To a Black Dancer in "The Little Savoy"
by Langston Hughes
Wine-Maiden
Of the jazz-tuned night,
Lips
Sweet as purple dew,
Breasts
Like the pillows of all sweet dreams'
Who crushed
The grapes of joy
And dripped their juice
On you?
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Langston Hughes: To a Black Dancer in The Little Savoy
To a Black Dancer in "The Little Savoy"
by Langston Hughes
Wine-Maiden
Of the jazz-tuned night,
Lips
Sweet as purple dew,
Breasts
Like the pillows of all sweet dreams'
Who crushed
The grapes of joy
And dripped their juice
On you?
Friday, June 27, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
by Mary Frye (1932)
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!
Friday, June 13, 2008
Site For Langston Hughes Poetry
Check out this site Langston Hughes - poetry. It has many cool poems by Langston Hughes, one of my favorites being;
Dead in There
Sometimes
A night funeral
Going by Carries home
A cool bop daddy.
Hearse and flowers
Guarantee
He’ll never hype
Another paddy.
It’s hard to believe,
But dead in there,
He’ll never lay a
Hype nowhere!
He’s my ace-boy,
Gone away.
Wake up and live!
He used to say.
Squares
Who couldn’t dig him,
Plant him now—
Out where it makes
No diff’ no how.
Dead in There
Sometimes
A night funeral
Going by Carries home
A cool bop daddy.
Hearse and flowers
Guarantee
He’ll never hype
Another paddy.
It’s hard to believe,
But dead in there,
He’ll never lay a
Hype nowhere!
He’s my ace-boy,
Gone away.
Wake up and live!
He used to say.
Squares
Who couldn’t dig him,
Plant him now—
Out where it makes
No diff’ no how.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
I loaf and invite my soul
[1] I celebrate myself, and sing myself, (from Song of Myself)
Walt Whitman
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Walt Whitman
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Shakespeare Sonnet #64
SONNET 64
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Sonnet 64/81
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Poetry as Punishment : The Punishment Fits the Crime
According to a story on NPR; Vandals Forced to Study Poetry of Frost.
In December, more than two dozen teenagers were arrested for breaking into and vandalizing the one-time summer residence of Robert Frost. Their punishment? Attend a class about the American poet. Novelist and Middlebury College professor Jay Parini, who taught the class, talks with Robert Siegel.
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