Looking for a Poem!

[MexThorn]

Hey everyone. I'm looking for a poem. I got an assignment that needs to be done by friday 3/3.

The assignment is to find a poem and resite it infront of the class then answer some questions about it. I'm a Jr. in high school and this assignment is worth 1 credit. So I really need to do this lol. I don't know a lot of poetry. I know a little from school, but if anyone knows some good poety that will be fairly simple to remmeber and resite and learn within a few days please let me know.


Thank you in advance!

-Mex

[Jay]

Were you given any requirements about the poem's lenght? If you can't remember longer poems (like myself), you should be able to memorize this one (as I can remember it :p)

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost

Now if you know the questions beforehand you might find the answers or hints on the web. If not, you might still want to do some research on your poem so you'd be pretty familiar with its imaginery, symbolism, whatever devices would your poem contain.
Good luck with your assignement! :D

[MexThorn]

Wow! Thank you Jay! I love Robert Frost, the long ones are a little hard for me to understand lol. I did a few projects on 2 of his poems last year. Why didn't I think of him. I like the poem you posted. I think i'll use it and research it some more and found out the background of it.

[Scheherazade]

How about e.e. cummings poem?

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness


It is only one sentence and there are different ways of interpreting it. And it would look very interesting when you write it on the board as well.

[blp]

Hard to recite. I suggest:

If You

Robert Creeley

If you were going to get a pet
What kind of animal would you get.

A soft-bodied dog, a hen
Feathers and fur to begin it again

When the sun goes down and it gets dark
I saw an animal in a park

Bring it home to give it to you.
I have seen animals break in two

You were hoping for something soft
And loyal and clean and wondrously careful.

A form of otherwise vicious habit
Could have long ears and be called a rabbit

Dead. Died. Will die. Want
Morning, midnight I asked you

If you were going to get a pet
What kind of animal would you get.

[blp]

Or how there's this:

The Emperor of Ice-cream

Wallace Stevens


Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her hornéd feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

[MexThorn]

Thank you so much blp and Scheherazade.

I think E.E. Cummings is kinda confuesing to read. I don't wanna give my classmates a headache lol.

The 2 that blp suggested are pretty good. Kinda long both good poems.


Thank you so much this is going to me a lot of fun. :D

[TodHackett]

Hey everyone. I'm looking for a poem. I got an assignment that needs to be done by friday 3/3.

The assignment is to find a poem and resite it infront of the class then answer some questions about it. I'm a Jr. in high school and this assignment is worth 1 credit. So I really need to do this lol. I don't know a lot of poetry. I know a little from school, but if anyone knows some good poety that will be fairly simple to remmeber and resite and learn within a few days please let me know.


Thank you in advance!

-Mex

A few suggestions:

Two from W.H. Auden:

"August, 1968":

The ogre does what ogres can--
Deeds quite impossible for man;
And yet, one prize is beyond his reach--
The ogre cannot master speech.

Upon a subjugated plain,
Amid its desperate and slain,
The ogre stomps with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

"Epitaph on a Tyrant":

Perfection, of a kind, is what he was after
His speeches were simple and easy to understand
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And showed some interest in armies and fleets

And when he laughed, repectable senators roared with laughter,
And when he cried, little children died in the streets.

And here's an obscure one from an old professor of mine:

"Mrs. Schmidt Talks About Pollution"
by William Dunlop

You couldn't ever hand the wash outside--
The wind might blow our way. My Heinrich's cuffs
Once nice and white, would get blackened with the stuff
Before he'd been an hour at work. We tried
To keep things decent, always took a pride
In our appearances, but just one puff
Of air would make us smutty. Gritty it was, like black fluff,
But sort of greasy too. It never dried,
But smeared our hands-- the Devil to get clean!
And this new soap we tried just made things worse...
Gritty it was, and never lathered rightly.

Funny to think of now, of course,
It's been so long since then.
But oh, dear! what a curse--
Living near Dachau, back in forty-three.

What can I say? I go in for grim poetry. If you'd like more, I'd love to give them. Best of luck!

[Xamonas Chegwe]

That last one is fantastic Tod - was your professor the unnamable by any chance? Or are they all like that?

Seriously, the best line was, "Funny to think of now, of course,". It sets you up for the reversal so well. One of those poems that has an immediate impact the first time you read it that you know you will never get again - you just want to pass it on, so someone else can get it.

Thanks for posting that.

[TodHackett]

XC--

Yeah... it's pretty frickin' awesome.

On the rare occasions that I am in a position to explain what poets mean when they talk about the "turn" in a poem, I use either that one or E.A. Richards' "Richard Cory".

Professor Dunlop is an Associate Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Washington, and opera critic for the Seattle Times. The course I took from him was called "Special Topics: Shakespeare & Opera", and it was incredible (how could such a course NOT be?).

That poem and many others worth reading, appear in a book called _Caruso for the Children, and other poems_. ISBN 096512102X; you can find it at Barnes&Noble.com. Knowing him as I do, I know he'd love to see his book getting sold!

Don't know who Unnamable is... but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that he's W.D.

[TodHackett]

Oh, and those were by heart, so I might have taken liberties...

I used to be a stickler about that. Then I read Ong.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Tod,

Barnes and Noble want to charge me more than the price of the book to ship it! $12.95 to ship a book to England is ridiculous! I found it secondhand on Amazon.

btw. I am buying this on the strength of that poem, I hate opera!

[TodHackett]

I will quote "Freezing Level" in my book.

"The Checkup"-- (I think. The one with the watch, the one about visiting the doctor...)

He writes some other WWII poems, but I don't get them. Do you?

I'm curious to hear your reactions...

[MexThorn]

Thank you so much everyone. I apreciate your help.

I'm sorry to say that I was sick last week with the flu and just got back to school today. I am going to talk with my teacher after class to see if I can still do my poem. I submitted a few to her that I got off here. Thank you again so much to everyone that helped me. My teacher liked a lot of the poems I showed her from here. The deadline was last Friday so i'm going to cross my fingers I can still get credit. :(

[Pensive]

What about this one?

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.