"TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK" by William Stafford

TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK

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 wildnerness listen.

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

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

—William Stafford

"WHAT WORK IS"; By Philip Levine

WHAT WORK IS

By Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any

reason he wants.  You love your brother
now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,

just because you don't know what work is.

TERMS TO KEEP IN MIND

TERMS TO KEEP IN MIND

The “I” of the poem is not the poet but someone who knows a great deal about the poet (Bell)

Narrative and lyric poetry

Prosody—rhythm of the human voice

Sound and rhythm

Image—uses concrete specific language (vs. abstract)

Metaphor or simile (like, as)

Tone and diction

Phrases—prepositional, participial

Chunking—syntactic units that drive the rhythm in a poem

Added or coordinated sentences (paratactic)

Subordinated sentences (hypotactic)

Noun style--nominalizations

Verb style—uses strong verbs

Lexicon—words

Plain colloquial rhetoric or conversational speech—one of American's great accomplishments (Bell)

Monosyllabic (Anglo-Saxon) words of one syllable

Polysyllabic (Latinate) words of more than one syllable

Adjectives are subjective, give evidence of the eye, the I of the poet (e.g., Sylvia Plath's poem)

Form (envelope)

Texture—"invisible stitching"

Stanza

Lineation—lines, linearity

Stress—rhetorical, accentual, or lexical (covered later)

Incantation or repetition

Parallel structure—adds stability

Tension—in a long sentence or in short choppy phrases (but all tension can equal no tension)

1st person singular, simple present tense—gives poem immediacy and strength

Alliteration—assonance and consonance

Sibilance

Rhyme—internal, end, or slant

Enjambment—line runs over (creating an orphaned line)

Caesura—mid-line break; punctuation creates a pause or stop

Anaphora—repeated word or phrase often at the beginning of a line

Kenning—creating a new word, "whistle-clean"

Volta or turn in a poem

Human body—a natural measure

Order and disorder, strain and tension, compression and elaboration— balancing opposites

"I strive for a transparency of surface," Kunitz tells us, "but I should be disappointed if my work yielded all its substance and tonality at first reading:"

"One thing that poems do," Bell reminds us, "is to give a phrase or sentence or thought more meaning. Or to find out how much more it meant all along." '

Carl Dennis recognizes that "the impulse to modify the tradition...is built into the tradition itself."

"TELL ME A STORY"; By Robert Penn Warren

TELL ME A STORY

By Robert Penn Warren

[A]

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

[B]

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a. story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

REPLY TO A PERSONAL

REPLY TO A PERSONAL

Dear Beautiful Soul,

I do solemnly swear

what you read is what you get.

Spineless as a jellyfish,

I take more shapes than water,

writhe like a python, have

more selves than the Trinity.

With nothing to hold onto

I clench my fists. Almost

down and out, I can't go back

or ahead. Struggling to stand

on my own two feet,

I constantly waver.

Because I refuse to pick up

the pieces of the past,

I can't map out a future.

With no promises to keep,

I don't know what I'm waiting for.

Too stiff-necked to hang my head,

I'm ashamed to hold it up.

When I plop it on a pillow,

I wrestle against myself,

dark angel I can't pin down.

The nightmare I wake up to

is crazier than my dreams.

As for love, it's a wag without a tale.

In an instant of letting go,

Dad and Mom misconceived.

Since they've tucked in their toes,

I've been trying to forgive them.

Dad bequeathed no mansions,

Mom can't intercede from the grave.

My days are strings of words

ending in Gordian knots.

Crooked my lines, my pages

ungathered, and the book

of me is unbound. Want me?

"DRUGSTORE, 1958"; By Albert Goldbarth

DRUGSTORE, 1958

By Albert Goldbarth

"Just walk right in and demand your

money back." The father makes it sound

as obvious as gravity or the seasons: the boy

 has been shortchanged, the merchant

needs to rectify this, and a heaping of manly

insistence won't hurt; he'll wait

in the car while the boy attends to this mission.

But the boy is not so sure; he's ten and

skittery as a blown leaf in the world's winds.

Maybe he counted wrong, maybe his voice will

stick then squeal, maybe fuss should be priced

higher than a dime And how can a dime be

part of a dollar? He looks back at the car. They

aren't even made of the same material.

"Michico Dead"; by Jack Gilbert

Michiko Dead

Jack Gilbert

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm which is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.