You've reached the end!

You're at the end of the Experiment!  Go back to the poem you've liked the most out of the poems you've read, and print that out for Thursday's class.

On Thursday, you will spend the first half of class preparing to present on the poem you've chosen.  As part of the presentation, you will be discussing its distinctive features, so take a minute to compare it to the other poems that you didn't like as much: what differences in form or content set this poem apart for you?

If there are any words you don't know in this poem, be sure to look them up before Thursday's class, and be prepared to paraphrase the meaning of the poem.

Harryette Mullen, "Kirstenography"

Kirstenography


K was burn at the bend of the ear in the mouth of remember. She 
was the fecund chill burn in her famish. She came into the word 
with a putty smoother, a handsewn farther, and a yodeler cistern. 
They were all to gather in a rosy horse on a piety sweet in Alligator Panorama.

When her smoother and farther wrought her chrome from the 
hose spittle, her cistern fought the piddle ably was a girly heeded 
bawl. A bawl that dank silk, booed, burgled, rabbled, fried, and 
tweed in wipers. This was not a bawl that swept in the joy blocks 
with her rather joys. This was a giving bawl that wasn't a joy like 
fluffed fan mail. Oh no! This was her grand blue piddle cistern that 
cold knot talc for a song time, but lonely fried and braid rather 
voices that the yodeler one cold knot rubberband.

It shook a few ears until the cold talc to gather, tall yolks, 
shear sacreds, heave a conversion or a dish cushion. That was 
laughter they kissed their handsewn farther who wind sway to 
Cheap Cargo, Ill Annoy. Mum and gulls made their mauve to 
Foreword Text. As swoon as they cold they boasted fetters in the 
snail to him and he relied as mulch as he cold.

Their inelegant smoother was a reacher who muddied lard, 
learned debris, and wept them upon the prosper pat. Reaching them 
fright from strong was her per rental doodly. They threw up and 
wind soft to mercy rule and hinder guardian, then on to 
sedimentary, fecund dairy, and slide rule. They were wood in all 
those paces, and waded to knowledge at Cutie Ostentatious. 

The smoother and her dodders all learned debris to gather. 
Evidentially, two quirked as proofs in the loony varsity. K was 
quirking for the slate of Taxes Hysterical Remission. Laughter a 
schmaltz fart with a wanky lurk, K fond her Sanity. A proof of 
reckoned comics. K quirked to learn her nastier debris and later she 
rave burps and becalmed herself a smoother.

Now she does her writhing ghostly a tome. Quirks at the muse, 
um, that's in Chapped Apple Milling Sea. Enduring, she has her 
sanity and they becalmed the prod parentheses of Adenoid and 
Williwaw. They all loved shapely over laughter.


Harryette Mullen


I love this.


This is insanity.

e.e. cummings, "my sweet old etcetera"

my sweet old etcetera


my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent 

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting 

for,
my sister 

Isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that 

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my 

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et 

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera) 


e.e. cummings


Yes!


No.


Maybe?

Walter de la Mare, "The Listeners"

The Listeners "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grass Of the forest's ferny floor; And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller's head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; "Is there anybody there?" he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:-- "Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word," he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Walter de la Mare

Great!

Nope.

William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow"

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams


Keep going!

I'm not so sure.

Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man"

I Know a Man

As I sd to my   

friend, because I am   

always talking,—John, I

sd, which was not his   

name, the darkness sur-

rounds us, what

can we do against

it, or else, shall we &

why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for   

christ’s sake, look   

out where yr going.

Robert Creeley

I think we're on to something here.

I'm not so sure.

William Blake, "The Sick Rose"

The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

William Blake


I like this more than I liked the Tennyson.

Tennyson was better.