Poetry of the 2000sAmerican Poets

Maya Angelou1928 to present: She is a writer, dancer, television director, radio show host, and an African-American activist. She has written five autobiographies.

Poor Girl

You’ve got another love and I know itSomeone who adores you just like meHanging on your words like they were goldThinking that she understands your soulPoor Girl

Just like me.

You’re breaking another heart and I know itAnd there’s nothing I can doIf I try to tell her what I knowShe’ll misunderstand and make me goPoor Girl

Just like me.

You’re going to leave her too and I know itShe’ll never know what made you goShe’ll cry and wonder what went wrong

Then she’ll begin to sing this songPoor Girl

Just like me.

On Reaching Forty

Other acquainted yearssidlewith modestdecorumacross the scrim of toughenedtears and to a stageplanked with laughter boardsand waxed with rueful lossBut forty with the authorized brazenness of a uniformedcop stompsno-knockinginto the scriptbumps a funky grind on the shabby curtain of youthand delays the action.

Unless you have the inbornwisdomand graceand are clever enoughto die at thirty-nine.

Tears

TearsThe crystal ragsViscous tattersOf a worn-through soul

Moans Deep swan songBlue farewellOf a dying dream.

Sounds Like Pearls

Sounds Like pearlsRoll of your tongue To grace this eager ebon ear.

Doubt and fear, Ungainly things,With blushings Disappear.

Gwendolyn Brooks1917-2000: She was born in Topeka, Kansas. In her early writings, she used a strict technical form and lofty word choice. In 1967 her work achieved a new tone and vision, as she changed to a more simple writing style so that her themes could come across more strongly.

Martin Luther King Jr.April 4, 1968

A man went forth with gifts.He was a prose poem.He was a tragic grace.He was a warm music.He tried to heal the vivid volcanoes.His ashes are

reading the world.His Dream still wishes to anointthe barricades of faith and of control.His word still burns the center of the sun,

above the thousands and thehundred thousands.

The word was Justice. It was spoken. So it shall be spoken.So it shall be done.

Best Friends

Getting to home means joiningVery Best Friends –from the very wide shelfmy father put on a wall for me.

One Friend, or another, knows what to say to meon Monday, or Thursday,for Monday or Thursday need.

If I want Repairing –or something to lock me up –or a happy key to open me –or fire when school has made me crispy-cold –coming homeI choose

from Very Best Friends on the very wide shelfmy father put on a wallfor me.

We Real Cool

We real cool. WeLeft School. We

Lurk late. WeStrike straight. We

Sing sin. WeThin gin. We

Jazz June. weDie soon.

Billy Collins1941 to present: Using a sarcastic, funny writing voice, he creates simplistic stanzas to try to create images that pull the reader away from real life. Bruce Weber of the New York Times calls him the most popular poet in America.

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feellike I’m coming down with something,something worse than any stomach acheor the headaches I get from reading in bad light –a kind of measles of the spirit,a mumps of the psyche,a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,but that is because you have forgottenthe perfect simplicity of being oneand the beautiful complexity introduced by two.But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisibleby drinking a glass of milk a certain way.at seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the windowwatching the late afternoon light.Back then it never felt so solemnlyagainst the side of my tree house,

and my bicycle never leaned against the garageas it does today,all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believethere was nothing under my skin but light.If you cut me I could shine.But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,I skin my knees. I bleed.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s roomand feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.

Passengers

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seatswith the possible company of my death,this sprawling miscellany of people –carry-on bags and paperbacks –

that could be gathered in a flashinto a band of pilgrims on the last open road.Not that I thinkif our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,holding hands like a ring of sky divers,into a sudden gasp of brightness,or that there would be some common spot

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,some spaceless, pillarless Greecewhere we could, at the count of three,toss our ashes into the sunny air.

(continued)

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcaseso carefully arranged,the way that girl is cooling her tea, and the flow of the comb that womanpasses through her daughter’s hair . . .and when you consider the altitude,the secret parts of the engines,and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . .

well, I just think it would be good if one of usmaybe stood up and said a few words,or, so as not to involve the police,at least quietly wrote something down.

Rita Dove1952 to present: She speaks with a direct voice in her poems and with dramatic intensity. In addition to writing prose and poetry, she has written text for musical composers and is an accomplished modern cello musician.

Variation on Pain

Two strings, one pierced cry.So many ways to imitateThe ringing in his ears.

He lay on the bunk, mandolinIn his arms. Two stringsFor each note and seventeenFrets; ridged soundHumming beneath callousedFingertips.

There was a needleIn his head but nothingFit through it. Sound quiveredLike a rope stretched clearTo land, tensed and brimming,A man gurgling air.

Two greased stringsFor each pierced lobe:So is the past forgiven.

Happenstance

When you appeared it was as if

magnets cleared the air.

I had never seen that smile before

or your hair, flying silver. Someone

waving goodbye, she was silver, too.

Of course you didn’t see me.

I called softly so you could choose

not to answer – then called again.

You turned in the light, your eyes

seeking your name.

Heart to Heart

It’s neither rednor sweet.It doesn’t melt or turn over,break or harden,so it can’t feelpain,yearning,regret.

It doesn’t havea tip to spin on,it isn’t even shapely –just a thick clutch of muscle,lopsided,mute. Still,I feel it insideits cage soundinga dull tattoo:

I want, I want –but I can’t open it:there’s no key.I can’t wear it on my sleeve,or tell you fromthe bottom of ithow I feel. Here,it’s all yours, now –but you’ll haveto take me, too.

Robert Hass1941 to present: He writes in a manner that allows clarity of expression, conciseness, and strong imagery. Topics are those found in everyday life. He is also very fond of Japanese haiku poems.

Child Naming Flowers

When old crones wandered in the woods,I was the hero on the hillin clear sunlight.

Death’s hounds feared me.

Smell of wild fennel,high loft of sweet fruit high in the branchesof the flowering plum.

Then I am cast downinto the terror of childhood,into the mirror and the greasy knives,the darkwoodpile under the fig treesin the dark.

It is onlythe malice of voices, the old horrorthat is nothing, parentsquarreling, somebodydrunk.

I don’t know how we survive it.On this sunny morningin my life as an adult, I am lookingin a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe.It is all the fullness that there isin light. A towhee scratches in the leavesoutside my open door.He always does.

A moment ago I felt so sickand so coldI could hardly move.

Emblems of a Prior Order

Patient cultivation,as the white petals ofthe climbing rose

were to some mana lifetime’s careful work,the mess of petals

on the lawn was bredto fall there as a dogis bred to stand –

gardens are a historyof art, this fin-de-siècleflower & Dobermann’s

pinscher, all deadlysleekness in the neighbor’syard, were born, brennende

liebe, under the lindensthat bear the morningtoward us on a silver tray.

Measure

Recurrences.Coppery light hesitatesagain in the small-leaved

Japanese plum. Summerand sunset, the peaceof the writing desk

and the habitual peace of writing, these thingsform an order I only

belong to in the idlenessof attention. Last lightrims the blue mountain

and I almost glimpsewhat I was born to,not so much in the sunlight

or the plum treeas in the pulse that forms these lines.

Ted Kooser1939 to present: It is said of Mr. Kooser that he has written more perfect poems than any other poet of his generation. He is acclaimed for his plainspoken style, gift of metaphor, and of his finding beauty in ordinary things. He is currently an English professor at the Univ. of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Sparklers

I scratched your name in longhand

on the night, then you wrote mine.

I couldn’t see you, near me,

laughing and chasing my name

through the air, but I could hear

your heart, I think, and feel your breath

against the darkness, hurrying.

One word swirled out of your hand

as you rushed hard to write it

all the way out to its end

before its beginning was gone.

It left a frail red line

trembling along on the darkness,

and that was my name, my name.

Walking to Work

Today, it’s the obsidianice on the sidewalkwith its milk white bubblespopping under my shoesthat pleases me, and upon ita lump of old snow with a trail like a comet,that somebody,probably falling in love,has kickedall the way to the corner.

Daddy Longlegs

Here, on the fine long legs springy as steel,a life rides, sealed in a small brown pillthat skims along over the basement floorwrapped up in a simple obsession.Eight legs reach out like the master ribsof a web in which some thought is caughtdead center in its own small world,a thought so far from the touch of thingsthat we can only guess at it. If mine,it would be the secret dreamof walking alone across the floor of my lifewith an easy grace, and with love enoughto live on at the center of myself.

A Birthday Poem

Just past dawn, the sun standswith its heavy red headin a black stanchion of trees,waiting for someone to come with his bucket for the foamy white light,and then a long day in the pasture. I too spend my days grazing,feasting on every green momenttill darkness calls,and with the othersI walk away into the night,swinging the little tin bellof my name.

Stanley Kunitz1905 to 2006: He is considered to be the most distinguished and accomplished poet in our country. At age 95 he became the oldest person to receive the title of United States Poet Laureate.

Twilight

I wait. I deepen in the room.Fed lions, glowing, congregateIn corners, sleep and fade. For whomIt may concern I, tawny, wait.

Time flowing through the window; daySpilling on the board its brightLast blood. Folding (big, gauzy, gray),A moth sits on the western light.

Sits on my heart that, darkened, dripsNo honey from its punctured core,Yet feed my hands and heeds my lips.The Moon, the Moon, is at the door!

Hermetic Poem

The secret my heart keepsFlows into cracked cups.

No saucer can containThis overplus of mine:

It glisters to the floor,Lashing like lizard fire

And ramps upon the wallsCrazy with ruby ills.

Who enters by my doorIs drowned, burned, stung, and starred.

Change

Dissolving in the ceramic vatOf time, man (gristle and fat),Corrupting on a rock in spaceThat crumbles, lifts his impermanent faceTo watch the stars, his brain locked tightAgainst the tall revolving night.Yet is he neither here nor thereBecause the mind moves everywhere;And he is neither now nor thenBecause tomorrow comes againForeshadowed, and the ragged wingOf yesterday’s rememberingCuts sharply the immediate moon;Nor is he always: late and soonBecoming, never being, tillBecoming is a being still.

Here, Now, and Always, man would beInviolate eternally;This is his spirit’s trinity.

Mary Oliver1935 to present: She often writes about the quiet side of nature, noticing the smallest of details. She was good friends with Edna Millay’s sister and helped organize the late poet’s papers after her death. The New York Times once described Ms. Oliver as America’s best-selling poet.

The Journey

One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around youkept shoutingtheir bad advice –though the whole house began to trembleand you felt the old tug at your ankles.“Mend my life!”each voice cried.But you didn’t stop.You know what you had to do,though the wind pried with its stiff fingersat the very foundations,though their melancholy was terrible.

It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallenbranches and stones.But little by little,as you left their voices behind,the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowly recognized as your own,that kept you companyas you strode deeper and deeperinto the world,determined to dothe only thing you could do –determined to savethe only life you could save.

The Sun

Have you ever seenanything

in your lifemore wonderful

than the way the sun,every evening,

relaxed and easy,floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,or the rumpled sea,

and is gone –and how it slides again

out of the blackness, every morning,

on the other side of the world,like a red flower

Streaming upward on its heavenly oils,say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance –and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love –do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enoughfor the pleasure

that fills you, as the sun

reaches out,as it warms you

as you stand thereempty-handed –or have you too

turned from this world –

or have you toogone crazy for power,for things?

Themes in 2000’s Poetry:

•Multicultural Voices•Ethnic Identity•Nature / Simplicity•Ordinary Objects