Poetry is a language used in a special way. Its words form patterns of verse,
of sound, and of thought that appeal strongly to the imagination. Types
of poetry include lyric, dramatic, and narrative. Lyric poems are usually
short and have a song-like quality. An expression of personal reactions
such as sight, sound, feelings, and what is thought is also involved. Narrative
poems that tell a story and are usually rather long. The poet suggests
the setting, characters, and events giving them meaning. Epics and ballads
are among the foremost kinds of narrative poetry. Dramatic poems resemble
narrative poems because they tell a story and are fairly long; the poet
tells the story through speach of one or more of the characters in the
story. Poetry is one of the most expressive writing styles because it
may provide insight to the soul and represent any emotion.
Selected Books
Howl and Other Poems: Allen Ginsberg "Ginsberg's political actions make him a significant cultural figure, but it is the poetry that makes him a significant literary figure."
Collected Poems, 1909-1962: T.S. Eliot "The language is so fluent that it flows lightly and evenly between our ears and its music is perfect and delightful. The images build up a crown or a wreath, according to tastes, life and death mixing equally with love and gloat. Deeply shakespearian by its syntax it is pure Chopin by its music, both rhythm and notes."
Complete Collected Works: Maya Angelou "You will hear the regal woman, the mischievous street girl; you will hear the price of black woman's survival and you will hear of her generosity."
Selected Works
Is About: Allen Ginsberg "Dylan is about the Individual against the whole creation...
Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightning clouds..."
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The: T.S. Eliot "Let us go then, you and I...when the evening is spread out against the sky...like a patient etherized upon a table; let us go, through certain half-deserted streets...the muttering retreats...of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels."
Annabel Lee: Edgar Allen Poe "It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea...that a maiden there lived whom you may know
by the name of Annabel Lee; and this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me."
Still I Rise: Maya Angelou "You may shoot me with your words...you may cut me with your eyes...you may kill me with your hatefulness,
but still, like air, I'll rise."
Is About: Allen Ginsberg
Dylan is about the Individual against the whole creation
Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightning clouds
The Pope is about abortion & the spirits of the dead...
Television is about people sitting in their living room looking at
their things
America is about being a big Country full of Cowboys Indians Jews
Negroes & Americans
Orientals Chicanos Factories skyscrapers Niagara Falls Steel Mills
radio homeless Conservatives, don't forget
Russia is about Czars Stalin Poetry Secret Police Communism
barefoot in the snow
But that's not really Russia it's a concept
A concept is about how to look at the earth from the moon
without ever getting there. The moon is about love and Werewolves,
also Poe.
Poe is about looking at the moon from the sun
or else the graveyard
Everything is about something if you're at thin movie producer
chain-smoking muggles
The world is about overpopulation, Imperial invasions, Biocide,
Genocide, Fratricidal Wars, Starvation, Holocaust, mass injury &
murder, high technology
Super science, atom Nuclear Neutron Hydrogen detritus, Radiation
Compassion Buddha, Alchemy
Communication is about monopoly television radio movie newspaper
spin on Earth, i.e. planetary censorship.
Allen Ginsberg is about confused mind writing down newspaper
headlines from Mars-
The audience is about salvation, the listeners are about sex,
Spiritual gymnastics, nostalgia for the Steam Engine & Pony
Express
Hitler Stalin Roosevelt & Churchill are about arithmetic &
Quadrilateral equations, above all chemistry physics & chaos
theory
Who cares what it's all about?
I do! Edgar Allan Poe cares! Shelly cars! Beethoven and Dylan care.
Do you care? What are you about
or are you a human being with 10 fingers and two eyes?
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The: T.S. Eliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin --
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
* * * *
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet -- and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" --
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor --
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Annabel Lee: Edgar Allen Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom
by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Still I Rise: Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
