Choose ONE of these poems and write a 750-1000 word explication of this poem.  Your final product should be an essay (with an introductory paragraph including thesis, supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion, not a worksheet/list.  MAKE SURE YOUR FINAL DRAFT IS WORD-PROCESSED and follows the MLA guidelines discussed earlier this semester. You may NOT use any outside sources besides a dictionary, thesaurus, your textbook, and class materials on poetic terminology.

Do not simply paraphrase the poem’s literal meaning.  Your goal, instead, is to apply the literary terminology we’ve been discussing in class to one specific poem.  For example, you might discuss how the poem’s sound, images, metaphors, tone, and form all work together to create an overall theme.

When interpreting the poem, try to capture the specificity of what THIS poem is saying that is different from what other poems on the same subject have said.  For example, don’t just say, “this poem is about someone who is in love.”  This could apply to millions of poems.  What makes this one unique?

Note:  After the title, I will provide the dates of the when the poem was published. In the right margin, I will provide definitions of words you probably don’t know.  (They correspond to the word with the ° sign.)

1. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (1600)

Come live with me and by my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove°                                                              try

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.°                                                                    harmonic songs

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies°                                                                    bouquets

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle                                                                         skirt

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle:

(Poem continued on next page.)

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds’ swains° shall dance and sing                                                 lovers

For thy delight each May morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my love.

John Donne,  “Holy Sonnet XIV”   (written around 1610)

Love Poem

By Denise Levertov                (published in 1978)

What you give me is

the extraordinary sun

splashing its light

into astonished trees.

A branch of berries, swaying

Under the feet of a bird.

I know

other joys—they taste

bitter, distilled as they are

from roots, yet I thirst for them.

But you—

you give me

the flash of golden daylight

in the body’s

midnight,

warmth of fall noonday

between the sheets in the dark.

If We Must Die

By Claude McKay (African-American writer of Harlem Renaissance.

Poem published in 1919)

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

_________________________________________________

what the mirror said

by Lucille Clifton  (I don’t have the exact date on this poem, but

it is fairly recent.)

listen,

you a wonder.

you a city

of a woman.

you got a geography

of your own.

listen,

somebody need a map

to understand you.

Somebody need directions

To move around you.

listen,

woman,

you not a noplace

anonymous

girl;

mister with his hands on you

he got his hands on

some

damn

body!

1. e. cummings (published 1923)

[in Just-]

In Just-

spring         when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles        far        and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piraces and it’s

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far     and        wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan         whistles

far

and

wee

Langston Hughes (African-American writer of the Harlem Renaissance)

(published 1926)

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back

Don’t you set down on the steps

‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Kim Addonizio (b. 1954)  (Published in 1994)

First Poem for You

I like to touch your tattoos in complete

darkness, when I can’t see them.  I’m sure of

where they are, know by heart the neat

lines of lightning pulsing just above

your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue

swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent

twists, facing a dragon.  When I pull you

to me, taking you until we’re spent

and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss

the pictures in your skin.  They’ll last until

you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists

or turns to pain between us, they will still

be there.  Such permanence is terrifying.

So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime (1921)

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

loaded the cherry branches

and color some bushes

Yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

Is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turned away forgetting.

Today my son told me

That in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

Wendell Berry (born 1934)

The Peace of Wild Things (1968)

When the despair of the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s life may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake°                             male duck with brilliant plumage

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Shirley Geok-lin-Lim (born 1944)

Learning to love America

because it has no pure products

because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline

because the water of the ocean is cold

and because land is better than ocean

because I say we rather than they

because I live in California

I have eaten fresh artichokes

and jacarandas bloom in April and May

because my senses have caught up with my body

my breath with the air it swallows

my hunger with my mouth

because I walk barefoot in my house

because I have nursed my son at my breast

because he is a strong American boy

because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is

because he answers I don’t know

because to have a son is to have a country

because my son will bury me here

because countries are in our blood and we bleed them

because it is late and too late to change my mind

because it is time.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

What lips my lips have kissed and where, and why               (published 1923)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there sits a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

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