"NI" means "Norton Introduction to Poetry," ed. J. Paul Hunter. "TW" means "Trouble the Water," ed. Jerry W.Ward, Jr. The page number refers to the page on which the poem starts; read the whole poem! In NI you will find that Hunter has many helpful comments both before and after some of the poems. In both books, look in the back for very brief summaries of the poets' lives (Ward's is complete; Hunter omits poets represented by only one poem).
Stories
NI set 1: "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (5), "To Have without
Holding" (22), "Why Should a Foolish Marriage Vow" (24), "Hanging Fire"
(78), "Mr. Flood's Party" (225), "Sir Patrick Spens" (237), "Western Wind"
(289), "My Last Duchess" (432).
TW set 1: "Vasti" (45), "The Creation" (73), "Transfer" (116), "Runagate, Runagate" (147), "Where Have You Gone" (217)
NI set 2: pp. 115-125, 166-172: please read prose as well as poems.
NI set 3: "Grandmother, a Caribbean Indian" (Sapia, 130); "Forgetfulness"
(Hart Crane, 177); "Goldenrod" (Oliver, 281); "Tithonus" (Tennyson, 580);
Williams, "This Is Just to Say" (593), "Sailing to Byzantium" (Yeats, 601)
If you haven't got the book, here
are a couple of the shorter poems to get started on.
TW set 2: "Soon One Mawnin" (6),"Motherless Child" (6), Grimke , 3 poems (82-83), "Ribbons and Lace"(199); 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)
NI set 4: A Valediction forbidding Mourning (check p. # in index), Ode to a Nightingale (321), A Noiseless Patient Spider (585), A Supermarket in California (538), and these two:
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.
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.
TW set 3: "Nobody Knows the Trouble I see," 7; Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask" (68); J.W. Johnson,"Lift Every Voice and Sing" (75) and "O Black and Unknown Bards" (78); Braithwaite, "Del Cascar" (80), Tolson, "Madam Alpha Devine" (105), Bontemps, "Golgotha Is a Mountain" (126); Cullen, "Heritage"(130); Danner, "And through the Caribbean Sea" (167), Evans, "I Am a Black Woman" (216)
NI set 5: pp. 55-59; Plath, "Daddy," 461; Rich, "Letters in the Family," 66; pp. 198-205, 208-211.
NI set 6: pp.179-181, 212-223, 370, 393
TW set 4: 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)
NI set 7: pp 33-43
NI set 8: 438-441, 515, 520 (both); 522-524, 528 ( ["My life closed twice"]), 530 ("Death Be Not Proud")
NI/TW set 1: NI pp 253-270; TW 91, 147, 170, 325
NI/TW set 2: NI 558, 585; TW 258, 294, 423