In reading and discussing these poems, you should not insist on one meaning, but should allow students to explore the universe of each poem from as many viewpoints as the intellect, imagination, and time allow. While all of these Easy Lessons stress reading and writing poems, the emphasis will vary from lesson to lesson. Where possible, copy both poems onto one sheet. You can still read and discuss each poem separately or discuss each in terms of the other.

General questions for reading and discussing poems:
Individual poems -
-What's going on here?
-What are some details or images that support what you think?
-Who is the speaker and how does he or she feel about the situation?
-Which lines or images are the most powerful?
-Which lines or images are the most confusing?
-What surprised you most about this poem?
-What pleased you most about this poem?

Two together -
-How is this poem similar to the first one?
-How is this poem different from the first one?
-Why are these poems paired?
-Which poem do you like better?
-Which is a better poem? Why?

Common ingredients for writing prompts:
You should drop these "ingredients" into each of your poetry writing assignments.

- Tell a secret & tell a lie (and never tell anyone which is which!)
- Finally, surprise yourself! Try to write something you didn't know you knew.
- Exaggerate your claims. Use lots of physical details and strong
verbs.
- Refer to Murphy's Style Sheet For Revising Poetry for revision strategies.

The Poems:
#1 "Traveling Through the Dark," William Stafford, from THE DARKNESS AROUND US IS DEEP: SELECTED POEMS OF WILLIAM STAFFORD, Harperperennial, 1994.
"Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump," David Bottoms, from ARMORED HEARTS : SELECTED & NEW POEMS, Copper Canyon Press, 1995.
#2 "A Bummer," Michael Casey, from OBSCENITIES, Yale University Press, 1972.
"Facing It," Yusef Komunyakaa, from DIEN CAI DAU, Wesleyan Poetry, 1988.

#3 "Yes" & "Nick At Night," Denise Duhamel, from THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
#4 "The Fork" & "The Spoon," Charles Simic, from SELECTED POEMS, 1963-1983, George Braziller, 1990.
#5 "What Do Women Want?" Kim Addonizio, from ANOTHER CHICAGO MAGAZINE Number 32/33, Spring & Summer 1997, forthcoming in TELL ME, from BOA Editions, Ltd.
"Eyes Fastened With Pins," Charles Simic, from SELECTED POEMS, 1963-1983, George Braziller, 1990.

#1 The Darkness Surrounds Us

The best nature poems reveal as much about human nature as they do about the natural world. In "Traveling Through the Dark," the narrator comes upon a dead doe whose unborn fawn is still alive, but the road is curvy, narrow, and dark, and it's a dangerous place to stop the car. A good man, he wants to do what's right, but what is the right thing when so much depends on moving quickly? "To swerve, might make more dead." In stanza four, things get fuzzy. The car comes alive, purring, breathing, and exhaling. The "wilderness" is also a teeming participant in the drama, as the speaker finally makes his decision to push "her over the edge into the river" so that others might live.

Students like to argue. "How could he?" they complain. They think he is a bad man. "What would you have him do," I ask, "perform a C-section there in the woods? Stick the deer in his back seat and drive a hundred miles to a vet?" Eventually, the details of the poem overwhelm all but the most stubborn who cling to the hope that they could have done something to save the fawn.

Darkness is the traditional symbol for the unknown, the feared. In this little tragedy, Stafford reminds us of the darkness that is life, and that we can only see a little way forward, as our own headlights can't illuminate and protect us from the unknown. Things happen in the dark that cannot be undone. Be wary, but realize we are always driving into the inevitable darkness.

In Bottom's poem the dark becomes a place of safety, and the light becomes dangerous. "It's the light they believe kills." True, he's talking about rats, which are also considered harmful and evil (though compared to their human antagonists, one almost sympathizes with them). There is a commingling of two worlds, the human and the animal, and neither one is doing very well in this poem. Of course, the humans have forfeited their nobility, becoming animals themselves.

The self-aware narrator articulates his own fate and that of his mob, as the rats advance "into the darkness we're headed for."

"Traveling Through the Dark"
by William Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason --
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all -- my only swerving --
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

from THE DARKNESS AROUND US IS DEEP: SELECTED POEMS OF WILLIAM STAFFORD, Harperperennial, 1994

Some useful questions:
(Don't forget to refer to the "General questions for reading and discussing poems")

How does the setting of the poem affect the actions of the speaker? What does the dark symbolize? Why is it better to "to roll them into the canyon"? Why is it dangerous to hesitate in such a place? Why does the car take on the qualities of the dead animal in stanza four? In line three of that same stanza, who or what is "turning red"? Why is thinking hard his "only swerving"? Does the narrator make the right decision? What else could he have possibly done? What is "the dark"?

"Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump"
by David Bottoms

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.

Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still
like dead beer cans.
Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow
into garbage, hide in old truck tires,
rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,
or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light
toward the darkness at the edge of the dump.

It's the light they believe kills.
We drink and load again, let them crawl
for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for.

from ARMORED HEARTS: SELECTED & NEW POEMS, Copper Canyon Press, 1995

Some useful questions: How are the speaker and his friends "loaded"? What does the darkness symbolize in this poem, and how does it differ from Stafford's? What do the headlights represent to the humans? To the rats? What does the last line suggest? Why does the narrator state it?

Writing Assignment: (Don't forget to refer to the "Common factors for writing prompts" for this and all the poetry writing assignments.)

1- A symbol is a concrete thing (SSSTT) used to represent something abstract. Think of an obvious symbol -- a flag, fire, the color red or green, etc., and think of ways you can twist it so it means its opposite or something else.

2- Create a symbol and write a poem about the wilderness within you.

3- The best nature poems use images from the natural world to reveal some truth of human nature. Think of your favorite or most dreaded "natural" thing (the beach, pine cones, cats, broccoli, storms, etc.) and use it in a poem which reveals something essential about yourself.

4- Both of these are narrative poems, as they tell stories. Write a narrative poem in which darkness and light are used in a surprising way.

5- Wallace Stevens wrote a poem called "The Man on the Dump." Write your own poem in which you use a "dump" as a symbol.

#2 Vietnam and Vietnam Remembered

Casey's poem describes a seemingly mundane incident in Vietnam pitting mechanized weapons of war against a simple garden tool. Guess who loses? The last four lines make a comparison that powerfully displays the horror of war and its consequence on civilians.

Komunyakaa's poem is a meditation at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington in which the speaker remembers and mourns, and, despite his best attempt not to, cries. He time-travels -- he is at the memorial in the present; he is in Vietnam in the past. Notice how he sees himself both in the wall and outside of it. How he is stone. How he is flesh.

Both poems use the crucible of war to depict an aspect of what it means to be human, which, according to Robert Hayden, is our goal and most important destiny.

Even students born years after the war's end should find themselves interested in the small battles revealed in these poems.

"A Bummer"
by Michael Casey

We were going single file
Through his rice paddies
And the farmer
Started hitting the lead track
With a rake
He wouldn't stop
The TC* went to talk to him
And the farmer
Tried to hit him too
So the tracks went sideways
Side by Side
Through the guy's fields
Instead of single file
Hard on, Proud Mary
Bummer, Wallace, Rosemary's Baby
The Rutgers Road Runner
And
Go Get Em-Done Got Em
Went side by side
Through the fields
If you have a farm in Vietnam
And a house in hell
Sell the farm
And go home

*track commander

from OBSCENITIES, Yale University Press, 1972

Some useful questions:
What is a "Bummer" and why is it the title of the poem? Why does the farmer attack the TC? Why does the TC order the vehicles to go side by side? What are all those names ("Hard on," "Proud Mary," "Bummer," etc.) about? What does the analogy at the end of the poem suggest? Do you believe it?

"Facing It"
by Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way -- the stone lets me go.
I turn that way -- I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

from DIEN CAI DAU, Wesleyan Poetry, 1988

Some useful questions:
At what point do you realize the setting of the poem? What does the speaker reveal about himself? What does he remember? How could the white vet lose his arm "inside the stone"? Why does the speaker mistake the woman brushing the boy's hair? How many reflections are there? Why does he change from "stone" to "flesh"? What could "facing it" mean? Is the speaker "facing it"?

Writing Assignments:

1- Write a poem which describes an atrocity or injustice which you are familiar with. Make it as vivid as possible, but keep your tone neutral to allow the reader to decide what is wrong rather than you stating it. See Hayden's "Night, Death, Mississippi."

2- Write a poem which portrays a personal interest, story, or concern against the backdrop of a historical one. For example, Sherman Alexie, a Coer d'Alene Indian, meditates in his poem "Inside Dachau" on the mistreatment of American Indians as he tours the concentration camp. In another poem Alexie plays basketball with Walt Whitman. Write a poem in which you play basketball (or chess or some other game) with a historical or literary figure. ("Tossing a Frisbee with Shakespeare," "Dealing a Joker to Darwin," etc.)

3- Write a poem about "reflection" in which you "face" something difficult to face.

#3 Culture Shock / Culture Comfort

Denise Duhamel is a young American poet married to a Philippino writer named Nick Carbo. In her most recent book, THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, she includes several poems written about the differences she has discovered in their two backgrounds.

Your students will enjoy Duhamel's humor as she tries to navigate the difficult straits that separate her American experiences from those of her husband's. Have them discuss their own encounters with those who are different and the misunderstandings they have had to overcome in order to get along and develop.

Before writing, you might have your students brainstorm American idioms and oddities which could cause difficulty for someone who encounters them for the first time.

"Yes" by Denise Duhamel

According to Culture Shock:
A Guide to Customs and Etiquette
of Filipinos, when my husband says yes,
he could also mean one of the following:
a.) I don't know.
b.) If you say so.
c.) If it will please you.
d.) I hope I have said yes unenthusiastically enough
for you to realize I mean no.
You can imagine the confusion
surrounding our movie dates, the laundry,
who will take out the garbage
and when. I remind him
I'm an American, that all his yeses sound alike to me.
I tell him here in America we have shrinks
who can help him to be less of a people-pleaser.
We have two-year-olds who love to scream "No!"
when they don't get their way. I tell him,
in America we have a popular book,
When I Say No I Feel Guilty.
"Should I get you a copy?" I ask.
He says yes, but I think he means
"If it will please you," i.e., "I won't read it."
"I'm trying," I tell him, "but you have to try too."
"Yes," he says, then makes tampo,
a sulking that the book Culture Shock describes as
"subliminal hostility. . . withdrawal of customary cheerfulness
in the presence of the one who has displeased" him.
The book says it's up to me to make things all right,
"to restore goodwill, not by talking the problem out,
but by showing concern about the wounded person's
well-being." Forget it, I think, even though I know
if I'm not nice, tampo can quickly escalate into nagdadabog --
foot stomping, grumbling, the slamming
of doors. Instead of talking to my husband, I storm off
to talk to my porcelain Kwan Yin,
the Chinese goddess of mercy
that I bought on Canal Street years before
my husband and I started dating.
"The real Kwan Yin is in Manila,"
he tells me. "She's called Nuestra Señora de Guia.
Her Asian features prove Christianity
was in the Philippines before the Spanish arrived."
My husband's telling me this
tells me he's sorry. Kwan Yin seems to wink,
congratulating me -- my short prayer worked.
"Will you love me forever?" I ask,
then study his lips, wondering if I'll be able to decipher
what he means by his yes.

from THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

Some useful questions:
Why is the speaker so frustrated? How convincing is the use of book titles? Why does Duhamel use Tagalog words such as "tampo"? What do you think her husband will answer to her last question?

"Nick At Night"
by Denise Duhamel

When growing up, Nick never saw The Brady Bunch.
He watched Eat Bulaga with Tito, Vic, and Joey,
which he likens to a Filipino version of The Three Stooges.
He ate Sky Flakes crackers instead of Ritz
and drank Royal True Orange with pulp bits instead of Sunkist.
He remembers the bells signaling the after-dinner arrival
of Magnolia ice cream -- vendors pushing silver coolers,
not driving trucks. I tell him about Apple Jacks,
the cereal that turned a kid's milk pink
and the phenomenon of Banana Quik.
I try to explain Midge, the brassy beautician who dipped
her clients' hands in Palmolive Dishwashing Liquid
between manicures. My husband endures
the moving scrapbook of my childhood
as we watch another round of Nick at Nite.
I teach him all the words to the Patty Duke theme song
during a break from their sponsor Head & Shoulders.
In the Philippines, dandruff was also an embarrassment.
Nick tells me of a shampoo commercial in English and Tagalog:
A girl loses interest in her dancing partner
when she notices the white patches on his collar
and huffs away as only the truly insulted can.
The famous slogan: "Charlie Balakubak, excuse me!"
My husband and I laugh. We are "East Meets West"
like LaChoy, makers of "Oriental recipes to serve at home."
I sing him "Aye, yie, yie-yie . . . I am the Frito Bandito."
Nick, who only started speaking English at six,
translates the original Spanish lyrics. The song, he says,
is really about singing without tears, not the virtues of corn chips.

from THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, 1999

Some useful questions:
Why does the narrator want Nick to understand her "growing up"? What does she learn about the popular images of his youth in the Philippines? What is ironic about the last line of the poem? What are some things you would want your future mate to understand about your childhood and adolescence?

Writing Assignment:

1- Write a poem about a cultural encounter that led to confusion or blunder and retell it in a conversational voice.

2- Write a poem which uses American icons and "-ism's" (such as the Empire State Building, Disney World, or football) or products from popular culture in a surprising way. You might take a product slogan like "Breakfast of Champions" or "Just Do It" and transform it into something entirely different. You might begin by making a list of products, phrases, or slogans that may have more than one meaning (Mars candy, social work, in-school suspension, etc.).

#4 Ordinary / Extraordinary

These two poems by Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Simic examine ordinary table utensils and visualize them as very different things altogether. These are useful poems for educating the imagination and for helping students to see one thing as another, which is the basis of all metaphor.

Your students may at first think these poems are "weird," which they are, but you want to guide them into understanding that the eye of the poet sees the same world as they do, but then transforms it into something else. Encourage them to make this transformation in their own poetry writing.

"The Fork"
by Charles Simic

This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird's foot
Worn around the cannibal's neck.

As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Large, bald, beakless and blind.

from SELECTED POEMS, 1963-1983, George Braziller, 1990

Some useful questions:
What kind of fork is this anyway? (You might have your students draw how they see Simic's fork.) How does it resemble a bird?

"The Spoon"
by Charles Simic

An old spoon
Bent, gouged
Polished to an evil
Glitter.

It has bitten
Into my life --
This kennel-bone
Sucked thin.

Now, it is a living
Thing: ready
To scratch a name
On a prison wall --
Ready to be passed on
To the little one
Just barely
Beginning to walk.

from SELECTED POEMS, 1963-1983, George Braziller, 1990

Some useful questions:
What does Simic compare his spoon to? What other allusions does he make?

Writing Assignment:
1- Write a poem which portrays an ordinary object in an extraordinary way. Choose something common and try to see into its inner life. As Simic writes in another poem, "Go inside a stone. That would be my way."

2- Imagine something unbelievably fantastic and write a poem in which it becomes the most common, mundane thing. Something like, "The Colossus Who Wouldn't Play Football" or "The Car that Wouldn't Grow Up."

#5 Desire / Personification

The following two poems are useful to get students writing without a lot of discussion and are particularly good after they have tried some of the other writing activities in this and the previous online lessons. Students enjoy Addonizio's vigorous poem with its very concrete details and spirited human desire. Ask students to read aloud their favorite lines (mine is "hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders") and to be as specific and lively in their writing as she is in hers.

Simic uses personification to make his poem work. Poor Death is trying to finish his rounds so he can go home and have dinner with the wife and kids. But, as it happens with the rest of us, Death is having a bad day. He is lost in the rain, while at home, his dinner is getting cold. Have your students point out the ordinary details that make Simic's Death seem as human and flawed as we are.

"What Do Women Want?"
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they'll bury me in.

from ANOTHER CHICAGO MAGAZINE Number 32/33, Spring & Summer 1997 forthcoming in TELL ME, from BOA Editions, Ltd.

Some useful questions:
What does she really want?

Writing Assignment:

1- Write a poem temporarily titled, "What I Want." Do not choose an abstraction like world peace or good will to all. Instead, choose something very concrete, the more physical the better, perhaps a comfortable chair, fresh coffee, shoelaces, a new Subaru.

2- Exaggerate your desire for the thing. Be outrageous.

3- When done with your first draft, cross out the title, "What I Want" and think of a more original one.

"Eyes Fastened With Pins"
by Charles Simic

How much death works.
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting Death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors . . .
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.

from SELECTED POEMS, 1963-1983, George Braziller, 1990

Some useful questions: What human qualities does Death have in this poem? How believable are they?

Writing Assignment:

1- Think of an abstraction such as love, fear, anger, jealousy, hunger, boredom, wealth, lust, etc. Write a poem which gives human qualities to this non-human entity and which makes it as real as the person sitting next to you. Make your personification as physical as possible by exaggerating and by using strong action verbs.

2- Write a love poem to a ghost, monster, beast, brute, ogre, or some other reprehensible thing, in which you accentuate its beautiful qualities which others fail to appreciate.

Peter Murphy teaches English and creative writing at Atlantic City High School. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including THE ANGLO-WELSH REVIEW, THE ATLANTA REVIEW, THE BELOIT POETRY JOURNAL, COMMONWEAL, THE NEW YORK QUARTERLY, THE NEW YORK TIMES, WITNESS, and YELLOW SILK. His essays and reviews have been published in THE AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW, THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING TEACHERS' DIGEST, THE SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY, THE TEACHERS & WRITERS GUIDE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS, WORLD ORDER and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships for writing and teaching from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Corporation of Yaddo, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. In addition, he was the first recipient of the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship at the Louhelen Bahá'í School in 1986. He is a consultant to the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation's poetry program and has been an educational advisor to five PBS television series on poetry, including FOOLING WITH WORDS WITH BILL MOYERS. He is also the founder/director of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway (www.wintergetaway.com), a writing and arts conference for teachers and others held annually in Cape May.

Photos by Lynn Saville

Featured Poets | Dodge Poetry Festival Information | About the Series
Credits | Forum | Teacher's Guide | Resources | Lesson Plan
FOOLING WITH WORDS Home
PBS Online | Thirteen Online