(clockwise from upper left): Eberhart, Stephen Spender, Howard Nemerov, James Dickey

(clockwise from upper left): Eberhart, Stephen Spender, Howard Nemerov, James Dickey

Richard Eberhart(1904-2005)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

EberhartThe Groundhog In June, amid the golden fields,I saw a groundhog lying dead.Dead lay he; my senses shook,And mind outshot  our naked frailty.

There lowly in the vigorous summerHis form began its senseless change,And made my senses waver dimSeeing nature ferocious in him.

Inspecting close maggots' mightAnd seething cauldron of his being,    Half with loathing, half with a strange love,I poked him with an angry stick.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

EberhartThe Groundhog (continued)The fever arose, became a flameAnd Vigour circumscribed the skies,Immense energy in the sun,                    And through my frame a sunless trembling.

My stick had done nor good nor harm.Then stood I silent in the dayWatching the object, as before;And kept my reverence for knowledge         

Trying for control, to be still,To quell the passion of the blood;Until I had bent down on my kneesPraying for joy in the sight of decay.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

EberhartThe Groundhog (continued)And so I left; and I returned                      In Autumn strict of eye, to seeThe sap gone out of the groundhog,But the bony sodden hulk remained

But the year had lost its meaning,And in intellectual chains                                                  I lost both love and loathing,Mured up in the wall of wisdom.

Another summer took the fields againMassive and burning, full of life,But when I chanced upon the spot              There was only a little hair left,

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

EberhartThe Groundhog (continued)And bones bleaching in the sunlightBeautiful as architecture;I watched them like a geometer,And cut a walking stick from a birch.

It has been three years, now.There is no sign of the groundhog.I stood there in the whirling summer,My hand capped a withered heart,

And thought of China and of Greece,          Of Alexander in his tent;Of Montaigne in his tower,Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

I Knew a Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I'd have them sing in a chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin; I nibbled meekly from her proferred hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing we did make).

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

I Knew a Woman

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant notes to sieze; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways).

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

In A Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood-- A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

In A Dark Time

A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is-- Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathesThe aspect of his fleshy clothes, --The flying fabric stitched on bone,The vesture of the skeleton,The garment neither fur nor hair,The cloak of evil and despair,The veil long violated byCaresses of the hand and eye.Yet such is my unseemliness:I hate my epidermal dress,The savage blood's obscenity,The rags of my anatomy,And willingly would I dispenseWith false accouterments of sense,To sleep immodestly, a mostIncarnadine and carnal ghost.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

My Papa's Waltz 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.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

The Waking

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.   I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

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;   I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Roethke

The Waking

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 wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   I learn by going where I have to go.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Rukeyser

MythLong afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It wasthe Sphinx. Oedipus said, “I want to ask one question.Why didn’t I recognize my mother?” “You gave thewrong answer,” said the Sphinx. “But that was whatmade everything possible,” said Oedipus. “No,” she said.“When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,Man. You didn’t say anything about woman.”“When you say Man,” said Oedipus, “you include womentoo.  Everyone knows that.” She said, “That’s whatyou think.”

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Rukeyser

The Poem as Mask

OrpheusWhen I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask,on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone down with song,it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.

There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memoryof my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued childbeside me among the doctors, and a wordof rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,the fragments join in me with their own music.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Rukeyser

Painters

In the cave with a long-ago flarea woman stands, her arms up. Red twig, black twig, brown twig.A wall of leaping darkness over her.The men are out hunting in the early lightBut here in this flicker, one or two men, paintingand a woman among them.Great living animals grow on the stone walls,their pelts, their eyes, their sex, their hearts,and the cave-painters touch them with life, red, brown, black,a woman among them, painting.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Rukeyser

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Rukeyser

The Conjugation of the Paramecium

This has nothingto do withpropagating

The speciesis continuedas so many are(among the smaller creatures)by fission

(and this speciesis very smallnext in order tothe amoeba, the beginning one)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Rukeyser

The Conjugation of the Paramecium

The parameciumachieves, then,immortalityby dividing

But whenthe parameciumdesires renewalstrength another joythis is what the paramecium does:

The parameciumlies down besideanother paramecium

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Rukeyser

The Conjugation of the Paramecium

Slowly inexplicablythe exchangetakes placein whichsome bitsof the nucleus of eachare exchanged

for some bits of the nucleusof the other

This is calledthe conjugation of the paramecium.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Delmore Schwartz(1913-1966)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Schwartz

The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

"the withness of the body" –Whitehead

The heavy bear who goes with me,A manifold honey to smear his face,Clumsy and lumbering here and there,The central ton of every place,The hungry beating brutish oneIn love with candy, anger, and sleep,Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,Climbs the building, kicks the football,Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city..

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Schwartz

The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,That heavy bear who sleeps with me,Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,Howls in his sleep because the tight-ropeTrembles and shows the darkness beneath.--The strutting show-off is terrified,Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,Trembles to think that his quivering meat

Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,Has followed me since the black womb held,Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,A caricature, a swollen shadow,

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Schwartz

The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,The secret life of belly and bone,Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,Stretches to embrace the very dearWith whom I would walk without him near,Touches her grossly, although a wordWould bare my heart and make me clear,Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fedDragging me with him in his mouthing care,Amid the hundred million of his kind,the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

William Stafford (1914-1993)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Stafford

Traveling Through The Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deerdead on the edge of the Wilson River road.It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the carand stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;she had stiffened already, almost cold.I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,alive, still, never to be born.Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Stafford

Traveling Through The Dark

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;under the hood purred the steady engine..I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,then pushed her over the edge into the river.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Stafford

Have You Heard This One?

A woman forged her face(It was one she found in a magazine.)Using it, she got a job on an airline.One day a passenger said, "Haven't I seenyou every place before?" (He had been readingRing Lardner.) They got marriedthat very night in a motel. This is a true story.It happened in New Yorkand Los Angelesand Chicagoand . . .

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Stafford

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glassesoff--they were still singing. They buzzedlike a locust on the coffee table and thenceased. Her voice belled forth, and thesunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, andknew that nails up there took a new gripon whatever they touched. "I am your ownway of looking at things," she said. "Whenyou allow me to live with you, everyglance at the world around you will bea sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Stafford

Atavism

1Sometimes in the open you look upwhere birds go by, or just nothing,and wait. A dim feeling comes you were like this once, there was air,and quiet; it was by a lake, ormaybe a river you were alertas an otter and were suddenly bornlike the evening star into widestill worlds like this one you have foundagain, for a moment, in the open.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Stafford

Atavism

2Something is being told in the woods: aisles ofshadow lead away; a branch waves;a pencil of sunlight slowly travels itspath. A withheld presence almostspeaks, but then retreats, rustlesa patch of brush. You can feelthe centuries ripple generationsof wandering, discovering, being lostand found, eating, dying, being born.A walk through the forest strokes your fur,the fur you no longer have. And your gazedown a forest aisle is a strange, longplunge, dark eyes looking for home.For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskerswider than your mind, away out over everything.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’ssleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Jarrell

Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom. Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves And the boy takes it to my station wagon, What I’ve become Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I’d wish What all girls wish: to have a husband,

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Jarrell

Next DayA house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me. For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me, The eyes of strangers! And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining, I too have taken The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog And we start home. Now I am good. The last mistaken, Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Jarrell

Next DayHappiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm Some soap and water— It was so long ago, back in some Gay Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss My lovely daughter Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work—I wish for them. The dog, the maid, And I go through the sure unvarying days At home in them. As I look at my life, I am afraid Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face. It looks at me From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Jarrell

Next DayThe smile I hate. Its plain, lined look Of gray discovery Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old.

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral I went to yesterday. My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers, Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body Were my face and body. As I think of her and I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have. But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I’m anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

John Berryman (1914-1972)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Berryman

The Ball Poem

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,What, what is he to do? I saw it goMerrily bouncing, down the street, and thenMerrily over—there it is in the water!No use to say 'O there are other balls':An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boyAs he stands rigid, trembling, staring downAll his young days into the harbour whereHis ball went. I would not intrude on him,A dime, another ball, is worthless. NowHe senses first responsibilityIn a world of possessions. People will take balls,Balls will be lost always, little boy,And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Berryman

The Ball Poem

He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,The epistemology of loss, how to stand upKnowing what every man must one day knowAnd most know many days, how to stand upAnd gradually light returns to the streetA whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,Soon part of me will explore the deep and darkFloor of the harbour . . . I am everywhere,I suffer and move, my mind and my heart moveWith all that move me, under the waterOr whistling, I am not a little boy.

Jon Stewart on the Ball

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Brooks

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. WeLeft school. We

Lurk late. WeStrike straight. We

Sing sin. WeThin gin. We

Jazz June. WeDie soon.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Brooks

The Crazy Woman

I shall not sing a May song. A May song should be gay. I'll wait until November And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November That is the time for me. I'll go out in the frosty dark And sing most terribly.

And all the little people Will stare at me and say, "That is the Crazy Woman Who would not sing in May."

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Brooks

My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell

I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home.My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Howard Nemerov (1920-1991)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Diane Arbus 1923-1971

Howard Nemerov’s Sister

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Diane Arbus: "You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw."

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Nemerov

Walking the Dog

Two universes mosey down the streetConnected by love and a leash and nothing else.Mostly I look at lamplight through the leavesWhile he mooches along with tail up and snout down,Getting a secret knowledge through the noseAlmost entirely hidden from my sight.

We stand while he's enraptured by a bushTill I can't stand our standing any moreAnd haul him off; for our relationshipIs patience balancing to this side tugAnd that side drag; a pair of symbiontsContented not to think each other's thoughts.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Nemerov

Walking the Dog

What else we have in common's what he taught,Our interest in shit. We know its every stateFrom steaming fresh through stink to nature's wayOf sluicing it downstreet dissolved in rainOr drying it to dust that blows away.We move along the street inspecting shit.

His sense of it is keener far than mine,And only when he finds the place preciseHe signifies by sniffing urgentlyAnd circles thrice about, and squats, and shits,Whereon we both with dignity walk homeAnd just to show who's master I write the poem.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Nemerov

Found Poem after information received in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4 v 86

The population center of the USAHas shifted to Potosi, in Missouri.The calculation employed by authoritiesIn arriving at this dislocation assumesThat the country is a geometric plane,Perfectly flat, and that every citizen,Including those in Alaska and HawaiiAnd the District of Columbia, weighs the same;So that, given these simple presuppositions,The entire bulk and spread of all the peopleShould theoretically balance on the point Of a needle under Potosi in MissouriWhere no one is residing nowadaysBut the watchman over an abandoned mineWhence the company got the lead out and left."It gets pretty lonely here," he says, "at night."

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Nemerov

The God of This World

He smiles to see His children, born to sin.Digging those foxholes there are no atheists in.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

James Dickey (1923-1997)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Dickey

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Dickey

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Dickey

Harry Crews

Crews to Dickey (in a bar in Gainesville, Florida, October 1973): “It takes me a whole year to write a bad novel. It takes you one night to write a bad poem.”

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Dickey

A Dog Sleeping on My Feet

Being his resting place,I do not even tense The muscles of a legOr I would seem to be changing.Instead, I turn the pageOf the notebook, carefully not Remembering what I have written, For now, with my feet beneath himDying like embers,The poem is beginning to moveUp through my pine-prickling legsOut of the night wood,Taking hold of the pen by my fingers.Before me the fox floats lightlyOn fire with his holy scene.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Dickey

A Dog Sleeping on My Feet

All, all are running.Marvelous is the pursuit,Like a dazzle of nails through the ankles,Like a twisting shout through the treesSent after the flying foxThrough the holes of logs, over streamsStock-still with the pressure of moonlight.My killed legs,My legs of a dead thing, follow,Quick as pins, through the forest,And all rushes on into darkAnd ends on the brightness of paper.When my hand, which speaks in a dazeThe hypnotized language of beasts, Shall falter, and failBack into the human tongue,

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Dickey

A Dog Sleeping on My Feet

And the dog gets up and goes outTo wander the dawning yard,I shall crawl to my human bedAnd lie there smiling at sunrise,With the scent of the foxBurning my brain like an incenseFloating out of the night wood,Coming home to my wife and my sonsFrom the dream of an animal, Assembling the self I must wake to,Sleeping to grow back my legs.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

James Wright (1927-1980)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Wright

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.Their women cluck like starved pullets,Dying for love.

Therefore,Their sons grow suicidally beautifulAt the beginning of October,And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Wright

Milkweed

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,I must have looked a long timeDown the corn rows, beyond grass,The small house,White walls, animals lumbering toward the

barn.I look down now. It is all changed.Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept forWas a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyesLoving me in secret.It is here. At a touch of my hand,The air fills with delicate creaturesFrom the other world.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry