GET LIT’S CLASSIC SLAM POEMS & EXCERPTS, 2014-2015 © 2014 Yellow Road Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. 1 Table of Contents All Lovely Things by Conrad Aiken ...................................................................................................................................................... 7 Lot’s Wife by Anna Akhmatova ............................................................................................................................................................ 8 Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World by Sherman Alexie .................................................................................................... 9 The Diameter of the Bomb by Yehuda Amichai ............................................................................................................................. 10 Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou ..................................................................................................................................... 11 I am a Mute Iraqi with a Voice by Anonymous ................................................................................................................................ 13 Siren Song by Margaret Atwood .......................................................................................................................................................... 14 Green Chile by Jimmy Santiago Baca ................................................................................................................................................. 15 It Happens I am a Singer of the Heart by Jimmy Santiago Baca ............................................................................................... 16 One Art by Elizabeth Bishop .................................................................................................................................................................. 17 One Wants a Teller at a Time Like This by Gwendolyn Brooks ................................................................................................... 18 Slim Greer in Hell (part I) by Sterling Brown ..................................................................................................................................... 19 Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning .......................................................................................................................................... 20 The Everyday by Rosario Castellanos ................................................................................................................................................. 21 Rondel of Merciless Beauty by Geoffrey Chaucer ........................................................................................................................... 22 Cloud by Sandra Cisneros ...................................................................................................................................................................... 23 I Am by John Clare .................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 Miss Rosie by Lucille Clifton ................................................................................................................................................................... 25 Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins ............................................................................................................................................... 26 Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town by e.e. cummings ............................................................................................................... 27 Next to of Course God America I by e.e. cummings ...................................................................................................................... 28 Somewhere I have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond by e.e. cummings .................................................................................... 29 Fatality by Rubén Darío .......................................................................................................................................................................... 30 Nocturne by Rubén Darío ...................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne ................................................................................................................................................. 32 Golden Retrievals by Mark Doty .......................................................................................................................................................... 33 Bilingual / Bilingue by Rhina Espillat .................................................................................................................................................. 34 A Considerable Speck by Robert Frost ............................................................................................................................................... 35 All I Gotta Do by Nikki Giovanni ........................................................................................................................................................... 36 My First Memory (of Librarians) by Nikki Giovanni ........................................................................................................................ 38 from Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ................................................................................................................................... 39 Imagination does Not Exist by Hafiz .................................................................................................................................................. 40 And if I Awaken in Los Angeles by Joy Harjo ................................................................................................................................... 41 Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden ......................................................................................................................................... 42 2 from The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney ........................................................................................................................................ 43 Postscript by Seamus Heaney ............................................................................................................................................................... 44 Invictus by William Ernest Henley ........................................................................................................................................................ 45 Black Rage by Lauryn Hill ....................................................................................................................................................................... 46 Death is Nothing at All by Henry Scott Holland .............................................................................................................................. 48 Harlem Sweeties by Langston Hughes ............................................................................................................................................... 49 Life is Fine by Langston Hughes ........................................................................................................................................................... 50 Note on Commercial Theatre by Langston Hughes ....................................................................................................................... 51 from Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston ..................................................................................................... 52 The Bear by Galway Kinnell ................................................................................................................................................................... 53 If by Rudyard Kipling ................................................................................................................................................................................ 56 A Fable by Etheridge Knight .................................................................................................................................................................. 57 For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide by Etheridge Knight ......................................................................................................... 58 You and I are Disappearing by Yusef Komunyakaa ....................................................................................................................... 59 Dust by Dorianne Laux ........................................................................................................................................................................... 60 The Elephant is Slow to Mate by D. H. Lawrence ............................................................................................................................ 61 Animals are Passing from our Lives by Philip Levine ..................................................................................................................... 62 The Simple Truth by Philip Levine ....................................................................................................................................................... 63 The