I'm on the UIL Poetry/Prose team for my high school and i need some great poetry with dialogue quick! Any suggestions would be wonderful! Thanks
hutto

Hutto, go to the Classical Poets section of this website. Go over poems which you may have read in your school. Here's a humorous selection from Lewis Carroll:

You Are Old Father William
by Lewis Carroll

"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And you have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray what is the reason for that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling a box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you mange to do it?"

"In my youth," said his fater, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as every;
Yet you balanced an eel on the tend of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs.

Les

awesome thank you les any more suggestions would be helpful. i need more than one.

tahnks again
-hutto

A language lesson in this one, your teacher would love it:

An Enigma
by Edgar Allan Poe

"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet-
Trash of all trash!- how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff-
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles- ephemeral and so transparent-
But this is, now- you may depend upon it-
Stable, opaque, immortal- all by dint
Of the dear names that he concealed within 't.

Les

How about some of the First World War work?

pam

Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

1 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
2 Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
3 Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
4 And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
5 Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
6 But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
7 Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
8 Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

9 Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
10 Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
11 But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
12 And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
13 Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
14 As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

15 In all my dreams before my helpless sight
16 He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

17 If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
18 Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
19 And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
20 His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
21 If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
22 Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
23 Bitter as the cud
24 Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
25 My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
26 To children ardent for some desperate glory,
27 The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
28 Pro patria mori.


Break of Day in the Trenches


The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy (5)
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German (10)
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life, (15)
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame (20)
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe, (25)
Just a little white with the dust.
- Isaac Rosenberg


Munition Wages

Earning high wages?
Yus, Five quid a week.
A woman, too, mind you,
I calls it dim sweet.

Ye'are asking some questions –
But bless yer, here goes:
I spends the whole racket
On good times and clothes.

Me saving? Elijah!
Yer do think I'm mad.
I'm acting the lady,
But – I ain't living bad.

I'm having life's good times.
See 'ere, it's like this:
The 'oof come o' danger,
A touch-and-go bizz.

We're all here today, mate,
Tomorrow – perhaps dead,
If Fate tumbles on us
And blows up our shed.

Afraid! Are yer kidding?
With money to spend!
Years back I wore tatters,
Now – silk stockings, mi friend!

I've bracelets and jewellery,
Rings envied by friends;
A sergeant to swank with,
And something to lend.

I drive out in taxis,
Do theatres in style.
And this is mi verdict –
It is jolly worth while.

Worth while, for tomorrow
If I'm blown to the sky,
I'll have repaid mi wages
In death – and pass by.

--Madeline Ida Bedford

>A language lesson in this one, your teacher would love it:

Right, Poe's Enigma is a riddle. Take the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second line, and so forth for the answer:

Sarah Anna Lewis (Poe's patroness)

update, i need an american poet, who was born after 1900, UIL rules are intensely ridiculous.

I'd suggest David Lee- he's a modern poet, with a couple of books in print. (Hey, he wrote a book, The Porcine Canticles, about pigs)

Here's a couple of his shorter works.

pam

Behold

And came forth like Venus from an ocean of
heat waves, morning in his pockets and the buckets in his hands
he emerged from the grey shed, tobacco and wind
pursed together in song from his tight lips he gathered the day
and went out to cast wheat before swine. And in
his mind he sang songs and thought thoughts, images of day
and heat, wind and sweat, dreams of silver and
visions of green earth twisting the cups of his mind
he crossed his fence of wire, the south Utah steppes
bending the air into corners of the sky he entered
the yard to feed his swine. And his pigs, they come.
(From The Porcine Canticles)


Aspen Pole Fence

The aspen poles criss-cross, a zig-zag line
slicing the dry belly of the meadow, five high
at one hundred twenty degree angles compounded.
Such waste in a pragmatic sense. Consider
materials: five aspen poles per section at, say,
twenty feet per pole. With angles, six sections builds
approximately eighty feet of fence, a net loss of two
sections, ten aspen poles. But they gained strength.
And durability. Chester said the old Horse Valley
fence stood seventy years, which means fifty, until
Forest Service knocked the east side down, let
Job Corps put up sheep mesh, which went over
in the second year’s snow. And the aesthetics.
Gods. The beauty of a cross pole fence in autumn.

But the trees. The beautiful aspen cut wholesale
for such a piece of geometry: five poles per section
when one pole equals one tree once living now
one pole. Chester said there are plenty of aspen
in the first place and in the second some things
have to be sacrificed in the name of progress
and in the third that land belongs to him. Which
means the trees. Unless they can find a way to leave.
Which is why he built that fence in the first place:
so things wouldn’t be getting away. They’re only
trash trees. You can’t get rid of them when you try.

Why is it that for some things there is partial sacrifice,
while others are required to give up all? At night I can believe
shadows of aspen trees grope along the far side
of the fence. I have not gone to see. In autumn,
when aspen spread the earth gold, I can think
the grey skeleton sprawling across yellow grass
is a good thing, Chester’s fat sheep mindlessly
following its confines from one corner to the next,
to water, and back out toward the fence.
A completion, a perfect holding pattern. Then
always I see its direction: the aspen grove flowing
down the west hill, a twisted grey arm stretching
out toward the glistening splash of autumn color.
(From So Quietly the Earth)

North to Parowan Gap

Turn right up there
and get off these pavements
there aint no sense
to holding up the traffic
and we aint hurrying
you just turn there and that dirt road
goes out to the Gap
where them Indins wrote on them rocks
I remember the first time
I ever got drunk. Me and my brother
we was following this branch back home in Misippi
when we seen a trail leading off
and he knew but I didn't
he's oldern I was and been down them trails
so's we went down and found it
any time you find a trail off a branch
you follow it . . .

(From Driving and Drinking)

- David Lee

do you know if David Lee has any good poems with lots of dialogue?

again i need an American poet who was born after 1900, with some good dialogue.

Yes, he does- much of his work set in the American rural Midwest. I've heard him read, and the voice is a slow, drawling one.

pam

What's UIL - University Scholastic League? But in hutto's in high school?

What's dialogue - gotta have a conversation, or quotation marks are ok?

A lot of John Berryman's Dream Songs have dialogue between Henry and Mr Bones:

Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken páprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
and only the fact of her husband & four other people
kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying
'You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes
have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon
(despairing) my spumoni.--Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de world, wif feeding girls.

--Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes
downcast . . . The slob beside her feasts . . . What wonders is
she sitting on, over there?
The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
--Mr. Bones: there is.


[www.poemhunter.com]

I don't mind helping with homework, but surely this is a task the original poster could accomplish without throwing the work off to others.

Go here:

<[eir.library.utoronto.ca]>

Search for poets born after 1900 (scroll down the page), then look up poems by them on, for example,

[eir.library.utoronto.ca]

or,

[www.cs.rice.edu]

>I don't mind helping with homework, but surely this is a task the original poster could accomplish without throwing the work off to others.

It gives those of us who would take the few minutes to post a poem, or to refer to one, an opportunity to share a poem that they/the students may not have had a chance to read otherwise.

Les



Post Edited (08-19-04 14:41)

>>I don't mind helping with homework.

There are some (incredibly rude) people who say I hinder more than help anyway.

Hugh Clary wrote:

> (incredibly rude)

Yes, but at least we're honest!

pam

haha yeah UIL/University Interscholastic League, and yes I am in high school. Thanks for all the suggestions, these will help a ton, if you have any more please feel free to share.

-hutto