National Poetry month

"Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events."

In celebration of poetry month, you will search for a poem/poet that you may find interesting. Make sure to stay on this page (poets. org) and that you not only post your poem, but speak about the poet as well as provide insight about the poem you chose. You will be sharing it with the class. Feel free to explore the site and the interesting things that they offer you.

http://www.poets.org/index.php

Poet Project Presentation

For this project, you will be choosing a poet to present and discuss with your classmates. The poet must be from the list that will be provided by your teacher in order to get credit for this project. You will be required to give a short biography presentation on your poet as well as recite one of their poems by memory. You will be expected to talk about the poem and explain why you chose to recite it. This will count as two test grades for this marking period.

1. Choose a poet and present a picture of the poet.
2. Must show full understanding of the poet’s life as a writer
3. Discuss some of their most famous poetry and what made them different.
4. How did society feel about their poetry?
5. Recite the poem
6. Discuss why you chose that poem and what you liked about it .
7. Explain what you understood from the poem and provide a connection.

1. e.e cummings- Kawaan

2. Emily Dickinson- Melissa

3. Billy Collins- Capo

4. Ezra Pound - Travis

5. Lewis Carrol- Kaylin

6. W. B. Yeats- Katina

7. T.S. Elliot- Yami

8. Pablo Neruda- Jose Q

9. Dylan Thomas- Hailee

10. William Shakespeare-Manny 
 
11. Robert Frost- Wesley

12. Maya Angelou- Andy

13. Nikki Giovanni__Cynthia

14. Gary Soto_Genesis

15. Walt Whitman _Cristina
 
16. Marge Piercy___Yogeidy

17. Charles Baudelaire_Juan

18. Stanley Kunitz_Angel

19. Gwendolyn Brooks__Sahara

20. Yusef Komunyakaa _Jesse

21. Joseph Rudyard Kipling _Caitlyn

22. Sylvia Plath _Rosemary

23. William Carlos Williams----- Silvestre

24. May Swenson- Taiona

25. Langston Hughes- Brandon

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

 

 

Writing response: Look at the progresson of the poem, how does it help our understanding of how the speaker felt on that day? Connect to the poem by thinking of a time where an event changed your life.

Water picture

Water Picture

by:May Swenson 

In the pond in the park 
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and 
wriggle gently. Chimneys 
are bent legs bouncing 
on clouds below. A flag 
wags like a fishhook 
down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge 
is an eye, with underlid 
in the water. In its lens 
dip crinkled heads with hats 
that don't fall off. Dogs go by, 
barking on their backs. 
A baby, taken to feed the 
ducks, dangles upside-down, 
a pink balloon for a buoy.

Treetops deploy a haze of 
cherry bloom for roots, 
where birds coast belly-up 
in the glass bowl of a hill; 
from its bottom a bunch 
of peanut-munching children 
is suspended by their 
sneakers, waveringly.

A swan, with twin necks 
forming the figure 3, 
steers between two dimpled 
towers doubled. Fondly 
hissing, she kisses herself, 
and all the scene is troubled:
water-windows splinter, 
tree-limbs tangle, the bridge 
folds like a fan.

Shooting Rats

Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump
by David Bottoms
Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride to the dump in carloads to turn our headlights across the wasted field, freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish. Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still like dead beer cans. Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow into garbage, hide in old truck tires, rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds, or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light toward the darkness at the edge of the dump. It's the light they believe kills. We drink and load again, let them crawl

Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun   by William Shakespeare   My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

We Never Know by: Yusef Komunyakaa

He danced with tall grass
for a moment, like he was swaying
with a woman. Our gun barrels
glowed white-hot.
When I got to him,
a blue halo
of flies had already claimed him.
I pulled the crumbed photograph
from his fingers.
There's no other way
to say this: I fell in love.
The morning cleared again,
except for a distant mortar
& somewhere choppers taking off.
I slid the wallet into his pocket
& turned him over, so he wouldn't be
kissing the ground.

Poem of the Day

Do not go gentle into that good night
by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.