looking for poetry that's a little more thought provoking, intense, mature...

[helena]

something beyond pleasant and sad. Any ideas? I'm putting together my poetry study for the upcoming year and I'd love some fresh ideas!

I have teens and they're open to almost anything, except maybe poems that start out with things like "My vagina is a ..."

Haha! 

 

 

ETA

I'd really like to throw one or two poems in this year that are down right painful, ugly, bleak... something. Something that leaves them going "Holy crap- We've never read a poem like that."

 

 

There will also be some rejoicing in the new season, love, nature, etc works. :) 

[Jean in Newcastle]

I'm typing representative poem titles but you could choose any poems by these poets:

 

William Blake  "The Tyger"

 

Dylan Thomas   "Do not go gentle into that good  night"

 

Edgar Allan Poe  "The Raven"

 

Elizabeth Browning "Sonnets of the Portuguese"  (not a poem title but a book title)

 

 

[helena]

I'm typing representative poem titles but you could choose any poems by these poets:

 

William Blake  "The Tyger"

 

Dylan Thomas   "Do not go gentle into that good  night"

 

Edgar Allan Poe  "The Raven"

 

Elizabeth Browning "Sonnets of the Portuguese"  (not a poem title but a book title)

We haven't done Sonnets From the Portuguese. You did remind me though, that I have two beautiful copies of it from the vintage Peter Pauper Press collection. I'm going to get comfy and check it out right now. Thanks! 

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Try the list of poems from Poetry Out Loud. There is a lot of variety there.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I like Labeling Keys by Taylor Mali. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00GIRTMEE/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1438620693&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&keywords=written+in+the+bone&dpPl=1&dpID=51BlpjBcDJL&ref=plSrch

 

There are videos of him performing it too

[Sebastian (a lady)]

This one is about Detroit and was performed at this summer's ELCA youth conference.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=diASuZZ3ly0

[Sebastian (a lady)]

We also like Sarah Kay. https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter/transcript?language=en

[Kareni]

This one was a favorite of mine in high school, and I still like it.  It might fit the thought provoking requirement.

The Preacher: Ruminates behind the Sermon
by Gwendolyn Brooks


I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No. Despite
The bright hosannas, bright dear-Lords, and bright
Determined reverence of Sunday eyes.

Picture Jehovah striding through the hall
Of his importance, creatures running out
From servant-corners to acclaim, to shout
Appreciation of His merit's gaze.

But who walks with Him?--dares to take His arm,
To slap Him on the shoulder, tweak His ear,
Buy Him a Coca-Cola or a beer,
Pooh-pooh His politics, call Him a fool?

Perhaps--who knows?--He tires of looking down.
Those eyes are never lifted. Never straight.
Perhaps sometimes He tires of being great
In solitude. Without a hand to hold.


Regards,
Kareni

[Tsuga]

Edna St. Vincent Millay: melodic, thought provoking, mature, modern, but no vaginas. :D

 

Conscientious Objector is a good one, as is Recuerdo.

[pehp]

Mary Oliver isn't really provocative, but she's brilliant.  

I also love Charles Wright.  

[meena]

T. S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" -- It's one of the first examples of Modernist poetry and is good for discussing existential angst amidst the minutiae of daily life, the tension between hope and bleak pessimism. It's also got some great quotable lines. Ex: "Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?/ In a minute there is time/ For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

 

"The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché is a modern prose poem. It's definitely for very mature readers, with graphic imagery and use of the f-word. It's valuable, though, for its form (the poet did not initially view it as a poem; great for discussing what is/isn't poetry, who decides, etc.) and also for the picture it paints of the brutality of war, even in modern (civilized?) times. After reading this poem, I've never looked at a peach the same.

 

"Musée des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden is great for discussing how suffering occurs amidst indifference, the injustice of tragedy, and so on. Lots to talk about regarding inspiration for poetry, including historical context (World War), the Greek myth of Icarus, Bruegel's painting The Fall of Icarus, and William Carlos Williams' poem "The Fall of Icarus".

[Chrysalis Academy]

I was going to throw some T. S. Eliot at you too - Prufrock is one of my favorite poems of all time.  But for something a little less lengthy, I'd go with The Hollow Men for your bleak offering.  The last stanza:

 

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper

 

Sylvia Plath is wonderful, too.  

 

One of my favorite modern poets is James Tate. I never see him mentioned (or anthologized) but I thought I'd throw him out there.

 

ETA.  Oh, Yeats! The Second Coming.

 

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold . . . 

 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

[Mystie]

John Donne!

[DragonFaerie]

Langston Hughes, or one of my favorites, Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owens:

 

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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 flound’ring 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.

[Alexigail]

Li Young Lee is a favorite.

[Laura Corin]

Telephone Conversation, by Wole Soyinka.  I came across it in one of the Galore Park English books.

[J-rap]

I love The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.

[Deee]

Poe's The Raven was a big hit with my bookclub teens. Robert Lowell's poetry is very dark. The Australian poet Gwen Harwood has some really intense stuff. Try "Night thoughts: baby and demon". Wilfred Owen is very good.

[Sneezyone]

Paul Lawrence Dunbar...almost anything he ever wrote. I particularly love 'After the Quarrel' though, because the smackdown and shade in it is so strong and the language so sublime, the subject never knew what hit him/her/it.

 

So we, who've supped the self-same cup,

To-night must lay our friendship by;

Your wrath has burned your judgment up,

Hot breath has blown the ashes high.

You say that you are wronged — ah, well,

I count that friendship poor, at best

A bauble, a mere bagatelle,

That cannot stand so slight a test.

I fain would still have been your friend,

And talked and laughed and loved with you

But since it must, why, let it end;

The false but dies, 't is not the true.

So we are favored, you and I,

Who only want the living truth.

It was not good to nurse the lie;

'Tis well it died in harmless youth.

I go from you to-night to sleep.

Why, what's the odds? why should I grieve?

I have no fund of tears to weep

For happenings that undeceive.

The days shall come, the days shall go

Just as they came and went before.

The sun shall shine, the streams shall flow

Though you and I are friends no more.

And in the volume of my years,

Where all my thoughts and acts shall be,

The page whereon your name appears

Shall be forever sealed to me.

Not that I hate you over-much,

'Tis less of hate than love defied;

Howe'er, our hands no more shall touch,

We'll go our ways, the world is wide.

 

 

Also this one, 'Right's Security'

 

WHAT if the wind do howl without,

And turn the creaking weather-vane;

What if the arrows of the rain

Do beat against the window-pane?

Art thou not armored strong and fast

Against the sallies of the blast?

Art thou not sheltered safe and well

Against the flood's insistent swell?

What boots it, that thou stand'st alone,

And laughest in the battle's face

When all the weak have fled the place

And let their feet and fears keep pace?

Thou wavest still thine ensign, high,

And shoutest thy loud battle-cry;

Higher than e'er the tempest roared,

It cleaves the silence like a sword.

Right arms and armors, too, that man

Who will not compromise with wrong;

Though single, he must front the throng,

And wage the battle hard and long.

Minorities, since time began,

Have shown the better side of man;

And often in the lists of Time

One man has made a cause sublime.

[Deee]

And don't forget "For whom the bell tolls".

[Ausmumof3]

Judith wright

Wilfred Owen

TS Eliot

[Ausmumof3]

Rage rage against the dying of the light, by Dylan Thomas, in another one. Oops it's the one Jean already posted and I got the title wrong.

[Ausmumof3]

Bullocky

Beside his heavy-shouldered team

thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,

he weathered all the striding years

till they ran widdershins in his brain:

 

Till the long solitary tracks

etched deeper with each lurching load

were populous before his eyes,

and fiends and angels used his road.

 

All the long straining journey grew

a mad apocalyptic dream,

and he old Moses, and the slaves

his suffering and stubborn team.

 

Then in his evening camp beneath

the half-light pillars of the trees

he filled the steepled cone of night

with shouted prayers and prophecies.

 

While past the campfire's crimson ring

the star struck darkness cupped him round.

and centuries of cattle-bells

rang with their sweet uneasy sound.

 

Grass is across the wagon-tracks,

and plough strikes bone beneath the grass,

and vineyards cover all the slopes

where the dead teams were used to pass.

 

O vine, grow close upon that bone

and hold it with your rooted hand.

The prophet Moses feeds the grape,

and fruitful is the Promised Land.

 

by Judith Wright

[Deee]

This is turning into a great thread!!!!! I love those Dunbar poems, Sneezy.

D

[fairy4tmama]

Excellent topic!!!!

 

These are great suggestions...I would add the Lines in the Sand: New Writing on War and Peace a collection of poetry and prose about war, my oldest and I have been reading from it this year and I highly recommend it.  The Maverick Poets: An Anthology and check out Button Poetry, Def Poetry Jam,  Neil Hilborn, Suheir Hammad, G. Yamazawa  

 

[helena]

Thank you for all the great suggestions! Lots to go through and consider. :)

I'm in England right now and just got back from Beatrix Potter's Hilltop Farm where we found two great pieces for poetry study! One was a framed needle work and the other was painted on a piece of pottery. Not her work, in fact they said they're not sure who originally wrote them. They're also not in the category of this thread... But still, a poetry victory for the day!

[mommymilkies]

Herman Hesse's poetry

 

"The Poet"

Only on me, the lonely one, 
The unending stars of the night shine, 
The stone fountain whispers its magic song, 
To me alone, to me the lonely one 
The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds 
Move like dreams over the open countryside. 
Neither house nor farmland, 
Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me, 
What is mine belongs to no one, 
The plunging brook behind the veil of the woods, 
The frightening sea, 
The bird whir of children at play, 
The weeping and singing, lonely in the evening, of a man secretly in love. 
The temples of the gods are mine also, and mine 
the aristocratic groves of the past. 
And no less, the luminous 
Vault of heaven in the future is my home: 
Often in full flight of longing my soul storms upward, 
To gaze on the future of blessed men, 
Love, overcoming the law, love from people to people. 
I find them all again, nobly transformed: 
Farmer, king, tradesman, busy sailors, 
Shepherd and gardener, all of them 
Gratefully celebrate the festival of the future world. 
Only the poet is missing, 
The lonely one who looks on, 
The bearer of human longing, the pale image 
Of whom the future, the fulfillment of the world 
Has no further need. Many garlands 
Wilt on his grave, 
But no one remembers him.

 

"All Deaths"

 

I have already died all deaths,
And I am going to die all deaths again,
Die the death of the wood in the tree,
Die the stone death in the mountain,
Earth death in the sand,
Leaf death in the crackling summer grass
And the poor bloody human death.

I will be born again, flowers,
Tree and grass, I will be born again,
Fish and deer, bird and butterfly.
And out of every form,
Longing will drag me up the stairways
To the last suffering,
Up to the suffering of men.

O quivering tensed bow,
When the raging fist of longing
Commands both poles of life
To bend to each other!
Yet often, and many times over,
You will hunt me down from death to birth
On the painful track of the creations,
The glorious track of the creations.

[Heidi]

I would purchase the Norton Anthology of English Literature 1 & 2.  Not only would they have the dark poetry, but essays and longer works as well.  I took the college courses specifically so I could have those books in my home for my future high schoolers (it was free through my husband's GI Bill).  They are excellent, but very expensive.