“Only One of My Deaths” is from FIRST COURSE IN TURBULENCE by Dean Young, © 1999. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
“Zimmer’s Head Thudding Against the Blackboard” is from FAMILY REUNION: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by Paul Zimmer, © 1983. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Jim Daniels, “Wheels” from PLACES/EVERYONE, © Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Used with permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.
Diane Wakoski, “George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth” used with permission of the author.
Tom Wayman, “Did I Miss Anything?” used with permission of the author.
“Blackberries,” by Yusef Komunyakaa, from PLEASURE DOME (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
“The Dacca Gauzes” by Agha Shahid Ali, from THE HALF-INCH HIMALAYAS (Wesleyan University Press, 1987). © 1987 by Agha Shaid Ali. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
“The Heaven of Animals” by James Dickey, from POEMS 1957-1967 (Wesleyan University Press, 1967) © 1967 by James Dickey. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.
“The Sheep Child” by James Dickey, from POEMS 1957-1967 (Wesleyan University Press, 1967). © 1967 by James Dickey. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.
“The Bagel” by David Ignatow, from AGAINST THE EVIDENCE: SELECTED POEMS 1934-1994 (Wesleyan University Press, 1993). © 1993 by David Ignatow. Reprinted with permission of Weslyean University Press.
“Camouflaging the Chimera,” by Yusef Komunyakaa, from PLEASURE DOME (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan Unversity Press.
“Facing It,” by Yusef Komunyakaa, from PLEASURE DOME (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
“What He Thought” by Heather McHugh, from HINGE & SIGN: Poems 1968-1993 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994) © 1994 by Heather McHugh. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.
“A Blessing” by James Wright, from COLLECTED POEMS (Wesleyan University Press, 1971) © 1971 by James Wright. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.
“Beginning” by James Wright, from Collected Poems (Wesleyan University, 1971). © 1971 by James Wright. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.
“Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” by James Wright, from COLLECTED POEMS (Wesleyan University Press, 1971) © 1971 by James Wright. Reprinted with permission from Wesleyan University Press.
Roberto Juarroz, “Any Movement Kills Something”, from VERTICAL POETRY: RECENT POEMS BY ROBERTO JUARROZ, White Pine Press, used with permission of the translator.
Zawgee, “The Way of the Water-Hyacinth” used with permission of the translator.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of the poems published in this book. The editor and publisher apologize if any material has been inadvertently included without appropriate permission or without the appropriate acknowledgement, and would be pleased to correct any oversights in future editions.
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Thoughts I Left Behind:
Collected Poems of William Roetzheim
184 pages, 30 illustrations.
This book is unashamedly autobiographical and that is one it’s strong points. It comes across as very real, the characters elicit empathy because the reader can identify with the situations. Frost’s poems had that same quality, like you were sitting at his kitchen table listening to him over coffee. I got that same feeling reading this book.
Gene Auprey
I enjoyed the personal nature and the wide variety of forms and subjects in these poems. William has a knack for finding the poetry in the details of everyday family and work life without glossing over or exaggerating the disappointments.
Stephen Scaer
You have a lot of great work here. Your work comes across as strong and solid. You have a wonderful command of the language and I enjoy your insight.
Martha Shea
In Roetzheim’s poems one senses a broad intelligence in conversation with itself: sober, worldly, both tender and weary, measuring itself against a lifetime of experience and revised expectations. Whether ruminating on old love, performing a surgical character sketch, or journeying through space, time and literature, Roetzheim manages to reach under the detritus of an ordinary life to share with the reader the uneasy truce of feeling alive.
Larry Weisman
The reaction this book instills can be described by two lines in Frost’s Birches: “I’d like to get away from earth awhile, and then come back to it and begin over” It is certainly a book to read by the hearth propped up in a comfortable chair.
Christopher L. McDonald
William Roetzheim is the tour guide whose humor and imagination illuminate each journey we embark upon with him. Whether he leads us along the streets of Italy, through the works of the famous poets, or simply from room to room in his house, every door he opens takes us someplace delightful and unexpected.
Jackleen Holton
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1 Form: Free verse
1 Form: Free verse
2 Form: Free verse
1 Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: courtesan: mistress to powerful man; sot: an alcoholic.
2 Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABB end rhyme—Vocabulary: Thrace: ancient region of southeast Balkan Peninsula; raddled: worn out; loins: crotch.
1 Form: unrhymed syllabic (count stresses only) dimeter—Vocabulary: Freya: Female Norse God of love and beauty; Scoring: A place in the Northland; throstles: a song bird. — Notes: Freya represents the coming of spring in victory over winter.
2 Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes.—Notes: The virtues of cuddling as opposed to sex.
1 Form: Free verse—Vocabulary: ply: layers; estranged: on bad terms; —Notes: Everyone, including even the birds, feels that their sorrow is unique.
1 Form: Free verse—Notes: The wife gave up her dreams to be married, and now her husband is off seeing the world. In her letter she offers to travel a thousand miles to a distant village to meet him, with the subtle message that she still longs to see the world.
1 Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: sans: without.
2 Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Notes: “Them” may represent many things. For example, children or people w
ho were given unheeded advice. Alternatively, the narrator may be God and the “them” is really “us.”
3 Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: piety: religious devotion— Notes: The moving finger is a central metaphor representing life.
1 Form: Iambic pentameter, AAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: bough: branch of tree; enow: enough.
2 Form: Haiku—Notes: There is a Japanese legend about fallen flowers returning to the tree branch.
3 Form: Iambic pentameter, ABABA BCBCA end rhymes.
1 Form: Iambic pentameter, ABBA end rhymes—Vocabulary: Indian Ware: expensive plates; cutted: wounded; Spartans: frugal Greek city state; “so total”: giving summary information; Phoenix Stella: narrator’s loved one.
2 Form: Modified sonnet, Iambic hexameter, frequent trochee substitutions at line starts create a driving rhythm, ABAB end rhymes with closing CC couplet—Vocabulary: fain: happily; “turning others’ leaves”: reading the works of other authors; Invention: imagination; step-dame: stepmother; “great with child”: pregnant.
1 Form: Iambic pentameter, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: baiting-place: applying bait to catch as in fishing; balm: salve; prease: press; garland: wreath of flowers—Notes: The narrator, missing Stella, seeks the escape of sleep, and offers to bribe a personified sleep by trading everything in his bedroom for the alternate world of sleep. He then considers that sleep already has the right to these things, so he sweetens the pot with the promise that after he is asleep then sleep will have the opportunity to see his love, Stella’s image.
2 Form: Iambic pentameter, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: savor of: smell of; mean: value; ’grees: agrees.
1 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: jot: smallest bit; decover: revive from death—Notes: He begins by exclaiming that his love for her is dead. He then says that, though it (love) is lying there dead with faith kneeling next to it and innocence closing the dead eyes, even then she could change her mind and bring dead love back to life.
1 Form: Unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse)—Notes: underlying message of needing to trust in faith after you have done everything you can to protect or prepare something (someone) that you love.
1 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: deserts: facts deserving reward.
2 Form: Sonnet—Notes: Here Shakespeare asks if he should compare the object of his love to a summer day, a traditional comparison, and then makes the argument that his love is actually far better than a summer day because a summer day is transient and imperfect as described. He then argues that as long as people are reading this sonnet his love lives through the words in the sonnet, and thereby she achieves permanence far beyond that of a summer day.
1 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: churl: rude person; bett’ring: best; vouchsafe: grant—Notes: In this sonnet, Shakespeare contemplates the situation where his love outlives him. He considers that as time goes on, poets will write better and better poems until his current attempts are not as good relatively. He then asks his love to consider that if he had continued alive his ability to write verse would have improved as well, and asks that his love look at his sonnet not from the perspective of technical skill with poetry, but because of the deep love that it embodies. He suggests reading the new verse for the technical skills, but his for the emotions.
2 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: broils: heat; enmity: hatred—Notes: This sonnet shows a hyperbole of confidence, stating that his sonnet will outlast everything physical in proclaiming his love, and that it will not be eclipsed until his love rises up herself at the time of judgment.
1 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: dun: brownish grey; damasked: used as decoration—Notes: Here Shakespeare makes fun of the various ways poets of the time described their loves through comparisons, concluding that even though his love does not fit the description of women in these other poems, she is actually as beautiful as any of them.
2 Form: Sonnet—Notes: Although Shakespeare speaks of white lies of love involving his age, his words ring equally true for all of those white lies that we tell loved ones although both of us know they are false.
1 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: feathered creatures: probably a chicken—Notes: The poet’s love chases after something (another love, her freedom, her career?) while he waits in the background for her return, wailing like an infant. Note the pun on Will Shakespeare in the first line of the turn.
1 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: longer nurseth: prolongs; physic: medicine—Notes: His love is the illness. His reason is the physician trying unsuccessfully to cure him.
2 Form: Unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse).
1 Form: Iambic trimeter, xAxA end rhymes—Vocabulary: unaffrighted: unfrightened—Notes: Thomas Campion echoes Robert Greene’s feelings about the happiness of a simple life, but makes his emphasis more the religious aspects of a simple life unafraid of both worldly things and the unknown afterlife because of a faith in the afterlife and a view of this life as simply a pilgrimage.
1 Form: Iambic pentameter, AA end rhyme.
2 Form: Iambic tetrameter, AABCCB end rhyme—Notes: To get the most out of this, you need to picture a scene from the early 1600s: A group of men are in an ale house, sitting around rough hewn wood tables, drinking by firelight. John stands up, raises his mug, and entertains the group with this poem to laughs and cheers. He argues that women are not inherently or consistently either good or bad. He claims that if they were good, then it would be obvious, while if they were bad then they would naturally die out. He then makes the leap that women are men’s to use as their mood suits them, and that it is natural to discard them once they are used up.
1 Form: Irregular meter for the first 3 lines of each stanza, ending with 2 lines of iambic trimeter and I line of iambic tetrameter starting each with a headless iamb.—Vocabulary: chidden: scolded; jointures: property set aside as inheritance—Notes: Another specialty of John is his poems written to seduce women through logical arguments, although I personally suspect they are either tongue-in-check or written more to the ale house crowds referenced earlier. In this poem, he argues that a weak man created monogamy to deprive women and make himself feel better. John argues that monogamy is not found in nature, that ships are not designed to sit in one harbor but to travel, and good things are meant to be enjoyed by many, not just one.
1 Form: Sonnet with unrhymed Volta.—Vocabulary: poppy: opium—Notes: Later in his life, John became a priest and presumably gave up womanizing. His poems transition to spiritual work. In this poem, he argues that death is not as powerful as many claim. He says that sleep is a sort of “mini-death” and not so bad. He concludes by saying that physical death is just a short sleep before eternally awakening, with death itself the thing that will then die.
2 Form: Iambic pentameter, AABBCC … End rhymes—Notes: A fun way to describe the seemingless endless hours during absence from his love. The end is a bit confusing. He says that although time seems to last forever, she should not think this means he is living a long life. Rather, because he is dead (in spirit), it is as if he is an immortal ghost. But then, if he is an immortal ghost, can he die, as he feels like he is dying.
1 Form: Mostly iambic pentameter, lines 3 and 4 of each stanza are iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter. ABBAAACCC End rhymes—Vocabulary: dispose: commit; Forswear: renounce; gout: a disease; gamesters: one who plays games; interwish: wish mutually; annexed: added; schedules: appendices—Notes: I think this poem is a wonderful curse John casts on whoever discovers his secret mistress. In the end, he claims that if the victim of his curse is a woman nature has already cursed her more than all the ills of his curse. Again, I’m sure this was very entertaining to his buddies in that ale house.
1 Form: Mostly iambic pentameter, irregular end rhymes—Vocabulary: bequeath: give; erst: once; nought: nothing.
2 Form: Ballad, ABAB end rhymes—Vocabulary: coy: flirtatiously shy; tarry: wait.
1 Form: Iambic tetrameter, AAA BBB end rhymes—Vocabulary: liquefaction: turning to liquid.
2 Form: Iambic tetram
eter, ABABCC end rhymes—Vocabulary: imped: grafted new feathers onto a falcon to increase speed or repair an injury.
1 Form: Sonnet—Vocabulary: chide: scold mildly—Notes: Milton was working for many years on his greatest work, Paradise Lost, a book- length poem written as a tribute to God. While half way done his eyesight began to fail. Doctors told him to stop working on the book or go blind. Here he expresses anger at God for putting him in this situation, but then accepts that his role is to bear whatever God has in store for him. Ultimately, he did go blind but continued to write using his daughters as secretaries while he dictated.
2 Form: Iambic but with many headless iambs at the start of lines, mixture of tetrameter and trimeter in 4-3-4-3-3 pattern except the last two lines, which are dimeter for emphasis, ABABB end rhymes—Vocabulary: wan: depressed; Prithee: expression of polite request.
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 70
