Sophomore Poetry Package

1. Sophomore Poetry Package April/May 2009

2. Sophomores will use the poems in this packet to assist them with their poetry assignments. You may NOT use a poem from this packet for assignment 1. These poems will be used throughout the next several weeks so do not misplace this packet. • You still have to find the citation information for these poems if you use them in your anthology for assignment 4.

3. An indian summer day on the prairie • Vachel Lindsay In the Beginning The sun is a huntress young, The sun is red, red joy, The sun is an Indian girl, Of the tribe of the Illinois. Mid-morning The sun is a smoldering fire, That creeps through the high gray plain, And leaves not a bush of cloud To blossom with flowers of rain. Noon The sun is a wounded deer, That treads pale grass in the skies, Shaking his golden horns, Flashing his baleful eyes. Sunset The sun is an eagle old; There in the windless west, Atop of the spirit-cliffs He builds him a crimson nest.

4. Earth your dancing place – May Swenson Beneath heaven’s vault remember always walking through halls of cloud down aisles of sunlight or through high hedges of the green rain walk in the world highheeled with swirl of cape hand at the swordhilt of your pride Keep a tall throat Remain aghast at life Enter each day as upon a stage lighted and waiting for your step Crave upward as flame have keenness in the nostril Give your eyes to agony or rapture Train your hands as birds to be brooding or nimble Move your body as the horses sweeping on slender hooves over crag and prairie with fleeing manes and aloofness of their limbs Take earth for your own large room and the floor of earth carpeted with sunlight and hung round with silver wind for your dancing place

5. The black snake • Mary Oliver When the black snake Flashed onto the morning road, And the truck could not swerve— Death, that is how it happens. Now he lies looped and useless As an old bicycle tire. I stop the car And carry him into the bushes. He is as cool and gleaming As a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet As a dead brother. I leave him under the leaves And drive on, thinking About death: its suddenness, Its terrible weight, Its certain coming. Yet under Reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones Have always preferred. It is the story of endless good fortune. It says to oblivion: not me! It is the light at the center of every cell. It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward Happily all spring through the green leaves before He came to the road.

6. The peace of wild things • Wendell Berry When despair for 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 lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in this 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.

7. All one people • Carl Sandburg What did Hiamovi, the red man, Chief of the Cheyennes, have? To a great chief at Washington and to a chief of peoples across the waters, Hiamovi spoke: “There are birds of many colors—red, blue, green, yellow, Yet it is all one bird. There are horses of many colors—brown, black, yellow, white, Yet it is all one horse. So cattle, so all living things, animals, flowers, trees. So men in this land, where once were only Indians, are now men of many colors—white, black, yellow, red. Yet all one people. That this should come to pass was in the heart of the Great Mystery. It is right thus—and everywhere there shall be peace.” Thus Hiamovi, out of a tarnished and weatherworn heart of old gold, out of living dawn gold.

8. The print of the paw • N. Scott Momaday It lies among leaves. Indeed, a leaf, fast and broken, is impressed in the heel’s deep hollow. The leaf is yellow and brown, and brittle at the edges. The edges have been crushed; there is a fine dust of color, like pollen, in the mold. Deeper than the heel’s hollow are the claw’s piercings. They are precisely placed in the earth as if the great beast moved with meticulous grace. The toes turn inward, perhaps to describe like a keel the center of gravity upon which a great weight is balanced. Were I to construct a model of this bear, based upon this single print, it would turn out to be mythic and wondrous thing. It would be a cipher, a glyph, a huge shape emergent on the wall of a cave, a full figure in polychrome—splotches of red and yellow in black outline. And I would be an artist of the first rank on this occasion, if on no other, for I should proceed directly, in the disinterested manner of a child, from this nearly perfect print of the paw. And all who should lay eyes uponm my work would know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, how much I love the bear whose print this is. Jemez Springs, 1997

9. To an aged bear • N. Scott Momaday Hold hard this infirmity. It defines you. You are old. Now fix yourself in summer, In thickets of ripe berries, And venture toward the ridge Where you were born. Await there The setting sun. Be alive To that old conflagration One more time. Mortality Is your shadow and your shade. Translate yourself to spirit; Be present on your journey. Keep to the trees and waters. Be the singing of the soil. Santa Fe, 1995

10. Listen! Rain approaches! • Navaho Traditional Truly in the East The white bean And the great corn plant Are tied with the white lightning. Listen! It approaches! The voice of the bluebird is heard Truly in the East The white bean And the great squash Are tied with the rainbow. Listen! It approaches! The voice of the bluebird is heard

11. Calling one’s own • Ojibwa Traditional Awake! Flower of the forest, sky treading bird of the prairie. Awake! Awake! Wonderful fawn-eyed One. When you look upon me I am satisfied, as flowers that drink dew. The breath of your mouth is the fragrance of flowers in the morning, Your breath is their fragrance at evening in the moon of fading leaf. Do not the red streams of my veins run toward you As forest streams to the sun in the moon of bright nights? When you are beside me my heart sings; a branch it is, dancing, Dancing before the Wind spirit in the moon of strawberries. When you frown upon me, beloved, my heart grows dark— A shining river the shadows of clouds darken; Then with your smiles comes the sun and makes to look like gold Furrows the cold wind drew in the water’s face. Myself! Behold me! Blood of my beating heart. Earth smiles—the waters smile—even the sky of clouds smiles—but I, I lose the way of smiling when you are not near. Awake! Awake! My beloved.

12. Spring song • Chippewa As my eyes search the prairie I feel the summer in the spring.