Words for the Spirit:

An Uplifting Poetry Unit

“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to ​turn on the light”
- J. K. Rowling

The following poems have been curated because of their themes of seeking hope in
difficult times, connecting to one’s community, ancestors and the human condition,
and learning to appreciate the small things in life.

While reading, keep these questions in mind:

How do the speaker’s own experiences impact how they see the world?

What metaphors do the poems use for overcoming adversity? For hope?

How does age affect optimism?

Why is repetition such a common poetic device?

Poems
● “The Violet Light of Healing” by Philip Kevin Paul 2
● “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur 3
● “Fitzgerald Flitt” by Karen Hesse 5
● “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou 6
● “Swami Anand” by Sujata Bhatt 8
● “Leaks” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 10
● “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas 11

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The Violet Light of Healing
By Philip Kevin Paul​ (​WSÁNEĆ, contemporary)

for Cecil Malloway You were digging for

camas bulbs in mid-winter
I saw a violet light you were so hungry.
rising, When you opened
then arch with its aching back a certain piece of earth,
like a grandfather might violet light
to kiss his grandchild’s poured out. You were young
worried brow. and your young self thought it meant
the ground there
What is that light? was fertile so you kept digging
with your bleeding hands
And since the question didn’t into the frozen ground.
surprise you, But you went to bed hungry
you answered: that night. Even in your closed eyes,
It’s the light that stays sleepless, the light wouldn’t cease
around until and through the hole you’d made in the
the healing is done. ground you saw
the violet fields of camas
Remembering the first time from happier days of poverty,
you saw such a light when you truly thought
you recalled also you were poor because
what it meant to you: your mother and father
our old country was still had no money.
alive somewhere.
So it was that your mother
picked nettles for soup,
even the ones hard and too old,
and your father, with
a hatchet-roughed stick,
dug for camas bulbs,
soft and too young.

Questions
1. How does the first simile set the tone of the poem?
2. Why do you think the poem is broken into stanzas of different lengths?
3. What do you think “the light” is?

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The Writer
By ​Richard Wilbur​ (American, 1921-2017)

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing

From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff

Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,

As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,

And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling

Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

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And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,

Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

From ​New and Collected Poems​, published by Harcourt Brace, 1988. Copyright © 1969 by Richard
Wilbur.

Questions
1. Why does the speaker worry his daughter “reject[s his] thought and its easy
figure”? What is the thought?
2. In the penultimate stanza, what do the words “the right window” imply? Why?
3. Why do you think birds are often used as symbols for hope?

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Fitzgerald Flitt
By Karen Hesse (American, 1952-)

there are always those

who think the world is
going to the dogs
and that everything
approached perfection
only in the
good old days.

they always say winters today demand less of us,

and summers now are meek.
and yet little has really changed.
those who move away remember
the massive town hall,
the solid stone church,
the imposing brick schoolhouse.
yet when they return after many years,
they find the building
though identical in reality,
strangely shrunken in size and majesty
from the impression
memory produced.

to those who swear our young are on the road to perdition

take comfort in this​—
every generation
has felt somewhat the same
for two or three thousand years
and still the world goes on.

Questions
1. What would you say existed “​only in the / good old days”?
2. Why do you think “the massive town hall, / the solid stone church, / the
imposing brick schoolhouse” were chosen as images the speaker remembers?
3. What is the relationship between generations in this poem?

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Still I Rise
By ​M​aya Angelou (American, 1928-2014)

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

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Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from ​And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.​ Copyright © 1978 by Maya
Angelou.

Questions
1. What is the role of repetition in this poem?
2. What “​history’s shame” does the speaker allude to?
3. What does the speaker do that might be seen as offensive? Do you think she’s
apologizing for it?

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Swami Anand
By Sujata Bhatt (Indian, 1956 -)

In Kosbad during the monsoons

There are so many shades of green
Your mind forgets other colours.

At that time
I am seventeen, and have just started
to wear a sari every day.
Swami Anand is eighty-nine
and almost blind.
His thick glasses don't seem to work,
they only magnify his cloudy eyes.
Mornings he summons me
from the kitchen
and I read to him until lunch time.

One day he tells me

"you can read your poems now."
I read a few, he is silent.
Thinking he's asleep, I stop.
But he says “continue.”
I begin a long one
In which the Himalayas rise
as a metaphor.
Suddenly I am ashamed
to have used the Himalayas like this,
ashamed to speak my imaginary mountains
to a man who walked through
the ice and snow of Gangotri
barefoot,
a man who lived close to Kanchajanga
and Everest clad only in summer cotton.
I pause to apologize
but he says “just continue.”

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Later climbing through
the slippery green hills of Kosbad,
Swami Anand does not need to lean
on my shoulder or his umbrella.
I prod him for suggestions,
ways to improve my poems.
He is silent a long while,
then, he says
"there is nothing I can tell you
except continue.”

Audio​ link available here

Questions
1. How does age play an important role in this poem?
2. What do we often use mountains as a metaphor for? Why might the speaker
feel bad about this?
3. How does the poem’s formatting influence how you read it? Why are the lines
of varying length?

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Leaks
By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg)

dirt road
open windows
beautiful one, too perfect for this world
the immediacy of mosquitoes
humidity choking breath
my beautiful singing bird
five-year-old ogichidaakwe
crying silent, petrified tears in the back seat
until the dam finally bursts
y​ou are the breath over the ice on the lake. you are the one the grandmothers
​ ve​d seeds of allies. you are the space
sing to through the rapids. you are the sa
between embrace​ s.
she's always going to remember this
you are rebellion, resistance, re-imagination
her body will remember
you are dug-up roads, 27-day standoffs, the foil of industry prospectors
she can't speak about it for a year, which is 1/6 of her life
for every one of your questions there is a story hidden in the skin of the
forest.
use them as flint, fodder, l​ove s​ongs, medicine. y​ ​ou are from a place of
unflinching ​po​wer, the holder of our stories, the one who speaks up.
the chance for spoken-up words drowned in ambush
y​o​u are not a ves​ se​l for white settler shame,
even if i am the housing that failed you.

“ogichidaakwe” is nishnaabemowin for holy woman

Simpson’s poem has an accompanying Music Video ​here​.

Questions
1. What is the relationship between the speaker and the five-year-old?
2. How does the use of italics influence your understanding of the poem?
3. What does the line, “her body will remember” suggest about the connection
between history and someone’s identity?

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Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas (Welsh, 1914-1953)

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Questions
1. What is the mood of this poem?
2. What is the speaker’s opinion of death?
3. How does “the light” in this poem differ from that of the first poem, Paul’s
“The Violet Light of Healing”?

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