Okay, Ophelia by Jeannine Hall Gailey.
1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - “I Knew a Woman” by Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!2. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh - The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
…I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough” by Robert Burns
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!5. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.6. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust - “Sonnet 30″ by William Shakespeare
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:7. Endless Night by Agatha Christie - “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake
Every night and every morn,
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.8. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway - “Meditation XVII” by John Donne
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
9. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - “The Lonely Hunter” by William Sharp
O never a green leaf whispers, where the green-gold branches swing:
O never a song I hear now, where one was wont to sing.
Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!11. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald - “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.12. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster - Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Passage to India!
Struggles of many a captain–tales of many a sailor dead!
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come,
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.
(Source: amandaonwriting)
4
Says to himself
The boy’s no good. The boy is just no good.
but he takes you in his arms and pushes your flesh around
to see if you could ever be ugly to him.
You, the now familiar whipping boy, but you’re beautiful,
he can feel the dogs licking his heart.
Who gets the whip and who…
(Source: d-argenteuil)
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, T.S. Eliot
poem of my heart.
(Source: meiringens)
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.”-The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
And then I began my habit
of walking at night
to get rid of the strings,
witherings. The Lord revealed to me
that I am full of birds
turned smoke and hooked strings.
I say to the Lord, Lord take
a string.-from The Chapter of the Rending in Sunder by Mia Nussbaum
sometimes
when i wake up
in the morning
and see all the faces
i just can’t
breathe- “Sometimes” by Nikki Giovanni
#a.k.a. ode to tumblr #i almost can’t believe this is a real poem #is nikki giovanni one of us? #anyway i just wanted to share this with y’all #because tumblr #it’s everywhere #it’s in your veins #and in nikki giovanni’s poetry
“I don’t pretend I’m clever,” he remarked, “or very wise,”
And at this she murmured, “Really,” with the right polite surprise.
“But women,” he continued, “I must own I understand;
Women are a contradiction—honorable and underhand—
Constant as the star Polaris, yet as changeable as Fate,
Always flying what they long for, always seeking what they hate.”
“Don’t you think,” began the lady, but he cut her short: “I see
That you take it personally—women always do,” said he.
“You will pardon me for saying every woman is the same,
Always greedy for approval, always sensitive to blame;
Sweet and passionate are women; weak in mind, though strong in soul;
Even you admit, I fancy, that they have no self-control?”
“No, I don’t admit they haven’t,” said the patient lady then,
“Or they could not sit and listen to the nonsense talked by men.”
Alice Duer Miller [x].
I remember one of my profs (PH104, I think? MOST LIKELY?) mentioning this poem, once. I kept meaning to Google it but kept forgetting, but here it is (w/ a pronunciation key + translation!).
Can’t pronounce this character, can’t solve the riddle. Reblogging in hopes that someone else does better. XD
Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
You raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through.
Richard Siken
First Drafts: Gary Soto’s ‘Talking to Myself’ and ‘Sunday Without Clouds’
Gary Soto is known for poetry that depicts the visceral side of working-class Mexican-American life. Jobs in factories and fields have shaped his work, as has an apprenticeship under fellow poet Philip Levine. A winner of the Nation/Discovery Award and the Levinson Award from Poetry magazine, he has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Of his job as a writer, he has said, “My duty is not to make people perfect, particularly Mexican Americans. I’m not a cheerleader. I’m one who provides portraits of people in the rush of life.” In addition to his poetry, Soto has written novels, short stories, memoirs, and over two dozen children’s books. Here he shares the drafts of two poems, one from his 1985 collection, Black Hair, and one from a forthcoming volume, Sudden Loss of Dignity.
Read more at The Atlantic
