Tuesday, April 29, 2008

My Poems

This anthology is a collection of poems I chose from the Language of Literature Book, some poems from a book of love poems I found at the library, and a few poems of my own. Most of these poems interest me, but some I just put on here to get credit.

A Summer Love Poem By Nikki Giovanni

clouds float by on a summer sky
i hop scotch over to you
rainbows arch from ground to gold
i climb over to you
thunder grumbles
lightning tumbles
and i bounce over to you
sun beams and catches me
smiling over to you

From: Love Poems
by Nikki Giovanni

Love Is By Nikki Giovanni

Some people forget that love is
tucking you in and kissing you "Good Night"
no matter how young or old you are

Some people don't remember that love is
listening and laughing and asking questions
no matter what your age

Few recognize that love is
commitment responsibility no fun at all
unless

Love is
You and Me


From ; Love Poems
by Nikki Giovanni

And I Have You By Nikki Giovanni

Rain has drops Sun has shine
Moon has beams That make you mine

Rivers have banks Sands for shores
Hearts have heartbeats That make me yours

Needles have eyes Though pins may prick
Elmer has glue To make things stick

WInter has Spring Stockings feet
Pepper has mint To make it sweet

Teachers have lessons Soup du jour
Lawyers sue bad folks Doctors care

All and all this much is true
You have me And I have you


From: Love Poems,
By Nikki Giovanni

My Dad

My Dad is always there for me,
He sometimes doesnt think I see
He has been there since my birth,
I know he is the best father on this Earth.
I could never live without his love,
I thank God for this gift from above.

By Hillary Renker

Me

Basketball is what I play,
I would never dream of taking ballet.
My favorite colors are orange and pink,
Even though that is not the color of my sink.
I am seventeen years old,
but I'm not as old as mold.
I'm getting really cold.

By Hillary Renker.
THank you, very much. Thank You.

To you

I wanted you to have the perfect birthday,
So I tried to find a present that would make it that way,
I searched in everyplace I knew,
But nothing I found was good enough for you.

By Hillary Renker

My Mom

My mom's name is Janet Lee,
She is very important to me
She decided to have me in the first place,
She's the real reason for the nose on my face.

She listens to me when I'm a nervous wreck,
It seems she is always writing me checks,
She's patient with me when I fail all my tests,
even when i failed my temps

Everynight she cooks a meal,
No matter how sick she might feel
She takes our clothes and makes them clean,
She deserves to be treated like a queen.

By Hillary Renker

My Tribe

My tribe wears jerseys, and socks, and tennis shoes
My tribe eats energy bars, and gatorade, and water.
My tribe listens to a warm up tape, and balls bouncing, and the stop clock buzzer.
My tribe drives to different schools, gyms, and courts.
My tribe goes to the gym to practice and play
In my trive we like to dribble, shoot and play.
My tribe is from Strongsville where the mustangs roam.
-Hillary Renker

Mirror By Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pin, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she was drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath wrote openly and honestly about the reality of her life. Her poems read liek confessions that exposed their troubled lives.

The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Life for My Child is Simple By Gwendolyn Brooks

Life for my child is simple, and is good.
He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all.
Because I know mine too.
And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things,
Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a window
Or tipping over an ice box pan
Or snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outlet
Or a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss.
No. There is more to it than that.
It is that he has never been afraid.
Rather, he reaches out and lo the chair falls with a beautiful crash,
And the blocks fall, down on the people's heads,
And the water comes slooshing sloppily out across the floor.
And so forth.
Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible.
But never has he been afraid to reach.
His lesions are legion.
But reaching is his rule.

Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the effects of racism and poverty.

The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Any Human to Another By Countee Cullen

The ills I sorrow at
Not me alone
Like an arrow,
Pierce to the marrow,
Through the fat
And past the bone.

Your grief and mine
Must intertwine
Like sea and river,
Be fused and mingle,
Diverse yet single,
Forever and forever.

Let no man be so proud
And confident,
To think he is allowed
A little tent
Pitched in a meadow
Of sun and shadow
All his little own.

Joy may be shy, unique,
Friendly to a few,
Sorrow never scorned to speak
To any who
Were false or true.

Your every frief
Like a blade
Shining and unsheathed

Must strike me down.
Of bitter aloes wreathed,
My sorrow must be laid
On your head like a crown

Countee Cullen was born in 1903. He was influenced by the English romantic poets. He taught french.

A Black Man Talks of Reaping By Arna Bontemps

I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
That wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.

I scattered seed enough to plant the land
In rows from Canada to Mexico,
But for my reaping only what the hand
Can hold at once is all that I can show.

Yet what i sowed and what the orchard yields
My brother's sons are gathering stalk and root,
Small wonder then my children glean in fields
They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.

Arna Bontemps was born on October 13th, 1902 in Louisiana. He had a teaching position in Harlem.

The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

I, Too By Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother,
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-

I, too, am America


The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Harlem By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisen in the sun?
Or fester kuje a sore-
And then run?
Does it sink like rotten meat?
Ir crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Langston Hughes incorproated patterns of African-American music into his poetry. He was born in Missouri and began writing poems in the eighth grade.

The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

If We Must Die By Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blook may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deahblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Claude McKay was born September 15, 1889. He was a Jamaican poet and writer. He wrote three novels and was involved in the Harlem Renaissance.

The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Elevator Music By Henry Taylor

A tune with no more substance than the air, performed on underwater instruments,
is preper to this short lift from the earth.
It hovers as we draw into ourselves,
and turns our reverent eyes toward the light.
That count us to our varous destinies.
We're all in this together. The songs says,
and later we'll descend. The melody
is like a name we don't recall just now
that still keeps on insisting it's there.


Henry Taylor is Professor of Literature and Co-Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University in Washington, DC. He was the winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He is the author of five volumes of poetry.

Subterranean Homesick Blues By Bob Dylan

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It's somethin' you did
God knows when
But you're doin' it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin' for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
In the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

Maggie comes fleet foot
Face full of black soot
Talkin' that the heat put
Plants in the bed but
The phone's tapped anyway
Maggie says that many say
They must bust in early May
Orders from the D. A.
Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't try "No Doz"
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Get sick, get well
Hang around a ink well
Ring bell, hard to tell
If anything is goin' to sell
Try hard, get barred
Get back, write braille
Get jailed, jump bail
Join the army, if you fail
Look out kid
You're gonna get hit
But users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hang around the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin' for a new fool
Don't follow leaders
Watch the parkin' meters

Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals
Don't wanna be a bum
You better chew gum
The pump don't work
'Cause the vandals took the handles

My City By James Weldon Johnson

When i come down to sleep death's endless night,
The threshold of the unknown dark to cross,
What to me then will be the keenest loss,
When this bright world blurs on my fading sight?
Will it be that no more I shall see the trees
Or smell the flowers or hear the singing birds
Or watch the flashing streams or patient herds?
No, I am sure it will be none of these.

But, ah! Manhattan's sights and sounds, her smells,
Her crowds, her throbbing force, the thrill that comes
From being of her a part, her subtle spells,
Her shining towers, her avenues, her slums-
O God! the stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city!

James Weldon Johnson:
He expresses deep feelings about Manhattan. It was based on the racism and injustive that he felt.


The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Adolescence-III By Rita Dove

With Dad gone, Mom and I worked
The dusky rows of tomatoes.
As they glowed orange in sunlight
And rotted in shadow, I too
Grew orange and softer, swelling out
Starched cotton slips.

The texture of twilight made me think of
Lengths of Dotted Swiss. In my room
I wrapped scarred knees in dresses
That once went to big-band dances;
I baptized my earlobes with rosewater.
Along the window-sill, the lipstick stubs
Glittered in their steel shells.

Looking out at the rows of clay
And chicken maure, I dreamed how it would happen:
He would meet me by the blue spruce,
A canrnation over his heart,saying,
"I have come for you, Madam;
I have loved you in my dreams."
At his touch, the scabs would fall away.
Over his shoulder, I see my father coming toward us:
He carries his tears in a bowl,
And blood hangs in the pine-soaked air.

Rita Dove:
She often gives public readings of her poems and intends them to be read aloud. This poem is the third in a series of three poems about being young that she has written.


The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

About Nikki Giovanni

Nikki was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943. She grew up in Cincinatti, Ohio. She in a University Distniguished Professor at Virginia Tech.

Telephone Poem By Nikki Giovanni

Cans and Strings and backyard trees
iggles coming through the wire
Summer, mud pies, lemonade stands
Hang Up No You Hang Up First

Potatoes must be piled mile high
Then you add the leaves
Daddies always light the fires
Hang Up No You Hang Up First

Marriage Children Divorces Jobs
Ambitions eat your days away
Girls I miss our silly times
Hang Up No You Hang Up First

About Wendy Cope

Wendy Cope was born in Erith, London. She went to Farringtons School and went on to read history at St. Hilda's College, Oxford.
Three of her poetry books have been published.

The Orange By Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
THe size of it made us all laugh
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave-
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over
I love you. I'm glad I exist

About Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. He graduated from high school at the top of his class. He suffered from dark depression due to his personal life tragedies.

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep By Robert Frost

The poeple along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
Aship keeps raising its hull;
The water ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

THe land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be-
The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they kept

Nothing Gold Can Stay By Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But nly so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Dust of Snow By Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Dust of Snow By Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood;
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear'
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if i should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Fire And Ice By Robert Frost

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.