Your Favorite Poem
Dear poets,
I'm teaching a class in April, and need to cover a poetry unit. Since my own knowledge of poetry is embarrassing, and I don't want to fall back on old J.Alfed Prufrock, I was thinking of teaching some W.H.Auden and Denise Levertov, just because I like them personally. But I was hoping some poets out there could suggest a poem or two, and tell me a little about why they like it, or why they liked teaching it. Feel free to comment here or shoot me an email: skrasikov@gmail.com. Thanks a lot.
posted by SЯK @ Wednesday, February 01, 2006
2 Comments:
missy ginsburg turned me on to d.a. powell. he was really nice too. here's one of his from, i think, "cocktails." also, anything from the mta's poetry in motion series.
[he would care for me as a stranger; courtesy clerk. so quick]
he would care for me as a stranger: courtesy clerk. so quick
that I scarcely noticed how he handled. my eggs. tomatoes
household explodeables. each within its own white skin
the safeway around. parts of bodies kept from rubbing
into cheese. bleeding into delicate figs. time was I was
a nasty little bugger: took a bite of every grocery clerk
and put them all back. rosy cheeks faced out: hiding
what I'd done to make them rotten: I could not see
a clump of grapes and not think "pesticide." crossing items
off my list I'd drift through the frozen aisle to piped-in
air supply: all out of love. all out of haagen dazs. unmoved
by the way he called me angel biscuits. hostess cake
as he tucked a receipt for my muskmelon into my jeans
©d.a. powell
Okay. This poem isn't one of my true favorites. It's one of the bigger guns in my teaching arsenal. If you point it in the general direction of your students, they'll get hit.
My Papa's Waltz
by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
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