The Unwritten Pages

Megan G.


I know
That somewhere
Are the words that remain invisible
They would love to sing
But they have no voice
They would love to breathe
But they have no air
So they wander
Unheard
Like music without a staff
And I know
Sometime
I will find those words
Help them sing and help them breathe
My pen will no longer remain still
My soul no longer
Unwritten

America the Beautiful

Katharine Lee Bates


O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stem impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

Idea: Read "America the Beautiful" to American literature class, and ask students to write about what they think is beautiful about America. Condense their answers into a list of words and phrases, laminate each, and use them throughout the year as students study each unit. Asking students: which of our ideas did the Puritans write about, etc.

Choose

Carl Sandburg


The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

Where I'm From

George Ella Lyon


I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I'm from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.

I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments--
snapped before I budded --
leaf-fall from the family tree.

Read Me Aloud

Catherine Killingsworth age: 18 - GA Scholastic Art & Writing Gold Award


I will not sit placidly on your eyes
Skipped and skimmed over ink that dries
Lifelessly on paper and lies
Trapped between sheets when skies
Should be my cage
Your mouth my page.

I want to slip between your teeth
Feel the humid heat
Of breath hissing and
Consonants cutting,
Vowels bleeding flavor onto me.

My sounds lap languidly at your lips
A taste instantly brilliant that slips
Into memory and fits
Perfectly under your tongue
Or behind the tips of your teeth
Or in your lungs.

So if you could I would have you

Just inhale some air and
Read me aloud.

Free me
To sing out
The way it's meant to be,
For I do not live imprisoned in print
But in your ears and sounds and mouth.

Selecting a Reader

Ted Kooser


First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

The Grammar Lesson

Steve Kowit


A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

of and with are prepositions. The's
an article, a can's a noun,
a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.

A can can roll - or not. What isn't was
or might be, might meaning not yet known.
"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

is present tense. While words like our and us
are pronouns - i.e. it is moldy, they are icky brown.
A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does.

Is is a helping verb. It helps because
filled isn't a full verb. Can's what our owns
in "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz."

See? There's almost nothing to it. Just
memorize these rules...or write them down!
A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does.
The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.

The Poet

Tom Wayman


Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook
May speak much but makes little sense
Cannot give clear verbal instructions
Does not understand what he reads
Does not understand what he hears
Cannot handle “yes-no” questions
Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs
Has difficulty recalling what he ate for breakfast, etc.
Cannot tell a story from a picture
Cannot recognize visual absurdities
Has difficulty classifying and categorizing objects
Has difficulty retaining such things as
addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables
May recognize a word one day and not the next

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

The Great Harry Houdini

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Eating Poetry

Mark Strand


Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Don't Be Afraid

by Rob, Grade 10


Writing poetry
Is not as daunting as it sounds.
All you have to have done
To write poetry
Is to have lived.

I’m alive,
So I can write poetry.
Anyone reading this is presumably alive;
Therefore, you too
Are capable of writing poetry.

Once you establish
That you are, in fact, alive,
Your poetry may be governed
By your mood. If you’re hungry,
For example, there’s an excellent chance
That your poem will reflect your hunger.

Some choose to be coy with their meanings
And highfalutin’ with their language
(“Bubbles in an IV loitering” or
“Museums mark their bodies down”)

This is okay sometimes,
But you don’t want to hide
Your poem’s meaning
From the reader altogether.

Do you understand now
Why writing poetry is not as hard
As you thought?

Proof of life, mood, language:
Three simple steps
And your poetry
Will flow
Like water.

Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?

Ron Koertge


Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

Did I Miss Anything?

Tom Wayman


Did I miss anything?

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class
Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm 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 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 this 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 existence
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 weren't here

The Astonishing Weight of the Dead, Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.

Central School

Jay S. Paul


From the bus garage beside the river, where motors
idle like the middle of stories, the road
labors uphill to street signs, the faces growing.

You stand in headlights, climb into the certainty
of acceleration, stagger between the lines of jokes,
You want a small place at the end of a seat,
hoping not to be noticed, not to weep when your shoe
flies from shout to shout and against a window.

Leaving the houses to speed along fence, the road
brakes into daily screams at the steep bank, the turn
above the invisible pasture. You name
each day by the wrong they do, reciting
days all day till counting loses count. One year

the shoe they hand is small. They hand it to you.