Poetry Mrs. Chausse

TABLEAU by Countee Cullen (1925)

Locked arm in arm they cross the way,
The black boy and the white,

The golden splendor of the day,
The sable pride of night.

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare, 5
And here the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.

Oblivious to look and work
They pass, and see no wonder 10
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.

(from Color, 1925)

Wise I by Amiri Baraka (1995)
WHYS (Nobody Knows
The Trouble I Seen)
Traditional
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
own boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!

Poetry Mrs. Chausse

Still I Rise (1978)

Poetry Mrs. Chausse

Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you? 5
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides, 10
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops. 15
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard. 20
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you? 25
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise 30
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear 35
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave. 40
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou

Nikki-Rosa BY NIKKI GIOVANNI (1968)

childhood rememberances are always a drag
if you're Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something 5
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those 10
big tubs that folk in chicago barbeque in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale 15
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father's pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though your're poor it isn't poverty that 20
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good 25
Christmasses
and I really hope no white person everhas cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they'll 30
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy

THEME FOR ENGLISH B

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you--
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eight Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
The Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be part of me.
Not do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

By Langston Hughes (1951)

A Work of Artifice by Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree

in the attractive pot

could have grown eighty feet tall

on the side of a mountain

till split by lightning. 5

But a gardener

carefully pruned it.

It is nine inches high.

Every day as he

whittles back the branches 10

the gardener croons,

It is your nature

to be small and cozy,

domestic and weak;

how lucky, little tree, 15

to have a pot to grow in.

With living creatures

one must begin very early

to dwarf their growth:

the bound feet,

the crippled brain, 20

the hair in curlers,

the hands you

love to touch.

One Art

By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Poetry Mrs. Chausse

from "What are big girls made of?"

The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. (5)
She is manufactured like a sports sedan.
She is retooled, refitted and redesigned
every decade.
...
Look at pictures in French fashion
magazines of the 18th century: (10)
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way, while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood. (15)
The breasts are stuffed up and out
offered like apples in a bowl.
The tiny foot is encased in a slipper
never meant for walking.
On top is a grandiose headache: (20)
hair like a museum piece, daily
ornamented with ribbons, vases,
grottoes, mountains, frigates in full
sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy
of a hairdresser turned loose. (25)
The hats were rococo wedding cakes
that would dim the Las Vegas strip.
Here is a woman forced into shape
rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:
a woman made of pain. (30)
How superior we are now: see the

modern woman
thin as a blade of scissors.
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights (35)
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She (40)
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.
...
If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves (45)
like healthy babies burbling in our arms.
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed
to need what is sold us.
Why should we want to live inside ads?
Why should we want to scourge our softness
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?
Why should we punish each other with scorn
as if to have a large ass
were worse than being greedy or mean?
When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained?
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?

By Marge Piercy

Poetry Mrs. Chausse