GROUP A:

Anne Bradstreet
Upon My Dear And Loving Husband His Going to England Jan 16,1661
O thou Most High who rulest all
And hear'st the prayers of thine,
O hearken, Lord, unto my suit
And my petition sign.

Into Thy everlasting arms Of mercy

I commend Thy servant, Lord.
Keep and preserve My husband,
my dear friend.

At Thy command, O Lord, he went,

Nor nought could keep him back.
Then let Thy promise joy his heart,
O help and be not slack.

Uphold my heart in Thee, O God.

Thou art my strength and stay,
Thou see'st how weak and frail I am,
Hide not Thy face away.

I in obedience to Thy will

Thou knowest did submit.
It was my duty so to do;
O Lord, accept of it.

Unthankfulness for mercies past

Impute Thou not to me.
O Lord, Thou know'st my weak desire
Was to sing praise to Thee.

Lord, be Thou pilot to the ship

And send them prosperous gales.
In storms and sickness, Lord, preserve.
Thy goodness never fails.

Unto Thy work he hath in hand

Lord, grant Thou good success
And favour in their eyes to whom
He shall make his address.

Remember, Lord, Thy folk whom Thou

To wilderness hast brought;
Let not Thine own inheritance
Be sold away for nought.

But tokens of Thy favour give,

With joy send back my dear
That I and all Thy servants may
Rejoice with heavenly cheer.

Lord, let my eyes see once again

Him whom Thou gavest me
That we together may sing praise
Forever unto Thee.

And the remainder of our days

Shall consecrated be
With an engaged heart to sing
All praises unto Thee.
 To My Dear And Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

The Four Elements

The Fire, Air, Earth and water did contest

Which was the strongest, noblest and the best,
Who was of greatest use and might'est force;
In placide Terms they thought now to discourse,
That in due order each her turn should speak;
But enmity this amity did break
All would be chief, and all scorn'd to be under
Whence issu'd winds & rains, lightning & thunder
The quaking earth did groan, the Sky lookt black
The Fire, the forced Air, in sunder crack;
The sea did threat the heav'ns, the heavn's the earth,
All looked like a Chaos or new birth:
Fire broyled Earth, & scorched Earth it choaked
Both by their darings, water so provoked
That roaring in it came, and with its source
Soon made the Combatants abate their force
The rumbling hissing, puffing was so great
The worlds confusion, it did seem to threat
Till gentle Air, Contention so abated
That betwixt hot and cold, she arbitrated
The others difference, being less did cease
All storms now laid, and they in perfect peace
That Fire should first begin, the rest consent,
The noblest and most active Element.

William Cullen Bryant In sorrow by thy bier we stand,

The Death of Lincoln Amid the awe that hushes all,
Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, And speak the anguish of a land
Gentle and merciful and just! That shook with horror at thy fall.
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear
The sword of power, a nations trust! Thy task is done; the bond are free:
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close

Hath placed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those
Who perished in the cause of Right.
 The Evening Wind
Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou
That coolst the twilight of the sultry day,
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow:
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!

Nor I alonea thousand blossoms round

Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
Gods blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,

Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast:
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows.
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the oershadowing branches sweep the grass.

The faint old man shall lean his silver head

To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moistened curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep:
And they who stand about the sick mans bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

Gobut the circle of eternal change,

Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.
I Broke the Spell That Held Me Long I broke the spellnor deemed its power
I broke the spell that held me long, Could fetter me another hour.
The dear, dear witchery of song. Ah, thoughtless! how could I forget
I said, the poets idle lore Its causes were around me yet?
Shall waste my prime of years no more, For wheresoeer I looked, the while,
For Poetry, though heavenly born, Was Natures everlasting smile.
Consorts with poverty and scorn.
Still came and lingered on my sight
Of flowers and streams the bloom and light,
And glory of the stars and sun;
And these and poetry are one.
They, ere the world had held me long,
Recalled me to the love of song.
 GROUP B:
Adrienne Rich
The School Among the Ruins
Bierut. Baghdad. Sarajevo. Bethlehem. Kabul. Not of course here.
To this list add Gaza. Add Halabja. Add Fallujah. Add many more.

1
Teaching the first lesson and the last
great falling light of summer will you last
longer than schooltime?
When children flow
in columns at the doors
BOYS GIRLS and the busy teachers
open or close high windows
with hooked poles drawing dark green shades
closets unlocked, locked
questions unasked, asked, when
love of the fresh impeccable
sharp-pencilled yes
order without cruelty
a street on earth neither heaven nor hell
busy with commerce and worship
young teachers walking to school
fresh bread and early-open foodstalls
2
When the offensive rocks the sky when nightglare
misconstrues day and night when lived-in
rooms from the upper city
tumble cratering lower streets
cornices of olden ornament human debris
when fear vacuums out the streets
When the whole town flinches
blood on the undersole thickening to glass
Whoever crosses hunched knees bent a contested zone
knows why she does this suicidal thing
Schools now in session day and night
children sleep
in the classrooms teachers rolled close
3
How the good teacher loved
his school the students
the lunchroom with fresh sandwiches
lemonade and milk
the classroom glass cages
of moss and turtles
teaching responsibility
A morning breaks without bread or fresh-poured milk
parents or lesson plans
diarrhea first question of the day
children shivering its September
Second question: where is my mother?
4
One: I dont know where your mother
is Two: I dont know
why they are trying to hurt us
Three: or the latitude and longitude
of their hatred Four: I dont know if we
hate them as much I think theres more toilet paper
in the supply closet Im going to break it open
5
Theres a young cat sticking
her head through window bars
shes hungry like us
but can feed on mice
her bronze erupting fur
speaks of a life already wild
her golden eyes
dont give quarter Shell teach us Lets call her
Sister
when we get milk well give her some
6
Ive told you, lets try to sleep in this funny camp
All night pitiless pilotless things go shrieking above us to somewhere
Dont let your faces turn to stone
Dont stop asking me why
Lets pay attention to our cat she needs us
Maybe tomorrow the bakers can fix their ovens
7
We sang them to naps told stories made
shadow-animals with our hands
wiped human debris off boots and coats
sat learning by heart the names
some were too young to write
some had forgotten how

For the Record

The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions

and if here or there a house

filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings

intend to refuse shelter

to homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred

Even the miles of barbed-wire

stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds

so many depths of vomit, tears

slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn't volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it

and ask whose signature

is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, big-bellied
women were, the drunks and crazies,
the ones you fear most of all: ask where you were.
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve May 26, 2008
Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid

later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

Syntax of rendition:

verb pilots the plane

adverb modifies action

verb force-feeds noun

submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb disgraced goes on doing

there are adjectives up for sale

now diagram the sentence

Marianne Moore

In This Age of Hard Trying, Nonchalance Is Good and

really, it is not the
business of the gods to bake clay pots. They did not
do it in this instance. A few
revolved upon the axes of their worth
as if excessive popularity might be a pot;
they did not venture the
profession of humility. The polished wedge
that might have split the firmament
was dumb. At last it threw itself away
and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege.
Taller by the length of
a conversation of five hundred years than all
the others, there was one, whose tales
of what could never have been actual
were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl
of certitude; his by-
play was more terrible in its effectiveness
than the fiercest frontal attack.
The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence
of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self-protectiveness.

Silence
My father used to say,
Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellows grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self-reliant like the cat
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouses limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.
Nor was he insincere in saying, Make my house your inn.
Inns are not residences.

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because

they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless

 wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against business documents and

school-books; all these phenomena are important. One must make

a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
literalists of
the imagination--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"

shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

"In Distrust of Merits"

"Strengthened to live, strengthened to die for

medals and positioned victories?
They're fighting, fighting the blind
man who thinks he sees,
who cannot see that the enslaver is
enslaved; the hater, harmed. O shining O
firm star, O tumultuous
ocean lashed till small things go
as they will, the mountainous
wave makes us who look, know

depth. Lost at sea before they fought! O

star of David, star of Bethlehem,
O black imperial lion
of the Lord-emblem
of a risen worldbe joined at last, be
joined. There is hate's crown beneath which all is
death; there's love's without which none
is king; the blessed deeds bless
the halo. As contagion
of sickness makes sickness,

contagion of trust can make trust. They're

fighting in deserts and caves, one by
one, in battalions and squadrons;
they're fighting that I
may yet recover from the disease, My
Self; some have it lightly; some will die. 'Man's
wolf to man' and we devour
ourselves. The enemy could not
have made a greater breach in our
defenses. One pilot-
ing a blind man can escape him, but
Job disenheartened by false comfort knew
that nothing can be so defeating
as a blind man who
can see. O alive who are dead, who are
proud not to see, O small dust of the earth
that walks so arrogantly,
trust begets power and faith is
an affectionate thing. We
vow, we make this promise

to the fightingit's a promise'We'll

never hate black, white, red, yellow, Jew,
Gentile, Untouchable.' We are
not competent to
make our vows. With set jaw they are fighting,
fighting, fighting,some we love whom we know,
some we love but know notthat
hearts may feel and not be numb.
It cures me; or I am what
I can't believe in? Some
in snow, some on crags, some in quicksands,
little by little, much by much, they
are fighting fighting that where
there was death there may
be life. 'When a man is prey to anger,
he is moved by outside things; when he holds
his ground in patience patience
patience, that is action or
beauty,' the soldier's defense
and hardest armor for

the fight. The world's an orphans' home. Shall

we never have peace without sorrow?
without pleas of the dying for
help that won't come? O
quiet form upon the dust, I cannot
look and yet I must. If these great patient
dyings-all these agonies
and wound bearings and bloodshed
can teach us how to live, these
dyings were not wasted.

Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron

iron is iron till it is rust.
There never was a war that was
not inward; I must
fight till I have conquered in myself what
causes war, but I would not believe it.
I inwardly did nothing.
O Iscariot-like crime!
Beauty is everlasting
and dust is for a time.
William Carlos Williams
A Love Song

What have I to say to you

When we shall meet?
Yet
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love

Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell

If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

Love
Love is twain, it is not single,
Gold and silver mixed to one,
Passion tis and pain which mingle
Glist'ring then for aye undone.

Pain it is not; wondering pity

Dies or e'er the pang is fled;
Passion tis not, foul and gritty,
Born one instant, instant dead.

Love is twain, it is not single,

Gold and silver mixed to one,
Passion tis and pain which mingle
Glist'ring then for aye undone.
Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad!

You sullen pig of a man

you force me into the mud
with your stinking ash-cart!

Brother!
-if we were rich
we'd stick our chests out
and hold our heads high!

It is dreams that have destroyed us.

There is no more pride

in horses or in rein holding.
We sit hunched together brooding
our fate.

Well-
all things turn bitter in the end
whether you choose the right or
the left way
and-
dreams are not a bad thing.