Poem Set 2

Swan and Shadow by John Hollander

Poetry

by Nikki Giovanni

poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
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 ear
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

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

The Red Wheelbarrow

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BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

so much depends 

upon 

a red wheel 

barrow 

glazed with rain 

water 

beside the white 

chickens

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)

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BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - 

That perches in the soul - 

And sings the tune without the words - 

And never stops - at all - 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - 

And sore must be the storm - 

That could abash the little Bird 

That kept so many warm - 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land - 

And on the strangest Sea - 

Yet - never - in Extremity, 

It asked a crumb - of me.

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

Blood

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BY 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 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?