50
“Introduction to Poetry” (1988)
By Billy Collins (1941- )
From The Apple That Astonished Paris (1996)
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
“Hairbands”
By Julia Alvarez (1950-)
From The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004)
My husband has given away my hairbands
in my dream to the young women he works with,
my black velvet, my mauve, my patent leather one,
the olive band with the magenta rose
whose paper petals crumple in the drawer,
the flowered crepe, the felt with a rickrack
of vines, the twined mock-tortoise shells.
He says I do not need them, I’ve cut my hair,
so it no longer falls in my eyes when I read,
or when we are making love and I bend over him.
But no, I tell him, you do not understand,
I want my hairbands even if I don’t need them.
These are the trophies of my maidenhood,
the satin dress with buttons down the back,
the scented box with the scalloped photographs.
This is my wild-haired girlhood dazzled with stories
of love, the romantic heroine with the pale, operatic face
who throws herself on the train tracks of men’s arms.
These are the chastened girl-selves I gave up
to become the woman who could be married to you.
But every once in a while, I pull them out
of my dresser drawer and touch them to my cheek,
worn velvet and faded silk, mi tesoro, mi juventud—
which my husband has passed on to the young women
who hold for him the promise of who I was.
And in my dream I weep real tears that wake me up
to my husband sleeping beside me that deep sleep
that makes me tremble thinking of what is coming.
And I slip out of bed to check that they are still mine,
my crumpled rose, my mauve, my black hairbands.
“Out, Out-” (1910)
By Robert Frost (1874-1963)
From Mountain Interval (1916)
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
“Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1921)
By Robert Frost (1874-1963)
From The Poetry of Robert Frost (1923)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
For further reading: Poem Analysis
“The Riddle of Strider” (1954)
By J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
From The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
For further reading: Poem Analysis
“O Me! O Life!” (1847)
By Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
From Leaves of Grass (1855)
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
For further reading: Guide to the Classics
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1947)
By Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
From Poems of Dylan Thomas (1951)
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.
For further reading: The Story Behind the Poem
“One Bullet, One Hundred Sets of Hands” (2021)
By Jamar Jackson (2006-)
From The Pulitzer Center’s 2022 Fighting Words Poetry Contest (2022)
August’s summer reminisces of
A sweltering breeze of death
That creeps into the evening.
That hurls into the right side of my chest. That flows straight through and
back to St. Louis and drifts down to Baltimore.
That hurls into another brown boy’s leg,
That pounds into another one’s shoulder,
That hopefully won’t pierce another one between the eyes.
The breeze lingers through the hole in my chest
As if it penetrated my brown skin One Hundred times,
Before long I’m slightly eased by the cold sweats
And I feel numb to the sweltering breeze.
By the time the hole is tended to,
Ten Sets of Hands chase what’s left of the breeze through the city
While another Ten hold firmly to my wound,
Enduring the gusts emerging from the breeze’s work of art
By the time the sweltering breeze has swung open the hospital doors,
Ten Sets of Hands frisk me, hoping to discover
Whether I ran with or against the breeze,
While another Ten lay me out on a stretcher
Hastily, so to outrun the cold sweats
Before they drain me of my last bit of life.
By the time I’m inside the trauma bay,
Ten Sets of Hands have cut my clothes
And located the bullet hole,
Another Ten get my blood pressure and insert an IV,
While another Ten put me on a ventilator.
Nothing except the memory of the breeze lingers,
The whistle before it struck me,
The burning I felt,
The flash.
By the time I’m able to speak,
Ten Sets of Hands pick my brain,
Ten Sets of Hands are preparing medication,
And the last Ten make a phone call,
Bracing the might of horrific shrieks and cries of anger and desperation.
It astonishes me
That such a fatal breeze
Blows so much that
It’s almost like background noise
For further reading: This Black Teen Deals With Gun Violence Every Day, So He Wrote A Gut-Wrenching Poem About It — And Won The Top Prize
“Her Voice” (2016)
By Jasmin Kaur (1992- )
From When You Ask Me Where I’m Going (2019)
scream
so that one day
a hundred years from now
another sister will not dry her tears
wondering where in history
she lost her voice.
