Poetry Anthology – LIS 55565 Laura Armstrong

Seeing Differently:

Poems that Encourage Us to Look

at the World Around Us

A Poetry Anthology by

Laura Armstrong

LIS 5565: Information Needs of Young Adults

12/7/2014

Seeing Differently: Poems to Help Us Look at the World Around Us

This anthology of poetry was inspired by the idea that sometimes we just need to see things

differently, to pause and look at situations from a different angle. The poems are about stopping to

really look at the world around us and getting enjoyment from simple occurrences. I chose this

topic because I wanted to collect poetry for teens that would encourage enjoyment, delight, and

celebration of the everyday things in life. The days of teenagers can be so filled with activities that

things can feel busy, overwhelming, or all-consuming. I decided to find poems that would instead

make readers think about slowing down, noticing things, and allowing that to shape the day. Poems

that make you look at things differently.

I began my poem search by reading through a stack of poetry collections. I marked poems

that jumped out at me and went back later and read through those again, narrowing down even

more. I was surprised to find that so many of the poems that stood out were about noticing simple

things - birds in the trees, the way someone smiles, laughter, art, etc. It became obvious that this

needed to be the focus of my anthology.

I tried to select poems with a range of topics, styles, forms, and rhythms. In doing this, I

hoped to bring together a collection of poems that point out that something can be seen and

enjoyed in anything around us. I looked for poems that used words creatively. I wanted there to be

surprises in the language used to describe simple situations. I chose poems that surprised me.

Most of the poems in the anthology were not written for teenagers, but the topics they

address apply to the lives of teenagers very well. I questioned some of the poems if they didn’t

seem obviously for teens, but in the end I felt the poems I chose were appropriate for older

teenagers between the ages of 16-19.

I arranged the poems by deciding how to begin and end the anthology first. I chose “How

Birds Sing” by Kay Ryan to be the first because it stands out to me as an example of seeing

something beautiful in something that happens naturally - a bird singing. I ended with “I Am

Standing” by Mary Oliver because it is about hearing singing birds and expressing thanks. I thought

these two poems echoed off of one another well and serve as a frame around the others. The order

in between was chosen based on flow. I wanted to start with poems about seeing beauty in nature

and move to seeing things in other areas of life - memories, simple dreams, art, people, and words.

So many more poems could have been included, but this anthology serves as a glimpse of how

poetry can help you see things differently.

Table of Contents

How Birds Sing Kay Ryan

Dust of Snow Robert Frost

With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice is So Delicate and Humble

Mary Oliver

To See the World in a Grain of Sand

William Blake

The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Billy Collins

In a Rear-View Mirror

Robert Shaw

Spring

Charles Simic

Women Laughing Ruth Stone

Ode to Isabelle’s Hair

Gray Emerson

Dream Variations Langston Hughes

Famous

Naomi Shihab Nye

A Word is Dead Emily Dickinson

I Am Standing

Mary Oliver

How Birds Sing

Kay Ryan

One is not taxed;

one need not practice;

one simply tips

the throat back

over the spine axis

and asserts the chest.

The wings and the rest

compress a musical

squeeze which floats

a series of notes

upon the breeze.

(Ryan, 2010, 100)

Dust of Snow

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.

(Rosenberg, 2000, 22)

With Thanks to the Field Sparrow,

Whose Voice is So Delicate and Humble

Mary Oliver

I do not live happily or comfortably

with the cleverness of our times.

The talk is all about computers,

the news is all about bombs and blood.

This morning, in the fresh field,

I came upon a hidden nest.

It held four warm, speckled eggs.

I touched them.

Then went away softly,

having felt something more wonderful

than all the electricity of New York City.

(Oliver, 2009, 46)

To See a World in a Grain of Sand

William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

(Pinsky & Dietz, 2002, 257)

The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Billy Collins

I will now step over the soft velvet rope

and walk directly into this massive Hudson River

painting and pick my way along the Palisades

with this stick I snapped off a dead tree.

I will skirt the smoky, nestled towns

and seek the path that leads always outward

until I become lost, without a hope

of ever finding the way back to the museum.

I will stand on the bluffs in nineteenth-century clothes,

a dwarf among rock, hills, and flowing water,

and I will fish from the banks in a straw hat

which will feel like a brush stroke on my head.

And I will hide in the green covers of forests

so no appreciator of Frederick Edwin Church,

leaning over the soft velvet rope,

will spot my tiny figure moving in the stillness

and cry out, pointing for the others to see,

and be thought mad and led away to a cell

where there is no vaulting landscape to explore,

none of this birdsong that halts me in my tracks,

and no wide curving of this river that draws

my steps toward the misty vanishing point.

(Collins, 2001, 17)

In the Rear-View Mirror

Robert Shaw

Thinking about them as you saw them last,

you see them standing there behind your back,

leaning out into the road to wave goodbye,

lingering even as growing speed and distance

diminish them until they neatly fit

head to foot in the mirror-strip you glance at.

Tiny in your lengthening wake, still waving,

they could be nameless people on a postcard,

too far away for you to make out faces.

Then, at the first turn, they’re lost completely,

places taken by someone’s windbreak pines,

a split-rail fence, and then, as the wheel straightens,

nothing but empty road. Ahead of you

are towns where you will never know a soul,

exits following exits you will pass

and never take, amassing a stiff toll

finally to make good on. Fortunately

you carry along with you that higher-powered

reflective instrument that you can use

no matter how far down the road you’ve gone

to bring them back in view as large as life,

putting yourself in the picture, too, which makes

thinking about them as you saw them lasting.

(Collins, 2005, 238)

Spring

Charles Simic

This is what I saw - old snow on the ground,

Three blackbirds preening themselves,

And my neighbor stepping out in her nightdress

To hang her husband’s shirts on the line.

The morning wind made them hard to pin.

It swept the dress so high above her knees,

She had to stop what she was doing

And have a good laugh, while covering herself.

(Pinsky & Dietz, 2002, 240)

Women Laughing

Ruth Stone

Laughter from women gathers like reeds in the river.

A silence of light below their rhythm glazes the water.

They are on a rim of silence looking into the river.

Their laughter traces the water as kingfishers dipping

circles within circles the reeds clicking;

and an upward rush of herons lifts out of the nests of

laughter,

their long stick-legs dangling, herons, rising out of the river.

(Rosenberg, 2000, 87)

Ode to Isabelle’s Hair

Gray Emerson

Ohhhhhhhhh - the twist of it! The

Spring!

Sprang!

Sprung!

Of it! From the frizz-frazz-frazzle curls -

(the early morning screech of her tangles)

The chit-chat-chattering of dusky locks

Spun like a starless stretch

Twisting & Twirling

They’re flourishing (ever expanding)

Like the slow quirk of a smile her smile!

(Nye, 2010, 67)

Dream Variations

Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide

In some place of the sun,

To whirl and to dance

Till the white day is done.

Then rest at cool evening

Beneath a tall tree

While night comes on gently,

Dark like me -

That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide

In the face of the sun,

Dance! Whirl! Whirl!

Till the quick day is done.

Rest at pale evening…

A tall, slim tree…

Night coming tenderly

Black like me.

(Paschen, 2010, 56)

A Word is Dead

Emily Dickinson

A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.

(Pinsky & Dietz, 2002, 304)

Famous

Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish

The loud voice is famous to the silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom

is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,

more famous than the dress shoe,

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it,

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men,

who smile while crossing streets,

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it did.

(Collins, 2005, 210-211)

I am Standing

Mary Oliver

I am standing

on the dunes

in the heat of summer

and I am listening

to mockingbird again

who is tonguing

his embellishments

and, in the distance,

the shy

weed loving sparrow

who has but one

soft song

which he sings

again and again

and something

somewhere inside

my own unmusical self

begins humming;

thanks for the beauty of the world.

Thanks for my life.

(Oliver, 2009, 47)

References

Collins, B. (Ed.). (2005). 180 more extraordinary poems for every day. New York, NY:

Random House Trade Paperbacks. Collins, B. (2001). Sailing alone around the room: new and selected poems. New York,

NY: Random House. Nye, N.S. (2010). Time you let me in: 25 poets under 25. New York, NY: Greenwillow

Books. Oliver, M. (2009). Evidence. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Paschen, E. (Ed.). (2010). Poetry speaks who I am. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc. Pinsky, R. & Dietz, M. (Eds.). (2002). Poems to read: a new favorite poem project

anthology. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. Rosenberg, L. (Ed.). (2000). Light-gathering poems. New York City, NY: Henry Holt and

Company. Ryan, K. (2010). The best of it: new and selected poems. New York, NY: Grove Press.