William Wordsworth

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.html

Born: April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, United Kingdom

Raised: He had four siblings and his mother died when he was eight. He was first published in 1787, his first year at St. John's College.

Education

     1778: Hawkshead Grammer School

     1787: St. John's College, Cambridge

Famous Works:

"My Heart Leaps Up"

"Daffodils"

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

"The Tables Turned"

Died: April 23, 1850

                                             

"I Wander Lonely as a Cloud"

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 

Dr. Suess

Biography

Given Name: Theodor Suess Geisel

Born: March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts

Raised: Springfield, Massachusetts

Schools: Dartmouth College

Famous Works: (known for his poetic meters) The Cat in The Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Lorax, Horton Hears a Who!, On Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

Died: September 24, 1991
http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm

How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Every Who
Down in Who-ville liked Christmas a lot
But the Grinch who lived just North of Who-ville
Did not!

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

Wilfred Owen

Born: 18th March 1893

Raised: Shropshire then moved to birkenhead

Education: Wakeman School

Famous works: Anthem for doomed youth, Dulce Et Decorum Est 
Died: 4th November 1918 ( WW1 KIA)

Photo:

Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Bio: Shel Silverstein began writing when he was twelve years old. He would have preferred to be playing ball with children his age, but he had no athletic ability. Also, girls showed no interest in him, so he began to write. He was not familiar with the style of any famous poets. Since he had no one whom he could mimic, he began developing his own technique.

Born: september 15 1930
raised: chicago
Famous works: The giving tree
died: may eighth 1999

Once there was a giving tree who loved a little boy.
And everyday the boy would come to play
Swinging from the branches, sleeping in the shade
Laughing all the summer’s hours away.
And so they love,
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

But soon the boy grew older and one day he came and said,
"Can you give me some money, tree, to buy something I’ve found?"
"I have no money," said the tree, "Just apples, twigs and leaves."
"But you can take my apples, boy, and sell them in the town."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree,
"I’m now a man and I must have a house that’s all my home."
"I can’t give you a house" he said, "The forest is my house."
"But you may cut my branches off and build yourself a home"
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

And time went by and the boy came back with sadness in his eyes.
"My life has turned so cold," he says, "and I need sunny days."
"I’ve nothing but my trunk," he says, "But you can cut it down
And build yourself a boat and sail away."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

And after years the boy came back, both of them were old.
"I really cannot help you if you ask for another gift."
"I’m nothing but an old stump now. I’m sorry but I’ve nothing more to give"
"I do not need very much now, just a quiet place to rest,"
The boy, he whispered, with a weary smile.
"Well", said the tree, "An old stump is still good for that."
"Come, boy", he said, "Sit down, sit down and rest a while."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

More Billy Collins: Another Key West Bootleg Jan. 2003

Podcast: Download (Duration: 30:32 — 14.0MB)

This Billy Collins recording was made in January of 2003, during Collins’s second term as Laureate. 

He reads a selection of poems, including:

Time 0:20-2:49 “Shoveling Snow With Buddha” 

“Monday” 
“Flock” 
“Creatures” 
“The Lanyard” 
“The Country” animated version More http://movingpoems.com/
“Surprise” 
“No Time” 
“Love” 
“Sonnet” 
“Japan” 
“Forgetfulness” - a cool visual presentation of the poem.
“Consolation” 
“On Turning Ten” 
and “Nightclub”


Additional links:

Billy Collins TED Talk: Poems in Motion

"Workshop" by Billy Collins

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.   

It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now   

so immediately the poem has my attention,

like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

And I like the first couple of stanzas,

the way they establish this mode of self-pointing

that runs through the whole poem

and tells us that words are food thrown down   

on the ground for other words to eat.   

I can almost taste the tail of the snake   

in its own mouth,

if you know what I mean.

But what I’m not sure about is the voice,

which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,   

but other times seems standoffish,

professorial in the worst sense of the word

like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.   

But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,   

especially the fourth one.

I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges   

which gives me a very clear picture.

And I really like how this drawbridge operator   

just appears out of the blue

with his feet up on the iron railing

and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—

a hook in the slow industrial canal below.

I love slow industrial canal below. All those l’s.

Maybe it’s just me,

but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.   

I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?   

And what’s an obbligato of snow?

Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.

At that point I’m lost. I need help.

The other thing that throws me off,

and maybe this is just me,

is the way the scene keeps shifting around.   

First, we’re in this big aerodrome

and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,   

which makes me think this could be a dream.   

Then he takes us into his garden,

the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,   

though that’s nice, the coiling hose,

but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.   

The rain and the mint green light,

that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?   

Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?

There’s something about death going on here.

In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here   

is really two poems, or three, or four,   

or possibly none.

But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.

This is where the poem wins me back,

especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.

I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,

but I still love the details he uses

when he’s describing where he lives.

The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,   

the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,   

the spool of thread for a table.

I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work   

night after night collecting all these things

while the people in the house were fast asleep,   

and that gives me a very strong feeling,

a very powerful sense of something.

But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.   

Maybe that was just me.

Maybe that’s just the way I read it.

Billy Collins, “Workshop” from The Art of Drowning. Copyright © 1995 by Billy Collins. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, www.pitt.edu/~press/.

Billy Collins on "The Reader"

Two Part post

Part I: (Disjointed) notes and links from Billy Collins from his reading in Key West:


The writer courts "the love of strangers."

Collins challenges Yeats: "a poet never speaks directly as to someone at the breakfast table"
He addresses the reader.

Poet aware of his presence; other, oblivious.  Dogs vs. Cats.

A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal


You, Reader


How can you envision a reader?


Writer to reader. Reader to writer.


Pretend that you haven't written the poem: Objective view point.



As a poet, you're more interested in yourself than the reader (or poetry).


Form gives pleasure to the reader.



Fishing on the Susquehanna in July


Collins never thought those poems were talking to him - until he read Walt Whitman.


Collins talks of the intimacy between you and the reader.


Walt Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Bridge




Directions


Taking inspiration from Collins, Inua Ellams shares his version of "Directions."


It's interesting that I deleted the formatting so I lost the stanza and line breaks at one point - (how would it change the poem?):

The Trouble with Poetry

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night --
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky --

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass. 

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world, 

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti --
to be perfectly honest for a moment --

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

Billy Collins, the U.S. poet laureate from 2001 to 2003, is the author of seven collections of poetry and is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He serves as the poet laureate of New York State.


(One of my favorite poems by "the bicycling poet of San Francisco"; I shared this poem once with a freshman English class since it was the poem of the day on the Writer's Almanac.  They never forget it; so much so it was a running joke until they were seniors.)

- We stopped listening here - I encourage you to listen to the end.  Collins gets risque in "Purity" (although he seems PG-13 next to Ginsberg). 

Collins jokes writing a poem is about how to end it - which is true.  Reminds me of the idea that "a poem is never finished, only abandoned."  I forget who said it first.   I google to discover French poet, Paul Valery. 

Last poem, Collins reads "Envoy"  "Off you go..." 

_______________

Part II. Reflection

September 4, 2012


Today in class - a block period - and the day after Labor Day, I could sense the general enthusiasm in the room.  So I pushed my luck and shared a Billy Collins podcast that I've been listening to, even falling asleep it at night like a bedtime story. 

 There is something about Billy Collins that speaks to me - that makes me smile and feel good about life and poetry - that it need not be all death and lost love with complex allusions and forced analysis. It simply reads as if a wise man were sharing a story with images.  With a blend of sincerity and self-aware irony, Collins takes notice of the eternal in the mundane daily lives that we make not otherwise care enough to slow down and see - and "notice the unlit candles" of our imagination as he challenges us in his poem, "You, Reader."  

While on the surface, he seems overly simplistic yet he makes subtle allusions and references that may leave you curious to ask what's the joke? He uses humor to entice the reader to read on, and read more poetry. Listening to his reading, we are offered an astute laugh track from a discerning crowd of poetry lovers. We laugh with them, but may not even know why at first.


In "A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal" Collins writes, "But some days I may notice/ a little door swinging open/ in the morning air". My hope in sharing this podcast and his take on poetry is that a "little door" swings open for my students - that there is humor in poetry - and the more poetry we read the more we can relate to it. 

 It need not boring if we begin to open doors and make connections like synopsis in the brain.  With my notes above, I like to embed hyper links for the curious - and for me - to make connections with a click.

In order to explain anything, we turn to words - and to metaphors and similes - and to analogies or extended metaphors - maybe even epic similes. A few years ago a famous cancer researcher from the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Tuohy. visited WRA and he spoke about the language of metaphor as a powerful tool in explaining his work in cancer research.  Think about it: without words or poetry, we cannot express anything - or explain anything.  We need images that we can relate to in order to make connections to things and ideas that we cannot wrap our mind around - at first; however, once we can see images and analogies in our mind's eye, we get it.  

Statement of the obvious: A poet offers pictures through poetry; however, does poetry depend more on the reader's ability to see - and listen?

In class, I wonder what they heard today. What did they write in their moleskine journals?   Were there any epiphanies or did a "little door open"? I wonder if anyone cares to comment...

A Little Advice from Adrienne on Writing a Poem

"I can’t write a poem to manipulate you; it will not succeed."

                                      - Adrienne Rich, 

                                          From her essay on poetic theory: " Someone is Writing a Poem"

Whenever I read Adrienne Rich, I wish I had time to read more.

Today, I asked my juniors to write a poem that is a conversation with either Thoreau or Emerson; the seniors, Frost or Emerson.  The assignment is simple address the famous poet in free verse - 14 lines.  The tone - conversational - or even critical.  They can quote, but not excessively: they can question, but they must ultimately argue a point.  A high-fiving homage has it's limitations in creativity, too.  It need not be inspirational; perhaps, ironic - and hopefully not cynical - which would be, thus, ironic given the optimism of Emerson.

Yet these three poets, were not always so, optimistic.  They certainly had their days and their fair share of loss and tragedy in their lives.  Yet they survived and endured.  They railed against conformity and imitation.  They found their voice through taking note of their lives - they wrote, they talked, they observed, they listened. 

Now, for my students, these assignments are daunting, frustrating, intimidating, and yes, scary.  Since I am not assessing whether they know the answers or how well they can memorize, parroting quotes or poems.  Emerson would not be happy if I did.  I am asking them to connect within - and transform his didactic essays (much in the way Whitman aspired to be the Emerson's "Poet) into their own words - beautiful words arranged in 14 simple verses.  

And as I tried to explain a conversation with a poet, I thought of an example: Allen Ginsburg's "A Supermarket in California" where he sees Whitman down the aisle and questions him.  

No cartoon light bulb over their head, my students seemed more confused with this example; their eyes  rather blank - and hungry before a late lunch on a Friday afternoon.  After class, I googled poems to poets, and found poems about poems - a wonderful list with links.  Yet meta-texts and Ars Poeticas...may only cloud the issue further.

A simple assignment: Write a poem.  Perhaps a letter - to these poets, and set it to verse - with consideration to enjambment and stanza breaks.  

Punctuation matters - no imitation of E.E. Cummings. 

For further inspiration, I share more Adrienne Rich (if you're still reading this post) - She is tough to truncate: click here for the full essay: 

I can’t write a poem to manipulate you; it will not succeed. Perhaps you have read such poems and decided you don’t care for poetry; something turned you away. I can’t write a poem from dishonest motives; it will betray its shoddy provenance, like an ill-made tool, a scissors, a drill, it will not serve its purpose, it will come apart in your hands at the point of stress. I can’t write a poem simply from good intentions, wanting to set things right, make it all better; the energy will leak out of it, it will end by meaning less than it says.

I can’t write a poem that transcends my own limits, though poetry has often pushed me beyond old horizons, and writing a poem has shown me how far out a part of me was walking beyond the rest. I can expect a reader to feel my limits as I cannot, in terms of her or his own landscape, to ask: But what has this to do with me? Do I exist in this poem? And this is not a simple or naive question. We go to poetry because we believe it has something to do with us. We also go to poetry to receive the experience of the not me, enter a field of vision we could not otherwise apprehend.

Someone writing a poem believes in a reader, in readers, of that poem. The “who” of that reader quivers like a jellyfish. Self-reference is always possible: that my “I” is a universal “we,” that the reader is my clone. That sending letters to myself is enough for attention to be paid. That my chip of mirror contains the world.

But most often someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate, vibrating range of difference, that an “I” can become a “we” without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images. A language that itself has learned from the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers.