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from Polson High School <a href="http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs"> Michael L. Umphrey website</a> <h2 class="title">A Selection of Poems Poetry for Class Reading</h2> By Michael L Umphrey Poetry Out Loud on YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm78Rfd8VbQ" title="Beauty">Beauty</a> by Tony Hoagland (start at 4:00) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE7e_xty4kw&eurl=http://englishcompanion.ning.com/video/poetry-out-loud-performance" title="Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward">Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward</a> by Anne Sexton <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skeTEymUKnQ&feature=related" title="The Spider and the Fly">The Spider and the Fly</a> by Mary Howitt <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEMeHoXV_B8&feature=related" title="Siren Song">Siren Song</a> by Margaret Atwood <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTmU2nI4X-I&feature=related" title="Frederick Douglass">Frederick Douglass</a> by Robert Hayden <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Iq3PbSWZY&feature=related" title="The Lanyard">The Lanyard</a> by Billy Collins Poetry Slam <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gRm8PXFtK0&feature=related" title="Peter Nevland">Peter Nevland</a> introduce Poetry Slam <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpog1_NFd2Q&feature=related" title="What Teachers Make">What Teachers Make</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsQ9pPBcL-c" title="Black be this, black be that">Black be this, black be that</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMtwLWgEEdk&feature=related" title="Nietzsche's Prophecy">Nietzsche’s Prophecy</a> The Student Theme Ronald Wallace The adjectives all ganged up on the nouns, insistent, loud, demanding, inexact, their Latinate constructions flashing. The pronouns lost their referents: They were dangling, lacked the stamina to follow the prepositions’ lead in, on, into, to, toward, for, or from. They were beset by passive voices and dead metaphors, conjunctions shouting But! or And! The active verbs were all routinely modified by adverbs, that endlessly and colorlessly ran into trouble with the participles sitting on the margins knitting their brows like gerunds (dangling was their problem, too). The author was nowhere to be seen; was off somewhere. 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. Of Politics & Art for Allen Norman Dubie Here, on the farthest point of the peninsula The winter storm Off the Atlantic shook the schoolhouse. Mrs. Whitimore, dying Of tuberculosis, said it would be after dark Before the snowplow and bus would reach us. She read to us from Melville. How in an almost calamitous moment Of sea hunting Some men in an open boat suddenly found themselves At the still and protected center Of a great herd of whales Where all the females floated on their sides While their young nursed there. The cold frightened whalers Just stared into what they allowed Was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow’s One visible eyeball. And they were at peace with themselves. Today I listened to a woman say That Melville might Be taught in the next decade. Another woman asked, “And why not?” The first responded, “Because there are No women in his one novel.” And Mrs. Whitimore was now reading from the Psalms. Coughing into her handkerchief. Snow above the windows. There was a blue light on her face, breasts, and arms. Sometimes a whole civilization can be dying Peacefully in one young woman, in a small heated room With thirty children Rapt, confident and listening to the pure God-rendering voice of a storm. Knowledge Philip Memmer My philosopher friend is explaining again that the bottle of well-chilled beer in my hand might not be a bottle of beer, that the trickle of bottle-sweat cooling in my palm might not be wet, might not be cool, that in fact it’s impossible ever to know if I’m holding a bottle at all. I try to follow his logic, flipping the steaks that are almost certainly hissing over the bed of coals – coals I’d swear were black at first, then gray, then red – coals we could spread out and walk on and why not, I ask, since we’ll never be sure if our feet burn, if our soles blister and peel, if our faithlessness is any better or worse a tool than the firewalker’s can-do extreme. Exactly, he smiles. Behind the fence the moon rises, or seems to. Have another. Whatever else is true, the coals feel hotter than ever as the darkness begins to do what darkness does. Another what? I ask. I’ve Been Known Denise Duhamel to spread it on thick to shoot off my mouth to get it off my chest to tell him where to get off to stay put to face the music to cut a shine to go under to sell myself short to play myself down to paint the town to fork over to shell out to shoot up to pull a fast one to go haywire to take a shine to to be stuck on to glam it up to vamp it up to get her one better to eat a little higher on the hog to win out to get away with to go to the spot to make a stake to make a stand to stand for something to stand up for to snow under to slip up to go for it to take a stab at it to try out to go places to play up to get back at to size up to stand off to slop over to be solid with to lose my shirt to get myself off to get myself off the hook Love Poem With Toast Miller Williams Some of what we do, we do to make things happen, the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc, the car to start. The rest of what we do, we do trying to keep something from doing something, the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting, the truth from getting out. With yes and no like the poles of a battery powering our passage through the days, we move, as we call it, forward, wanting to be wanted, wanting not to lose the rain forest, wanting the water to boil, wanting not to have cancer, wanting to be home by dark, wanting not to run out of gas, as each of us wants the other watching at the end, as both want not to leave the other alone, as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone, we gaze across breakfast and pretend. Did I Miss Anything? Tom Wayman 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 suddenly descended and an angel or other heavenly being appeared and revealed to us what each woman or man must do to attain divine wisdom in this life and the hereafter This is the last time the class will meet before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth. Nothing. When you are not present how could something significant occur? Everything. Contained in this classroom is a microcosm of human experience assembled for you to query and examine and ponder This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered but it was one place And you weren’t here <a href="http://www.flatheadreservation.org/index.php/phs/a_selection_of_poems/">A Selection of Poems</a> sent from Michael L. Umphrey's website