March Madness 10

8/14/2019 March Madness 10

1/23

M a r c h ( a n d A p r i l ) M a d n e s s ! April is National Poetry Month!

Help us celebrate by participating in March (and April) Madness.

Be a part of deciding what it takes to be a good poem.

From a pool of 32 student-selected* poems,one will make it through the sweet sixteen,

the great eight,the final four,

and the championship round to becomethe 2010 Shaker poem of the year.

Fallen, by Jrg Piringer

All Shaker High School students, faculty, and staff can vote for their favorites.

If your class is participating, you can read and vote in class; otherwise, you can vote

in the library. For each poetry match-up, a winner will be selected to move on to the

next round. Voting will take place as listed below the votes will be counted at the

end of the school day on each of the dates.

First round voting (round of 32) due by Wednesday, March 24Second round voting (sweet 16) due by Thursday, April 1Third round voting (great 8) due by Friday, April 16Semifinal (final 4) round voting due by Wednesday, April 21Final round voting due by Friday, April 23


2/23


3/23

1. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

DYLAN THOMAS

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,


Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,


Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,



2. The Waking

THEODORE ROETHKE

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.


Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;


Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.


I learn by going where I have to go.


4/23

3. I, Too

LANGSTON HUGHES

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

Ill be at the table

When company comes.

Nobodyll dare

Say to me,

Eat in the kitchen,Then.

Besides,

Theyll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed

I, too, am America.

4. Piano

D.H. LAWERNCE

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.


5/23

5. A Dream Within a Dream

EDGAR ALLAN POE

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow:

You are not wrong who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creepThrough my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

6. She Walks in Beauty

LORD BYRON

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all thats best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens oer her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and oer that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!


6/23

7. There Is Another Sky

EMILY DICKINSON

There is another sky,

Ever serene and fair,

And there is another sunshine,

Though it be darkness there;Never mind faded forests, Austin,

Never mind silent fields -

Here is a little forest,

Whose leaf is ever green;

Here is a brighter garden,

Where not a frost has been;

In its unfading flowers

I hear the bright bee hum:

Prithee, my brother,

Into my garden come!

8. This Is Just To Say

WILLIAM CARLOS WILIAMS

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold


7/23

9. Loud Music

STEPHEN DOBYNS

My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.

You see, I like the music loud, the speakers

throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether

Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up soeach bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.

But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four

and likes the music decorous, pitched below

her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.

With music blasting, she feels she disappears,

is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.

But at four what she wants is self-location

and uses her voice as a porpoise uses

its sonar: to find herself in all this space.

If she had a sort of box with a peephole

and looked inside, what she'd like to see would beherself standing there in her red pants, jacket,

yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject

for serious study. But me, if I raised

the same box to my eye, I would wish to find

the ocean on one of those days when wind

and thick cloud make the water gray and restless

as if some creature brooded underneath,

a rocky coast with a road along the shore

where someone like me was walking and has gone.

Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,

leaving turbulent water and winding road,

a landscape stripped of people and language-

how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.


8/23

10. Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

the need gotta be

so deep words can't

answer simple questions

all night long notes

stumble off the tongue

& color the air indigo

so deep fragments of gut& flesh cling to the song

you gotta get into it

so deep salt crystalizes on eyelashes

the need gotta be

so deep you can vomit up ghosts

& not feel broken

till you are no more

than a half ounce of gold

in painful brightness

you gotta get into it

blow that saxophoneso deep all the sex & dope in this world

can't erase your need

to howl against the sky

the need gotta be

so deep you can't

just wiggle your hips

& rise up out of it

chaos in the cosmos

modern man in the pepperpot

you gotta get hooked

into every hungry groove

so deep the bomb locked

in rust opens like a fist

into it into it so deep

rhythm is pre-memory

the need gotta be basic

animal need to see

& know the terror

we are made of honey

cause if you wanna dance

this boogie be ready

to let the devil use your head

for a drum


9/23

11. A Song in The Front Yard

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Ive stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where its rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say its fine

How they dont have to go in at quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.That Georgell be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say its fine. Honest, I do.

And Id like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

12. The Best Time Of The Day

RAYMOND CARVER

Cool summer nights.

Windows open.

Lamps burning.

Fruit in the bowl.

And your head on my shoulder.

These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,

of course. And the time

just before lunch.

And the afternoon, and

early evening hours.

But I do love

these summer nights.

Even more, I think,

than those other times.

The work finished for the day.

And no one who can reach us now.

Or ever.


10/23

13. The Student Theme

RONALD WALLACE

The adjectives all ganged up on the nouns,

insistent, loud, demanding, inexact,

their Latinate constructions flashing. The pronouns

lost their referents: They were dangling, lacked

the stamina to follow the prepositions' leadin, on, into, to, toward, for, or from.

They were beset by passive voices and dead

metaphors, conjunctions shouting But! orAnd!

The active verbs were all routinely modified

by adverbs, that endlessly and colorlessly ran

into trouble with the participles sitting

on the margins knitting their brows like gerunds

(dangling was their problem, too). The author

was nowhere to be seen; was off somewhere.

14. The Poetry of Bad Weather

DEBORA GREGER

Someone had propped a skateboard

by the door of the classroom,

to make quick his escape, come the bell.

For it was February in Florida,

the air of instruction thick with tanning butter.

Why, my students wondered,

did the great dead poets all live north of us?

Was there nothing to do all winter there

but pine for better weather?

Had we a window, the class could keep an eye

on the clock and yet watch the wild plum

nod with the absent grace of the young.

We could study the showy scatter of petals.

We could, for want of a better word, call it snowy.

The room filled with stillness, flake by flake.

Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life indoors

could be heard. Not even the songbird

of a cell phone chirped. Go home,

I wanted to tell the horse on the page.

You know the way, even in snow

gone blue with cold.


11/23

15. Break

DORIANNE LAUX

We put the puzzle together piece

by piece, loving how one curved

notch fits so sweetly with another.

A yellow smudge becomes

the brush of a broom, and two blue armsfill in the last of the sky.

We patch together porch swings and autumn

trees, matching gold to gold. We hold

the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair

of brown shoes. We do this as the child

circles her room, impatient

with her blossoming, tired

of the neat house, the made bed,

the good food. We let her brood

as we shuffle through the pieces,

setting each one into place with a satisfiedtap, our backs turned for a few hours

to a world that is crumbling, a sky

that is falling, the pieces

we are required to return to.

16. Keeping Things Whole

MARK STRAND

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my body's been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole


12/23

17. O Captain! My Captain!

WALT WHITMAN

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weatherd every rack, the prize we sought is won,The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise upfor you the flag is flungfor you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbond wreathsfor you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;Here Captain! dear father!

The arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

Youve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchord safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.


13/23

18. Hate Poem

JULIE SHEEHAN

I hate you truly. Truly I do.

Everything about me hates everything about you.

The flick of my wrist hates you.

The way I hold my pencil hates you.

The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trappedin the jaws of a moray eel hates you.

Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green jewel of sock lint Im digging

from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you.

The history of this keychain hates you.

My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases

hates you.

The goldfish of my genius hates you.

My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvioussymbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.

My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.

My pleasant good morning: hate.

You know how when Im sleepy I nuzzle my head

under your arm? Hate.

The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit

practices it.

My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning

to night hate you.

Layers of hate, a parfait.

Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,

I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one

individually and at leisure.

My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity

of my hate, which can never have enough of you,

Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.


14/23


15/23

21. Ozymandias

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who saidTwo 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 readWhich 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!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

22. The Road Not Taken

ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.


16/23

23. Phenomenal Woman

MAYA ANGELOU

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

Im not cute or built to suit a fashion models size

But when I start to tell them,

They think Im telling lies.

I say,

Its in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

Im a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

Thats me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand orFall down on their knees.

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.

I say,

Its the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

Im a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

Thats me.

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they cant touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,

They say they still cant see.

I say,

Its in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

Im a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

Thats me.

Now you understand

Just why my heads not bowed.

I dont shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.


17/23

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

Its in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need for my care.

Cause Im a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,Thats me.

24. Miracle Ice Cream

ADRIENNE RICH

Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,

Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,

and, yes, you can feel happywith one piece of your heart.

Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow

a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.

Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.

Late, you sit weighing the evening news,

fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,

the rest of your heart.


18/23

25. Tuesday 9:00 AM

DENVER BUTSON

A man standing at the bus stop

reading the newspaper is on fire

Flames are peeking out

from beneath his collar and cuffs

His shoes have begun to melt

The woman next to him

wants to mention it to him

that he is burning

but she is drowning

Water is everywhere

in her mouth and ears

in her eyes

A stream of water runs

steadily from her blouse

Another woman stands at the bus stop

freezing to death

She tries to stand near the man

who is on fire

to try to melt the icicles

that have formed on her eyelashes

and on her nostrils

to stop her teeth long enough

from chattering to say something

to the woman who is drowning

but the woman who is freezing to death

has trouble moving

with blocks of ice on her feet

It takes the three some time

to board the bus

what with the flames

and water and ice

But when they finally climb the stairs

and take their seats

the driver doesn't even notice

that none of them has paid

because he is tortured

by visions and is wondering

if the man who got off at the last stop

was really being mauled to death

by wild dogs.


19/23

26. Why I Am Not a Painter

FRANK OHARA

I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg

is starting a painting. I drop in.

Sit down and have a drink hesays. I drink; we drink. I look

up. You have SARDINES in it.

Yes, it needed something there.

Oh. I go and the days go by

and I drop in again. The painting

is going on, and I go, and the days

go by. I drop in. The painting is

finished. Wheres SARDINES?

All thats left is just

letters, It was too much, Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life. Days go by. It is even in

prose, I am a real poet. My poem

is finished and I havent mentioned

orange yet. Its twelve poems, I call

it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery

I see Mikes painting, called SARDINES.

27. The Orange

WENDY COPE

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange

The size of it made us all laugh.

I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave

They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park

This is peace and contentment. Its new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.

I did all my jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. Im glad I exist.


20/23

28. Cartoon Physics, part 1

NICK FLYNN

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know

that the universe is ever-expanding,

inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of itacted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock

only he can pass through it.

Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds

should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,

ships going down -- earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run

back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come

with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,

& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point

the bridge will give, who will swim to safety

& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff

he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.


21/23

29. On Turning Ten

BILLY COLLINS

The whole idea of it makes me feel

like I'm coming down with something,

something worse than any stomach ache

or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--

a kind of measles of the spirit,a mumps of the psyche,

a disfiguring chicken pox

of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,

but that is because you have forgotten

the perfect simplicity of being one

and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.

But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.

At four I was an Arabian wizard.

I could make myself invisibleby drinking a glass of milk a certain way.

At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window

watching the late afternoon light.

Back then it never fell so solemnly

against the side of my tree house,

and my bicycle never leaned against the garage

as it does today,

all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,

as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.

It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,

time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe

there was nothing under my skin but light.

If you cut me I could shine.

But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,

I skin my knees. I bleed.


22/23

30. Did I Miss Anything?

TOM WAYMAN

Nothing. When we realized you werent here

we sat with our hands folded on our desks

in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth40 percent of the grade for this term

and assigned some reading due today

on which Im about to hand out a quiz

worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course

has value or meaning

Take as many days off as you like:

any activities we undertake as a class

I assure you will not matter either to you or me

and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time

a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel

or other heavenly being appeared

and revealed to us what each woman or man must do

to attain divine wisdom in this life and

the hereafter

This is the last time the class will meet

before we disperse to bring the good news to all people

on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present

how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human experience

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

This is not the only place such an opportunity has been

gathered

but it was one place

And you werent here.

31. The Death of Santa Claus


23/23

CHARLES WEBB

He's had the chest pains for weeks,

but doctors don't make house

calls to the North Pole,

he's let his Blue Cross lapse,

blood tests make him faint,

hospital gown always flap

open, waiting rooms upsethis stomach, and it's only

indigestion anyway, he thinks,

until, feeding the reindeer,

he feels as if a monster fist

has grabbed his heart and won't

stop squeezing. He can't

breathe, and the beautiful white

world he loves goes black,

and he drops on h is jelly belly

in the snow and Mrs. Claus

tears out of the toy factory

wailing, and the elves wring

their little hands, and Rudolph's

nose blinks like a sad ambulance

light, and in a tract house

in Houston, Texas, I'm 8,

telling my mom that stupid

kids at school say Santa's a big

fake, and she sits with me

on our purple-flowered couch,

and takes my hand, tears

in her throat, the terrible

news rising in her eyes.

32. Turtle

KAY RYAN

Who would be a turtle who could help it?

A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,

She can ill afford the chances she must take

In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.

Her track is graceless, like draggingA packing-case places, and almost any slope

Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,

Shes often stuck up to the axle on her way

To something edible. With everything optimal,

She skirts the ditch which would convert

Her shell into a serving dish. She lives

Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery

Will change her load of pottery to wings.

Her only levity is patience,

The sport of truly chastened things.

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