Poetry Class

Here is a sample from what I wrote in my "Writing Poetry" class:

The first one I actually adapted from a blog entry and it is a
Mary Oliver imitation. (of her style):

To My Student Sitting in the First Row:

If the future of America
rests upon you,
lets just say I’m worried;
you make me
believe people
can’t change
can’t soften
and for that I can
scarcely look at you.
I stand;
I tell you of beautiful things:
Martin Jr.’s Dream,
Frost’s less traveled road,
Harper’s defense of the weak,
but I feel your icy breath
stinging my words
drowning their meaning
as you mutter contradictions,
arguments, war.
You sit there
brooding, shoulders stiff
eyes cold, heart deaf,
mind impenetrable
like a fortress.
I am ashamed to admit
you move me somehow…
to restlessness
to anger
because when I go home,
I’ll think about you:
my loftiness broken,
doubts encircling,
mind wondering
if tomorrow
could bring
something different
something stronger
something renewed.

An English Teacher’s Hope

I show you poetry:
words of wonder, and wish
so that maybe you
will recognize beauty:
I read you Frost,
bringing you the birches,
where you can climb
“toward heaven til the tree
can bear no more.”
I read you Keats so you can be
“among the river sallows, borne aloft,”
“a close-bosom friend
of the maturing sun.”

I show you what is ugly
in the words and lines
so that maybe you
will need change:
I read you Langston,
so you can understand--
“I am the darker brother
they send me to eat in the kitchen,
But I laugh
And eat well
And grow strong.”
I read you Blake
so you can hear
“every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry fear.”

I show you what love is
in the imagery and rhymes
so that maybe you
will believe in love:
I read you Elizabeth
so you can feel one who loves
“to depth and breadth and height”
one who “loves freely, purely.”
I read you Wilcox
so that maybe you
will remember, “love much.
Earth has enough bitter in it. No heart
so hard, but love at last may win it.
Love is the great primeaval cause of man.”

This next one is a Pantoum, which means
that specific lines have to repeated in very
specific places....

Your Love

Your love raises the sun anew.
I don’t ask, but you go with me,
for if we are together, happiness revives;
even a foreign place is home.

I don’t ask, but you go with me;
I am Naomi, and you, my Ruth.
Even a foreign place is home
where we survive, abide, provide.

I am Naomi, and you, my Ruth.
You follow me to joy or mourning
where we survive, abide, provide.
You, like a star, wane my darkness.

You follow me to joy or mourning,
for if we are together, happiness revives.
You, like a star, wane my darkness.
Your love raises the sun anew.