Introduction to Poetry

Poems:

1.  Billy Collins, Introduction to Poetry                  

2.  Sharon Olds, First Hour

3.  Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting                               

4.  Mark Doty, Golden Retrievals

5. Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll

6. Richard Wilbur, A Barred Owl

7. Billy Collins, The History Teacher           

8. Taylor Mali, Like, Totally Whatever

9. Jan Heller Levi, Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad  

10. Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

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.

“First Hour”

by Sharon Olds

That hour, I was most myself. I had shrugged                              

my mother slowly off, I lay there

taking my first breaths, as if

the air of the room was blowing me

like a bubble. All I had to do

was go out along the line of my gaze and back,

feeling gravity, silk, the

pressure of the air a caress, smelling on

myself her creamy blood. The air

was softly touching my skin and mouth,

entering me and drawing forth the little

sighs I did not know as mine.

I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet

and looked, and did the wordless thought,

my mind was getting its oxygen

direct, the rich mix by mouth.

I hated no one. I gazed and gazed,

and everything was interesting, I was

free, not yet in love, I did not

belong to anyone, I had drunk

no milk yet—no one had

my heart. I was not very human. I did not

know there was anyone else. I lay

like a god, for an hour, then they came for me

and took me to my mother.

“Hawk Roosting”

by Ted Hughes

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.                                  

Inaction, no falsifying dream

Between my hooked head and hooked feet:

Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!

The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray

Are of advantage to me;

And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

There is no sophistry in my body:

My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.

For the one path of my flight is direct

Through the bones of the living.

No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.

Nothing has changed since I began.

My eye has permitted no change.

I am going to keep things like this.

“Golden Retrievals”

by Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention                    

seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.

Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh

joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue

of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?

Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,

thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning

—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:

to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,

my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,

entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy

This girlchild was born as usual

and presented dolls that did pee-pee

and miniature GE stoves and irons

and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.

Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:

You have a great big nose and fat legs.

She was healthy, tested intelligent,

possessed strong arms and back,

abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.

She went to and fro apologizing.

Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.

She was advised to play coy,

exhorted to come on hearty,

exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.

Her good nature wore out

like a fan belt.

So she cut off her nose and her legs

and offered them up.

In the casket displayed on satin she lay

with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,

a turned-up putty nose,

dressed in a pink and white nightie.

Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.

Consummation at last.

To every woman a happy ending.

A Barred Owl by Richard Wilbur

The warping night air having brought the boom

Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,

We tell the wakened child that all she heard

Was an odd question from a forest bird,

Asking of us, if rightly listened to,

“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,

Can also thus domesticate a fear,

And send a small child back to sleep at night

Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight

Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw

Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

The History Teacher by Billy Collins

Trying to protect his students' innocence

he told them the Ice Age was really just

the Chilly Age, a period of a million years

when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,

named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more

than an outbreak of questions such as

"How far is it from here to Madrid?"

"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,

and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom

on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom

for the playground to torment the weak

and the smart,

mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home

past flower beds and white picket fences,

wondering if they would believe that soldiers

in the Boer War told long, rambling stories

designed to make the enemy nod off.

Totally like whatever, you know? by Taylor Mali

In case you hadn’t noticed,

it has somehow become uncool

to sound like you know what you’re talking about?

Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?

Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s

have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?

Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences—so called

because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true, okay,

as opposed to other things are, like, totally, you know, not—

have been infected by a totally hip

and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?

Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;

this is just like the word on the street, you know?

It’s like what I’ve heard?

I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?

I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?

Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?

Have they been, like, chopped down

with the rest of the rain forest?

Or do we have, like, nothing to say?

Has society become so, like, totally . . .

I mean absolutely . . . You know?

That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .

whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness

is just a clever sort of . . . thing

to disguise the fact that we’ve become

the most aggressively inarticulate generation

to come along since . . .

you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,

I challenge you: To speak with conviction.

To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks

the determination with which you believe it.

Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,

it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.

You have to speak with it, too.

Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad by Jan Heller Levi

I think you are most yourself when you are swimming;

slicing the water with each stroke,

the funny way you breathe, your mouth cocked

as though you’re yawning.

You’re neither fantastic nor miserable

at getting from here to there.

You wouldn’t win any medals, Dad,

but you wouldn’t drown.

I think how different everything might have been

had I judged your loving

like I judge your sidestroke, your butterfly,

your Australian crawl.

But I always thought I was drowning

in that icy ocean between us,

I always thought you were moving too slowly to save me,

When you were moving as fast as you can.

My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath  

Could make a small boy dizzy;  

But I hung on like death:  

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans  

Slid from the kitchen shelf;  

My mother’s countenance  

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist  

Was battered on one knuckle;  

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head  

With a palm caked hard by dirt,  

Then waltzed me off to bed  

Still clinging to your shirt.