AMERICAN MODERN POETRY

Robert Frost (1874 1963)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

People are not going

To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

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.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

The Road not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in 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.
A question
A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.
Wallace Stevens (1879 1955)
Disillusionment of Ten OClock (1931):
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
William Carlos Williams (1883 1963)
The Red Wheelbarrow (1923),
So much depends
Upon
a red wheel
barrow

The Birds
The world begins again!
Not wholly insufflated
the blackbirds in the rain
upon the dead topbranches
of the living tree,
stuck fast to the low clouds,
notate the dawn.
Their shrill cries sound
announcing appetite
and drop among the bending roses
and the dripping grass.
The Great Figure
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

glazed with rain

water
beside the white
chickens.
The Young Housewife (1917)
At ten a.m. the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her hubands house.
I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb,
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
To a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

1.

FROM AN IMAGIST MANIFESTO

To use the language of common speech, but to employ
the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely
decorative word.

Poem (As the cat)

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

2.

We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be

better expressed in free verse than in conventional
forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.

3.

Absolute freedom in the choice of subject.

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

4.

To present an image. We are not a school of painters,

but we believe that poetry should render particulars
exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however
magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we
oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the
real difficulties of his art.

5.

To produce a poetry that is hard and clear, never

blurred nor indefinite.

6.

Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the

very essence of poetry.

carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot