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Sasha's poetry corner
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 7:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi JohnTpartee. Welcome back. Finish your poem please and provide a lesson plan for its use in the classroom.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A topical poem for classroom discussion on ancient North African empires and politics and in no way related to anything happening elsewhere today...


OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 10:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ithaka

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk


As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon�don�t be afraid of them:
you�ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon�you won�t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind�
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won�t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean....C.P.Cavafy
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Didn't want to post this yesterday, so here it is today:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK5kme0dCQY

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

William Carlos Williams, "so much depends"


so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shake and shake
The ketchup bottle
None'll come
And then a lot'll

Just went and got a burger from a street vendor and suddenly had an overwhelming urge to quote some Ogden Nash.
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

JAPANESE PRINT

Both skyed
In south-west wind beyond
Poplar and fir-tree, swallow,
Heron, almost collide,
Swerve
With a rapid
Dip of wing, flap,
Each in an opposite curve,
Fork-tail, long neck outstretched
And feet. All happened
Above my head. The pair
Was disappearing. Say I
Had seen, half hint, a sketch on
Rice-coloured air,
Sharako, Hokusai!

-- Austin Clarke
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 10:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

For all TEFL exiles everywhere...


Exile is not a word
It is a sound
The rending of skin
A fistful of clay on top
of a coffin
Exile is not a word
It is shaving against
A photograph not a mirror
Exile is not a word
It is hands joined in
supplication
In an empty cathedral
It is writing your own
hagiography
It is a continuing atrocity
It is the purgatorial
Triumph of memory
over topography
Exile is not a word
Exile is not a word

Peter Woods
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Trial

And you�ll have strengths enough
To see and know again
How all that was your love
Will start to bring a pain.
Your friend � without blame �
Will come a werewolf once;
You�ll be by him defamed,
By other ones � repulsed.
They will start to seduce,
And order, �Abrogate!� �
Your heart will be reduced
From fear and regret.
And you�ll have strengths enough
To answer them again:
�From all that was my life
I never will abstain!�
And you�ll have strengths enough,
Having recalled this rake,
To all that you have loved
To cry again: �Come back!�


Olga Berggoltz, 1938
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 5:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hunting Stories

There was nothing in those stories
Told huddled over bread, salt and the stove
That I could ever take away:
No trace of a hare
In the snow
No blood on a leaf
Dripping onto your
open palms
Nothing of the fear
of boots
And the words of men.
No hint of the
Bait that we all
Had become.

.....Arto Inatchiyan......
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 5:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Courage.

We know what is now on History�s scales,
What is, in the world, going now.
The hour of courage shew our clock�s hands.
Our courage will not bend its brow.
None fears to die under the bullet�s siege,
None bitters to lose one�s home here, --
And we will preserve you, O great Russian speech,
O Russian great word, we all bear.
We�ll carry you out, clear and free, as a wave,
Give you to our heirs, and from slavery save.
Forever!

Anna Akhmatova, Leningrad 1942
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bridgetc



Joined: 14 Nov 2007
Posts: 23

PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 7:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Teaching children, I use a lot of "kiddy" poems. But my 6th grade class studied W.J. Turner's poem "Romance"just before Christmas. Some complex meaning in there I didn't really want to get into with 11 year old Mexican children... but they loved to read a poem in English about something that is such a potent image within their country. Of course, I love this poem too and have done since I studied it at school, so that was a big part of wanting to use it, too. I was always enchanted by the names:

When I was but thirteen or so
I went into a golden land,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi,
Took me by the hand.

My father died, my brother too,
They passed like fleeting dreams,
I stood where Popocatapetl
In the sunlight gleams.

I dimly heard the master's voice
And boys' far-off at play,
Chimborazo, Cocopaxi
Had stolen me away.

I walked in a great golden dream
To and fro from school -
Shining Popocatapetl
The dusty strets did rule.

I walked home with a gold dark boy
And never a word I'd say
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had taken my speech away:

I gazed entranced upon his face
Fairer than any flower -
O shining Popocatepetl
It was thy magic hour:

The houses, people, traffic seemed
Thin, fading dreams by day,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
The had stolen my soul away.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good stuff bridgetc! Thanks for that.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 3:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Politics

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

W.B.Yeats
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