Poetry UNIT

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.


"Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

A dog has died by Pablo Neruda

A dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

______________________________________________________________

"The Raven" By Edgar Allan Poe

Click on the link to get to an audio version of the poem, read by Christopher Walken

http://instruct.uwo.ca/mit/204f/audio/raven.mp3

Then answer the following questions:


1.What are your impressions of the narrator?



2.How does the narrator respond to the noise he hears?



3.What does the narrator ask of the raven?



4.What is the response?


5.What does the speaker order the raven to do?



6.During the course of The Raven, what changes occur in the narrator's attitude towards the bird?


7.What brings about this change?



8.What does the raven come to represent?



9.How does the narrator's emotional state change during the poem?



10.How are these changes related to the changes in his attitude toward the raven?



11.How is the word “nevermore” related to the narrator's emotional state at the end of the poem?


EXERCISE

Writing Poetry is Hard! Below is a simple formula that will help you focus your attension and help you get past writer's block.

I once
____________________________________________________________________________

I used to ____________________________________________________________________________

I want
____________________________________________________________________________

I dream of ____________________________________________________________________________

Life is like ____________________________________________________________________________

Death is
____________________________________________________________________________


I remember _____________________________________________________________________________
I crave ______________________________________________________________________________
My friends ______________________________________________________________________________

They
_____________________________________________________________________________

I see
_____________________________________________________________________________

I hear
______________________________________________________________________________
I fear that ______________________________________________________________________________

When I think of ________________________________

I think of ____________________________________________

I’m supposed to _______________________________________________________________________________

But instead, I _______________________________________________________________________________

When I’m tired I
_______________________________________________________________________________

If I hurt ________________________________________,

then I ______________________________________________

Sleep __________________________________ me, but

___________________________________________ drains me.

When ___________________ comes,

I pretend to
_________________________________________________________