous,
the Shoshone woman perhaps to be trusted
to guide them through hostile territory,

perhaps not.  And when they came at length to nothing
but swamp, there was nothing to be done but wade in,
flintlock and powder held over their heads,
Lewis and Clark going first,

up to their armpits in the oozing Technicolor,
the drive-in movie burning like the visions
the nuns at school told us the saints saw,
burning in the desert.

And then I too slipped deeply
into sleep, a sated visionary,
because next we were driving home
past the mouth of the Yakima River,

the farthest up the Columbia Lewis and Clark went
before they turned back, making their way finally
to what they'd come for--open water.
Or so a sign we passed always claimed,

our one scrap of history.
I tasted the word like the host at Communion,
without the teeth, as the nuns had instructed,
until it dissolved into nothing.

Tonight someone else's father stood on the corner
in his shirtsleeves in the halo of streelight,
waiting for the bus to take him deep in the desert:
it was time for graveyard shift at the reactor.

The moon was a canoe tipped over in the river,
the river heavy, warmed by coolant from the reactor.
Along the shore you found the pearly husks
Of salmon, eyes wide, swimming with cloud.

Down to the Sea of the West, Lewis wrote,
along the banks, out over the water,
the tribes had built platforms to fish from,
so many they were almost continuous.

"And did you eat fish from the river
more than once a week when you were a child?"
the doctor will ask, but not for years yet,
not for years.
 
 
 

Psyche and Eros in Florida

In the subtropics it must be spring:
a flock of cedar waxwings
swarms the cabbage palm.
It clings to its shadow.  They whisper.

They devour the fruit no local bird wants.
Unswerving, they swerve through clotheslines.
Let their whispery cries be mine.
Their whisper of wings is yours.

But what good is sight?
In the dark, I thought, lay the struggle
of mind over body that kept Aquinas awake.
Whoever you were, you slept on.

By candlelight nothing is not beautiful.
The relief of your finely sculpted head.
The drop of wax that fell on your bare shoulder.
Why didn't you want me to see you?

The drop of red on each wing almost glows
this hour neither dark nor light.
Waxwings, forgive me.  Fly away north.
What was the dark like?

I remember the mind fogged with something not dream.
And afterwards
what of the traitorous, languorous body?
It lies down.  It begs.
 
 

Much Too Late

"Much too late," I said on the steps
of Santa Maria Maggiore, meaning it wasn't a ruin,
we could find something older and take each other's picture.

But you insisted and then we were inside,
the dim tonnage polished to a hush,
the guidebook proving you right;

not the apse built with the rubble of pagan Rome,
not the sliver of the Holy Infant's crib in silver,
the porphyry urn of early martyr's bones,

but the ceiling.  It rated a star in your book.
There was the first gold Columbus brought back
with the first slaves from the New World

to prove he was as good as his word.
The Queen gave it to the Pope to prove she was good.
On high, the papal coat of arms bristled with gilt,

the keys to the kingdom of heaven forever crossed,
flanked by plastered, impossible flowers.
High on the wall a mosaic flickered like faith:

a dreamer who'd hung around the courts
of the great all his life, which is to say
Moses, the man in the plainest robe,

still stretched out his rocky hand
to part a rocky patch of sea,
sure he'd been chosen by God,

sure the promised land showed up in a later panel--
though it never did, only the scouts sent ahead
to search for it, lost in the surrounding gold.

Thirty days and thirty nights in the desert
that was the ocean--too late for Columbus
to order the ships to turn back,

too late for him not to believe he was sent.
The ships hung it the eye of the wind,
the scent of dirt carried over the salt.

Much too late, we two Americans,
and this the wrong god to ask forgiveness of.
 

TWset9  McKay, "Harlem Shadows" (91); Brooks, "Kojo" (175); Cortez, "If the Drum Is a Woman" (320); Troupe, "My Poems Have Holes Sewn into Them" (416); Giovanni, "For Saundra" (418)

SC set 9  Hopkins, "The Wind-hover"(514); Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" (376);  Wordsworth, "Ode" (367); Vaughan, "The World" (273); Milton "Methought I saw" (251)

MA set 10-the poems of Robert Frost (you may skip "The Witch of Coos") (235-54).  Think about tone  and voice.
 

SC set 10 Anonymous, "Hierusalem," 68; "A Song of Ale," 69; Raleigh, "The Lie," 89; Sidney, "A Litany," 99; Drayton, "Since There's No Help," 119;  Shakespeare, "Full Fathom Five," 154; Donne, "Death Be Not Proud," 185; Blake, "London," 342; Byron, "When We Two Parted," 402;
Clough, "The Latest Decalogue," 472.

TW set 10  Some of these poems we have read before; please review them.

Brooks, "The Mother" (169) and "We Real Cool" (below)
Lorde, "Sahara" (282) and "Coal" (below)
Hughes, "Blues in Stereo" (below); Young, "The Blues Don't Change" (366)
Jeffers, "When I Know the Power of My Black Hand" (211); Evans, "Speak the Truth to the      People" (217)
Johnson, "The Banjo Player" (89) and Toomer, "Song of the Son" (94)

We Real Cool (Gwendolyn Brooks)

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.

Coal (Audre Lorde)

I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book--buy and sign and tear apart--
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders.  Others know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me

Love is word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.

Blues in Stereo (Langston Hughes)

YOUR NUMBER'S COMING OUT!                            TACIT
BOUQUETS I'LL SEND YOU
AND DREAMS I'LL SEND YOU
AND HORSES SHOD WITH GOLD
ON WHICH TO RIDE IF MOTORCARS
WOULD BE TOO TAME--
TRIUMPHAL ENTRY SEND YOU--
SHOUTS FROM THE EARTH ITSELF
BARE FEET TO BEAT THE GREAT DRUMBEAT
OF GLORY TO YOUR NAME AND MINE
ONE AND THE SAME:
YOU BAREFOOT, TOO,
IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES
WHERE AN ANCIENT RIVER FLOWS
PAST HUTS THAT HOUSE A MILLION BLACKS
AND THE WHITE GOD NEVER GOES
FOR THE MOON WOULD WHITE HIS WHITENESS
BEYOND ITS MASK OF WHITENESS
AND THE NIGHT MIGHT BE ASTONISHED
AND SO LOSE ITS REPOSE

IN A TOWN NAMED AFTER STANLEY
NIGHT EACH NIGHT COMES NIGHTLY           African
AND THE MUSIC OF OLD MUSIC'S                   drum-
BORROWED FOR THE HORNS                           beats
THAT DON'T KNOW HOW TO PLAY                 over
ON LPs THAT WONDER                                      blues
HOW THEY EVER GOT THAT WAY.                 that
                                                                                gradually
        WHAT TIME IS IT, MAMA?                        mount
        WHAT TIME IS IT NOW?                             in
        MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO ME--           intensity
        BUT I'M ASKING ANYHOW.                     to
        WHAT TIME IS IT MAMA?                         end
        WHAT TIME NOW?                                    in
                                                                               climax.
DOWN THE LONG HARD ROW THAT I BEEN HOEING                TACIT
I THOUGHT I HEARD THE HORN OF PLENTY BLOWING.
BUT I GOT TO GET A NEW ANTENNA LORD--
MY TV KEEPS ON SNOWING.

MA Set 10 is not in MA--it's T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats