Poetry

poem-a-day

The Witch Doctor

As part of “Poem in your Pocket” Day, Ms. West’s third grade ESOL class performs “The Witch Doctor.”

And here are the lyrics if you would like to try:

Hey Witchdoctor, give us the magic words
-All right, you go: uh ih uh ah ah, ting tang wallawallabingbang
All right!

[Chorus]

ooh eeh ooh ahah, ting tang wallawallabingbang
ooh eeh ooh ahah, tingtang wallawallabingbang
ooh eeh ooh ahah, ting tang wallawallabingbang
ooh eeh ooh ahah, tingtang wallawallabingbang

dou dou doudou dou dou dou

[Chorus]

dou dou dou dou
I told the witchdoctor, I was in love with you
dou dou dou dou
I told the witchdoctor, I was in love with you
dou dou dou dou

And than the witchdoctor, he told me what to do
he told me:

[Chorus]

dou dou dou dou
I told the witchdoctor, you didn't love me true
dou dou dou dou
I told the witchdoctor, you didn't love me nice
dou dou dou dou
And than the witchdoctor, he gave me this advice

[Chorus]

You can keep your love from me just like you were a miser,
And I'll admit it wasn't very smart, (eyeyeyey)
But I went out to find my-self a guy that's so much wiser,
And he told me the way to win your heart:
dou dou doudou dou dou dou

ooh eeh ooh ahah,... (dou dou dou dou dou dou dou)
ooh eeh ooh ahah,... (dou dou dou dou dou dou dou)
ooh eeh ooh ahah,... (dou dou dou dou dou dou dou)
ooh eeh ooh ahah,... (dou dou dou dou dou dou dou)
ooh eeh ooh ahah, tingtang wallawallabingbang

Come on and:

[Chorus]



Two Monkeys by Brueghel by Wislawa Szymborska

Last Friday was 12th graders last day of formal classes. They now prepare for their exams. I hope they will not need the “soft jingling of the chain” to prompt them during their exams.

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Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Two Monkeys (1562)
Oil on canvas, approximately 8 inches x 9 inches. Dahlem Museum, Berlin.


Two Monkeys by Brueghel
--Wislawa Szymborska
(trans. from the Polish by Magnus Kryski)

I keep dreaming of my graduation exam:
in a window sit two chained monkeys,
beyond the window floats the sky,
and the sea splashes.

I am taking an exam on the history of mankind:
I stammer and flounder.

One monkey, eyes fixed upon me, listens ironically,
the other seems to be dozing--
and when silence follows a question,
he prompts me
with a soft jingling of the chain.

Mortal Limit by Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was born 24 April 1905. He considered himself a poet but is probably best known for his novel, All the King's Men, a 1946 Pulitzer Prize winner. Much of his writing concerns itself with man’s search for self-knowledge. He was selected as the first poet laureate of the United States in 1986.

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Photo from Creative Commons Flickr by by new_sox

Mortal Limit      
by Robert Penn Warren    

I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.
It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags
Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming
Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags.

There--west--were the Tetons.  Snow-peaks would soon be
In dark profile to break constellations.  Beyond what height
Hangs now the black speck?  Beyond what range will gold eyes see
New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light?

Or, having tasted that atmosphere's thinness, does it
Hang motionless in dying vision before
It knows it will accept the mortal limit,
And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore

The breath of earth?  Of rock?  Of rot?  Of other such
Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch?

From New and Selected Poems 1923-1985 by Robert Penn Warren, published by Random House. © 1985

Winter by William Shakespeare

April 23--Shakespeare’s birthday (1564) and also recognized as his date of death (1616).
Despite that it’s April and spring with blossoms, scents, and birds singing, there are still those memories of winter.

Image

--from Flickr Creative Commons by allfr3d

Winter
-from Love’s Labour’s Lost  

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!
To-who!--a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!
To-who!--a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
                                               (V, ii, 920-937)

Shakespeare, William. "Winter." Columbia Granger's World of Poetry Online. 2009. Columbia University Press. 23 Apr. 2009. <http://www.columbiagrangers.org>.

To Autumn by Louise Glück

Louise Glück  was born 1943 on this day, 22 April. Today we also celebrated Earth Day.

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Photo from Flickr Creative Commons Dave-F almost retired

To Autumn
—for Keith Althaus
by Louise Glück

Morning quivers in the thorns; above the budded snowdrops
caked with dew like little virgins, the azalea bush
ejects its first leaves, and it is spring again.
The willow waits its turn, the coast
is coated with a faint green fuzz, anticipating
mold. Only I
do not collaborate, having
flowered earlier. I am no longer young. What
of it? Summer approaches, and the long
decaying days of autumn when I shall begin
the great poems of my middle period.

"To Autumn" by Louise Glück, from The First Four Books of Poems. Copyright ©1995.

Leda and the Swan by W. B. Yeats

In Break, Blow, Burn, Camille Paglia presents close readings of forty-three English language poems.  She concludes her discussion of “Leda and the Swan”  with it “ends with a question. There is no resolution. All human beings, like Leda, are caught up moment by moment in the “white rush” of experience. For Yeats, the only salvation is the shapeliness and stillness of art.”

Paglia, Camille. Break, Blow, Burn. New York: Pantheon Books, 2005.

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Creative Commons on Flickr by psilver (silverph)

Leda and the Swan     
by W. B. Yeats    

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                    Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

In cooperation with poets.org, this poem is also presented by Textflows:
http://www.textflows.com/player/playFlow/15525

Hands by Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish died 20 April 1982.
A prolific poet who also held the post as librarian of Congress.

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Photo from Flickr Creative Commons Andrew Pescod

Hands
--by Archibald MacLeish

Emperors, prophets, priests, named one by one,
Great names of prophets who foretold the sun,
Names of great emperors whose armies won—
These are but names and, being named, are done.

But you are never dust, that had no name,
Nor any honor in your ages' fame;
You that were ageless and all times the same.

You raised the stones that lie at Eridu,
Petra you built, where once the date-palm grew;
And Egypt's pyramids, that cannot say

What king they house, nor what his death and day,
Nor how he lived, are eloquent of you,
Naked and nameless modellers of clay.

You have no monument, yet every king
Who built a tomb for his remembering
Built with the marble you could hew and bring;

And every conqueror who set a tower
To mark forever his triumphal power
Marked but your skill that labored there an hour;

And every prophet who cried out the Word
Cried only meanings that your hearts had heard,
Hearing the twilight silence and the bird.

And when these cities made of steel and stone
Are choked with earth and vaguely overblown,
Nothing will rest of all that now they own,
No fame, no wonder, but your hands alone.

MacLeish, Archibald. "Hands." Columbia Granger's World of Poetry Online. 2009. Columbia University Press. 20 Apr. 2009. <http://www.columbiagrangers.org>.

Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke [First Elegy excerpt]

How can you not like Rilke?
This poem is selected from the Duino Elegies simply because it is one of my favorites, and one that I often return to.

First Elegy [excerpt]
--by Rainer Maria Rilke

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in than overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
--translated by Stephen Mitchell

W er , wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
starkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören, Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.

Source: Rilke, Rainer Maria, and Stephen Mitchell. Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke. New York: Modern Library, 1995.


There are several other formidable translations, the above translation was selected because it is the one found in our school library. Below is a sampling of other translators.
Harry Behn
David Hinton
Robert Hunter
Gary Miranda
Edward Snow
David Young

The Tyger by William Blake

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One of the most anthologized poems. Here is Ian’s version:


This manuscript created by Blake is one of my favorites, several other versions can be seen at http://www.blakearchive.org/

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The Tyger
by William Blake

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes!
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Blake, William. "Tyger, The." Columbia Granger's World of Poetry Online. 2009. Columbia University Press. 16 Apr. 2009. <http://www.columbiagrangers.org>.

Caged Bird by Maya Angelou

I am excited to be sharing poems read and produced by students from grade 10.

Read and produced by Ha Yeon

Caged Bird
by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House, Inc., 1994)