Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Modern Short Stories
William Faulkner:
“A Rose for Emily”
Ernest Hemingway:
“Hills like White Elephants”
Shirley Jackson:
“The Lottery”
William Carlos Williams:
“The Use of Force”
Tim O’Brien:
“The Man I Killed”
James Thurber:
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
“The Unicorn in the Garden”
The Modern Novel
F. Scott Fitzgerald:
The Great Gatsby:
The Roaring Twenties:
The Lost Generation
The Jazz Age
Modern Poetry
Edwin Arlington Robinson:
“Miniver Cheevy”
“Mr. Flood’s Party”
“Richard Cory”
Robert Frost:
“The Mending Wall”
“The Road Not Taken”
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Carl Sandburg:
“Fog”
Wallace Stevens:
“The Anecdote of the Jar”
William Carlos Williams:
“The Red Wheelbarrow”
“This is Just to Say”
T.S Eliot:
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Langston Hughes:
Harlem
Don Marquis:
“The Lesson of the Moth”
TP-CASTT Method of Analysis:
Imagism:
Ekphrastic Poetry:
Modern Non-Fiction
Sophistry:
Syllogism:
Tautologies (Avoid):
Barbie and Her Playmates - Don Richard Cox
The Case for Torture - Michael Levin
The Amateur Scientist - Richard P. Feynman
Untying the Knot - Anne Dillard
Hugh Gallagher’s College Essay
Modern Drama
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Contemporary Poetry
William Stafford:
Traveling Through the Dark
Howard Nemerov:
I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee
Denise Levertov:
What were they like?
Anne Sexton:
Cinderella
Adrienne Rich:
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
Gary Snyder:
At Tower’s Peak
Lucille Clifton:
In the Inner City
Sharon Olds:
“The Death of Marilyn Monroe”
Louise Gluck:
The Mountain
Rita Dove:
Geometry
Modern Poems
Miniver Cheevy - E.A. Robinson
Mr. Floods Party - E.A. Robinson
Richard Cory - E.A. Robinson
The Mending Wall - Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
Fog - Carl Sandburg
“The Anecdote of the Jar” - Wallace Stevens
“The Red Wheelbarrow” - William Carlos Williams
“This is Just to Say” - William Carlos Williams
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” - T.S. Eliot
 “The Lesson of the Moth” - Don Marquis
Contemporary Poems
Traveling Through the Dark - William Stafford
I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee - Howard Nemerov
What were they like? - Denise Levertov
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers - Adrienne Rich
Cinderella - Anne Sexton
At Towers Peak - Gary Snyder
in the inner city - Lucille Clifton
“The Death of Marilyn Monroe” - Sharon Olds
The Mountain - Louise Gluck
Geometry - Rita Dove
 Modern Short Stories
● William Faulkner:
■ 1897 - 1962
■ Important writer of Southern Literature
■ wrote novels, poetry, short stories and occasionally screenplays
■ experimental style with meticulous attention to diction
■ one nobel prize in 1949 and 3 Pulitzer prizes
■ “A Rose for Emily”
● Written in 1930
● Story told by the townspeople about Emily
● Out of order timeline
● Emily’s own funeral is treated by the townspeople as fulfilling curiosity and
paying respects to a monument
○ She does not have to pay taxes because of who her father was,
highly respected in the town
○ After her death, people go into her home and find Homer Barron’s
body, still in bed with marks that Emily has slept next to him for
many years
● Emily’s Father, a domineering, controlling force in her life that takes away
her chances for happiness is already dead
○ She still mourns, cuts her hair short, stops maintaining her looks
● Homer Barron comes to town, is a yankee laborer, player
● She buys rat poison and kills him, people think he just skipped town
● Toby, Emily’s Manservant knows about the murder all along, lives in fear
of being accused of the murder, and continues to serve Emily, but
disappears after her death, serving Emily was his whole life

● Ernest Hemingway:
■ 1899 - 1961
■ Novelist and Essayist
● Nobel Prize for the Old Man and the Sea
○ dialogue with one character
○ English with Spanish syntax
■ Ambulance Driver in WWI
● Member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920’s
■ A Persona - the man’s man
● a bigger than life personality, constantly being publicized
● Style more noticeable than his ideas in his writing
○ known for his influence on contemporary style
■ Suicide by Gunshot in 1961
■ “Hills like White Elephants”
● written in 1927
 ● characters are roaming around Europe - lost generation
○ repetition, a lot of dialogue (short and tense)
● Dry and Moist Imagery
○ no shade, no trees, hot
○ wet drinks, moistening coasters
○ Life giving moisture and shade, fields of grain vs desert, barren,
death
● Hills Imagery
○ hill - the baby bump
● Railroad/Crossroads Imagery
○ abortion or no abortion?
○ Barcelona or Madrid?
● A White Elephant Gift - something unexpected that you don’t want
● Conversation between an unmarried man and woman (Jig) at a train
station in Spain
● Mundane Conversation, innocuous with underlying conflict
○ woman is pregnant, discussing abortion
○ Man and Woman not saying what they truly want to, nothing is
being decided, only a battle of verbal pushing and shoving
● Man’s position is that abortion is safe and natural, simple
○ believes that once they get rid of the baby their relationship will go
back to the way it was
● The woman knows that no matter the decision, things will never be the
same in her life or between them.
● At A crossroads: symbolized by the railroad
● Hemingway doesn’t make it clear how the story ends:
○ man does something decisive, carries bags to train
○ comes back and she has made some decision
○ the solution is unknown to the reader

● Shirley Jackson:
■ 1919-1965
■ Writing in the Political Era (Vietnam war - the draft)
■ Heavily Motivated by WWII and Cold War
● people turning on their neighbors for the “greater good”
■ “The Lottery”
● written in 1949
● The Lottery is not a positive thing, the people are tense
○ Old irrational ritual that serves little purpose
○ neighboring town has given up the ritual
● People are used to tradition and feel peer pressure to participate
○ idea of hanging on to archaic and dangerous traditions
● Own families turning against each other
● Tessie Hutchinson is the year’s victim and her family goes after her
● How can a community function in fear?

● William Carlos Williams:

■ 1883-1963
 ■ Pediatrician, not autobiographical author, draws from experience
■ Modernist Writer, mid 20th century style, sensibility, and voice
■ Imagist Poet
■ “The Use of Force”
● Written in 1930’s
○ Great Depression, people are skinny, ill, poor
● no quotation marks to show dialogue, rushed
● The Doctor is retelling the story of one of his house calls
○ reprocessing what occurred
● There has to be a victor:
○ the girl could win, but then die
○ the doctor could win, search was pointless, she has diphtheria
● “Divided Mind”
○ all have different goals and objectives
● Need for a team: everyone working for the betterment of the team and
united with one mindset
● Divided Mind in the Doctor:
○ wants to help the child by checking her throat
■ wants to stop the spread of diphtheria, save her life, and the
people around her
○ wants to hurt her because she is aggravating
■ human clash of wills - doctor wants to be in full control
■ in love with her because she is fighting and youthful,
something many are not in the Depression
○ The child was stopping him from reaching one of his goals
■ her behavior is impeding the discovery of the disease
● Divided Mind in the Girl:
○ old enough to understand that if she is sick with diphtheria it is fatal
○ still holds childlike fear of doctors and pain
■ sticking with needles, negatives of doctors office
■ childish feeling of if its not diagnosed its not real
● Divided Mind in the Parents:
○ want the child to get better
■ taking her to the doctor
○ without hurting the child
■ not wanting to be embarrassed by the child
■ can’t make the child behave
● Divided Mind in the Reader:
○ divided mind about the proceedings of the doctor
○ don’t want the child to die, but dislike her as a character
○ supposed to support the doctor but he seems to want to hurt her,
caring professions : medicine
● Tim O’Brien:
■ 1946- present
■ Vietnam Veteran
■ Professor of Fine Arts at Texas State University
■ his novels are a collection of short stories
 ■ “The Man I Killed”
● internal thought/dialogue interrupted by outside dialogue
○ the internal monologue
● repetition from the mind of the man who killed the soldier
● the human truths intensified in the war
● reality is not what the main character (Tim) wants it to be
○ he is remorseful, incredulous, thoughtful, shocked
■ thinking, does not speak aloud
● story takes place at the end of action
○ disorganized description, mimicking war, factual writing, running
over every detail, imagining the soldier’s life
● Stream of Consciousness:
○ barely being pulled out of his thoughts by Kiowa’s
■ questions/attempts at making him feel better
○ totally consumed by his conscious mind and what he has done
○ jumbled up thoughts
● Conflict:
○ between Tim and his own mind/what he has done
○ Kiowa’s sympathy vs Azar’s joy at the deed done
○ who is human? who is evil?
● James Thurber:
■ 1894-1961
■ humorist, born and raised in Ohio
■ childhood accident, leading to total blindness later in life
■ author and Cartoonist
■ known for his use of theme “Battle of the Sexes”
■ “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
● written in 1939
● Mitty-esque: daydreamer, passive in reality, imagine themselves to be a
person of grandeur
● Humorist:
○ sound effects
○ the crazy nagging wife vs the spacey hapless husband
○ Mitty is always surrounded by beautiful girls who throw themselves
on him in his dreams
● Mitty gets his stories from other peoples lives
○ drives past the hospital - becomes a doctor
○ driving into town - becomes captain of a hydroplane
○ people making fun of him - has his arm in a sling
○ his stories have recurring themes of
■ guns, violence, victory
■ pretty women
■ people respecting him
■ “The Unicorn in the Garden”
● battle between husband and wife
■ husband says he sees unicorn in the Garden
○ wife calls police to get him into asylum
● as she tells story to police, she sounds crazy
○ husband wins, naggy, bitch wife in insane asylum
● husband is plotting, willing to let the tables turn
○ does not only imagine success, achieves it
○ pensive, passive husband
 The Modern Novel
○ F. Scott Fitzgerald:
■ 1896 - 1940
■ “The Lost Generation” and “The Jazz Age”
■ From the MidWest but writes about the East and West Coasts
■ The American Dream, The Self Made Man
■ The Great Gatsby:
● Symbols
● Color References
● Character Descriptions
● Idea of Changing the Past, altering what has already occurred

○ The Roaring Twenties:

■ 1920 - 1929 and the start of the Great Depression
■ Electrification, telephone, indoor plumbing, cars, suffrage, technology
■ a lot of money to be made, Standard Oil, Progressivism, Prohibition
■ Period of High Modernity

■ The Lost Generation

● The Great War, The War to End All Wars
● Trench Warfare, Poison Gas
● People came back with Traumatic Stress Syndrome
○ Shift in the Culture of the US
● People begin to wander aimlessly without many plans for the future
○ wealthier generations traveling without purpose
■ The Jazz Age
● flappers
● prohibition
● dancing
● gangsters
● Speakeasy
 Modern Poetry
● Edwin Arlington Robinson:
○ 1869-1935
○ “The world is not a prison house but a kind of spiritual kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants
are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”
○ people don’t know what they are supposed to do, trying to figure out what God intended for them
○ people are paying attention to the wrong things, even with right intent
○ “Miniver Cheevy”
■ written in 1910
■ abab rhyme, end rhyme, irony, allusions, imagery
■ Miniver is reminiscing
● tone is both sympathetic and mocking
■ Repetition of Miniver at the end of every stanza
● he has been scorned
■ Upset that he has been born in a time not suited to him
■ He looks down on people who have wealth, but he also wants to be like them,
allusions of wealth and grandeur
■ Jealous and wants but will not do anything to get the money
● Thinks but never acts, complains of materialism of life
■ Miniver coughed and called it fate - sick, most likely has TB
■ and kept on drinking - alcoholic
■ Living in ones wishes and never acting to make them true
○ “Mr. Flood’s Party”
■ written in 1920
■ Mr. Flood has outlived everyone
■ There are strangers in the town below, times of prohibition
■ 2 personas, 1 speaker, multiple personalities
● Mr. Eben Flood - so drunk he is talking to himself
● Eben and Mr. Flood
■ Ebb and flow: the coming of time, the passing of time, emptiness
● Harvest - the fall, close to death, older middle age
■ He had a family that is now gone, family and friends are dead
■ Uncertain lives of men - young people die
■ So drunk that he sees two moons
■ He is out of community, he is lonely because of his age

○ “Richard Cory”
■ Repetition of “and he”
■ The character is not happy with his life
■ Narrative poems about a person’s life
■ Abab rhyme scheme, end rhyme
■ Speaker: “we” the normal townspeople, a collective voice
■ “We” think that Richard Cory has the perfect life, nothing is said to be negative
● Glitter: Cory looks clean, wears jewelry, gold
● treats the townspeople well, speaks to them, “flutters pulses”
 ■ the problem: he is isolated by his wealth, we and then Richard Cory
● kills himself

● Robert Frost:
○ 1874 - 1963
○ “The Mending Wall”
● Tradition is both accepted by and detrimental to society fear of not being
isolated
● the neighbor does not want to be close to the speaker
○ repetition of good fences make good neighbors
● [characters in both stories (The Lottery and The Mending Wall) live in a sort of
ignorant happiness/bliss that is spurred on by their fear of a substantial change in
their day to day life/what they are used to]

● “The Road Not Taken”

○ epitomizing the choices and decisions that one must make in life
○ choosing one way will lead someone on a totally different path in life than
choosing to go another way
○ “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”

● “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

○ Feminist Reading:
■ take the I as a female perspective
■ referring to women’s suffrage - the fight for female equality
■ the woods: men own everything, are established with homes and property
■ promise of continuing fighting for women’s equality
■ miles before she can stop, miles before she gains equality
■ no indication of the gender of the speaker
■ women are missing from the poem
■ confined to the home, not going on the journey
■ feminine energy associated with nature
● the horse is speaking for nature
■ horse is nagging, as if it were a women, who is missing, and being
ignored by the man
○ Freudian Analysis:
■ the idea of death as being lovely, dark, deep
■ promises to himself or promises to others
■ sees life as needing to go on, continue on
○ Marxist Analysis:
■ commentary on land ownership
■ commentary on people being overworked
■ darkest, coldest day of the year, no one would go out unless they had to
■ the speaker is a worker, compelled to be out
■ working right out to Christmas - 12.21: darkest day of year
○ Theological Reading:
■ god’s house is in the village
■ frozen lake: purgatory, purity is frozen
■ woods are dark, lovely, deep : temptation
 ● must resist temptation
■ Devil in the woods/forest
■ the main speaker is Santa - promises to keep

● Carl Sandburg:
○ 1878 - 1967
○ came from poor background
○ joined the hobo sub-culture in America
○ encouraged to attend college by friends
■ had to quit school at 13 to help support family income
○ his professor at college paid to publish his poetry
○ wrote in free verse
○ the beauty of middle class workers and the workers life
■ celebrating industrial and agricultural America
○ Admirer of Abraham Lincoln - wrote 6 volume biography
■ Pulitzer prize winner
○ “Fog”
■ Imagery
● appeals to the sight -
○ connotation of cat/cat feet as soft
● silence - sound imagery
■ Metaphor - fog to a cat
■ Poem about Fog? about guilt? Confusion? Describing a state of mind
■ free verse

● Wallace Stevens:
○ 1879 - 1955
○ Pulitzer Prize winner
○ harvard educated lawyer
○ aspirations of being a poet and a corporate suit
○ belief that a poet looks at the world with passion and close, mindful observation
○ “The Anecdote of the Jar”
■ written in 1937
■ describing nature/the wilderness
■ slovenly, wild, all over the place nature
■ contrasting of urbanization and nature
● the jar is industry
■ surrounded by nature, industry is taking over nature
■ (Tennessee River Valley Authority - dam up the river to make way for lights)
■ placing the jar, placing in industry, leads to chain reactions
● its different because man changed something
■ the jar is a sign that man has left his mark

● William Carlos Williams:

○ 1883 - 1963
○ “The Red Wheelbarrow”
■ written in 1923
● an observation poem commenting on life
 ○ necessities: water, food, hard work
■ idea of getting out of one’s own head and noticing the world
● must notice the world to live a full life
● healthy mindset, life, creativity
○ “This is Just to Say”
■ in a kitchen, the poem is the note that has been left
■ this poem is an apology or an excuse
■ the man is not afraid of the person he is writing the note to (friendly relationship)
● people who are living together, cohabitation - most likely husband and wife
● there are plums he realizes that are being saved for breakfast
○ saving plums for them, look so good he eats them
■ the only thing he has left to share with her is the description of the plums
■ sharing through words even though there is nothing physical to share

● T.S Eliot:
○ “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
■ a person etherized or sedated, unable to move
■ traveling through cheap, classless places
■ many allusions to his idea of a fulfilled life and what others believe is their fulfilled
life
■ putting on a fake persona to show to the world
■ idea that there will be time to complete all the things he wanted to but suddenly
the time is gone
■ he has an inherent fear of being judged, fear to live the life that he wants or do
the things that he wants
■ by his middle aged time: he has lived a measured, predictable, and controlled
life, he beings to be separated, out of social flow
■ does not connect with other humans, feels a failure as a man
■ eternal footman: death
● he feels even death would laugh at him
○ feels as though he has amounted to nothing
○ time to die, yet he has yet to live

● Langston Hughes:
○ African American writing during the mid 20th century
○ Harlem
■ basis of raisin in the sun
■ premise of what happens to a dream that has been put aside

● Don Marquis:
■ “If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make
them think, they’ll hate you”
■ Poet, Newspaper writer, dies in 1937
■ “The Lesson of the Moth”
● no capitalization or punctuation
● there was an Imagist Poet who came back as a cockroach, reincarnation
● couldn’t hit the shift key for caps or punctuation
● “archy” the poet and philosopher - best friend - Mehitabel, a cat
● “fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what
does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up
with beauty than to live a long time”
● “I wish there was something I wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself”

○ Archy is looking for passion in his life - human struggle for meaning
and a purpose
● TP-CASTT Method of Analysis:
■ Title:
■ Paraphrase:
● going over the poem at the surface level
■ Connotation:
● the search for the deeper meaning
● analyze the rhyme scheme, literary tools of the poem
■ Attitude:
● author’s tone about the subject
● tone: how the speaker feels about the subject
■ Shifts:
● in tone action or rhythm
■ Title:
● re-evaluate the meaning of the title now that you’ve read and analyzed the
poem
■ Theme:
● Imagism:
○ movement of the early 20th century beginning in the United States and Britain that
favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language
○ reject the sentiment and discursiveness of the Romantic Poetry
○ Ezra Pound: “Make it new” Idea
■ direct treatment of the thing, whether subjective or objective
■ use no word that does not contribute to presentation
■ not to use metered verse in poetry
● Ekphrastic Poetry:
○ a poem that is derived from another art form
○ example: a poem written about a piece of art
 Modern Non-Fiction

● Sophistry:
○ the use of language to an end, talking around a question, knowing how to argue a point to get
what they need
● Syllogism:
○ A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a
conclusion.
● Tautologies (Avoid):
○ A needless repetition of the same sense in different words; A statement composed of similar
statements in a fashion that makes it true whether the simpler statements are true or false
supporting a side a person doesn’t truly believe

● Barbie and Her Playmates - Don Richard Cox

○ born in 1943 - right outside the baby boomer generation
○ essay written in 1977
○ Mid-Westerner: more traditional than people from the coast
○ College professor writing in a scientific journal
○ Expository Essay
● appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture
■ a more personable title - makes the reader wonder
■ Barbie: immediate connotation to the doll
● playmates: little girls who play with Barbie
■ Playboy Playmates
● as opposed to “friends”
■ Suddenly keyed onto a more sexual/redefining meaning
■ Subject:
● the effect or influence on the generation of young girls
○ what these toys may do to society at large
■ word choice, level of details, tone : all change based on audience
● adults with young children who may play with the toys
● scientists, human studies students, American culture students
■ asserting something without truly drawing a conclusion
■ cause and effect essay, if girls play with barbies, this is how they will change
■ Anti-Barbie
● the author’s opinion, not a scientific paper, based on observations
■ an educated, purposeful observer
■ uses rhetorical questions
■ judgmental tone, no scientific sources
■ an opinion piece
● snarky, sarcastic, edgy tone
● voice is very masculine
■ not directing his argument to the producer, at the consumer

● The Case for Torture - Michael Levin

○ Professor of Philosophy
 ■ does not deal with law
○ Persuasive Essay
■ The Case for Torture
■ arguing in favor for torture
■ case: opinion or argument, not fiction story
● Printed in 1982
■ why torture should be used on occasion and when
● Pre- 9/11 account of torture
○ way ahead of the ideas of torture
■ not a policy paper
● makes torture a powerful moral issue - positive
■ concise
■ written for the general populace
● writing for the people who are against torture - proving his stand for torture
■ comes right out and says what he believes -
● Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis model of writing
● putting up the opposite side of the argument
■ looks at both sides of the argument
■ his belief that torture is morally good and justifiable in some cases
● morally mandatory
● torturing is barbaric, but mass murder is more so
● balancing innocent lives vs means of saving them
■ use of biased opinions of mothers whose children are in danger

● The Amateur Scientist - Richard P. Feynman

○ The Anecdote
■ talking about his experience with ants and experiments
● how he became his own scientist
■ powerful way of looking at the world
■ an informative essay
■ what it is to do science?
■ deliberately or through his manner he is entertaining his audience
■ using anecdotes to define what is the scientific mind
■ essay is written in first person
● reflective essay - “when i was”
■ an anecdotal essay - the chapter is made up of all stories
■ Thesis:
● no statement of premise
● “i just played” “i didn’t do anything but ferry ants”
● simple activity is what makes a scientist
■ His point of view is very personable
● es a very personal, homey tone of voice and language
■ uses italics
● directly addresses the reader - knows who the reader
■ uses a lot of parenthetical, ellipses, quotations etc
● very conversational writing tone
● Untying the Knot - Anne Dillard
○ The Analogy
■ Comparing the circular form/a knot to the seasons of life and the environment
 ■ A correspondence in some respects between things otherwise dissimilar. A form
of logical inference, or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if things
are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other
respects.
● Hugh Gallagher’s College Essay
○ Humorous Essay
■ Satire: ridicules and exposes the follies and foibles of mankind
■ lampoon: an often scathing personal satire
■ Parody: ridicules a serious work by imitating and exaggerating its style
■ Tell Tale (Shaggy Dog Story): twist ending
■ Black Humor: juxtaposes morbid or absurd elements with comical or farcical
ones
○ Techniques of humor
■ Repetition: to repeat for effect
■ hyperbole: exaggeration
■ Litotes: understatement
■ Quip: (retort, jest, witticism, bon mot) - a humorous turn of phrase
■ Pun: a play on words
■ Humorous anecdote: illustrate a point
 Modern Drama

● The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

○ Importance of Staging
■ Use of multi-media = screen backdrop
■ Use of narrator/character = tom is both the narrator telling the story from the past
and a character in the present
■ Single setting = the Wingfield apartment
○ Comparison of Amanda Wingfield and Jay Gatsby
■ Both have a problem with time and being in the correct time
● Gatsby wants to go back to the time he was with Daisy
● Amanda wants her daughter to have her experience as a courted young
woman
■ Both have lives focused on money
● Gatsby has gone from poor to rich in order to buy love and the past
● Amanda has slipped from gentile to the impoverished
■ Both live in their distorted memories or unrealistic dreams. Both confuse dream
and reality and live in a dream world
● Gatsby dreams of being Daisy’s only love
● Amanda dreams of her dysfunctional daughter being a belle
○ Williams’ thought on the Power of Feelings/Emotions
■ Strong emotions destroy
■ Strong emotions make it hard to live uncomfortably in the mundane world
● Jim moving along, has little emotion, takes business classes, has a life
● Tom write poetry, wants more, wants a different life not attuned to the
mundane world and is stuck
○ Williams frequently create fragile female characters
■ Amanda
● Is trying to make changes in her children’s lives even if she’s in a weak
position
■ Laura
● Weak across the board; mentally, socially, physically
○ Williams frequently created trapped or cornered men
■ Tom is a poet. Williams often shows the creative sensitive man as being trapped
and deadened by traditional society
■ Tom is oppressed by:
● His mother
 ● His job
● His sense of duty to his sister
○ Williams’ use of symbolism
■ Fire escape
● Wishing on the star, Tom and Amanda and Laura
■ The glass menagerie
● Glass suggests fragile and menagerie is just an odd grouping
● Frailness of the world at large
■ Unicorn
● Unicorns aren’t real, are mythical. Just like they don’t fit with the other
animals, Laura doesn’t fit at all
■ The Gentleman caller
● Hope for salvation, financial and other problems will be solved when he
marries Laura
○ Williams deals with the dysfunctional family
■ Amanda
■ Laura
■ Tom
■ Amanda<—>Tom
■ Amanda<—>Laura
■ Tom<—>Laura
○ Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansbury
○ Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun
Or fester like a sore----
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

Like a heavy load
Or does it explodes?
--Langston Hughes
○ Word association
■ Life, energy, search, movement, release, stability, mobility, heritage
■ Walter Lee, Mama(Lena), Ruth, Beneatha, George, Asagai
○ Tension
■ Walter Lee, Mama, Ruth, and Beneatha
○ Comparisons
■ Mama/Lena vs Amanda
 ■ Beneatha vs. Laura
■ Tom vs. Walter Lee
■ George vs. Jim
■ Asagai vs. Jim
■ Travis vs. Walter Lee
○ Symbols
■ Mama’s plant
■ The house
■ The check
■ The liquor store
 Contemporary Poetry

● William Stafford:
○ Traveling Through the Dark
■ dead, pregnant deer that a man finds on the Side of the Road
■ he pushes her over the side of the road even though the fawn may still be living
inside of her
■ the value of life, how humans value the lives of other species’ and what humans
can qualify as inferior life
■ the definition of life - what is life
■ is something unborn alive?
■ throw the deer over the cliff on the side of the road
● fawn will die
■ take the whole deer to an animal hospital
■ cut open the deer and attempt to save the fawn
● effort, time consuming
● he does not know what he is doing
● effort and practicality vs saving a life
■ A no win situation
■ the decision still consumed the speaker
■ fragility, the establishment of life

● Howard Nemerov:
○ I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee
■ the relationship between beauty and death, is the killing of whales worth the
beauty caused. Is beauty worth the horrible agony of her “beauty”(death)
■ house imagery - water/sea imagery, whaling imagery
■ Description of a Woman
● not very pleasing to look at
○ she looks unhappy, fake, unreal, not someone he knows
● she is untouchable, formulated
● compared to a large ship getting rid of all her “tackle”
■ Whales:
● the whalebone in her corset
● needle drawing blood (harpoon)
■ Accusatory Tone
■ The Title: Ishmael’s epilogue of Moby Dick
● a survivor coming back to tell you the truth

● Denise Levertov:
○ What were they like?
■ the peasants of Vietnam and what they were like before the Vietnam War
■ stanzas
■ short sentences - statements for effect
■ questions
■ no rhyme
 ■ repetition of song/singing
● her structure of questioning is important to the subject since it mirrors the
title
■ it displays the curiosity of the author and her view that she will sadly never have
answers to these questions first hand
■ She does not rhyme so as not to cheapen the seriousness of the poem, she
however, does use repetition of song/singing in order to add lyrical qualities to
the Vietnamese people and to her poem
■ shift in time : before the war the people were one way
● after the war, the people were another way
■ First stanza:
● speaker asked a question
● all related to cultural things
● in-concrete questioning
○ very abstract/academic questioning
● feeling as though they are far back, removed
● the Vietnamese have been “obliterated”
■ Second Stanza:
● speaker answering a question
● first hand experience or very close experience
● very grounded in human suffering

● Anne Sexton:
○ Cinderella
■ feminist sympathies?
● own satiric comments into a ages old story
○ story about how all women need is a prince to be happy
■ women are stupid for men etc
● idea of a woman as something to catch and then ride away with
■ Sexton’s problem with traditional happily ever after
■ satirical
● “That story”
● “Al Johnson” - black face make up
● satirical specifically towards those who do not earn there livings
○ no “that story” on the man who goes into real estate
■ very ironic feeling about marriage
● “marriage market”
● stepmothers - just how they are
■ doesn’t take the age old fairytale seriously, puts her own inflections in
● mocks the fairytale
● How’d the bird get a dress?
● How’d the prince get a axe?
● since when do white doves talk?
■ mocks the fairytale with her simplicity, with her lack of taking it seriously
● Familiar Form:
○ fairytale - based on the French Version of Cinderella
○ comes form the gruesome French Version
○ picks a less happy version than (Disney) to show how begging for a
man is clearly not the ideal life
● Adrienne Rich:
○ Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
■ Why is the Wedding Band so heavy?
● being oppressed by her husband
● clearly very creative yet is restricted to the “womanly” arts
● being held back from what she would rather do
○ finding happiness in the tapestries
■ Why are her fingers described as frightened?
● they are frantic, trying to get out her creativity
● without angering her husband
■ Is she mastered/defeated by the ordeals she “must” put down?
● wool, tapestry, weaving pictures
■ Why does Aunt Jennifer create the tapestries?
● because she has been held back
○ forced into a role
● it is the only way she can think to express the other roles she wishes
■ The Tigers are her alter-ego - she is none of the things he is
● they are refusing to be dominated by men
○ she is dominated by her husband
● the tigers are free
○ she is not
● the tigers will always be alive in her tapestry
○ she will die without gaining her freedom

● Gary Snyder:
○ At Tower’s Peak
■ the land that surrounds the city
■ the whole world is not a city, but it is the only thing people pay attention to
■ the small details are lost through the importance placed on success, and city
life and material items.
■ the human imperfection that has us look at the part instead of the whole, the
selfish motive instead of the world motive, the concern with material items and
life vs nature
■ Human Destruction of nature through industrialism, human development
■ Indulging both the good and bad of nature
■ what could be bad for one is good for another

● Lucille Clifton:
○ In the Inner City
■ contrasts perspectives of the inner city
■ to the larger society (white society) inner city (dangerous, ghetto) is what the poet
and her society (African American) call “home”
■ Inner city view of uptown - white areas
● a lifeless place with no appeal
■ Speaker (African American) rather stay in inner city and feel alive
● idea of cultural revival among African Americans
● Sharon Olds:
○ “The Death of Marilyn Monroe”
● beautiful, looks, sensual
■ How we deal with death - the effects of vibrance leaving life
■ 3 ambulance drivers - 3 is the Western “power” number
● beautiful powerful woman forced into a piece of meat
■ 1st man:
● nightmares
● becomes very disillusioned
● iconic symbol of life is dead
■ 2nd man:
● views everything differently now
● wife and kids will all die
● Marilyn is alive but somewhere else
■ 3rd man:
● just wanting to make sure his wife is still alive
● wants to hear her being alive
● alive wife trumps Marilyn Monroe dead
● the totality of death - touches even the perfect
■ Marilyn is the epitome of vibrance and joy in life to these men

● Louise Gluck:
○ The Mountain
■ (teacher, artist)
■ the speaker is assumed to be female, a teacher and an artist
■ speaking to a class of students younger than her
■ The Idea of Endless Useless Labor
● her useless labor of pushing the rock up the hill is making the poem
● only adding to the heap of poems

● Rita Dove:
○ Geometry
■ explores the dynamic between knowledge and imagination.
■ indisputable knowledge (“I prove a theorem”) to the realm of imagination.
■ the idea of a transformative force through knowledge
■ “house” immediately “expands” from what is known and certain, and suddenly the
speaker is no longer protected, but is “out in the open.”
■ transformation from rational thought to imagination.
■ intellect and imagination “intersect” there is “sunlight,”
● it is the imagination that is “true and unproven.”
 Modern Poems
● Miniver Cheevy - E.A. Robinson

○ Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old

When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,

And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Minever mourned the ripe renown

That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Minever loved the Medici,

Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace

And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,

But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,

Scratched his head and kept on thinking,
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

● Mr. Floods Party - E.A. Robinson

 Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."
Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things
break;
● Richard Cory - E.A. Robinson
○ Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favoured and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he
walked.
● The Mending Wall - Robert Frost
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.
"Only a very little, Mr. Flood --
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang --
"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below --
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine -- we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the
bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet in his head.
 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass
abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a
stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I
mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them
made,
But at spring mending-time we find them
there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to
each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly
balls
We have to use a spell to make them
balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are
turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling
them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
● 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,
● Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good
neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to
him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage
armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good
neighbors."
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.
 ○ Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

● Fog - Carl Sandburg

○ The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

● “The Anecdote of the Jar” - Wallace Stevens

○ I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

● “The Red Wheelbarrow” - William Carlos Williams

 ○ so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

● “This is Just to Say” - William Carlos Williams

○ 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

● “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” - T.S. Eliot

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-
panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-
panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
● “The Lesson of the Moth” - Don Marquis
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple
pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
.....
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the
pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
… At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled
streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail
along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
.....
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the
beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
I was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
 Contemporary Poems
● Traveling Through the Dark - William Stafford
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead 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.
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.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; under the hood purred the steady engine.
she had stiffened already, almost cold. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. 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.

● I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee - Howard Nemerov

I tell you that I see her still
At the dark entrance of the hall.
One gas lamp burning near her shoulder
Shone also from her other side
Where hung the long inaccurate glass
Whose pictures were as troubled water.
An immense shadow had its hand
Between us on the floor, and seemed
To hump the knuckles nervously,
A giant crab readying to walk,
Or a blanket moving in its sleep.
You will remember, with a smile
Instructed by movies to reminisce,
How strict her corsets must have been,
How the huge arrangements of her hair
Would certainly betray the least
Impassionate displacement there.
It was no rig for dallying,
And maybe only marriage could
Derange that queenly scaffolding -
As when a great ship, coming home,
Coasts in the harbor, dropping sail
And loosing all the tackle that had laced
Her in the long lanes...
I know
We need not draw this figure out
But all that whalebone came for whales
And all the whales lived in the sea,
In calm beneath the troubled glass,
Until the needle drew their blood.
I see her standing in the hall,
Where the mirror's lashed to blood and foam,
And the black flukes of agony
Beat at the air till the light blows out.
● What were they like? - Denise Levertov

○ Did the people of Viet Nam

use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.

It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after their children were killed
there were no more buds.
Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
it is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.

● Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers - Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
They do not fear the men beneath the tree; Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
● Cinderella - Anne Sexton
You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from
town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed
him.
Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and
broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three
days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the
slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the
white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
● At Towers Peak - Gary Snyder

○ Every tan rolling meadow will turn into housing

Freeways are clogged all day
Academies packed with scholars writing papers
City people lean and dark
This land most real
As its western-tending golden slopes
And bird-entangled central valley swamps
Sea-lion, urchin coasts
Southerly salmon-probes
Into the aromatic almost-Mexican hills
Along a range of granite peaks
The names forgotten,
An eastward running river that ends out in desert
The chipping ground-squirrels in the tumbled blocks
The gloss of glacier ghost on slab
Where we wake refreshed from ten hours sleep
After a long day's walking
Packing burdens to the snow
Wake to the same old world of no names,
No things, new as ever, rock and water,
Cool dawn birdcalls, high jet contrails.
A day or two or million, breathing
A few steps back from what goes down
In the current realm.
A kind of ice age, spreading, filling valleys
Shaving soils, paving fields, you can walk in it
Live in it, drive through it then
It melts away
For whatever sprouts
After the age of
Frozen hearts. Flesh-carved rock
And gusts on the summit,
Smoke from forest fires is white,
The haze above the distant valley like a dusk.
It's just one world, this spine of rock and streams
And snow, and the wash of gravels, silts
Sands, bunchgrasses, saltbrush, bee-fields,
Twenty million human people, downstream, here below.
 ● in the inner city - Lucille Clifton
○ in the inner city
or
like we call it
home
we think a lot about uptown
and the silent nights
and the houses straight as
dead men
and the pastel lights
and we hang on to our no place
happy to be alive
and in the inner city
or
like we call it
home

● “The Death of Marilyn Monroe” - Sharon Olds

○ The ambulance men touched her cold
body, lifted it, heavy as iron,
onto the stretcher, tried to close the
mouth, closed the eyes, tied the
arms to the sides, moved a caught
strand of hair, as if it mattered,
saw the shape of her breasts, flattened by
gravity, under the sheet
carried her, as if it were she,
down the steps.

These men were never the same. They went out

afterwards, as they always did,
for a drink or two, but they could not meet
each other's eyes.
Their lives took
a turn--one had nightmares, strange
pains, impotence, depression. One did not
like his work, his wife looked
different, his kids. Even death
seemed different to him--a place where she
would be waiting,

and one found himself standing at night

in the doorway to a room of sleep, listening to a
woman breathing, just an ordinary
woman
breathing.
● The Mountain - Louise Gluck
○ My students looked at me expectantly
I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labour. Their expressions
hardly change; they need to know
a little more about endless labour
So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed to push
a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing
would come of this effort
but that he would repeat it
indefinitely. I tell them
there is joy in this, in the artist’s life,
that one eludes
judgment and as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain. Why do I lie
to these children? They aren’t listening,
they aren’t deceived, their fingers
tapping at the wooden desks –
So I retract
the myth; I tell them it occurs
in hell and that the artist lies
because he is obsessed with attainment
that he perceives the summit
as that place where he will live forever,
a place about to be
Transformed by his burden: with every breath,
I am standing at the top of the mountain.
Both my hands are free. And the rock has added
height to the mountain…

● Geometry - Rita Dove

○ I prove a theorem and the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
the ceiling floats away with a sigh.

As the walls clear themselves of everything

but transparency, the scent of carnations
leaves with them. I am out in the open

And above the windows have hinged into butterflies,

sunlight glinting where they've intersected.
They are going to some point true and unproven.