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1. Ada Limón poems & responses |
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2. HOW TO WRITE A POEM:
Imagery
- senses
- simile
- metaphor
| imagery.pptx |
Midnight, Talking About Our Exes
The sun is still down and maybe even downer.
Two owls, one white and one large-eared,
dive into a nothingness that is a field, night-beast
in the swoop-down, (the way we all have to
make a living). Let's be owls tonight, stay up
in the branches of ourselves, wide-eyed,
perched on the edge of euphoric plummet.
All your excellences are making me mouse,
but I will shush and remain the quiet flyer,
the one warm beast still coming to you in the dark
despite all those old, cold, claustrophobic stars.
Ada Limón
Two owls, one white and one large-eared,
dive into a nothingness that is a field, night-beast
in the swoop-down, (the way we all have to
make a living). Let's be owls tonight, stay up
in the branches of ourselves, wide-eyed,
perched on the edge of euphoric plummet.
All your excellences are making me mouse,
but I will shush and remain the quiet flyer,
the one warm beast still coming to you in the dark
despite all those old, cold, claustrophobic stars.
Ada Limón
A New National Anthem
The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?
- Ada Limón, "A New National Anthem" from The Carrying. Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón. Reprinted by permission of Milkweed Editions.
OH PLEASE, LET IT BE LIGHTNING
We were crossing the headwaters of
the Susquehanna River in our new car
we didn’t quite have the money for
but it was slick and silver and we named it
after the local strip club next to the car wash:
The Spearmint Rhino, and this wasn’t long
after your mother said she wasn’t sure
if one of your ancestors died in childbirth
or was struck by lightning, there just wasn’t
anyone left to set the story straight, and we
started to feel old. And it snowed. The ice
and salt and mud on the car made it look
like how we felt on the inside. The dog
was asleep on my lap. We had seven more hours
before our bed in the bluegrass would greet us
like some southern cousin we forgot we had.
Sometimes, you have to look around
at the life you’ve made and sort of nod at it,
like someone moving their head up and down
to a tune they like. New York City seemed years
away and all the radio stations had unfamiliar
call letters and talked about God, the one
that starts his name with a capital and wants
you not to get so naked all the time.
Sometimes, there seems to be a halfway point
between where you’ve been and everywhere
else, and we were there. All the trees were dead,
and the hills looked flat like in real bad landscape
paintings in some nowhere gallery off an interstate
but still, it looked kind of pretty. Not because
of the snow, but because you somehow found
a decent song on the dial and there you were
with your marvelous mouth, singing full-lunged,
driving full-speed into the gloomy thunderhead,
glittery and blazing and alive. And it didn’t matter
what was beyond us, or what came before us,
or what town we lived in, or where the money came from,
or what new night might leave us hungry and reeling,
we were simply going forward, riotous and windswept,
and all too willing to be struck by something shining
and mad, and so furiously hot it could kill us.
We were crossing the headwaters of
the Susquehanna River in our new car
we didn’t quite have the money for
but it was slick and silver and we named it
after the local strip club next to the car wash:
The Spearmint Rhino, and this wasn’t long
after your mother said she wasn’t sure
if one of your ancestors died in childbirth
or was struck by lightning, there just wasn’t
anyone left to set the story straight, and we
started to feel old. And it snowed. The ice
and salt and mud on the car made it look
like how we felt on the inside. The dog
was asleep on my lap. We had seven more hours
before our bed in the bluegrass would greet us
like some southern cousin we forgot we had.
Sometimes, you have to look around
at the life you’ve made and sort of nod at it,
like someone moving their head up and down
to a tune they like. New York City seemed years
away and all the radio stations had unfamiliar
call letters and talked about God, the one
that starts his name with a capital and wants
you not to get so naked all the time.
Sometimes, there seems to be a halfway point
between where you’ve been and everywhere
else, and we were there. All the trees were dead,
and the hills looked flat like in real bad landscape
paintings in some nowhere gallery off an interstate
but still, it looked kind of pretty. Not because
of the snow, but because you somehow found
a decent song on the dial and there you were
with your marvelous mouth, singing full-lunged,
driving full-speed into the gloomy thunderhead,
glittery and blazing and alive. And it didn’t matter
what was beyond us, or what came before us,
or what town we lived in, or where the money came from,
or what new night might leave us hungry and reeling,
we were simply going forward, riotous and windswept,
and all too willing to be struck by something shining
and mad, and so furiously hot it could kill us.
- Ada Limón, from Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015)