I am supposed to find various types of poems for a homework assignment and I am having difficulty doing so. If anyone could lead me to some published poems that fit with the listed assigned points that would be great!!
-Find a poem that you do not understand but like anyway.
-Find a poem that describes " your" favourite place.
-Find a poem that reminds you of a vivid experience.
-Find a poem that makes you laugh.
-Find a poem with an amazing line. Make sure it is an unforgettable line.
-Find a poem with an abstract title. Underline images in the poem that make the abstract title concrete.

Thanks!!

Help, use google for humorous poems etc. What kind of school do you go to?


For all the rest of the categories, go here: [www.poemhunter.com]

Here's a poem for the last part of the assignment.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

'Help', no one here can say what poems will fit the first four assigned points, because they are specifically directed to your experience. Nobody else's.

Even the fifth point really refers to something that you find amazing and unforgettable. It also depends on what you use the word 'amazing' to mean.

An excellent exercise. I applaud your teacher.

You have acknowledged the direction you need to go, in your title for this thread. This homework assignment is designed to make you read a lot of poetry carefully enough to pick out some that meet the criteria. You need to get hold of at least one good poetry anthology, and start reading.

Maybe your school has given you an anthology as part of your study materials. If not, you should be able to find one in any decent library. Some good modern ones containing a fair proportion of short poems are: 'The Rattle Bag' and 'The School Bag', both edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes; and 'Good Poems' edited by Garrison Keillor. A good mid-20th Century one is 'Other Men's Flowers' edited by A.P.Wavell. Another classic from England is 'Palgrave's Golden Treasury', though the selection of poems might seem a little old-fashioned by comparison.

For something humorous, you could look up poems by any of Ogden Nash, Piet Hein, Wendy Cope, Hilaire Belloc, Newman Levy, Marriott Edgar, Shel Silverstein, Spike Milligan and Roald Dahl.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of poems containing great lines that might impress you enough when you first read them to be unforgettable, but I can't guess what will appeal to you, especially as you haven't revealed your age and whether you are male or female and what country you live in.

Let us know what poems you end up selecting.

Ian



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2006 09:14AM by IanB.

>Maybe your school has given you an anthology as part of your study materials.

There's one here: [www.emule.com]

and here: [rpo.library.utoronto.ca]

and here: [www.cs.rice.edu]

and here: [www.poemhunter.com]

Les

>Find a poem that you do not understand but like anyway.

Dream-Pedlary

If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,
With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still,
Until I die.
Such pearls from Life's fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.

But there were dreams to sell
Ill didst thou buy;
Life is a dream, they tell,
Waking, to die.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And if I had the spell
To call the buried well,
Which one should I?

If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call,
Out of hell's murky haze,
Heaven's blue pall?
Raise my loved long-lost boy,
To lead me to his joy.--
There are no ghosts to raise;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.

Know'st thou not ghosts to sue,
No love thou hast.
Else lie, as I will do,
And breathe thy last.
So out of Life's fresh crown
Fall like a rose-leaf down.
Thus are the ghosts to woo;
Thus are all dreams made true,
Ever to last!
-- Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)


For a dictionary current in Beddoes days, see:

[www.cbtministries.org]


Passing-bell – a bell tolled at the moment of the death of a person to invite his neighbours to pray for the safe passing of his soul.

Sue - entreat

Note the 10 lines in the first stanza, then 9 in each of the others, total 46. Significant? How old was Beddoes when he died (1849-1803)? Well, June 30 to January 26 is actually about 45.5. Close enough?

What about the rhyme scheme. Can you figure it out? Is it the same in every stanza?

Last, the interpretation. If there were dreams to sell, which one of them would you like to purchase? Like Walden, a cottage in the woods? And, if so, is this really a wise purchase? Couldn't you do better than to just loaf around smelling the flowers all day?

>Find a poem that you do not understand but like anyway.

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Les

What's not to understand?

It was a bright, sunshiny day and the village's various inhabitants were romping around on a hillside enjoying life. Sadly, they were frequently threatened by a jabberwock (as happens on the internet almost daily), and the hero kid is sent by his father to kill said beastie, all the while avoiding the bandersnatch, sure. The wock attacks the youth in the forest, but is quickly dispatched by the boy and his trusty sword. Hero returns home to much rejoicing and everyone lives happily ever after.

Piece of cake, innit.

Sure, Hugh, you probably have a vorpal sword in your pocket, but some of the rest of us are lacking borogroves and are altogether too mimsy in the wabe.

Les



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2006 05:56PM by lg.

>Find a poem that makes you laugh.


A SONG OF CREPANCIES - Leonard Rosenthal

Give me a lady, one that's couth,
Who putes the things I say;
Who's gainly in the eyes of man,
Who's imical to the things I plan,
Who parages me whenever she can,
Who's gruntled all the day.

Give me a girl whose hair is kempt,
Whose talk is always ane;
Who's ept at ridding home of dirt,
Who's iquitous and not a flirt,
Who's dignant, and whose mind is ert,
And I'll look on her with dain.


>Find a poem with an amazing line. Make sure it is an unforgettable line.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works ye mighty and despair!" (This is the line.)
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Unforgetable lines? How about this one?

Trees
by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.


Les

An excellent unforgettable line suggestion from Hugh. Les, do you mean the last line of that Joyce Kilmer poem? Not a bad suggestion either. And both have the virtue of being in well-known short poems.

There are some unforgettable lines in poetry that won't be of use to young 'Help!' because the rest of the poem is unavailable. For instance, I'm told there's a poem that won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford University, way back in the 19th century, on the strength of one unforgettable line:

    Petra, the rose-red city half as old as time

though I can't be absolutely sure it's one line, as distinct from being distributed across two lines by enjambment, because the rest of the poem seems to have been forgotten. At least, I've never been able to find a published copy.

There's said to be a traditional Pathan marching song containing (when translated) the line:

    There's a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach but alas I cannot swim

but no one has ever been able to produce the rest of it. It may well be two lines of course, but as it's oral tradition how could one ever check the line breaks?

And apropos of bottoms and things rose-red, Victor Gollancz in either 'Dear Timothy' or 'Letters to Timothy' refers (if I remember correctly, which is doubtful) to a pupil or academic colleague who began a poem about sunrise with the line:

    The sun like a bishop's bottom rosy and round and hot

but sadly Victor didn't quote any more of it.

Ian



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2006 03:55AM by IanB.

>Petra, the rose-red city half as old as time

[www.cs.rice.edu]

(I'm guessing the 9-letter adjective sought is 'evocative'.)

[en.wikipedia.org]

Thanks, Hugh. ‘Evocative’ it surely is.

So that famous Petra line, which I had wrong enough to frustrate superficial googling, comes from something as short as a sonnet.

With the non-English spelling and typos in lines 2 and 11 corrected, and the line starts capitalised as Burgon would have done in 1845, and adding what I presume was the poem's title, the text provided by that anonymous contributor to the Minstrels site reads as follows:

Petra
by John William Burgon

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,
By labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;
But from the rock as by magic grown,
Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
Where erst Athena held her rites divine;
Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,
That crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;
But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
That first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
Which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
A rose-red city half as old as time.

There still appears to be a syllable missing in each of the 3rd and 9th lines, presumably though transcription errors. Should ‘as by’ in the 3rd be ‘as if by’ or ‘as by some’? Should ‘rose-red’ in the ninth be ‘roseate red’? We can speculate. Much better if someone with access to the original would tell us.

Incidentally, Kenneth Baker’s comment that Burgon disappeared into obscurity after becoming a clergyman may be true for the poetic landscape, but the information about him on the Internet shows that he became and is still remembered as a leading scholar and authority on the textual accuracy or otherwise of various translations of the New Testament.




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2006 06:03PM by IanB.

The Petra site below adds an 'if' to correct the third line, which makes sense, but the 9th appears to be the same:

[www.petranationalfoundation.org]

>But rose-red as if the blush of dawn

One could make that one 'rosy' red to get the required 10 syllables, I guess, although reading it as a spondee gives the necessary five-stress 'feel' to the line. Still only has four feet that way, right.

But ROSE-RED as IF the BLUSH of DAWN

I have a printed copy in "More Poetry Please" Margaret Bradley ed. Everyman, 1988.

It doesn't seem to have a title as it's headed "From Pedra"

The third line does contain the "if" and the ninth is "rosy-red"
Does it make a difference that this gives the end of the second line as "plann'd"?

Thanks, Linda. That probably settles the text. "Plann'd" looks authentic for an era when convention allowed poets the option of sounding an -ed ending as a separate syllable.

The "From Petra" heading [I'm assuming Pedra is a typo] leaves open the question whether there's more to the whole poem than these 14 lines. Maybe it was a sonnet sequence.

I'm not sure Pedra is a typo, I have seen it like that elsewhere. We do seem to need more of the context, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotes gives the famous line as being Petra l. 132.

(You can tell I've just learned to do italics, can't you?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2006 08:11AM by Linda.

I see that in the version of the poem used as a flagship on that petranationalfoundation site, 'plain' is misspelled as 'plane'. A Freudian slip perhaps by some peripatetic website builder suffering from jet-lag. That doesn't excuse the Foundation for allowing such a sense-changing error to remain. Tut tut !



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2006 09:01AM by IanB.

This site [tinyurl.com] claims there are 371 lines in Burgon's Petra. Which is odd as it's supposed to have won the Newdigate prize, but wikipaedia says the competion is for poems no longer than 300 lines.

The full text must be somewhere.

I have found a book of Burgon's poems, which he had published by Macmillan in 1885. It includes 'Petra'. It shows some other differences from the extract quoted above. For a start, the extract should begin 'They seem', not 'It seems'. In order to make sense of that 'They', here is the 1885 version with the four preceding lines:

O passing beautiful––in this wild spot
Temples, and tombs, and dwellings,––all forgot !
One sea of sunlight far around them spread,
And skies of sapphire mantling overhead.
They seem no work of man’s creative hand,
Where Labour wrought as wayward Fancy plann’d;
But from the rock as if by magic grown,
Eternal––silent––beautiful––alone !
Not virgin white––like that old Doric shrine
Where once Athena held her rites divine :
Not saintly grey––like many a minster fane
That crowns the hill, or sanctifies the plain :
But rosy-red,––as if the blush of dawn
Which first beheld them were not yet withdrawn :
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
Which men call’d old two thousand years ago !
Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime,––
A rose-red city––half as old as Time !

The double hyphens are all printed as a single long dash in the book. I don't know how to do that here.

Since the full poem is out of copyright, and not available anywhere else on the Internet, I might post it in General Discussion.

To return to the original subject of this thread, is young 'Help!' going to let us know which poems he/she ended up choosing?

Ian




Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2006 03:02AM by IanB.

Good stuff, Ian. I am guessing there was an overwhemling urge to make into a sonnet-sized 14 lines, even though in heroic couplets.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the en dash and em dash were left out of the html markup language because of size considerations. Using double dash for the em dash seems to work as well, so no problem.

I am taking the opportunity to learn some Spanish, since I now live in New Mexico (USA), and I pick up a weekly free newspaper (Semanario) at the gas station when I fill up. I find it interesting that their quotation marks begin with the beginning marks having one upside down, and the ending ones both right side up. Somehow that technique has disappeared as well. I notice that the marks do not so appear on their web pages:

[www.elsemanarionews.com]