Ode on a Grecian Urn - Georgia Institute of Technologyblogs.iac.gatech.edu/trivial/files/2013/12/object-poetry-se… · Web viewOr an emphatic Thumb - Though I than He ... We had

Poems about specific objects:

Ode on a Grecian UrnBy John Keats (1795-1821)

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens

loth?What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild

ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new;More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young;All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching

tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest,Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-keats


Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought,With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thoughtAs doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woeThan ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to

know."

BirchesBy Robert Frost (1874-1963)

When I see birches bend to left and rightAcross the lines of straighter darker trees,I like to think some boy's been swinging them.But swinging doesn't bend them down to stayAs ice-storms do. Often you must have seen themLoaded with ice a sunny winter morningAfter a rain. They click upon themselvesAs the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal

shellsShattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—Such heaps of broken glass to sweep awayYou'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.They are dragged to the withered bracken by the

load,And they seem not to break; though once they are

bowedSo low for long, they never right themselves:You may see their trunks arching in the woodsYears afterwards, trailing their leaves on the

groundLike girls on hands and knees that throw their hairBefore them over their heads to dry in the sun.But I was going to say when Truth broke inWith all her matter-of-fact about the ice-stormI should prefer to have some boy bend themAs he went out and in to fetch the cows—Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,Whose only play was what he found himself,Summer or winter, and could play alone.One by one he subdued his father's treesBy riding them down over and over againUntil he took the stiffness out of them,


And not one but hung limp, not one was leftFor him to conquer. He learned all there wasTo learn about not launching out too soonAnd so not carrying the tree awayClear to the ground. He always kept his poiseTo the top branches, climbing carefullyWith the same pains you use to fill a cupUp to the brim, and even above the brim.Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,Kicking his way down through the air to the

ground.So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.It's when I'm weary of considerations,And life is too much like a pathless woodWhere your face burns and tickles with the

cobwebsBroken across it, and one eye is weepingFrom a twig's having lashed across it open.I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.May no fate willfully misunderstand meAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth's the right place for love:I don't know where it's likely to go better.I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunkToward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,But dipped its top and set me down again.That would be good both going and coming back.One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Some Lines Against the Lightby Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)translated from the Hebrew by Leon Wieseltier

How awful the light is for the eyes.How awful it is to be flooded with light,how unpleasant to be David's Citadel or the Wailing Wallor an actoror something like that.How awful is the light left on in the henhouseby wily farmers


so that the hens will lay and laythinking it is forever day.How awful of the light in this way to sow feelings,to be leaping, always to begin loving anew,to spew love.Sometimes I stumble into historythe way a small animal, a rabbit or a fox,stumbles into a passing car's beam of light.Sometimes I am the driver.


ParsleyBy Rita Dove (1952-)

1. The Cane FieldsThere is a parrot imitating springin the palace, its feathers parsley green. Out of the swamp the cane appears

to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General searches for a word; he is all the world there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,

we lie down screaming as rain punches through and we come up green. We cannot speak an R—out of the swamp, the cane appears

and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina.The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads. There is a parrot imitating spring.

El General has found his word: perejil.Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.

And we lie down. For every drop of blood there is a parrot imitating spring.Out of the swamp the cane appears.

2. The PalaceThe word the general’s chosen is parsley. It is fall, when thoughts turnto love and death; the general thinksof his mother, how she died in the falland he planted her walking cane at the grave and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming four-star blossoms. The general

pulls on his boots, he stomps toher room in the palace, the one without curtains, the one with a parrotin a brass ring. As he paces he wonders Who can I kill today. And for a moment the little knot of screamsis still. The parrot, who has traveled

all the way from Australia in an ivory cage, is, coy as a widow, practising spring. Ever since the morning his mother collapsed in the kitchen


while baking skull-shaped candies for the Day of the Dead, the general has hated sweets. He orders pastries brought up for the bird; they arrive

dusted with sugar on a bed of lace. The knot in his throat starts to twitch; he sees his boots the first day in battle splashed with mud and urineas a soldier falls at his feet amazed—how stupid he looked!— at the soundof artillery. I never thought it would sing the soldier said, and died. Now

the general sees the fields of sugar cane, lashed by rain and streaming. He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth gnawed to arrowheads. He hears the Haitians sing without R’sas they swing the great machetes: Katalina, they sing, Katalina,

mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows his mother was no stupid woman; she could roll an R like a queen. Even a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room

the bright feathers arch in a parody of greenery, as the last pale crumbsdisappear under the blackened tongue. Someone

calls out his name in a voiceso like his mother’s, a startled tearsplashes the tip of his right boot.My mother, my love in death.The general remembers the tiny green sprigs men of his village wore in their capes to honor the birth of a son. He willorder many, this time, to be killed

for a single, beautiful word.

NOTES: On October 2, 1937, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), dictator of the Dominican Republic, ordered 20,000 blacks killed because they could not pronounce the letter “r” in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley.


Balloonsby Sylvia Plath(1932-1963)

Since Christmas they have lived with us,Guileless and clear,Oval soul-animals,Taking up half the space,Moving and rubbing on the silk

Invisible air drifts,Giving a shriek and popWhen attacked, then scooting to rest, barely

trembling.Yellow cathead, blue fish ----Such queer moons we live with

Instead of dead furniture!Straw mats, white wallsAnd these travelingGlobes of thin air, red, green,Delighting

The heart like wishes or freePeacocks blessingOld ground with a featherBeaten in starry metals.

Your small

Brother is makingHis balloon squeak like a cat.Seeming to seeA funny pink world he might eat on the other side

of it,He bites,

Then sitsBack, fat jugContemplating a world clear as water.A redShred in his little fist.


Thirteen Ways of Looking at a BlackbirdBy Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

IAmong twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.

III was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.

IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.

IVA man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.

VI do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

VIIcicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.

VIIO thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?

VIIII know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too,


That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

IXWhen the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.

XAt the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.

XIHe rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.

XIIThe river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

XIIIIt was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

The MowerBy Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind


While there is still time.

On a Drop of DewBy Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

See how the orient dew,Shed from the bosom of the morn Into the blowing roses,Yet careless of its mansion new,For the clear region where ’twas born Round in itself incloses: And in its little globe’s extent,Frames as it can its native element. How it the purple flow’r does slight, Scarce touching where it lies, But gazing back upon the skies, Shines with a mournful light, Like its own tear,Because so long divided from the sphere. Restless it rolls and unsecure, Trembling lest it grow impure, Till the warm sun pity its pain, And to the skies exhale it back again. So the soul, that drop, that ray Of the clear fountain of eternal day, Could it within the human flow’r be seen,

Remembering still its former height, Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green, And recollecting its own light,Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, expressThe greater heaven in an heaven less. In how coy a figure wound, Every way it turns away: So the world excluding round, Yet receiving in the day, Dark beneath, but bright above, Here disdaining, there in love. How loose and easy hence to go, How girt and ready to ascend, Moving but on a point below, It all about does upwards bend.Such did the manna’s sacred dew distill, White and entire, though congealed and chill, Congealed on earth : but does, dissolving, run Into the glories of th’ almighty sun.


Brass SpittoonsBy Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Clean the spittoons, boy. Detroit, Chicago, Atlantic City, Palm Beach.Clean the spittoons.The steam in hotel kitchens,And the smoke in hotel lobbies,And the slime in hotel spittoons:Part of my life. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar,Two dollars a day. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar, Two dollarsBuy shoes for the baby.House rent to pay.Gin on Saturday,

Church on Sunday. My God!Babies and gin and churchAnd women and SundayAll mixed with dimes andDollars and clean spittoonsAnd house rent to pay. Hey, boy!A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord. Bright polished brass like the cymbalsOf King David’s dancers,Like the wine cups of Solomon. Hey, boy!A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.A clean bright spittoon all newly polished—At least I can offer that. Com’mere, boy!


The AltarBy George Herbert (1593-1633)

A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,Made of a heart and cemented with tears; Whose parts are as thy hand did frame; No workman's tool hath touch'd the same. A HEART alone Is such a stone, As nothing but Thy pow'r doth cut. Wherefore each part Of my hard heart Meets in this frame To praise thy name. That if I chance to hold my peace, These stones to praise thee may not cease.Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

The WindhoverBy Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn

Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air,

and stridingHigh there, how he rung upon the rein of

a wimpling wingIn his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:

the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hidingStirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of

the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!


No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough

down sillionShine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun By Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -In Corners - till a DayThe Owner passed - identified -And carried Me away -

And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -And now We hunt the Doe -And every time I speak for HimThe Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial lightOpon the Valley glow -It is as a Vesuvian faceHad let it’s pleasure through -

And when at Night - Our good Day done -

I guard My Master’s Head -’Tis better than the Eider Duck’sDeep Pillow - to have shared -

To foe of His - I’m deadly foe -None stir the second time -On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -Or an emphatic Thumb -

Though I than He - may longer liveHe longer must - than I -For I have but the power to kill,Without - the power to die -

Poems about multiple objects:

In the Museum of Lost ObjectsBy Rebecca Lindenberg

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee; What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage. Ezra Pound

You’ll find labels describing what is gone:an empress’s bones, a stolen painting of a man in a feathered helmetholding a flag-draped spear. A vellum gospel, hidden somewhere long agoforgotten, would have sat on that pedestal; this glass cabinet could have kept the firstsalts carried back from the Levant. To help us comprehend the magnitudeof absence, huge rooms lie empty of their wonders—the Colossus,Babylon’s Hanging Gardens and

in this gallery, empty shelves enough to holdall the scrolls of Alexandria. My love, I’ve petitioned the curatorwho has acquired an empty chest representing all the poems you willnow never write. It will be kept with others in the poet’s gallery. Next door,a vacant room echoes with the spill of jewels buried by a pirate who diedbefore disclosing their whereabouts. I hope you don’t mind, but I have kepta few of your pieces for my private collection. I thinkyou know the ones I mean.


from My Lifeby Lyn Hejinian (1941-)

Back and backward, why, wide and wider. Such that art is inseparable from the search for reality. The continent is greater than the content. A river nets

the peninsula. The garden rooster goes through the goldenrod. I watched a robin worming its way on the ridge, time on the uneven light ledge. There as in that's their truck there. Where it rested in the weather there it rusted. As one would say, my friends, meaning no possession, and don't harm my trees. Marigolds, nasturtiums, snapdragons, sweet William, forget-me-nots, replaced by chard, tomatoes, lettuce, garlic, peas, beans, carrots, radishes--but marigolds. The hum hurts. Still, I felt intuitively that this which was incomprehensible was expectant, increasing, was good. The greatest thrill was to be the one to "tell." All rivers' left banks remind me of Paris, not to see or sit upon but to hear spoken of. Cheese makes one thirsty but onions make a worse thirst. The Spanish make a little question frame. In the case, propped on a stand so as to beckon, was the hairy finger of St. Cecilia, covered with rings. The old dress is worn out, torn up, dumped. Erasures could not serve better

authenticity. The years pass, years in which, I take it, events were not lacking. There are more colors in the great rose window of Chartres than in the rose. Beside a body, not a piece, of water. Serpentine is fool's jade. It is on a dressed stone. The previousness of plants in prior color--no dream can come up to the original, which in the common daylight is voluminous. Yet he insisted that his life had been full of happy chance, that he was luck's child. As a matter-of fact, quite the obverse. After a 9-to-5 job he got to just go home. Do you have a compulsion to work and then did you have a good time. Now it is one o'clock on the dot, but that is only a coincidence and it has a bad name. Patriots drive larger cars. At the time the perpetual Latin of love kept things hidden. We might be late to the movies but always early for the kids. The women at the parents' meeting must wear rings, for continuity. More sheep than sleep. Paul was telling me a plot which involved time travel, I asked, "How do they go into the future?" and he answered, "What do you mean?--they wait and the future comes to them--of course!" so the problem was going into the past. I think my interests are much broader than those of people who have been saying the same thing for eight years, or so he said. Has the baby enough teeth for an apple. Juggle, jungle, chuckle. The hummingbird, for all we know, may be singing all day long. We had been in France where every word really was a bird, a thing singing. I laugh as if my pots were clean. The apple in the pie is the pie. An extremely pleasant


and often comic satisfaction comes from conjunction, the fit, say, of comprehension in a reader's mind to content in a writer's work. But not bitter.


GirlBy Jamaica Kincaid (1949-)

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry;

don't walk bare head in the hot sun;cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil;soak your little cloths right after you take them off;when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash;

soak salt fish overnight before you cook it;is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?;always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach;

on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming;don't sing benna in Sunday school;you mustn't speak to wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions;

don't eat fruits on the street - flies will follow you;but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school;

this is how to sew on a button;this is how to make a buttonhole for the button

you have just sewed on;this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and to prevent yourself from looking like the slut you are so bent on becoming;

this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease;this is how you iron your father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease;this is how you grow okra - far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants;

when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it;this is how you sweep a corner;this is how you sweep a whole house;this is how you sweep a yard;

this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much;this is how you smile at someone you don't like at all;this is how you smile to someone you like completely;

this is how you set a table for tea;this is how you set a table for dinner;this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest;this is how you set a table for lunch;this is how you set a table for breakfast;


this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming;

be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit;don't swat down to play marbles - you are not a boy, you know;don't pick people's flowers - you might catch something;don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all;

this is how to make a bread pudding;this is how to make doukona;this is how to make pepper pot;this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child;

this is how to catch a fish;this is how to throw back a fish you don't like and that way something bad won't fall on you;this is how to bully a man;

this is how a man bullies you;this is how to love a man, and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up;this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you;

this is how to make ends meet;always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh;but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?;you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?

The Argument of his BookBy Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes.I write of youth, of love, and have accessBy these to sing of cleanly wantonness.I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by pieceOf balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris.I sing of Time's trans-shifting; and I writeHow roses first came red, and lilies white.I write of groves, of twilights, and I singThe court of Mab, and of the fairy king.I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.



From Tender ButtonsBy Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

OBJECTS.

Within, within the cut and slender joint alone, with sudden equals and no more than three, two in the centre make two one side.

If the elbow is long and it is filled so then the best example is all together.

The kind of show is made by squeezing.

EYE GLASSES.

A color in shaving, a saloon is well placed in the centre of an alley.

A CUTLET.

A blind agitation is manly and uttermost.

CARELESS WATER.

No cup is broken in more places and mended, that is to say a plate is broken and mending does do that it shows that culture is Japanese. It shows the whole element of angels and orders. It does more to choosing and it does more to that ministering counting. It does, it does change in more water.

Supposing a single piece is a hair supposing more of them are orderly, does that show that strength, does that show that joint, does that show that balloon famously. Does it.

A PAPER.

A courteous occasion makes a paper show no such occasion and this makes readiness and eyesight and likeness and a stool.

A DRAWING.

The meaning of this is entirely and best to say the mark, best to say it best to show sudden places, best to make bitter, best to make the length tall and nothing broader, anything between the half.

WATER RAINING.

Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.

COLD CLIMATE.

A season in yellow sold extra strings makes lying places.

MALACHITE.

The sudden spoon is the same in no size. The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.


AN UMBRELLA.

Coloring high means that the strange reason is in front not more in front behind. Not more in front in peace of the dot.

A PETTICOAT.

A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.

A WAIST.

A star glide, a single frantic sullenness, a single financial grass greediness.

Object that is in wood. Hold the pine, hold the dark, hold in the rush, make the bottom.

A piece of crystal. A change, in a change that is remarkable there is no reason to say that there was a time.

A woolen object gilded. A country climb is the best disgrace, a couple of practices any of them in order is so left.

A TIME TO EAT.

A pleasant simple habitual and tyrannical and authorised and educated and resumed and articulate separation. This is not tardy.

A LITTLE BIT OF A TUMBLER.

A shining indication of yellow consists in there having been more of the same color than could have been expected when all four were bought. This was the hope which made the six and seven have no use for any more places and this necessarily spread into nothing. Spread into nothing.

…

Pied BeautyBy Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that

swim;Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and

plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)


With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.


From alphabet by Inger Christensen (1935-2009)translated by Susanna Nied

1.apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist

2.bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

3cicadas exist; chicory, chromium citrus trees; cicadas exist; cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cere-bellum

4doves exist, dreamers, and dolls; killers exist, and doves, and doves; haze, dioxin, and days; days exist, days and death; and poems exist; poems, days, death

*translator’s note: The length of each section of Christensen’s alphabet is based on Fibonacci’s sequence, a mathematical sequence beginning 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21

Prayer (I)By George Herbert (1593-1633)

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earthEngine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-days world transposing in an hour,A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, Exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,The milky way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the

soul's blood, The land of spices; something understood.


That OneBy Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

O days consecrated to the uselessoffice of forgetting the biographyof a lesser poet from the hemispherebelow, to whom the shades or the starsbequeathed a body that leaves behind no sonand blindness, penumbra and prison,and old age, aurora of death,and fame, which nobody deserves,and the habit of devising hendecasyllabicsand an old love of encyclopediasand of fine calligraphic mapsand of fragile ivory and an incurablenostalgia for Latin and fragmentarymemories of Edinburgh and Genevaand the oblivion of dates and of namesand the cult of the Orient, which the peoplesof the miscellaneous Orient do not share,and vigils glimmering with expectation,and the abuse of etymologyand the iron of Saxon syllablesand the moon, which always surprises us,and that bad habit, Buenos Aires,

and the flavor of grapes and of water and of cocoa, confection of Mexico,and a few coins and a clock made of sandand who, one afternoon, like so many others,resigns himself to these verses.

HarlemBy Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?



ApostrophBy Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

O MATER! O fils!O brood continental!O flowers of the prairies!O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud!

5

O race of the future! O women!O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm!O native power only! O beauty!O yourself! O God! O divine average!O you bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slumberers!

10

O arouse! the dawn bird’s throat sounds shrill! Do you not hear the cock crowing?O, as I walk’d the beach, I heard the mournful notes foreboding a tempest—the low, oft-repeated shriek of the diver, the long-lived loon;O I heard, and yet hear, angry thunder;—O you sailors! O ships! make quick preparation!O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle!(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up your spoils;)

15

O sarcasms! Propositions! (O if the whole world should prove indeed a sham, a sell!)O I believe there is nothing real but America and freedom!O to sternly reject all except Democracy!O imperator! O who dare confront you and me?O to promulgate our own! O to build for that which builds for mankind!

20


O feuillage! O North! O the slope drained by the Mexican sea!O all, all inseparable—ages, ages, ages!O a curse on him that would dissever this Union for any reason whatever!O climates, labors! O good and evil! O death!O you strong with iron and wood! O Personality! 25

O the village or place which has the greatest man or woman! even if it be only a few ragged huts;O the city where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as the men;O a wan and terrible emblem, by me adopted!O shapes arising! shapes of the future centuries!O muscle and pluck forever for me! 30

O workmen and workwomen forever for me!O farmers and sailors! O drivers of horses forever for me!O I will make the new bardic list of trades and tools!O you coarse and wilful! I love you!O South! O longings for my dear home! O soft and sunny airs!

35

O pensive! O I must return where the palm grows and the mocking-bird sings, or else I die!O equality! O organic compacts! I am come to be your born poet!O whirl, contest, sounding and resounding! I am your poet, because I am part of you;O days by-gone! Enthusiasts! Antecedents!O vast preparations for These States! O years! 40

O what is now being sent forward thousands of years to come!O mediums! O to teach! to convey the invisible faith!To promulge real things! to journey through all The States!O creation! O to-day! O laws! O unmitigated adoration!


O for mightier broods of orators, artists, and singers! 45

…O voices of greater orators! I pause—I listen for youO you States! Cities! defiant of all outside authority! I spring at once into your arms! you I most love!O you grand Presidentiads! I wait for you!New history! New heroes! I project you!Visions of poets! only you really last! O sweep on! sweep on!

60

O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet!O heights! O infinitely too swift and dizzy yet!O purged lumine! you threaten me more than I can stand!O present! I return while yet I may to you!O poets to come, I depend upon you! 65

Poems that refer to themselves as objects, or to words as objects:

American PoetryBy Louis Simpson (1923-2012)

Whatever it is, it must haveA stomach that can digestRubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems.

Like the shark, it contains a shoe.It must swim for miles through the desertUttering cries that are almost human.

To the ReaderBy Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

As you read, a white bear leisurelypees, dyeing the snowsaffron,

and as you read, many godslie among lianas: eyes of obsidianare watching the generations of leaves,

and as you readthe sea is turning its dark pages,turningits dark pages.

Why I Am Not A PainterBy Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)

I am not a painter, I am a poet.Why? I think I would rather bea painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldbergis starting a painting. I drop in."Sit down and have a drink" hesays. I drink; we drink. I lookup. "You have SARDINES in it.""Yes, it needed something there.""Oh." I go and the days go byand I drop in again. The paintingis going on, and I go, and the daysgo by. I drop in. The painting isfinished. "Where's SARDINES?"All that's left is justletters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking ofa color: orange. I write a lineabout orange. Pretty soon it is awhole page of words, not lines.Then another page. There should beso much more, not of orange, ofwords, of how terrible orange isand life. Days go by. It is even inprose, I am a real poet. My poemis finished and I haven't mentionedorange yet. It's twelve poems, I call

Poems that refer to themselves as objects, or to words as objects:

it ORANGES. And one day in a galleryI see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

To the One Who is Reading MeBy Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)Translated From The Spanish By Tony Barnstone

You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver(those forces that control your destiny)the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it beyour irreversible time is that riverin whose bright mirror Heraclitus readhis brevity? A marble slab is savedfor you, one you won’t read, already gravedwith city, epitaph, dates of the dead.And other men are also dreams of time,not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dustlike you; the universe is Proteus.Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.Know this: in some way you’re already dead.

Delight in DisorderBy Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

A sweet disorder in the dressKindles in clothes a wantonness;A lawn about the shoulders thrownInto a fine distraction;An erring lace, which here and thereEnthrals the crimson stomacher;A cuff neglectful, and therebyRibands to flow confusedly;A winning wave, deserving note,In the tempestuous petticoat;A careless shoe-string, in whose tieI see a wild civility:Do more bewitch me, than when artIs too precise in every part.

Women as objects:

from Il CanzoniereBy Petrarch (1304-1374)

#90

Sometimes she'd comb her yellow braids out loosefor winds to tease and tangle in bright air,and all that light caught in her eyes, her hair.Most things have faded now. But once I used

to see her gauging me with thoughtful eyes:with pity true or false, it's all the same.My soul dry kindling, waiting for her flame,and could I help it I was set ablaze?

I tell you, she was like a goddess walking,a pulsing sun to keep a man from cold,radiant, gold, that spirit danced abroad;

when she spoke, I divined the angels talking.You say she's just a woman growing old?Her bow's gone slack, her arrow's in my side.

#148

Not Tiber, Tesin, Po nor Arno, Rhone,Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Erme, Indus, Seine,Alphaeus, Elve; not breaking sea, nor Rhine,Ebro, Loire, Garonne, Don, Danube--none

can quench me! What's more, no pine,spruce, ivy, juniper can shelterme from sun! And yet there is one riverwho shares my grief: one sapling bears my pain.

They succor me through every heavy blowof Love, who still compels me to bear armsas I go reeling headlong far abroad.

Grow green, dear laurel, by this riverflow;let me who planted you inscribe true poemshere where sweet water ripples in your shade.

Women as objects:

What Length of Verse?By Sir Philip Sidney (1554- 1586)

What length of verse can serve brave Mopsa’s good to show,

Whose virtues strange, and beauties such, as no man them may know?

Thus shrewdly burden, then, how can my Muse escape?

The gods must help, and precious things must serve to show her shape.

Like great god Saturn, fair, and like fair Venus, chaste;

As smooth as Pan, as Juno mild, like goddess Iris fast.

With Cupid she foresees, and goes god Vulcan’s pace;

And for a taste of all these gifts, she borrows Momus’ grace.

Her forehead jacinth-like, her cheeks of opal hue,Her twinkling eyes bedecked with pearl, her lips of

sapphire blue,

Her hair pure crapall stone, her mouth, O heavenly wide,

Her skin like burnished gold, her hands like silver ore untried.

As for those parts unknown, which hidden sure are best,

Happy be they which believe, and never seek the rest.

Upon The Nipples Of Julia's BreastBy Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Have ye beheld (with much delight)A red rose peeping through a white?Or else a cherry (double graced)Within a lily? Centre placed?Or ever marked the pretty beamA strawberry shows half drowned in cream?Or seen rich rubies blushing throughA pure smooth pearl, and orient too?

Women as objects:

So like to this, nay all the rest,Is each neat niplet of her breast.

Women as objects:

To His Mistress Going to BedBy John Donne (1572-1631)

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,Until I labour, I in labour lie.The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,But a far fairer world encompassing.Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.Off with that happy busk, which I envy,That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow

steals.Off with that wiry Coronet and shew The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:Now off with those shoes, and then safely treadIn this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to beReceived by men; Thou Angel bringst with theeA heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though

Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,By this these Angels from an evil sprite,Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright. Licence my roving hands, and let them go, Before, behind, between, above, below.O my America! my new-found-land,My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,How blest am I in this discovering thee!To enter in these bonds, is to be free;Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,To taste whole joys. Gems which you women useAre like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings madeFor lay-men, are all women thus array’d;Themselves are mystic books, which only we (Whom their imputed grace will dignify)Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;As liberally, as to a Midwife, shewThy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,There is no penance due to innocence.

Women as objects:

To teach thee, I am naked first; why thenWhat needst thou have more covering than a man.

Women as objects:

There Is A Garden In Her FaceBy Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

There is a garden in her faceWhere roses and white lilies grow;A heav'nly paradise is that placeWherein all pleasant fruits do flow. There cherries grow which none may buy, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do encloseOf orient pearl a double row,Which when her lovely laughter shows,They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow; Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still,Her brows like bended bows do stand,Threat'ning with piercing frowns to killAll that attempt with eye or hand Those sacred cherries to come nigh, Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun (Sonnet 130) by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red;If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damasked, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

Documents

Ode on a Grecian Urn - Georgia Institute of Technologyblogs.iac.gatech.edu/trivial/files/2013/12/object-poetry-se… · Web viewOr an emphatic Thumb - Though I than He ... We had