Poem Memorizations
September 4 and September 11
There Is No Frigate Like a Book
Emily Dickinson
Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the
shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes
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?
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
HERE DEAD WE LIE
A. E. Housman
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
How to Eat a Poem
Eve Merriam
Don’t be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and
lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever
you are.
You do not need a knife or fork or
spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.
For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.
My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold
William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So it is now I am a man;
So be it when. I shall grow up,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety
Swift Things are Beautiful
Elizabeth Coatsworth
Swift things are beautiful:
Swallows and deer,
And lightning that falls
Bright-veined and clear,
Rivers and meteors,
Winds in the wheat,
The strong-withered horse,
The runner’s sure feet.
And slow things are beautiful:
The closing of the day,
The pause of the wave
That curves downward to spray,
The ember that crumbles,
The opening flower,
And the ox that moves on
In the quiet of power.
A Jelly-Fish
Marianne Moore
Visible, invisible,
a fluctuating charm
an amber-tinctured amethyst
inhabits it, your arm
approaches and it opens
and it closes; you had meant
to catch it and it quivers;
you abandon your intent.
The Crocodile
Lewis Carroll
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
Steam Shovel
Charles Malam
The dinosaurs are not all dead.
I saw one raise its iron head
To watch me walking down the road
Beyond our house today.
Its jaws were dripping with a load
Of earth and grass that it had cropped.
It must have heard me where I
stopped,
Snorted white steam my way,
And stretched its long neck out to see,
And chewed, and grinned quite
amiably.
The Falling Star
Sara Teasdale
I saw a star slide down the sky,
Blinding the north as it went by,
Too burning and too quick to hold,
Too lovely to be bought or sold,
Good only to make wishes on
And then forever to be gone.
Trees
Walter Dean Myers
I am a tree.
Strong limbed and deeply rooted
My fruit is bittersweet
I am your mother
You are a tree
A sapling by the river
With buds straining for the winter
sun
You are my child
Together we are a forest
Against the wind
Luck
Langston Hughes
Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy,
Sometimes a bone
Is flung.
To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only heaven.
Shirley Said
Dennis Doyle
Who wrote “kick me” on my back?
Who put a spider in my mac?
Who’s the one who pulls my hair?
Tries to trip me everywhere?
Who runs up to me and strikes me?
That boy there – I think he likes me.
Fire and Ice
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.
homage to my hips
Lucille Clifton
these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back
these hips have never been
enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the
words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
First Memory
Louise Glück
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of
time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
Leaving Forever
Denise Levertov
He says the waves in the ship’s wake
are like stones rolling away.
I don’t see it that way.
But I see the mountain turning,
turning away its face as the ship
takes us away.
It’s Dark In Here
Shel Silverstein
I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it’s rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not to be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion’s cage
I’m afraid I got too near.
And I’m writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it’s rather dark in here.