Assignment 1

Jonathan Rochester

A Man In His Life by Yehuda Amichai

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything

  Hagan Joiner

Hagan Joiner

April Midnight

By Arthur Symons
   Side by side through the streets at midnight,

Roaming together,

Through the tumultuous night of London,

In the miraculous April weather.

Roaming together under the gaslight,

Day’s work over,

How the Spring calls to us, here in the city,

Calls to the heart from the heart of a lover!

Cool to the wind blows, fresh in our faces,

Cleansing, entrancing,

After the heat and the fumes and the footlights,

Where you dance and I watch your dancing.

Good it is to be here together,

Good to be roaming,

Even in London, even at midnight,

Lover-like in a lover’s gloaming.

You the dancer and I the dreamer,

Children together,

Wandering lost in the night of London,

In the miraculous April weather.

The hurricane-

The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.


 

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Chase Payne

Because I could not stop for Death (712)
by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death –  He kindly stopped for me –  The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility –  We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring –  We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –  We passed the Setting Sun –  Or rather – He passed us –  The Dews drew quivering and chill –  For only Gossamer, my Gown –  My Tippet – only Tulle –  We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground –  The Roof was scarcely visible –  The Cornice – in the Ground –  Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity –

Kendall Moore

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master; 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.

Grant Martin

The Hurricane - William Carlos Williams

The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.

Destiny Dillard

photo by: ©2008-2012 =P0RG

Approach of Winter

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine--
like no leaf that ever was--
edge the bare garden.


William Carlos Williams

STUDENTS! be sure you are linking the ACTUAL photograph - NOT just the "link" - we need to be able to SEE the photograph when we open this page. 
Also, you must assign your name, the name of the poem, and the name of the author / artist(s).  You will not receive credit for this assignment if you do not follow directions.  Oops! ;-) 
********************************************
Jana Armstrong
A Love Song
What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?
-William Carlos Williams

One more bc the first one was already used.....

Complete Destruction
by William Carlos Williams

It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it
in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

Photo by David Octavius Hill with Robert Adamson
Newhaven Fishwives
1840

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Austin Davis:
Queen Anne's Lace, by William Carlos Williams
Her body is not so white as

anemony petals nor so smooth—nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over—

or nothing.

Untitled, Unknown photographer

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aUSTON wINGARD What have I to say to you When we shall meet? Yet— I lie here thinking of you. The stain of love Is upon the world. Yellow, yellow, yellow, It eats into the leaves, Smears with saffron The horned branches that lean Heavily Against a smooth purple sky. There is no light— Only a honey-thick stain That drips from leaf to leaf And limb to limb Spoiling the colours Of the whole world. I am alone. The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky. See me! My hair is dripping with nectar— Starlings carry it On their black wings. See, at last My arms and my hands Are lying idle. How can I tell If I shall ever love you again As I do now?

************************************************************************ Loey Peete  A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.   by Amy Lowell They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black. Cabs go down it, One, And then another, Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. The city is squalid and sinister, With the silver-barred street in the midst, Slow-moving, A river leading nowhere. Opposite my window, The moon cuts, Clear and round, Through the plum-coloured night. She cannot light the city: It is too bright. It has white lamps, And glitters coldly. I stand in the window and watch the moon. She is thin and lustreless, But I love her. I know the moon, And this is an alien city.  ************************************************** Jaclyn Largin To a Poor Old Woman munching a plum on    the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good    to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her
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Using "Worksheet 2" as a guide (You should have received this in hard-copy while in class.), you are to keep track of your descriptions as you practice SEEING a poem and a photograph.

1. You are to select any photograph (meant to be art, rather than snapshots) with human subjects.  (You might consider using some of the links to museums and photography collections found on this blog. See the "Link" page.) 

2.  Select any poem by William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, James Wright or Wallace Stevens to describe as demonstrated on "Worksheet 2".  (There is a link on this blog to the Academy of American Poets where you may be able to locate a poem you find interesting.) 

3.  "Worksheet 2" demonstrates how you are to practice "seeing" both the photograph and the poem.  Just use the worksheet to fill in your observations.

4.  Upload your photograph and your poem HERE on this page. Be sure to press "preview" to make sure your entry shows up where it should - on the "ASSIGNMENT 1"page.

Be sure to type YOUR name, as well as the name of the artist or author along with your post.

DO NOT write your "Worksheet 2" comments on this blog; for now, simply upload the photograph and poem.  You will have an opportunity to describe your photo during our next class.  You are to post the actual photograph and the actual poem, not a link to them.  Comprende??