UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND

CONTENTS
Walt Whitman
One’s Self I sing
I hear America Singing
For You O Democracy
Emily Dickinson
303
320
445
466
479

AMERICAN 591
656
Edgar Allan Poe

POETRY The Raven

Sherman Alexie
Evolution

AN ANTHOLOGY
How to Write the Great American Indian Novel
John Ashbery
They Dream Only of America
The Picture of Little J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT Paradoxes and Oxymorons
The Other Tradition
Amiri Baraka
SOS
Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note
John Berryman
Dream Song 1
Dream Song 14
Dream Song 46
Elizabeth Bishop
The Fish
Filling Station
The Armadillo
One Art
STUDENT BOOKLET FOR AMERICAN POETRY
Philip Levine Audre Lorde
Animals are Passing from Our Lives Coal 15
Gwendolyn Brooks Marianne Moore
We Real Cool The Fish
Gay Chaps at the Bar Frank O’Hara 16
Robert Creeley Why I AM Not a Painter
I Know a Man Sylvia Plath 17
The Flower Black Rook in Rainy 17 Weather
After Lorca The Colossus
Water Adrienne Rich
Here Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
17
Countee Cullen Diving Into the Wreck
Incident Wallace Stevens 18
Tableaux Thirteen Ways of looking
18 at a Blackbird
From the Dark Tower Anecdote of the Jar18
e.e. cummings Bantams in Pine-Woods
next to of course god america i The Emperor of Ice-Cream
19
[in Just] The Snow Man 19
my sweet old etcetera 19
William Carlos Williams
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r The Red Wheelbarrow 20
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond This is Just to Say 20
H.D.
Sea Rose 21
Helen 21
Oread 21
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken 22
Acquainted with the Night 22
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 22
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers 23
Harlem 23
Denise Levertov
Aware 23
Masquerade

Page 1 of 32
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Walt Whitman Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

One’s Self I sing For You O Democracy

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person, Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
Of physiology from top to toe I sing, With the love of comrades,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I With the life-long love of comrades.
say the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing. I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of
America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, prairies,
Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s
The Modern Man I sing. necks,
By the love of comrades,
I hear America Singing By the manly love of comrades.
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.
and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
Emily Dickinson
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the 303
deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The Soul selects her own Society —
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing Then — shuts the Door —
as he stands, To her divine Majority —
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the Present no more —
morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
work, or of the girl sewing or washing, At her low Gate —
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young Upon her Mat —
fellows, robust, friendly,

2
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

I’ve known her — from an ample nation — They might as wise have lodged a Bird
Choose One — For Treason – in the Pound –
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone — Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
320 Look down upon Captivity –
And laugh – No more have I –
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft 466
Of Cathedral Tunes – I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – More numerous of Windows –
We can find no scar, Superior – for Doors –
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are – Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
None may teach it – Any – And for an everlasting Roof
'Tis the seal Despair – The Gambrels of the Sky –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air – Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
When it comes, the Landscape listens – The spreading wide my narrow Hands
Shadows – hold their breath – To gather Paradise –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death – 479
Because I could not stop for Death –
445
He kindly stopped for me –
They shut me up in Prose –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
As when a little Girl
And Immortality.
They put me in the Closet –
Because they liked me “still” –
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
Still! Could themself have peeped –
My labor and my leisure too,
And seen my Brain – go round –
3
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

For His Civility – What portion of me be

Assignable - and then it was
We passed the School, where Children strove There interposed a Fly -
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
We passed the Setting Sun – Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
Or rather – He passed Us – I could not see to see -
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 656
My Tippet – only Tulle –
started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
We paused before a House that seemed
The Mermaids in the Basement
A Swelling of the Ground –
Came out to look at me –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Feels shorter than the Day
Aground – opon the Sands –
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
591 And past my Apron – and my Belt
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - And past my Boddice – too –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air - And made as He would eat me up –
Between the Heaves of Storm – As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve –
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - And then – I started – too –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King And He – He followed – close behind –
Be witnessed - in the Room - I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away Would overflow with Pearl –
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 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –
Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost
Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
5
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the
door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,
“Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,
“Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and
flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or
stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber
door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no
craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly
shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber
door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he
fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown
before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden
bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
6
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and
door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an
unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he
hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or
devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here
ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both
adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked,
upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath
spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my
door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on
the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
Sherman Alexie
Evolution
Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation
right across the border from the liquor store
and he stays open 24 hours a day,7 days a week
and the Indians come running in with jewelry
television sets, a VCR, a full-lenght beaded buckskin outfit
7
it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill
takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it
all catalogues and filed in a storage room. The Indians
pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawn
their skeletons, falling endlessly from the skin
and when the last Indian has pawned everything
but his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks
closes up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the old
calls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN
CULTURES
charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter.
How to Write the Great American Indian Novel
All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and
arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic
food.
The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian,
preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is
mandatory.
If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be
slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man
then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white
that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man
gasps
at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared
to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear
water.
If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a
secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly
revealed.
Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives
of any white women who choose to love them. All white women
love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust
at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse
cultures.
Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian
man
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.
There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.
Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian
8
then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must
carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-
breed
and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.
If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer,
especially if she is inside
a white woman. Sometimes there are complications.
An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian
woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,
everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her
horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.
For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child,
gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.
In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be
ghosts.
John Ashbery
They Dream Only of America
They dream only of America
To be lost among the thirteen million pillars of grass:
"This honey is delicious
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Though it burns the throat." I

And hiding from darkness in barns Darkness falls like a wet sponge
They can be grownups now And Dick gives Genevieve a swift punch
And the murderer's ash tray is more easily— In the pajamas. “Aroint thee, witch.“
The lake a lilac cube. Her tongue from previous ecstasy
He holds a key in his right hand. Releases thoughts like little hats.
"Please," he asked willingly.
He is thirty years old. "He clap’d me first during the eclipse.
That was before Afterwards I noted his manner
We could drive hundreds of miles Much altered. But he sending
At night through dandelions. At that time certain handsome jewels
When his headache grew worse we I durst not seem to take offence.”
Stopped at a wire filling station.
Now he cared only about signs. In a far recess of summer
Was the cigar a sign? Monks are playing soccer.
And what about the key?
He went slowly into the bedroom. II
"I would not have broken my leg if I had not fallen So far is goodness a mere memory
Against the living room table. What is it to be back Or naming of recent scenes of badness
Beside the bed? There is nothing to do That even these lives, children,
For our liberation, except wait in the horror of it. You may pass through to be blessed,
And I am lost without you." So fair does each invent his virtue.

The Picture of Little J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers
He was spoilt from childhood
by the future, which he mastered
rather early and apparently
without great difficulty.
And coming from a white world, music
Will sparkle at the lips of many who are
Beloved. Then these, as dirty handmaidens
To some transparent witch, will dream
Of a white hero’s subtle wooing,
And time shall force a gift on each.

–Boris Pasternak That beggar to whom you gave no cent

Striped the night with his strange descant.

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 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
III
Yet I cannot escape the picture
Of my small self in that bank of flowers:
My head among the blazing phlox
seemed a pale and gigantic fungus.
I had a hard stare, accepting
Everything, taking nothing
As though the rolled-up future might stink
As loud as stood the sick moment
The shutter clicked. Though I was wrong,
Still, as the loveliest feelings
Must soon find words, and these, yes,
Displace them, so I am not wrong
In calling this comic version of myself
The true one. For as change is horror,
Virtue is really stubbornness
And only in the light of lost words
Can we imagine our rewards.
Paradoxes and Oxymorons
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
10
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.
It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
The Other Tradition
They all came, some wore sentiments
Emblazoned on T-shirts, proclaiming the lateness
Of the hour, and indeed the sun slanted its rays
Through branches of Norfolk Island pine as though
Politely clearing its throat, and all ideas settled
In a fuzz of dust under trees when it’s drizzling:
The endless games of Scrabble, the boosters,
The celebrated omelette au Cantal and through it
The roar of time plunging unchecked through the sluices
Of the days, dragging every sexual moment of it
Past the lenses: the end of something.
Only then did you glance up from your book,
Unable to comprehend what had been taking place, or
Say what you had been reading. More chairs
Were brought, and lamps were lit, but it tells
Nothing of how all this proceeded to materialize
Before you and the people waiting outside and in the next
Street, repeating its name over and over, until silence
Moved halfway up the darkened trunks,
And the meeting was called to order.
I still remember
How they found you, after a dream, in your thimble hat,
Studious as a butterfly in a parking lot.
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

The road home was nicer then. Dispersing, each of the
Troubadours had something to say about how charity
Had run its race and won, leaving you the ex-president
Of the event, and how, though many of those present
Had wished something to come of it, if only a distant
Wisp of smoke, yet none was so deceived as to hanker
After that cool non-being of just a few minutes before,
Now that the idea of a forest had clamped itself
Over the minutiae of the scene. You found this
Charming, but turned your face fully toward night,
Speaking into it like a megaphone, not hearing
Or caring, although these still live and are generous
And all ways contained, allowed to come and go
Indefinitely in and out of the stockade
They have so much trouble remembering, when your forgetting
Rescues them at last, as a star absorbs the night.
Makes when I run for a bus...
Things have come to that.
And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.
Nobody sings anymore.
And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Amiri Baraka Her own clasped hands.

SOS
John Berryman
Calling all black people
Calling all black people, man woman child
Wherever you are, calling you, urgent, come in Dream Song 1
Black People, come in, wherever you are, urgent, calling you, Huffy Henry hid the day,
calling all black people unappeasable Henry sulked.
calling all black people, come in, black people, come on in. I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.
(for Kellie Jones, born 16 May 1959)
Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
All the world like a woolen lover
The ground opens up and envelopes me
once did seem on Henry’s side.
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Then came a departure.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
11
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

I don’t see how Henry, pried Dream Song 46

open for all the world to see, survived. I am, outside. Incredible panic rules.
People are blowing and beating each other without mercy.
What he has now to say is a long Drinks are boiling. Iced
wonder the world can bear & be. drinks are boiling. The worse anyone feels, the worse
Once in a sycamore I was glad treated he is. Fools elect fools.
all at the top, and I sang. A harmless man at an intersection said, under his breath, "Christ!"
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed. That word, so spoken, affected the vision
of, when they trod to work next day, shopkeepers
Dream Song 14 who went and were fitted for glasses.
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. Enjoyed they then an appearance of love & law.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, Millenia whift & waft one, one er, er. . .
we ourselves flash and yearn, Their glasses were taken from them, & they saw.
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored Man has undertaken the top job of all,
means you have no son fin. Good luck.
I myself walked at the funeral of tenderness.
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no Followed other deaths. Among the last,
inner resources, because I am heavy bored. like the memory of a lovely fuck,
Peoples bore me, was: Do, ut des.
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes Elizabeth Bishop
as bad as achilles,
The Fish
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. I caught a tremendous fish
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and held him beside the boat
and somehow a dog half out of water, with my hook
has taken itself & its tail considerably away fast in a corner of his mouth.
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving He didn’t fight.
behind: me, wag. He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
12
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

his brown skin hung in strips of an object toward the light.

like ancient wallpaper, I admired his sullen face,
and its pattern of darker brown the mechanism of his jaw,
was like wallpaper: and then I saw
shapes like full-blown roses that from his lower lip
stained and lost through age. —if you could call it a lip—
He was speckled with barnacles, grim, wet, and weaponlike,
fine rosettes of lime, hung five old pieces of fish-line,
and infested or four and a wire leader
with tiny white sea-lice, with the swivel still attached,
and underneath two or three with all their five big hooks
rags of green weed hung down. grown firmly in his mouth.
While his gills were breathing in A green line, frayed at the end
the terrible oxygen where he broke it, two heavier lines,
—the frightening gills, and a fine black thread
fresh and crisp with blood, still crimped from the strain and snap
that can cut so badly— when it broke and he got away.
I thought of the coarse white flesh Like medals with their ribbons
packed in like feathers, frayed and wavering,
the big bones and the little bones, a five-haired beard of wisdom
the dramatic reds and blacks trailing from his aching jaw.
of his shiny entrails, I stared and stared
and the pink swim-bladder and victory filled up
like a big peony. the little rented boat,
I looked into his eyes from the pool of bilge
which were far larger than mine where oil had spread a rainbow
but shallower, and yellowed, around the rusted engine
the irises backed and packed to the bailer rusted orange,
with tarnished tinfoil the sun-cracked thwarts,
seen through the lenses the oarlocks on their strings,
of old scratched isinglass. the gunnels—until everything
They shifted a little, but not was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
to return my stare. And I let the fish go.
—It was more like the tipping

13
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Filling Station Why, oh why, the doily?

Oh, but it is dirty! (Embroidered in daisy stitch
—this little filling station, with marguerites, I think,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated and heavy with gray crochet.)
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency. Somebody embroidered the doily.
Be careful with that match! Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
Father wears a dirty, arranges the rows of cans
oil-soaked monkey suit so that they softly say:
that cuts him under the arms, esso—so—so—so
and several quick and saucy to high-strung automobiles.
and greasy sons assist him Somebody loves us all.
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty. The Armadillo
(for Robert Lowell)
Do they live in the station? This is the time of year
It has a cement porch when almost every night
behind the pumps, and on it the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
a set of crushed and grease- Climbing the mountain height,
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa rising toward a saint
a dirty dog, quite comfy. still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
Some comic books provide that comes and goes, like hearts.
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie Once up against the sky it's hard
upon a big dim doily to tell them from the stars—
draping a taboret planets, that is—the tinted ones:
(part of the set), beside Venus going down, or Mars,
a big hirsute begonia.
or the pale green one. With a wind,
Why the extraneous plant? they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
Why the taboret? but if it's still they steer between
14
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
15
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Philip Levine
Animals are Passing from Our Lives
It’s wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.
I’m to market. I can smell
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

the sour, grooved block, I can smell Lurk late. We

the blade that opens the hole Strike straight. We
and the pudgy white fingers
Sing sin. We
that shake out the intestines Thin gin. We
like a hankie. In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble, Jazz June. We
suffering children, suffering flies, Die soon.

suffering the consumers Gay Chaps At The Bar

who won’t meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see. The boy ...and guys I knew in the States, young
who drives me along believes officers, return from the front crying and
trembling. Gay chaps at the bar in Los
that any moment I’ll fall Angeles, Chicago, New York...
on my side and drum my toes
—Lt. William Couch
like a typewriter or squeal in the South Pacific
and shit like a new housewife
We knew how to order. Just the dash
discovering television, Necessary. The length of gaiety in good taste.
or that I’ll turn like a beast Whether the raillery should be slightly iced
cleverly to hook his teeth And given green, or served up hot and lush.
with my teeth. No. Not this pig. And we knew beautifully how to give to women
The summer spread, the tropics of our love.
Gwendolyn Brooks When to persist, or hold a hunger off.
Knew white speech. How to make a look an omen.
We Real Cool But nothing ever taught us to be islands.
And smart, athletic language for this hour
THE POOL PLAYERS. Was not in the curriculum. No stout
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. Lesson showed how to chat with death. We brought
No brass fortissimo, among our talents,
We real cool. We To holler down the lions in this air.
Left school. We
Robert Creeley
16
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

I Know a Man After Lorca

As I sd to my (for M. Marti)
friend, because I am The church is a business, and the rich
always talking,—John, I are the business men.
When they pull on the bells, the
sd, which was not his poor come piling in and when a poor man dies, he has a
name, the darkness sur- wooden
rounds us, what cross, and they rush through the ceremony.

can we do against But when a rich man dies, they

it, or else, shall we & drag out the Sacrament
why not, buy a goddamn big car, and a golden Cross, and go doucement, doucement
to the cemetery.
drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look And the poor love it
out where yr going. and think it’s crazy.

Water
The Flower Water drips,
I think I grow tensions a fissure of leaking
like flowers moisture spills
in a wood where itself unnoticed.
nobody goes.
What
Each wound is perfect, was I looking at,
encloses itself in a tiny not to see
imperceptible blossom, that wetness spread.
making pain.
Here
Pain is a flower like that one, What
like this one, has happened
like that one, makes
like this one.

17
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

the world. In unison to walk.

Live
on the edge, Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
looking. That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.
Countee Cullen
From the Dark Tower
Incident We shall not always plant while others reap
Once riding in old Baltimore, The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, Not always countenance, abject and mute,
I saw a Baltimorean That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Keep looking straight at me. Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Now I was eight and very small, Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
And he was no whit bigger, We were not made to eternally weep.
And so I smiled, but he poked out The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.' White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
I saw the whole of Baltimore In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
From May until December; So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
Of all the things that happened there And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
That's all that I remember.
e.e. cummings
Tableaux
Locked arm in arm they cross the way next to of course god america i
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day next to of course god america i
The sable pride of night. love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
From lowered blinds the dark folk stare country 'tis of centuries come and go
And here the fair folk talk, and are no more what of it we should worry
Indignant that these two should dare in every language even deafanddumb

18
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry

by jingo by gee by gosh by gum the
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead goat-footed
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead balloonMan whistles
then shall the voice of liberty be mute? far
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water and
wee
[in Just]
in Just- my sweet old etcetera
spring when the world is mud- my sweet old etcetera
luscious the little aunt lucy during the recent
lame balloonman
war could and what
whistles far and wee is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and for,
piracies and it's my sister
spring
Isabel created hundreds
when the world is puddle-wonderful (and
hundreds)of socks not to
the queer mention fleaproof earwarmers
old balloonman whistles etcetera wristers etcetera, my
far and wee mother hoped that
and bettyandisbel come dancing
i would die etcetera
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
it's a privilege and if only he
spring could meanwhile my
and
19
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

self etcetera lay quietly your slightest look easily will unclose me
in the deep mud et though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
cetera (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
(dreaming,
et or if your wish be to close me,i and
cetera, of my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
Your smile as when the heart of this flower imagines
eyes knees and of your Etcetera) the snow carefully everywhere descending;

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
compels me with the colour of its countries,
who
rendering death and forever with each breathing
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
PPEGORHRASS
and opens;only something in me understands
eringint(o-
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
aThe):l
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
eA
!p:
H.D.
S a
(r
rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs) Sea Rose
to Rose, harsh rose,
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly marred and with stint of petals,
,grasshopper; meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
more precious
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
than a wet rose
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
single on a stem—
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
you are caught in the drift.
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
Stunted, with small leaf,
20
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

you are flung on the sand, whirl your pointed pines,

you are lifted splash your great pines
in the crisp sand on our rocks,
that drives in the wind. hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.
Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance Robert Frost
hardened in a leaf?
The Road Not Taken
Helen Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
All Greece hates And sorry I could not travel both
the still eyes in the white face, And be one traveler, long I stood
the lustre as of olives And looked down one as far as I could
where she stands, To where it bent in the undergrowth;
and the white hands.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
All Greece reviles And having perhaps the better claim,
the wan face when she smiles, Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
hating it deeper still Though as for that the passing there
when it grows wan and white, Had worn them really about the same,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills. And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Greece sees, unmoved, Oh, I kept the first for another day!
God’s daughter, born of love, Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
the beauty of cool feet I doubted if I should ever come back.
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid, I shall be telling this with a sigh
only if she were laid, Somewhere ages and ages hence:
white ash amid funereal cypresses. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
Oread And that has made all the difference.
Whirl up, sea—
Acquainted with the Night
21
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
22
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

And then run? Masquerade

Does it stink like rotten meat? Today the mountain,
Or crust and sugar over— playful and not omniscient, thinks itself
like a syrupy sweet? concealed among
attendant clouds.
Maybe it just sags Their white and blue
like a heavy load. are a perfect match for yours,
O mountain! But you are no more hidden
Or does it explode? by complacent cumulus
than Venus by a mask
Denise Levertov of black Venetian velvet.
Like a cavaliere
Aware astounded, in the piazza's twilight throng,
When I opened the door to discern her goddess-flesh,
I found the vine leaves I recognize
speaking among themselves in abundant amidst imponderable white
whispers. wafting billows, your naive force,
My presence made them mountain,
hush their green breath, dense, unmoving.
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets, Audre Lorde
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended Coal
just before you arrived. I
I liked Is the total black, being spoken
the glimpse I had, though From the earth's inside.
of their obscure There are many kinds of open.
gestures. I liked the sound How a diamond comes into a knot of flame
of such private voices. Next time How a sound comes into a word, coloured
I'll move like cautious sunlight, open By who pays what for speaking.
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully. Some words are open
Like a diamond on glass windows
Singing out within the crash of passing sun
23
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Then there are words like stapled wagers split like spun
In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart— glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
And come whatever wills all chances into the crevices—
The stub remains in and out, illuminating
An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat the
Breeding like adders. Others know sun turquoise sea
Seeking like gypsies over my tongue of bodies. The water drives a wedge
To explode through my lips of iron through the iron edge
Like young sparrows bursting from shell. of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
Some words
Bedevil me. pink
rice-grains, ink-
Love is a word another kind of open— bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
As a diamond comes into a knot of flame lilies, and submarine
I am black because I come from the earth's inside toadstools, slide each on the other.
Take my word for jewel in your open light.
All
Marianne Moore external
marks of abuse are present on this
The Fish defiant edifice—
wade all the physical features of
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps ac-
adjusting the ash-heaps; cident—lack
opening and shutting itself like of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
an out on it; the chasm-side is
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side dead.
of the wave, cannot hide Repeated
there for the submerged shafts of the evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive
sun, its youth. The sea grows old in it.

24
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Frank O’Hara Sylvia Plath

Why I Am Not a Painter Black Rook in Rainy Weather

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
On the stiff twig up there
Why? I think I would rather be
Hunches a wet black rook
a painter, but I am not. Well,
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
for instance, Mike Goldberg
Or an accident
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
To set the sight on fire
says. I drink; we drink. I look
In my eye, not seek
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
“Yes, it needed something there.”
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
Without ceremony, or portent.
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
Although, I admit, I desire,
go by. I drop in. The painting is
Occasionally, some backtalk
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
All that’s left is just
A certain minor light may still
letters, “It was too much," Mike says.
Leap incandescent
But me? One day I am thinking of
Out of the kitchen table or chair
a color: orange. I write a line
As if a celestial burning took
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then ---
whole page of words, not lines.
Thus hallowing an interval
Then another page. There should be
Otherwise inconsequent
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
By bestowing largesse, honor,
and life. Days go by. It is even in
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
Wary (for it could happen
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
Yet politic; ignorant
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
Of whatever angel may choose to flare
25
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul A blue sky out of the Oresteia
My eyelids up, and grant Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
A brief respite from fear I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Of total neutrality. With luck, Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
Patch together a content It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Of sorts. Miracles occur, Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
If you care to call those spasmodic Of your left ear, out of the wind,
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel. Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
For that rare, random descent. The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
The Colossus No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Adrienne Rich
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It’s worse than a barnyard. Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
Thirty years now I have labored They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser. Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
I crawl like an ant in mourning Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
26
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. of our human air.
The tigers in the panel that she made I go down.
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid. My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
Diving Into the Wreck to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
First the air is blue and then
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
it is bluer and then green and then
I put on
black I am blacking out and yet
the body-armor of black rubber
my mask is powerful
the absurd flippers
it pumps my blood with power
the grave and awkward mask.
the sea is another story
I am having to do this
the sea is not a question of power
not like Cousteau with his
I have to learn alone
assiduous team
to turn my body without force
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
in the deep element.
but here alone.
And now: it is easy to forget
There is a ladder.
what I came for
The ladder is always there
among so many who have always
hanging innocently
lived here
close to the side of the schooner.
swaying their crenellated fans
We know what it is for,
between the reefs
we who have used it.
and besides
Otherwise
you breathe differently down here.
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
I go down.
The words are maps.
Rung after rung and still
I came to see the damage that was done
the oxygen immerses me
and the treasures that prevail.
the blue light
I stroke the beam of my lamp
the clear atoms
27
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

slowly along the flank by cowardice or courage

of something more permanent the one who find our way
than fish or weed back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
the thing I came for: a book of myths
the wreck and not the story of the wreck in which
the thing itself and not the myth our names do not appear.
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun Wallace Stevens
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty Thirteen Ways of looking at a Blackbird
the ribs of the disaster
I
curving their assertion
Among twenty snowy mountains,
among the tentative haunters.
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
II
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
I was of three minds,
We circle silently
Like a tree
about the wreck
In which there are three blackbirds.
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
It was a small part of the pantomime.
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
IV
obscurely inside barrels
A man and a woman
half-wedged and left to rot
Are one.
we are the half-destroyed instruments
A man and a woman and a blackbird
that once held to a course
Are one.
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
V
I do not know which to prefer,
We are, I am, you are
The beauty of inflections
28
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

Or the beauty of innuendoes, At the sight of blackbirds

The blackbird whistling Flying in a green light,
Or just after. Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

VI
Icicles filled the long window XI
With barbaric glass. He rode over Connecticut
The shadow of the blackbird In a glass coach.
Crossed it, to and fro. Once, a fear pierced him,
The mood In that he mistook
Traced in the shadow The shadow of his equipage
An indecipherable cause. For blackbirds.

VII XII
O thin men of Haddam, The river is moving.
Why do you imagine golden birds? The blackbird must be flying.
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet XIII
Of the women about you? It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
VIII And it was going to snow.
I know noble accents The blackbird sat
And lucid, inescapable rhythms; In the cedar-limbs.
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved Anecdote of the Jar
In what I know.
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
IX
It made the slovenly wilderness
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
Surround that hill.
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
X
The jar was round upon the ground
29
 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

And tall and of a port in air. Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
It took dominion everywhere. On which she embroidered fantails once
The jar was gray and bare. And spread it so as to cover her face.
It did not give of bird or bush, If her horny feet protrude, they come
Like nothing else in Tennessee. To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
Bantams in Pine-Woods The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt! The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
Damned universal cock, as if the sun To regard the frost and the boughs
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail. Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal. And have been cold a long time
Your world is you. I am my world. To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines, Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs, In the sound of a few leaves,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.
Which is the sound of the land
The Emperor of Ice-Cream Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

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 AMERICAN POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018

William Carlos Williams I

By the road to the contagious hospital
The Red Wheelbarrow under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
so much depends
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
upon
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
a red wheel
barrow
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
glazed with rain
water
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
beside the white
stuff of bushes and small trees
chickens.
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-
This is Just to Say
I have eaten Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
the plums dazed spring approaches-
that were in
the icebox They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
and which save that they enter. All about them
you were probably the cold, familiar wind-
saving
for breakfast Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
Forgive me One by one objects are defined-
they were delicious It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
so sweet
and so cold But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
Spring and All has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

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