A Postcard from the Volcano by Wallace Stevens (Lavinia)

A Postcard from the Volcano

BY WALLACE STEVENS

Children picking up our bones 

Will never know that these were once   

As quick as foxes on the hill; 

And that in autumn, when the grapes   

Made sharp air sharper by their smell   

These had a being, breathing frost; 

And least will guess that with our bones   

We left much more, left what still is   

The look of things, left what we felt 

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow   

Above the shuttered mansion house,   

Beyond our gate and the windy sky 

Cries out a literate despair. 

We knew for long the mansion's look   

And what we said of it became 

A part of what it is ... Children,   

Still weaving budded aureoles, 

Will speak our speech and never know, 

Will say of the mansion that it seems   

As if he that lived there left behind   

A spirit storming in blank walls, 

A dirty house in a gutted world, 

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,   

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Transience, Mortality, Generations

Stylistic features: Free verse, Tercets

Oranges by Roisin Kelly (Lavinia)

Oranges

BY ROISIN KELLY

I’ll choose for myself next time

who I’ll reach out and take

as mine, in the way

I might stand at a fruit stall

having decided

to ignore the apples

the mangoes and the kiwis

but hold my hands above

a pile of oranges

as if to warm my skin

before a fire.

Not only have I chosen

oranges, but I’ll also choose

which orange — I’ll test

a few for firmness

scrape some rind off

with my fingernail

so that a citrus scent

will linger there all day.

I won’t be happy

with the first one I pick

but will try different ones

until I know you. How

will I know you?

You’ll feel warm

between my palms

and I’ll cup you like

a handful of holy water.

A vision will come to me

of your exotic land: the sun

you swelled under

the tree you grew from.

A drift of white blossoms

from the orange tree

will settle in my hair

and I’ll know.

This is how I will choose

you: by feeling you

smelling you, by slipping

you into my coat.

Maybe then I’ll climb

the hill, look down

on the town we live in

with sunlight on my face

and a miniature sun

burning a hole in my pocket.

Thirsty, I’ll suck the juice

from it. From you.

When I walk away

I’ll leave behind a trail

of lamp-bright rind.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Love, Possession

Stylistic features: Free verse, extended metaphor

Nocturne by Louise Glück (Lavinia)

Nocturne

BY LOUISE GLÜCK

Mother died last night,

Mother who never dies.

Winter was in the air,

many months away

but in the air nevertheless.

It was the tenth of May.

Hyacinth and apple blossom

bloomed in the back garden.

We could hear

Maria singing songs from Czechoslovakia —

How alone I am —

songs of that kind.

How alone I am,

no mother, no father —

my brain seems so empty without them.

Aromas drifted out of the earth;

the dishes were in the sink,

rinsed but not stacked.

Under the full moon

Maria was folding the washing;

the stiff  sheets became

dry white rectangles of  moonlight.

How alone I am, but in music

my desolation is my rejoicing.

It was the tenth of May

as it had been the ninth, the eighth.

Mother slept in her bed,

her arms outstretched, her head

balanced between them.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Death, Family, Grief, Sorrow, Alienation, Escapism, Denial

Stylistic features: Free verse

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney (Lavinia)

Mid-Term Break

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbours 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.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Living, Death, Loss, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Family & Ancestors

Stylistic Features: Lyric poem, Tercet

hurtling by Stephanie Ye (Lavinia)

hurtling by Stephanie Ye

(the 'L', chicago)

i once saw a weeping man standing

at a window. our eyes met, and

for one fierce moment

i knew we shared a deep connection.

then the 'L' train i was on shot by,

a horizontal shape slicing the vertical,

sundering our budding relationship

decisively.

i still think of him sometimes,

especially on the 'L',

though i've never found his window again.

as if a hole opened

in the gleaming fabric of the city

and swallowed up the window

and the man;

then with a shimmer rippled shut, smoothening

itself out

to become another anonymous glass wall.

people look more beautiful up here,

coiled

in each window

like a portrait in a picture frame.

when i see someone looking, i always

look back. i indulge in these

random acts of intimacy,

because in the next moment

i am gone,

hurtling through the city

in the air.

Level: Lower/Upper Sec

Themes: disconnect, estrangement, alienation, urban life, human connection/relationships, intimacy, transience, global citizenship, cosmopolitanism

Stylistic Devices: Consistent use of the lowercase, free verse, extended metaphor

Traveling through the Dark by William E. Stafford (Andrea)

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car   

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;   

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,   

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;   

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;   

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,   

then pushed her over the edge into the river

For Jane by Charles Bukowski ( Andrea)

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

If by Rudyard Kipling ( Andrea)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Why a Man Cannot Have Wings by Alfian bin Sa'at (Andrea)

Because he will crash land on his head, assuming it to be
The strongest part of his body.

Because someone will put up a sign that reads:
Do Not Step on the Cirrus Clouds.

Because it does not even take a man hundreds of feet above
Sea-level to learn contempt.

Because there will be new categories of handicaps: bow-wings,
Ostrich disease, scaly feathers, carousel flight syndrome,
Or at a freak show: The Amazing Wingless Wonder.

Because he will have a new weapon, gravity,
And everything he releases becomes a missile,
Even glass marbles, books, the fatal music box.

Because he is lonely enough without being able to
Frame the house he lives in between his forefinger and thumb.

Because then the sky will shed its metaphors of freedom
And become another path for him to carry his burdens.

Because there will be a popular form of suicide:
Flying into foreign airspace and being gunned down;
All it takes is a nose-tip to press an invisible blue button.

Because each death in mid-air, each comic comet plunge,
Will be another enactment of the fall of Man.

Because in concentration camps people will break wings
And use the feathers for quills to write sonnets
And pillow stuffing for innocent dreams.

Because he will have less to fantasize about, less of miracles
And the word 'levitation' will not exist.

Because there will be children who will empty their bladders
Under cloud cover in an attempt to make yellow snow.

And because he might get the wrong notion that he is closer
To heaven, when he has not even come to a mile
Within the presence of angels, despite the resemblance

The Backseat of My Mother's Car by Julia Copus (Andrea)

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass;
I was calling to you – Daddy! – as we screeched away into
the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.
You were mouthing something I still remember, the noiseless words
piercing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunset
pouring itself out against the sky. The ensuing silence
was the one clear thing I could decipher –
the roar of the engine drowning your voice,
with the cool slick glass between us.
With the cool slick glass between us,
the roar of the engine drowning, your voice
was the one clear thing I could decipher –
pouring itself out against the sky, the ensuing silence
piercing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunset.
You were mouthing something: I still remember the noiseless words,
the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.
I was calling to you, Daddy, as we screeched away into
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched.
We left before I had time.

A Song on the End of the World by Czslaw Milosz (Andrea)

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

         

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop (Lavinia)

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; 

so many things seem filled with the intent 

to be lost that their loss is no disaster. 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 

places, and names, and where it was you meant 

to travel. None of these will bring disaster. 

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or 

next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. 

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident 

the art of losing’s not too hard to master 

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Loss, Love, Confession

Stylistic Features: Villanelle, Hyperbole, End-stopped lines, Refrains, Fixed Verse, Tercets, Quatrains

Boats by Cyril Wong (Cherie)

Boats by Cyril Wong

You and your photographs of boats;
that repeated metaphor for departure,

or simply the possibility of a voyage?
What you cannot tell me you tell me

with a vessel and its single passenger,
eyes fixed on some skylit conclusion.

Set apart and starkly upon a canvas
of tractable waves, brought to still

by the trigger-click of your camera,
like the sound a key makes when it

releases the lock. Your heart became
that lock; these images how you have

always articulated distance, a withdrawal.
Darling, there are just as many ways

of saying goodbye as there are ways
of letting you go. The boat is narrow

like the width of my heart after
impossible loss, cruel resignation;

this heart you ride in. Love, if this is how
you choose to leave me let me let you.

Level: Upper Sec
Themes: Love, Loss
Stylistic Features: Imagery, Metaphor, Metonym

How do I love thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Cherie)

How do I love thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's 
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears of all my life; and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death. 

Level: Lower Sec, Upper Sec
Themes: Love
Stylistic Features: Petrarchan Sonnet, Repetition, Hyperbole

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen (Cherie)

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Level: Upper Sec/ JC

Themes: War, Death,Violence

Stylistic Features: Shakespearean sonnet, alliteration, elegy, imagery

Kids Who Die by Langston Hughes

Kids Who Die by Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don't want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don't want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies'll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter's field,
Or the rivers where you're drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.

Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Black Disabled Art History 101 by Leroy F. Moore Jr

Black Disabled Art History 101 by Leroy F. Moore Jr

Sit down & listen
cause there will be a test at the end
Displaying & speaking
our history & culture
through music & art
From slavery to homeland security
Black disabled artists
roots grow deep
however this garden is starving for recognition
The most famous classical pianist
in the mid to late 19th century
was a Black Blind Autistic slave
Tom Wiggins aka Blind Tom was his slave name
his master used him to make money
and left him poor and broken
Horace Pippin, the first Black Disabled self-taught painter
lost his arm in WW1
using his left arm
to prop up his right forearm
crafted his first masterpiece depicting horrors of war
Oh, the price he paid for being Black, Poor,
Self-taught & Disabled
Blues is the Black Anthem
attract blind singers & musicians
to make a living on the streets
some made it into recording studios
Blind Willie McTell born in 1898
played on the streets of Atlanta
Blind Willie Johnson born around 1902
a street evangelist
stepmother threw lye
in young Johnson’s eyes
causing blindness
Johnson became the first
gospel guitarist too record
he died of pneumonia
hospital refused admittance
due to his blindness
Blind Blake & Blind Boone’s
Birthdates are not known
Blind John William Boone formed
his own concert company
traveling all over the country
more than 8,000 concerts
in the USA Canada, Europe & Mexico
The most popular Male Blues
recording artists of the twenties
was Blind Lemon Jefferson
he was also a street performer
Black deaf schools
in the fifties produced
independent businesses like barber shops
down south and social clubs in the East
Writers like Mary Herring Wright, Linwood
Smith & Ernest Hairston
voice the experiences of our Black Deaf Brothers & Sisters
Listen to the Melody Heartbeat of a Black Deaf Woman
Jades fingers reads I’m a proud Black Deaf Woman
Black sign language was developed ‘cause societal
attitudes & educational policy helped create a dual
system and what grew?
A strong Black Deaf identity
integration killed Black Sign & almost
erased Black Deaf Culture
Let’s travel to Jamaica
Where in the fifties Polio infected the island
Skelly, Wise & Apple are Israel Vibration
they met each other
at Mona Rehabilitation Center
got kicked out ‘cause their religious beliefs in Rasta
homeless, poor & disabled
began to sing on the streets
now they are the Fathers of Reggae
Back to Africa
tribal dancing
to the drumming, guitar strumming and singing
of Amadou & Mariam
a Blind married couple
blending Rock, Pop, Jazz & Hip Hop
with an international flavor
from Cuba to Asia & India to America
Coming home to the Bay Area
to swing from Charles Curtis Blackwell & Avotcha’s
jazz Poe-tree & celebrate
Disabled African American Visual Artists
at Harambee’s annual art show called KUUMBA
So get out your number two pencils for your final
on Black Disabled Art History

Cézanne by Gertrude Stein

Cézanne by Gertrude Stein

The Irish lady can say, that to-day is every day. Caesar can say that

every day is to-day and they say that every day is as they say.

In this way we have a place to stay and he was not met because

he was settled to stay. When I said settled I meant settled to stay.

When I said settled to stay I meant settled to stay Saturday. In this

way a mouth is a mouth. In this way if in as a mouth if in as a

mouth where, if in as a mouth where and there. Believe they have

water too. Believe they have that water too and blue when you see

blue, is all blue precious too, is all that that is precious too is all

that and they meant to absolve you. In this way Cézanne nearly did

nearly in this way. Cézanne nearly did nearly did and nearly did.

And was I surprised. Was I very surprised. Was I surprised. I was

surprised and in that patient, are you patient when you find bees.

Bees in a garden make a specialty of honey and so does honey. Honey

and prayer. Honey and there. There where the grass can grow nearly
four times yearly.

Deliverance by Grace Chia Krakovic

Deliverance by Grace Chia Krakovic

What I would give
to give you, child,
this broken pearl I call, earth,
this womb lacerated by
a thousand wounds, hundred swords,
a dozen thoughts tainted by the daily wars
of half-wits;

this blackened crystal of crust
made milk by a soft cry of your unborn voice: Mama!
Child, with this one word, you
salvage this broken mass, give it meaning,
bring down arms, make it whole again;
and I remember once more, why it is
that you are the one
who deliver me.