An eclectic anthology of poems by laureates, contemporary and unknown poets Kasi Zimmerman

An eclectic anthology of poems by laureates, contemporary and unknown poets Kasi Zimmerman

Guide to an Eclectic Anthology of Poems • Pg. 1 Billy Collins • Pg. 2 The History Teacher • Pg. 3 The Art of Drowning • Pg. 4 The Man in the Moon • Pg. 5 Days • Pg. 6 Marge Piercy • Pg. 7 Colors Passing Through Us • Pg. 8 Naomi Shihab Nye • Pg. 9 Two Countries • Pg. 10 Lucille Clifton • Pg. 11 There is a Girl Inside • Pg. 12 The Mississippi River Empties into the Gulf • Pg. 13 Robert Frost • Pg. 14 The Road Not Taken • Pg. 15 To Earthward • Pg. 16 Stars • Pg. 17 Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening • Pg. 18 Maya Angelou • Pg. 19 Phenomenal Women • Pg. 20 These Yet to be United States • Pg. 21 Kasi Zimmerman • Pg. 22 Marigolds • Pg. 23 The Garden • Pg. 24 The Thrill of The Grass • Pg. 25 When In Shadow and Disguise • Pg. 26 The Unbreaking of a Broken Heart • Pg. 27 Life • Pg. 28 No Matter Who You Are

Billy Collins In an interview with Mr. Collins he stated, “Poetry is my cheap means of transportation. By the end of the poem the reader should be in a different place from where he started. I would like him to be slightly disoriented at the end, like I drove him outside of town at night and dropped him off in a cornfield." His work has appeared in in Poetry, American Poetry Review, American Scholar, Harper's, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. He has also been featured in the Pushcart Prize anthology and The Best American Poetry for 1992, 1993, and 1997. Collins was named Poet of the Year in 1994 by Poetry Magazine and his new cd, “The Best Cigarette” sold out almost immediately.

The History Teacher Trying to protect his students’ innocence He told them the Ice Age was really just The Chilly Age, a period of a million years When everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, Named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more Than an outbreak of questions such as “How far is it from here to Madrid?” “What do you call the matador’s hat?” The War of the Roses took place in a garden, And the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan. The children would leave his classroom For the playground to torment the weak And the smart, Mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses, While he gathered up his notes and walked home Past flower beds and white picket fences, Wondering if they would believe that soldiers In the Boer War told long, rambling stories Designed to make the enemy nod off. ~ Billy Collins

The Art of Drowning I wonder how it all got started, this business About seeing your life flash before your eyes While you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence, Could startle time into such compression, crushing Decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds. After falling off a steamship or being swept away In a rush of floodwaters, wouldn’t you hope for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand, turning the pages of an album of photographs- You up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat. How about a short animated film, a slide presentation? Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph? Wouldn’t any form be better than this sudden flash? Your whole existence going off in your face In an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography- Nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned. Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance Here, some bolt of truth forking across the water, Dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage. But if something does flash before your eyes As you go under, it will probably be a fish, A quick blur of curved silver darting away, Having nothing to do with your life or your death. The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all As you sink toward the reedy disarray of the bottom, Leaving behind what you have already forgotten, The surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds. ~ Billy Collins

The Man in the Moon He used to frighten me in the nights of childhood, The wide adult face, enormous, stern, aloft. I could not imagine such loneliness, such coldness. But tonight as I drive home over these hilly roads I see him sinking behind stands of winter trees And rising again to show his familiar face. And when he comes into full view over open fields He looks like a young man who has fallen in love With the dark earth, A pale bachelor, well-groomed and full of melancholy, His round mouth open As if he had just broken into song. ~ Billy Collins

In this poem, the author is talking about how he was always frightened by the moon at night because of what he thought the moon stood for. When he was young the moon stood for a stern, aloof adult figure in his life that showed loneliness. I believe that the author, as a young boy, was afraid of growing up and thought about this at night before he slept. He could have associated the stark whiteness and familiarity of the moon with his fears of being lonely and aloof as an adult, however when he became an adult he realized that his fears were unfounded and that the moon was actually like a friend that was always there for him. He It also hints that the author is in love because it makes him happy that the Moon loves the Earth enough to watch over it and if he was not happily with someone he might have been saddened by this revelation.

Days Each one is a gift, no doubt, Mysteriously placed in your waking hand Or set upon your forehead Moments before you open your eyes. Today begins cold and bright, The ground heavy with snow And the thick masonry of ice, The sun glinting off the turrets of clouds. Through the calm eye of the window Everything is in its place But so precariously This day might be resting somehow On the one before it, All the days of the past stacked high Like the impossible tower of dishes Entertainers used to build on stage. No wonder you find yourself Perched on the top of a tall ladder Hoping to add one more Just another Wednesday You whisper, Then holding your breath, Place this cup on yesterday’s saucer Without the slightest clink. ~Billy Collins

Marge Piercy Piercy’s poems contain visions of a woman's struggle to take responsibility for her own life and set out the fierce honesty necessary in a truly loving relationship. Her political poems make human faces and recognizable neighborhoods so that we can cross that bridge of understanding from what would otherwise be merely abstract ideas and cold statistics. At readings, conventions, study groups, and celebrations, her poems are being used like hammer and nails, basic tools for building new lives. She has published 15 books of poetry including Colors Passing Through Us and Mars and Her Children. Piercy is dedicated to exploring ideology and aesthetics through Marxist, feminist, and environmentalist points of view. "To name," she writes, "is not to possess what cannot be owned or even known in the small words and endless excuses of human speech." She edited the poetry anthology Early Ripening: American Women Poets Now (1988), and is currently the poetry editor of Tikkun. In 1990 she worked with Nell Blaine, a painter, on a book entitled The Earth Shines Secretly: A Book Of Days, which featured Piercy's outstanding poetry and Blaine's exceptional artwork.

Colors Passing Through US Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Ever day I will paint you, as women Color each other with henna On hands and on feet. Red as henna, as cinnamon, As coals after the fire is banked, The cardinal in the feeder, The roses tumbling on the arbor Their weight bending the wood The red of the syrup I make from petals. Orange as the perfumed fruit Hanging from their globes on the glossy tree, Orange as the pumpkins in the field, Orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs Who come to eat it, orange as my Cat running lithe through the high grass. Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes, Yellow as a hill of daffodils, Yellow as dandelions by the highway, Yellow as butter and egg yolks, Yellow as a school bus stopping you, Yellow as a slicker in a downpour. Here is my bouquet, here is a sing Song of all the tings you make me think of, here is oblique praise for the height and depth Of you and the width too. Here is my box of new crayons at your feet. Green as mint jelly, green As a frog on a lily pad twanging, The green of cos lettuce upright About to bolt into opulent towers, Green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear Glass, green as wine bottles. Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums, Bachelor’s buttons. Blue as Roquefort, Blue as Saga. Blue as still water. Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat. Blue as shadows on a new snow, as a spring Azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop. Cobalt as the midnight sky When day has gone without a trace And we lie in each other’s arms Eyes shut and fingers open And all the colors of the world Pass through our bodies like strings of fire. ~ Marge Piercy

In this poem, the author is conveying her feelings for her significant other. She is saying that all the colors of the rainbow and everything that contains these colors reflect her joy and love for him. She says that she will give him a new color everyday and it will represent another facet of her love. As she is describing the colors she is talking about things that she wants to experience and show her lover throughout their days together. She wants to live and laugh and share her life with this person and has been able to express this through the colors of the rainbow and what they mean to her. By sharing this part of her with him, she is opening up and fusing them together.

Naomi Shihab Nye Naomi Shihab Nye was born in 1952, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. She is the author of numerous poem books, including 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002), Fuel (1998), Red Suitcase (1994), and Hugging the Jukebox (1982). She has twice traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the United States Information Agency promoting international goodwill through her poetry. Nye has received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Carity Randall prize, and the International Poetry Forum. Her poems and short stories have appeared in a variety of journals and reviews throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle and Far East. Nye has also written numerous books for children, and edited several anthologies of prose.

Two Countries Skin remembers how long the years grow When skin is not touched, gray tunnel Of singleness, feather lost from the tail Of a bird, swirling onto a step, Swept away by someone who never saw It was a feather. Skin ate, walked, slept by itself, knew how to raise a See-you-later hand. But skin felt It was never seen, never known as A land on the map, nose like a city, Hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque And the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope. Skin had hope, that’s what skin does. Heals over the scarred place, makes a road. Love means you breathe in two countries. And skin remembers – silk, spiny grass, Deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own. Even now, when skin is not alone, It remembers being alone and thanks something larger That there are travelers, that people go places Larger than themselves. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Lucille Clifton • Her books of poetry include Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (2000), which won the National Book Award.The Terrible Stories (1995), which was nominated for the National Book Award. Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (1987), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and Two-Headed Woman (1980), was also a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. She has also written Generations: A Memoir (1976) as well as many other books of poems and more than sixteen books for children. Her honors include an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the YM-YWHA Poetry Center Discovery Award. In 1999 she was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

There is a girl inside There is a girl inside. She is randy as a wolf. She will not walk away and leave these bones to an old woman. She is a green tree in a forest of kindling. She is a green girl in a used poet. She has waited patient as a nun for the second coming, when she can break through gray hairs into blossom and her lovers will harvest honey and thyme and the woods will be wild with the damn wonder of it. ~Lucille Clifton

The Mississippi River Empties Into The Gulf The Mississippi River empties into the gulf And the gulf enters into the sea and so forth, None of them emptying anything, All of them carrying yesterday Forever on their white tipped backs, All of them dragging forward tomorrow. It is the great circulation Of the earth’s body, like the blood Of the gods, this river in which the past Is always flowing. Ever water Is the same water coming round. Everyday someone is standing on the edge Of this river, staring into time, Whispering mistakenly: Only here. Only now. ~Lucille Clifton

Robert Frost Robert Frost was influenced by many of the contemporary British poets he met during his travels, such as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also launched a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his works. When Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections which were, A Boy's Will and North of Boston. Through these two works his reputation was established. By the 1920’s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book, including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962),his fame and honors increased. Although his work is primarily associated with the life and landscape of New England, he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained persistently distant from the poetic movements and fashions of his time period. As the author of searching and often dark thoughts on universal themes, he is a characteristically modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken. The degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony is much loved by audiences of today.

The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be on traveler, long as I stood And looked down one ad far as I could To where it bent into the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~Robert Frost

To Earthward Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air That crossed me from sweet things, The flow of--was it musk From hidden grapevine springs Downhill at dusk? I had the swirl and ache From sprays of honeysuckle That when they're gathered shake Dew on the knuckle. I craved strong sweets, but those Seemed strong when I was young; The petal of the rose It was that stung. Now no joy but lacks salt, That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove. When stiff and sore and scarred I take away my hand From leaning on it hard In grass and sand, The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength To feel the earth as rough To all my length. ~Robert Frost

Stars How countlessly they congregate O'er our tumultuous snow,Which flows in shapes as tall as trees When wintry winds do blow!--As if with keenness for our fate, Our faltering few steps onTo white rest, and a place of rest Invisible at dawn,--And yet with neither love nor hate, Those stars like some snow-whiteMinerva's snow-white marble eyes Without the gift of sight. ~Robert Frost

In this poem, Robert Frost is personifying the stars by saying that they watch us and understand our fate. I believe what he is trying to convey is that they are our guardian angels. He is saying that they see the snow blowing below them, and they can comprehend our fate but they do this without sight as we know it because they are stars and have no eyes. I think he is trying to tell us that they are more than just stars, they are a part of us. They are what we have done and what we have yet to accomplish and they will watch continue to watch over us as they always have. Soundlessly and without interfering, but they are there for us.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep. ~Robert Frost

Maya Angelou As stated in her poem, Angelou is certainly a phenomenal woman. She has been an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist in her lifetime. She is widely recognized for her autobiographical books: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), The Heart of a Woman (1981), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), Gather Together in My Name (1974) and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). I Know Whythe Caged Bird Sings was nominated for the National Book Award. Some of her books of poetry are A Brave and Startling Truth (1995), The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994), Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? (1983), Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), and Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), which was nominated for the Pulitzer prize. In 1959,Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., asked Angelou to become the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1961 to 1962 she was associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt, which was the only English-language news weekly in the Middle East at the time, following that she was she was feature editor of the African Review in Accra, Ghana from 1964 to 1966. She returned to the U.S. in 1974 and was quickly appointed to the Bicentennial Commission by Gerald Ford and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year. She also delivered her poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” during President Bill Clinton’s inaugural speech.

Phenomenal Woman Pretty women wonder where my secret lies I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, That’s me. I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees. Then they swarm about me, A hive of honey bees. I say, It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing of my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Men themselves have wondered What they see in me. They try so much But they can’t touch My inner mystery When I try to show them They say they still can’t see. I say, It’s in the arch of my back, The sun of my smile, The ride of my breasts, The grace of my style. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Now you understand Just why my head’s not bowed. I don’t shout or jump about Or have to talk real loud. When you see me passing It ought to make you proud. I say, It’s in the click of my heels, The bend of my hair The palm of my hand, The need of my care, “Cause I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. ~Maya Angelou

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? 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, 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, 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 backyard. 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? 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 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 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. I rise I rise I rise. ~Maya Angelou

These Yet to be United States Tremors of your network Cause kings to disappear. Your open mouth in anger Makes nations bow in fear. Your bombs can change the seasons, Obliterate the spring. What more do you long for? Why are you suffering? You control the human lives In Rome and Timbuktu. Lonely nomads wondering Owe Telstar to you. Seas shift at your bidding, Your mushrooms fill the sky. Why are you unhappy? Why do your children cry? They kneel alone in terror With dread in every glance. Their rights are threatened daily By a grim inheritance. You dwell in whitened castles With deep and poisoned moats And cannot hear the curses Which fills your children’s throats. ~Maya Angelou

Kasi Zimmerman Kasi was published in a 2001 poem anthology, Muse of the Heart and won numerous small poetry awards and publications in magazines and anthologies throughout her career as a poet.

Marigolds They were great bunches of color, Tended by someone who cared. They were Marigolds. Beauty placed there by an old woman who dared. The only beauty, In our little shanty town. We children looked upon them, With unknowing frowns. We flaunted our youth, And mustered up courage. We gathered some pebbles, As she tended her forage. Zing! My lone pebble beheads a flower. At the old woman’s rage, I revel in power. We gather again, By the great oak tree. I then feel ashamed, For that attack was led by none other than me. That night I find out, What my parents are hiding. My father breaks down And my mother keeps sighing. He has no job, And my mother must work. My father is ashamed, For it is her food that he eats with his fork. I was filled with bewilderment, And ruled by emotions. I crept to the garden, Unaware of my notions. I attacked those flowers, The one source of beauty. For my mother, my father, And our impoverished community. Above me rose a ghost. A ghost of the great woman she used to be. She stared at her flowers, As a mother would her baby. I realized then, That I had not been right. My innocence robbed, On that unforgettable night. They were great bunches of color, Tended by someone who cared. They were Marigolds. Placed there by an old woman who dared. ~Kasi Zimmerman

The Garden Every leaf and blade of grass Every pebble in the path Every drop of water Or flower petal Was perfect In plan and execution True in color And shape Unharmed Unworn As if each had been created Only a moment ago Each was a gem The life’s work Of a jeweler. ~Kasi Zimmerman

The Thrill of the Grass Diving left Graceful as a toppling tree Fielding high grounders Like a cat leaping for butterflies Bracing the right foot And tossing to first The throw true As if steel ribbon connected my hand And the first baseman’s glove. ~Kasi Zimmerman

When In Shadow and Disguise When in shadow and disguise From me alone, I cannot hide And everyone believes my lies And in no one I can confide Wanting to peel off my mask Wishing I could stand the pain Desiring to be me at last Contented least with bearing my name Yet someone out there beckons me Suddenly I see past my lashes Then myself awakens Like a phoenix I rise from my ashes For remembering love I have discarded my fears That then I may overcome all those years… ~Kasi Zimmerman

The Unbreaking of a Broken Heart Losing you was one of my worst fears And I don’t have a clue how long these feelings will last I can’t seem to stop the falling of my tears ‘Cuz everything I cherished is gone so fast I’ve shelved all my memories of you and I I gathered up your things and put them in your pack I handed them over and walked away with a sigh And I’m trying so hard not to look back Slowly time will heal my pain And a healing rain will fall and wash away my tears Somehow my old confidence I will regain And time will take away my lonely fears I will pick myself up and walk straighter Because from knowing you my world will be brighter ~ Kasi Zimmerman

Life Life is challenging.It's catching the moment,A change of heart.Remember your promises;A return ticket,A disconnected phone.The way time passes is a river of yesterdays.Have No Regrets.

No Matter Who You Are No matter who you are, I’ll be there by your side. No matter who you are, From me you won’t have to hide. No matter who you are, I’ll catch you when you fall. No matter who you are, I’ll always be there to call. No matter who you are, On my shoulder you can cry. No matter who you are, I will never pass you by. ~Kasi Zimmerman

An eclectic anthology of poems by laureates, contemporary and unknown poets Kasi Zimmerman