POETRY SELECTIONS- TEST C
Selection 1
Ice and Fire
by Edmund Spenser
My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows, the more I her entreat1?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat 5
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold2?
What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice: 10
and ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind
that it can alter all the course of kind.
______
1: entreat- beg
2: augmented manifold- supplemented many times over
Selection 2
Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem 5
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem 10
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose 15
to find out what it really means.
Selection 3:
Constantly Risking Absurdity
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience 5
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces 10
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats3
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics 15
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist 20
who must perforce4 perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch 25
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man 30
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
______
3: entrachat- [en tra shay] (Fr.) very quick ballet footwork
in which the feet move about each other in scissor-
like movements
4: perforce- out of necessity
Selection 4:
Tongue
by Conrad Hilberry
He did not mean to test the cold
or his own daring. He did it idly,
not thinking, as he might suck
a little solace from his thumb.
Alone at recess, watching three boys 5
wrestle in the snow, he touched
his tongue to the cyclone fence
and it froze. The cold clanged shut.
With his fingers, he pulled at the tongue
as if it were a leech, sucking 10
the blood of his leg. But the ice held.
In panic, he tore away his mistake,
tore loose his tongue, leaving skin
like patches of rust on the metal.
What could he do with the torn and swollen 15
tongue, with shame that tasted like blood?
In school, he hid his mouth behind
his hands. He swallowed. He swallowed.
Selection 5:
POVERTY
by Wendy Ramos
To be hungry is to learn to eat,
For indulgence drugs the mind
And sways away the emptiness
We need our souls to find.
To wonder is to learn to learn, 5
For knowledge fills a breach
And eats itself to fullness
We need our souls to reach.