Literary Truth Packet #2:dm 11/14/07
Example Poems – Some Themes for You to Consider:
1. Poems Concerning Parents (or any significant adult in a child’s life):
Example: Harp by Bruce Weigl
Example: Mothers by Nikki Giovanni
2. Poems Concerning the Things that Were Forbidden:
Example: The Burnt Child by W.S. Merwin
3. Poems Concerning the Heightened Knowledge of the Passing of Time:
Example: The Giant Slide by Ted Kooser
4. Poems Concerning Family Rituals (Birthdays, the Dinner Table etc)
Example: Eating Together by Li-Young Lee
The Harp by Bruce Weigl
When he was my age and I was already a boy
my father made a machine in the garage.
A wired piece of steel
with many small and beautiful welds
ground so smooth they resembled rows of pearls.
He went broke with whatever it was.
He held it so carefully in his arms.
He carried it foundry to foundry.
I think it was his harp,
I think it was what he longed to make
with his hands for the world.
He moved it finally from the locked closet
to the bedroom
to the garage again
where he hung it on the wall
until I climbed and pulled it down
and rubbed it clean
and tried to make it work.
Bruce Weigl, “The Harp” from Archaeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems. 1999.
Writing Idea:
Write a poem or short prose piece in which you depict a parent or significant adult in a way that recognizes them as a real person with hopes and dreams and frailties rather than the abstraction called “mother” or “father.”
Mothers by Nikki Giovanni
the last time i was home
to see my mother we kissed
exchanged pleasantries
and unpleasantries pulled a warm
comforting silence around
us and read separate books
i remember the first time
i consciously saw her
we were living in a three room
apartment on burns avenue
mommy always sat in the dark
i don’t know how i knew that but she did
that night i stumbled into the kitchen
maybe because i’ve always been
a night person or perhaps because i had wet
the bed
she was sitting on a chair
the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through
those thousands of panes landlords who rented
to people with children were prone to put in windows
she may have been smoking but maybe not
her hair was three-quarters her height
which made me a strong believer in the samson myth
and very black
i’m sure i just hung there by the door
i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady
she was very deliberately waiting
perhaps for my father to come home
from his night job or maybe for a dream
that had promised to come by
“come here” she said “i’ll teach you
a poem: i see the moon
the moon sees me
god bless the moon
and god bless me”
i taught it to my son
who recited it for her
just to say we must learn
to bear the pleasures
as we have borne the pains
Nikki Giovanni, “Mothers” from My House. 1972 by Nikki Giovanni.
Writing Idea:
Write a poem or short prose piece in which you depict a parent or significant adult in a way that recognizes them as a real person with hopes and dreams and frailties rather than the abstraction called “mother” or “father.”
The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin
Matches among other things that were not allowed
never would be
lying high in a cool blue box
that opened in other hands and there they all were
bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns
white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring
fire after fire gone before
I could hear the scratch and flare
when they were over
and catch the smell of the striking
I knew what the match would feel like
lighting
when I was very young
a fire engine came and parked
in the shadow of the big poplar tree
on Fourth Street one night
keeping its engine running
pumping oxygen to the old woman
in the basement
when she died the red lights went on burning
W. S. Merwin, “The Burnt Child” from Flower & Hand: Poems 1977-1983.
Writing Idea:
Write a poem or short prose piece in which you consider a thing that was considered ‘forbidden’ or taboo in your family when you were a child. You can use any perspective that feels right. For instance the subject seen through the eyes of a child, yet with the perspective of the intervening years.
The Giant Slide by Ted Kooser
Beside the highway, the Giant Slide
with its rusty undulations lifts
out of the weeds. It hasn’t been used
for a generation. The ticket booth
tilts to that side where the nickels shifted
over the years. A chain link fence keeps out
the children and drunks. Blue morning glories
climb halfway up the stairs, bright clusters
of laughter. Call it a passing fancy,
this slide that nobody slides down now.
Those screams have all gone east
on a wind that will never stop blowing
down from the Rockies and over the plains,
where things catch on for a little while,
bright leaves in a fence, and then are gone.
Ted Kooser, “The Giant Slide” from One World at a Time. 1985.
Writing Idea:
Write a poem or short prose piece in which you transmit the knowledge of the passing of time by writing about a physical place that has been transformed since the years of your childhood.
Eating Together by Li-Young Lee
In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.
Li-Young Lee, “Eating Together” from Rose. 1986.
Writing Idea:
Write a poem or short prose piece in which you depict a family ritual, whether it be dinner, weekend trips to the country or anything that in your mind ties the past and present together in some way.
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