Poetry Composition Through Instruction
By Sherman Alexie I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shallafter an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Damand topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgiveand so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive damdownriver from the Grand…
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By Theodore Roethke I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those…
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By Theodore Roethke In a dark time, the eye begins to see,I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;I hear my echo in the echoing woodA lord of nature weeping to a tree.I live between the heron and the wren,Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What’s madness but nobility of soulAt odds…
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By Duane Niatum aven steals your name for an autumn joke:buries you along with it underthe thickest hemlock known to chipmunks.Too bad you were awake for the event.He accuses you of asking allthe wrong questions over and over.You attempt revolt to prove his medicinewheel is cracked and filling up its own pit. He hollers your…
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by Duane Niatum You said to me that day,“There’s nothing you can do,”and spoke of Auden’s line:“Poetry makes nothing happen.”And though I honor you,especially your poems,the objects you dipped in light,then, left in the rainbow,let slip from our sight,I admitted, diving out of self,a sweet woman’s white caress,the hundreds of lives and placesin books, failed…
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by Duane Niatum (Salish) IYou asked us to hear the softest vocable of wind,whether slow or swift, rising or falling to earth,its fragments will drop in to place in the end.You said, believe, endure, the ironies of birth!If we succeeded in sleeping like thorns on a rose,the nerves awake to the pulse, folklore of the…
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by Shihab Zeest Hashmi A guard forces you to urinate on yourselfAnother barks out louder than his dogthe names of your sisterswho live in the delicate nestof a ruby-throated hummingbirdEach will be a skeleton he saysWas there someone who gave youseven almonds for memory,a teaspoon of honey every morning?Cardamom tea before bed?Someone who starched your…
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by Mamoud Darwish I didn’t apologize to the well as I passed by it.I borrowed a cloud from an ancient pine and squeezed itlike an orange. I waited for a mythical white deer.I instructed my heart in patience: Be neutral, as thoughyou were not a part of me. Here, good shepherdsstood on air and invented…
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By Naomi Shihab Nye Because the eye has a short shadow orit is hard to see over heads in the crowd? If everyone else seems smarterbut you need your own secret? If mystery was never your friend? If one way could satisfy the infinite heart of the heavens? If you liked the king on his…
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by Naomi Shihab Nye Tiny keyboard bearing the massive reverie of the past—press one button, we’re carried away on a country road,marching with saints, leaving the Red River Valley…here is every holiday you hated, every hard time,each steamy summer wish. You closed your eyesin the wooden stairwell, leaning your head against the wall,knowing a bigger…
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