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Poetry Explication UIL Literary Criticism Student Activities Conference, Fall 2014 Poetry Explication The Jaguar The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun. a The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut b Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut. b Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion a Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw. It might be painted on a nursery wall. But who runs like the rest past these arrives At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized, As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom— The eye satisfied to be blind in fire, By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear— He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him More than to the visionary his cell: His stride is wildernesses of freedom: The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel. Over the cage floor the horizons come. Ted Hughes Sonnet 138 When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told: Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be. William Shakespeare 1 First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, waiting too, Earth's immeasurable surprise. They could not grasp it if they knew, What so soon will wake and grow. Philip Larkin Piano Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide. So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past. D. H. Lawrence Sonnet 34 Like as a ship, that through the ocean wide, By conduct of some star, doth make her way; When as a storm hath dim'd her trusty guide Out of her course doth wander far astray! So I, whose star, that wont with her bright ray Me to direct, with clouds is over-cast, Do wander now, in darkness and dismay, Through hidden perils round about me placed; Yet hope I well that, when this storm is past, My Helice, the loadstar of my life, Will shine again, and look on me at last, With lovely light to clear my cloudy grief, Till then I wander careful, comfortless, In secret sorrow, and sad pensiveness. Edmund Spenser 2 Texas Poetry Up East, they do not think much of Texas poetry. They think Texans have no soul for aesthetics, that all they do is pound their own chests, talk loud and make money. But every time I'm nearing Austin, I look up at a painted sign high on the side of the highway that says, "Bert's Dirts" and to the pyramids of many-colored soils sold by Bert, and I swell with pride at the rhyming sign, I puff up and point to that terse little title and wish we could stop so I could go in and purchase a spondee of sand to make a gesture of my support for poetry in Texas. Violette Newton Violette Newton (1912-2013) was the 1973-1974 Poet Laureate of Texas. The Violette Newton Collection is housed in the Cornette Library at West Texas A&M University. Our Hunting Fathers Our hunting fathers told the story Of the sadness of the creatures, Pitied the limits and the lack Set in their finished features; Saw in the lion's intolerant look, Behind the quarry's dying glare, Love raging for, the personal glory That reason's gift would add, The liberal appetite and power, The rightness of a god. Who, nurtured in that fine tradition, Predicted the result, Guessed Love by nature suited to The intricate ways of guilt, That human ligaments could so His southern gestures modify And make it his mature ambition To think no thought but ours, To hunger, work illegally, And be anonymous? W. H. Auden 3 The New Colossus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus Childhood When I was a child I knew red miners dressed raggedly and wearing carbide lamps. I saw them come down red hills to their camps dyed with red dust from old Ishkooda mines. Night after night I met them on the roads, or on the streets in town I caught their glance; the swing of dinner buckets in their hands, and grumbling undermining all their words. I also lived in low cotton country where moonlight hovered over ripe haystacks, or stumps of trees, and croppers’ rotting shacks with famine, terror, flood, and plague near by; where sentiment and hatred still held sway and only bitter land was washed away. Margaret Walker Sonnet for Jill A story, Jill, as you already know, Is a character who wants something and Who goes through conflict to get it. And so Must you: graduation’s less an end than A beginning. Every hero, before She's earned the title, must endure her tests— Lose friends, lose sleep, lose hope, and heart and more And the more’s the thing: the self who starts the quest Must die, with all mirages, all façades But you’re prepared; you have a foundation You’ll face up to challenges, beat the odds, And write a story that’s an inspiration Of all the stories that you’ll teach in class It's yours that matters most, the one that lasts. Jeremy Gentry 23 May 2014 4 We Are Getting to the End of Visioning We are getting to the end of visioning The impossible within this universe, Such as that better whiles may follow worse, And that our race may mend by reasoning. We know that even as larks in cages sing Unthoughtful of deliverance from the curse That holds them lifelong in a latticed hearse, We ply spasmodically our pleasuring. And that when nations set them to lay waste Their neighbours' heritage by foot and horse, And hack their pleasant plains in festering seams, They may again,—not warily, or from taste, But tickled mad by some demonic force.— Yes. We are getting to the end of dreams! Thomas Hardy Nursery Vignette The bubbled baby gave an abrupt burp, Her tiny face contorted in an irpe (The i pronounced, perhaps, like beard not bird). Ben Jonson only used this pleasant little word. Edmund Wilson Vacant Lot Crouched in its giant green the Indian hid And on the trapper sprang the ambuscade. It was the wilderness to city kid, And paradise to each pariah weed. We'd give the slip to megaphone-voiced wardens For atavistic field where memories blur, As asters make their getaway from gardens And scrape acquaintance with uncultured burr. There among sunflowers, goldenrod and thistle, We'd act the old drama of boys' strength, Bloody each other's noses, blacken eyes, and wrestled Till hustled home to bed by moon at length. While April set up sprinting around the bases, October chasing the eccentric ball, and faces December sculpturing farcial forms, It was chameleon stage containing all. Dudley Randall 5 In a Texas Farm-House Kitchen It's dinner time once more The men will soon be in, They'll dirty up the floor. This batter is too thin. The men will soon be in. The meat is almost done. The batter is too thin. And cooking is no fun. The meat is almost done. I'm almost cooked myself, And cooking is no fun! The pitcher's on the shelf.
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