Poetry Mrs. Chausse

Poetry Mrs. Chausse 1

TABLEAU by Countee Cullen (1925)

Locked arm in arm they cross the way, The black boy and the white, The golden splendor of the day, The sable pride of night. From lowered blinds the dark folk stare, 5 And here the fair folk talk, Indignant that these two should dare In unison to walk. Oblivious to look and work They pass, and see no wonder 10 Poetry Mrs. Chausse 2 That lightning brilliant as a sword Should blaze the path of thunder. (from Color, 1925)

Wise I by Amiri Baraka (1995)

WHYS (Nobody Knows The Trouble I Seen) Traditional

If you ever find yourself, some where lost and surrounded by enemies who won't let you speak in your own language who destroy your statues & instruments, who ban your omm bomm ba boom then you are in trouble deep trouble they ban your own boom ba boom you in deep deep trouble humph! probably take you several hundred years to get out!

Still I Rise (1978) Poetry Mrs. Chausse 3

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you? 5 Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, 10 Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. 15 Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. 20

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you? 25 Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame I rise 30 Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear 35 I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. 40 I rise I rise I rise.

Maya Angelou Poetry Mrs. Chausse 4 Poetry Mrs. Chausse 5 Poetry Mrs. Chausse 6

Nikki-Rosa BY NIKKI GIOVANNI (1968) childhood rememberances are always a drag if you're Black you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something 5 they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those 10 big tubs that folk in chicago barbeque in and somehow when you talk about home it never gets across how much you understood their feelings as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale 15 and even though you remember your biographers never understand your father's pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes And though your're poor it isn't poverty that 20 concerns you and though they fought a lot it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference but only that everybody is together and you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good 25 Christmasses and I really hope no white person everhas cause to write about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they'll 30 probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy

THEME FOR ENGLISH B The instructor said, Poetry Mrs. Chausse 7 Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you-- Then, it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eight Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, The Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page: It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me--who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn't make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white-- yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American. Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be part of me. Not do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me-- although you're older--and white-- and somewhat more free. This is my page for English B. By Langston Hughes (1951)

A Work of Artifice by Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till split by lightning. 5 Poetry Mrs. Chausse 8 But a gardener carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he whittles back the branches 10 the gardener croons, It is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, 15 to have a pot to grow in. With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, 20 the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch.

One Art By Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

from "What are big girls made of?" Poetry Mrs. Chausse 9

The construction of a woman: a woman is not made of flesh modern woman of bone and sinew thin as a blade of scissors. belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. She runs on a treadmill every morning, (5) fits herself into machines of weights (35) She is manufactured like a sports sedan. and pulleys to heave and grunt, She is retooled, refitted and redesigned an image in her mind she can never every decade. approximate, a body of rosy ... glass that never wrinkles, Look at pictures in French fashion never grows, never fades. She (40) magazines of the 18th century: (10) sits at the table closing her eyes to food century of the ultimate lady hungry, always hungry: fantasy wrought of silk and corseting. a woman made of pain. Paniers bring her hips out three feet ... each way, while the waist is pinched If only we could like each other raw. and the belly flattened under wood. (15) If only we could love ourselves (45) The breasts are stuffed up and out like healthy babies burbling in our arms. offered like apples in a bowl. If only we were not programmed and The tiny foot is encased in a slipper reprogrammed never meant for walking. to need what is sold us. On top is a grandiose headache: (20) Why should we want to live inside ads? hair like a museum piece, daily Why should we want to scourge our softness ornamented with ribbons, vases, to straight lines like a Mondrian painting? grottoes, mountains, frigates in full Why should we punish each other with scorn sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy as if to have a large ass of a hairdresser turned loose. (25) were worse than being greedy or mean? The hats were rococo wedding cakes that would dim the Las Vegas strip. When will women not be compelled Here is a woman forced into shape to view their bodies as science projects, rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh: gardens to be weeded, a woman made of pain. (30) dogs to be trained? When will a woman cease How superior we are now: see the to be made of pain?

By Marge Piercy