Nikki Giovanni - Tredyffrin/Easttown School District



Nikki Giovanni

“Poetry”

Poetry is motion graceful

As a fawn

Strong like the eye

Finding peace in a crowded room

We poets tend to think our words are golden

Though emotion speaks too

Loudly to be defined

By silence

Sometimes after midnight or just

Before

The dawn

We sit typewriter in hand

Pulling loneliness around us

Forgetting our lovers or children who are sleeping

Ignoring the weary wariness

Of our own logic

To compose a poem

No one understands it

It never says “love me” for poets are

Beyond love

It never says “accept me” for poems seek not

acceptance but controversy

it only says “I am” and therefore

I concede that you are too

a poem is pure energy

horizontally contained between the mind

of the poet and the ear of the reader

if it does not sing discard the dear

for poetry is song

if it does not delight discard

the heart for poetry is joy

if it does not inform then close

off the brain for it is dead

if it cannot heed the insistent message

that life is precious

which is all we poets

wrapped in our loneliness

are trying to say

“How to Eat a Poem”

Eve Merriam

Don’t be polite.

Bite in.

Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice

that may run down your chin.

It is ready and ripe now, wherever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon

Or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core

Or stem

Or rind

Or pit

Or seed

Or skin

To throw away.

“Filling Station” Elizabeth Bishop

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.

“A Deserted Barn” Larry Woiwode

I am a deserted barn—

My cattle robbed from me

My horses gone,

Light leaking in my sides, sun

Piercing my tin roof

Where it’s torn.

I am a deserted barn.

Dung’s still in my gutter.

It shrinks each year as side planks shrink,

Letting in more of the elements,

And flies.

Worried by termites, dung beetles,

Maggots, and rats,

Visited by pigeons and hawks,

No longer able to say what shall enter,

Or what shall not,

I am a deserted barn.

I stand in Michigan,

A gray shape at the edge of a cedar swamp.

Starlings come to my peak,

Dirty, and perch there;

Swallows light on bent

Lightning rods whose blue

Globes have gone to

A tenant’s son and his .22.

My door is torn.

It sags from rusted rails it once rolled upon,

Waiting for a wind to lift it loose;

Then a bigger wind will take out

My back wall.

But winter is what I fear,

When swallows and hawks

Abandon me, when insects and rodents retreat,

When starlings, like the last of bad thoughts, go off,

And nothing is left to fill me

Except reflections—

Reflections, at noon,

From the cold cloak of snow, and

Reflections, at night, from the reflected light of the moon.

“the/sky/was” E.E. Cummings

The

Sky

Was

Can dy lu

Minous

Edible

Spry

Pinks shy

Lemons

Greens coo l choc

Olate

s.

un der,

a lo

co

mo

tive s pout

ing

vi

o

lets

“Blackberry Eating” Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September

Among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries

To eat blackberries for breakfast,

The stalks very prickly, a penalty

They earn for knowing the

Black art

Of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them

Lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries

Fall almost unbidden to my tongue,

As words sometimes do, certain

Peculiar words

Like strengths or squinched,

Many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,

Which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well

In the silent, startled, icy black language

Of blackberry-eating in late September.

“Forgotten Language” Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of flowers,

Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,

Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,

And shared a conversation with the housefly

In my bed.

Once I heard and answered all the questions

of the crickets,

And joined the crying of each falling dying

flake of snow,

Once I spoke the language of the flowers…

How did it go?

How did it go?

“Hector the Collector” Shel Silverstein

Hector the Collector

Collected bits of string,

Collected dolls with broken heads

And rusty bells that would not ring.

Pieces out of picture puzzles,

Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,

Twists of wires, worn-out tires,

Paper bags and broken bricks.

Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,

Gatlin’ guns that wouldn’t shoot,

Leaky boats that wouldn’t float

And stopped-up horns that wouldn’t toot.

Butter knives that had no handles,

Copper keys that fit no locks,

Rings that were too small for fingers,

Dried-up leaves and patched-up socks.

Worn-out belts that had no buckles.

‘Lectric trains that had no tracks.

Airplane models, broken bottles,

Three-legged chairs and cups with cracks.

Hector the collector

Loved these things with all his soul—

Loved them more than shining diamonds,

Loved them more than glistenin; gold.

Hectore called to all the people,

“Come and share my treasure trunk!”

And all the silly sightless people

Came and looked…and called it junk.

“The Lost Parrott” Naomi Shihab Nye

He talks slowly, like his voice travels far

To get out of his body

A dream-parrot?

No, a real parrot!

Write about it

He squirms, looks nervous, everyone else is almost finished

And he hasn’t started

If felt

What left?

The parrot

He hunches over the table, pencil gripped in fist,

Shaping the heavy letters

Days later we will write story-poems, sound-poems,

But always the same subject for Carlos

It left

He will insist on reading it and the class will look puzzled

The class is tired of the parrot

Write more, Carlos

I can’t

Why not?

I don’t know where it went

Each day when I leave he stares at the ceiling

Maybe he is planning an expedition

Into the back streets of San Antonio

Armed with nets and ripe mangoes

He will find the parrot nesting in a rain gutter

This time he will guard it carefully, make sure it stays

Before winter comes and his paper goes white in all directions

Before anything else he loves

Gets away.

“My Father’s Song”

Simon Ortiz

Wanting to say things,

I miss my father tonight.

His voice, the slight catch,

The depth from his thin chest,

The tremble of emotion

In something he has just said

To his son, his song:

We planted corn one Spring at Acu—we planted several times

But this one particular time

I remember the soft damp sand in my hand.

My father had stopped at one point to show me an overturned furrow;

The plowshare had unearthed

The burrow nest of a mouse

In the soft moist sand.

Very gently, he

Scooped tiny pink animals

Into the palm of his hand

And told me to touch them.

We took them to the edge

Of the field and put

Them in the shade

Of a sand moist clod.

I remember the very softness

Of cool and warm sand and tiny alive mice and my father saying things.

“The Charge of the Light Brigade”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

“Charge for the guns!” he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

2.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismay’d?

Not tho’ the soldier knew

Someone had blunder’d

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

3.

Cannon to the right of them,

Cannon to the left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred.

“Corners of the Sky” Author Unknown

Our earth is round, and, among other things

That means that you and I can hold

Completely different

Points of view and both be right.

The difference of our positions will show

Stars in your window. I cannot even imagine.

Your sky may burn with light,

While mine, at the same moment,

Spreads beautiful to darkness.

Still, we must choose how we separately corner

The circling universe of our experience

Once chosen, our cornering will determine

The message of any star and darkness we encounter.

“Under the Apple Tree”

Diana Rivera

I like it here,

Under the apple tree,

Knotty, with its hollow

Belly

Here

Sitting on its branch

Above stone fences that separate pastures,

Taking life

Here

With the sun that strokes

The sides of trees

Casting its shadows on emerald hills.

I like it here,

Entering the dark crevice of trunks,

Studying the butterfly’s tiny blue hearts

On powdery wings.

Like horses with their swerved necks,

I concentrate on grass.

Earthworms insert themselves into the earth like glossy, pink pins!

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download