My beautiful and mysterious creature:
The red-lipped daughter of the Mother Dairy owner
next to our house,
with a scythe for a neck and scimitars
for eyes,
walked on her two scissor legs.
Conversations with her were difficult.
Her Picasso marble eyes, as they looked at you,
asudden turned her into your
reflection.
You were left staring at yourself.
One morning I carried
an orange
silver
stone bowl to the shop
and, amidst the onions chillies leafy spinach,
tumbled water into it;
slid next to the owner's red-lipped daughter
as she bent to take out frozen peas;
saw her reflected
eyes snared and swirling black.
She told me this:
Walk straighter than an assegai;
kill faster than a scythe.
Eyes glow coal at the millionth second
at the merest effrontery.
Paint lips red and wear
war paint in the heart.
Saying this, she turned to smile at the next customer,
wavered,
and ebbed from my sight.
On 4/29/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Sheesh! Some of the poems these young students of Ken Koch came up with
> gives me a serious insecurity complex...
>
> V.
>
> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> Subject: Kenneth Koch and Co.
> From: "Knopf Poetry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Thu, April 28, 2005 3:00 pm
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Today, a special selection from ROSE, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RED? Teaching
> Great Poetry to Children by Kenneth Koch. The book, originally released
> in 1973 and updated in 1990, is a classic of educational literature.
> Anyone who knows a child and has an interest in the vitality of the
> imagination will find this book to be extraordinarily useful, a welcoming
> celebration and introduction to the power and mystery of language. Koch's
> empathy, generosity, and insouciance continue to be irresistible.
>
> Related links follow the text, including a link to a many-author
> multimedia tribute to Koch, who passed away in 2002, from the
> Australian on-line literary journal Jacket. Also, find information about
> voting for week four's poem-of-the-week and our Poetry in the World
> contest.
>
> Kenneth Koch's highly anticipated COLLECTED POEMS will be released by
> Knopf in fall 2005.
>
> ***************************************************
>
> The idea of talking to an animal appeals to children a great deal. The
> whole air of mystery and magic about [William Blake's] "The Tyger" is very
> interesting to them too. The main question the poet asks is a question
> they often think about: How did something get the way it is? They ask this
> question about animals, about apples, about the sky and the clouds, and
> about themselves. Blake has an excited idea of how the tiger got to be the
> way it is: that a Superpowered Being gathered
> materials from the ocean, earth, and sky, and then pounded and twisted
> them all together until He had made a tiger. Blake stresses the
> amazingness and scariness of this Being: He has wings and can fly, can
> hold fire in his hand, and can control the terrible force of the tiger...
>
> The Tyger
>
> Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
> In the forests of the night,
> What immortal hand or eye
> Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
>
> In what distant deeps or skies
> Burnt the fire of thine eyes!
> On what wings dare he aspire!
> What the hand dare seize the fire?
>
> And what shoulder, & what art,
> Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
> And when thy heart began to beat,
> What dread hand? & what dread feet?
>
> What the hammer? what the chain?
> In what furnace was thy brain?
> What the anvil? what dread grasp
> Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
>
> When the stars threw down their spears
> And water'd heaven with their tears,
> Did he smile his work to see?
> Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
>
> Tyger, Tyger burning bright,
> In the forests of the night:
> What immortal hand or eye,
> Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
>
> The poetry idea that I gave the children was "Write a poem in which you
> are talking to a beautiful and mysterious creature and you can ask it
> anything you want--anything. You have the power to do this because you can
> speak its secret language.
>
> "The Tyger," speaking to children's sense of strangeness and wonder, could
> heighten their awareness of nature and their place in it...Yes, you can
> talk to a stone if you wish, instead of an animal. Yes,
> Markus, you can write it in "octopus language." Yes, you can, instead of
> asking the animal questions, tell it what to do. I would stress, all the
> while, the part of it I thought would most inspire them: But remember,
> whatever you do, that you are really talking to
> it--really...When I praised the children's lines, it was not for their
> resemblance to Blake or Donne, but for what they were in themselves.
>
> ++++
>
> Monkey
>
> Oh, you must come from a hairy god.
> Where do you get your funny voice?
> Monkey, where did you learn to climb?
> Monkey, how did you live to eat bananas?
> You feet must come from a chicken farm.
>
> --Michelle Woods
>
> ++++
>
> The Sick Rose
>
> "O Rose, why are you sick? The little worm kills you now?"
> "Yes, the little worm kills me now?this is the end of me!"
> Up in the sky, down in the earth, "Why do you die in the light of the
> earth?"
> "I die now because the worm eats me."
> Up in the sky, down in the earth, the worm is crawling in the ground. Up
> in the sky, down in the earth, why do you die in the light of the earth.
>
> --Vivian Jenkins
>
> ++++
>
> Little duck, little duck, how did you get those iron legs?
> How did you get those steel eyes?
> How did you get 43 ears?
> How does your head glow in the light?
> What god made you?
>
> --Edgar Guadeloupe
>
> ++++
>
> Tiger Dog
>
> Oh, Tiger Dog, why do you eat my clothes?
> Oh, why do you jump on the flowers in my garden?
> Oh, why do you mark up my furniture?
> Why are you such an awful Tiger Dog?
>
> I eat your clothes because they taste good.
> I jump on your flowers because it makes me bounce.
> I mark up your furniture so it will have a design.
> I am a bad dog for the fun of being bad.
>
> --Wendy Hyman
>
>
> **************************************************
>
> >From ROSE, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RED by Kenneth Koch
> Copyright (c) 1973, 1990 by Kenneth Koch. Excerpted by permission of
> Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights
> reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
> without permission in writing from the publisher.
>
> **************************************************
>
> Related links:
>
> About Kenneth Koch:
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eRQ0Er
>
> About "Rose, Where Did You Get That Red:"
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eRR0Es
>
> Pre-order Kenneth Koch's COLLECTED POEMS, coming Fall 2005:
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eRS0Et
>
> A posthumous tribute to Kenneth Koch, with contributions from writers such
> as Ron Padgett, Barbara Guest, and Robert Creeley, including
> ?Popeye and William Blake Fight to the Death?--an audio recording of a
> public rhyming contest between Allen Ginsburg and Kenneth Koch at St
> Mark's Poetry Project, NYC, 9 May 1979:
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eRT0Eu
>
> Kenneth Koch "On Aesthetics:"
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eRU0Ev
>
> Discuss the work of Kenneth Koch on the Knopf Poets Forum:
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0dyo0Ez
>
> *************************************************
>
> POEM-OF-THE-WEEK:
>
> Tomorrow is Friday, time to vote for your favorite poem-of-
> the-week (April 22-28) on the Knopf Poetry Forum:
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eNx0ES
>
> The first five to post on Friday will receive a signed first
> edition of Camille Paglia's bestselling BREAK, BLOW, BURN.
> You can review the week's poems here:
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eNz0EU
>
> Poem-of-the-Week for Week 2:
> J. D. McClatchy's "The Orchid"
>
> Poem-of-the-Week for Week 3:
> A TIE!
> Jack Gilbert's "A Brief for the Defense" and
> Nancy Willard's "A Human Error"
>
> THE POETRY IN THE WORLD CONTEST:
>
> We invite you to send us photos and descriptions of how you've
> seen poetry celebrated out in the real world. If you are a bookseller,
> send in images of your in-store display. If you admire the
> display in your favorite bookstore, send us photos of what
> they did. Teachers, show us a poetry bulletin board you
> created. Find poetry broadsides hanging on the wall in a
> library. Have you found a new poetry Web site that you love?
> Send us the link. If you hang our poems from string in trees
> outside your house, make poetry kites, or serve your meals
> out of poetry paper plates, let us know. Surprise us.
> Whatever you find or choose to do, let us know about it.
> We will pick the five most creative tributes to poetry and post
> them on the Borzoi Reader. Winners will receive five books of
> poetry from Knopf.
>
> View the official rules here.
> http://info.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin21/DM/y/ejMc0KPbYZ0Wa0eEq0EC
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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