UNIVERSIDAD DE PANAMA

CENTRO REGIONAL UNIVERSITARIO DE COLON

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES

Final Exam

Teacher:

Sirenaika Rawlins

Student:

Rolando Francis 3-742-412

Subject:

Contemporary Literature

Topic:

Contemporary American Poetry

 Introduction

This work is about the Contemporary American Poetry and it will let us know a

little bit of the history, some poems and literary works of the American poets.

This will help us to enrich our knowledge and it will give us the capacity to

understand a little more its history, literary works and on top of that, we are

going to know the background of them, who wrote them and what are they

about.
 Index

Introduction

History of the Contemporary American Poetry………………………….… 4

Poems

I know why the caged bird sings…………………..……………………...… 7

Touched by An Angel………………………………...…………….………… 9

Ontological……………………………………………….……………...….… 11

Death in the Family……………………………………….……………….… 12

Lesson 1……………………………………………………….…………...… 14

Conversation……………………………………………………...………..… 15

Summer Nights……………………………………………………...……..… 17

Even Because……………………………………………………….…….… 19

Glazunoviana……………………………………………………...…….…… 21

Before Sleep…………………………………………………………….…… 22

Literary works

Mom and Me and Mom………………………………………………...…… 24

I know why the caged bird sings…………………………………...….…… 25

Seven elephants standing in the rain………………………………..…..… 26

On earth………………………………………………………….…..…….…. 27

Dog Years…………………………………………………………...…….…. 28

Deep Lane……………………………………………...………………….… 29
Different Hours………………………………………………….……………... 30

Lines of defense……………………………………………………....…........ 31

Pagan Virtues……………………………………………………………....…. 32

A Raga for George Harrison……………………………………...…..……… 33

Reflexion…………………………………………………………..……...…… 34

Conclusion………………………………………………………..…………… 35

Bibliography……………………………………………….………………..… 36
- History of the Contemporary American Poetry.

It arose first as efforts by American colonists to add their voices to English

poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the Thirteen

Colonies (although a strong oral tradition often likened to poetry already existed

among Native American societies). Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists'

work relied on contemporary English models of poetic form, diction, and theme.

However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By

the later part of that century, when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic

audience abroad, poets from the United States had begun to take their place at

the forefront of the English-language avant-garde.

The history of American poetry is not easy to know. Much of the American poetry

published between 1910 and 1945 remains lost in the pages of small circulation

political periodicals, particularly the ones on the far left, destroyed by librarians

during the 1950s McCarthy era. The received narrative of Modernism proposes

that Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in

1948) were perhaps the more influential modernist English-language poets in the

period during World War I. But this narrative leaves out African American and

women poets who were published and read widely in the first half of the 20th

century. By the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to

their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for new kinds of

poetry. Toward the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had

diversified, as scholars placed an increased emphasis on poetry by

women, African Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos, Native Americans, and other

ethnic groups. Louise Glück is the only contemporary American writer writing

primarily poetry who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, while Bob

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Dylan, a songwriter, who has also written poems, has been awarded the same

prize.

5
Poems
 Poem # 1

I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps on the back

Of the wind and floats downstream

Till the current ends and dips his wing

In the orange suns rays

And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage

Can seldom see through his bars of rage

His wings are clipped and his feet are tied

So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

Of things unknown but longed for still

And his tune is heard on the distant hill for

The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

And the trade winds soft through

The sighing trees

And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright

Lawn and he names the sky his own.

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But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams

His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

His wings are clipped and his feet are tied

So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with

A fearful trill of things unknown

But longed for still and his

Tune is heard on the distant hill

For the caged bird sings of freedom.

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 Poem # 2

Touched by An Angel by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

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Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

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 Poem # 3

Ontological by Maggie Anderson

This is going to cost you.

If you really want to hear a

country fiddle, you have to listen

hard, high up in its twang and needle.

You can't be running off like this,

all knotted up with yearning,

following some train whistle,

can't hang onto anything that way.

When you're looking for what's lost,

everything's a sign,

but you have to stay right up next to

the drawl and pull of the thing

you thought you wanted, had to

have it, could not live without it.

Honey, you will lose your beauty

and your handsome sweetie, this whine,

this agitation, the one you sent for

with your leather boots and your guitar.

The lonesome snag of barbed wire you have

wrapped around your heart is cash money,

honey, you will have to pay.

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 Poem # 4

Death in the Family by Julie Hill Alger

They call it stroke.

Two we loved were stunned

by that same blow of cudgel

or axe to the brow.

Lost on the earth

they left our circle

broken.

One spent five months

falling from our grasp

mute, her grace, wit,

beauty erased.

Her green eyes gazed at us

as if asking, as if aware,

as if hers. One night

she slipped away;

machinery of mercy

brought her back

to die more slowly.

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 At long last

she escaped.

Our collie dog

fared better.

A lesser creature, she

had to spend only one day

drifting and reeling,

her brown eyes

beseeching. Then she

was tenderly lifted,

laid on a table,

praised, petted

and set free.

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 Poem # 5

Lesson 1 by Julie Hill Alger

At least I've learned this much:

Life doesn't have to be

all poetry and roses. Life

can be bus rides, gritty sidewalks,

electric bills, dishwashing,

chapped lips, dull stubby pencils

with the erasers chewed off,

cheap radios played too loud,

the rank smell of stale coffee

yet still glow

with the inner fire of an opal,

still taste like honey.

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 Poem # 6

Conversation by Ai

We smile at each other

and I lean back against the wicker couch.

How does it feel to be dead? I say.

You touch my knees with your blue fingers.

And when you open your mouth,

a ball of yellow light falls to the floor

and burns a hole through it.

Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.

Did you ever, you start,

wear a certain kind of dress

and just by accident,

so inconsequential you barely notice it,

your fingers graze that dress

and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,

you see it too

and you realize how that image

is simply the extension of another image,

that your own life

is a chain of words

that one day will snap.

Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,

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 and beginning to rise heavenward

in their confirmation dresses,

like white helium balloons,

the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,

and above all that,

that's where I'm floating,

and that's what it's like

only ten times clearer,

ten times more horrible.

Could anyone alive survive it?

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 Poem # 7

Summer Nights by Deborah Ager

Lamoni, Iowa

The factory siren tells workers time to go home

tells them the evening has begun.

When living with the tall man

whom I didn't love, I would wander

the streets, dreaming of Italy.

Trekking the handful of avenues

with him, he would say look there

between pink cobblestones,

there's manure like mortar.

The sweet smell of it Wednesday nights,

the night before auction,

when the misery of cows greets me

heading home through town.

Lake quiets, tired of my lies.

When will I tell truths again?

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 The siren. My love is home.

Nights, we stay in and X the days.

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 Poem # 8

Even Because by Ralph Angel

Because it all just breaks apart, and the pieces scatter and

rearrange without much fanfare or notice.

Because you can't and don't remember the step that kicked up

dust and left this planet—you'd give up even more now.

Because the body itself—the heart's

not dead but deeper, wrapped up in curtains, a different color,

among the railings and the pigeons, the rooftops and

walls—

for all you know it's a question of bread

or beer.

Because even love

returns. The city's all brightness

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 and shadow, deckle-edged, bluer than air—there's no help

anywhere—you no longer know how to listen.

And love says, love—midnight to midnight,

already ablaze. And the boulevard—wide-open. And the well-

stocked crowdless market, and a lone taxi blears.

Even happiness—the way anger's come back to roost again.

And joy, though joy's not in the ear or the eye. On this

walk.

The gulls hover offshore and the islands are speckled with fire.

Even love, even because.

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 Poem # 9

Glazunoviana by John Ashbery

The man with the red hat

And the polar bear, is he here too?

The window giving on shade,

Is that here too?

And all the little helps,

My initials in the sky,

The hay of an arctic summer night?

The bear

Drops dead in sight of the window.

Lovely tribes have just moved to the north.

In the flickering evening the martins grow denser.

Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation.

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 Poem # 10

Before Sleep by Catherine Anderson

I was in love with anatomy

the symmetry of my body

poised for flight,

the heights it would take

over parents, lovers, a keen

riding over truth and detail.

I thought growing up would be

this rising from everything

old and earthly,

not these faltering steps out the door

every day, then back again.

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Literary Works
 Literary Works # 1

Mom and Me and Mom by

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou recounts, with vigor and almost without affectation, in her most

personal autobiographical account, how she was sexually assaulted several

times, the first at age 7, how she emerged from a childhood plagued by poverty

and misery in the segregated American South, and how Later she became a

dancer, singer, actress, writer, film director, poet, activist, prostitute and a

thousand other things.

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 Literary Works # 2

I know why the caged bird sings

By Maya Angelou

In the first and best known of her autobiographical novels, Maya Angelou tells us

about her hard childhood and the trances she had to go through until she became

an independent woman. Raised in a small town in Arkansas by her grandmother,

she Angelou learned much from this exceptional woman and an extraordinarily

cohesive community; some life lessons from her that would help her cope with

the dramatic circumstances that she later had to face in San Luis and California.

This moving account also portrays the life of the majority of the black population

of the South of the United States during the first half of the 20th century.

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 Literary Works # 3

Seven elephants standing in the rain

by Billy Collins

Each poem seems to open wide, with generous doors, to whoever wants to read

it. And so, it is. And it also happens that this transparency is much more opaque

than it appears at first glance. In fact, the immense popularity of Collins's poetry

may not be fully understood. His is not easy poetry. As he himself has once said,

it is hospitable poetry. Like the worker who makes cigarettes, Billy Collins

concisely coils his intuition, always planted in the meticulous attention to the

things that happen to us, that we see, that lead us to think about ourselves and

to think about the world.

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 Literary Works # 4

On earth by Creeley, Robert

This book, published after the author's death in 2005, consists of some thirty

poems in which Creeley reflects on the passage of time and the survival of

memory, and an essay that explores the final stage of the poetry of Walt Whitman.

This volume concludes (too prematurely) one of the most exciting intellectual

adventures of twentieth-century poetry: a representative proposal of the

movement started by Olson and his theory of projective verse, parallel in the

postures of Eliot and Stevens.

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 Literary Works # 5

Dog Years by Mark Doty

When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner,

he brings home Beau, a large, malnourished golden retriever in need of loving

care. Joining Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family, Beau bounds

back into life. Before long, the two dogs become Doty's intimate companions, and

eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the

darkest days.

Dog Years is a poignant, intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections

on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about living, love, and

loss.

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 Literary Works # 6

Deep Lane by Mark Doty

Mark Doty’s poetry has long been celebrated for its risk and candor, an ability to

find transcendent beauty even in the mundane and grievous, an unflinching eye

that―as Philip Levine says― “looks away from nothing.” In the poems of Deep

Lane, the stakes are higher: there is more to lose than ever before, and there is

more for us to gain.

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 Literary Works # 7

Different Hours by Stephen Dunn

A wise and graceful new collection by one of our "major, indispensable poets"

(Sidney Lea). The mysteries of Eros and Thanatos, the stubborn endurance of

mind and body in the face of diminishment--these are the undercurrents of

Stephen Dunn's eleventh volume. "I am interested in exploring the 'different'

hours," he says, "not only of one's life, but also of the larger historical and

philosophical life beyond the personal".

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 Literary Works # 8

Lines of defense by Stephen Dunn

In his seventeenth collection of poetry, Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn

confronts the lines we fight against and the ones we draw for ourselves. Lines of

Defense poignantly captures the absurdities of modern life, expectations

derailed, the lived life juxtaposed to the imagined life, and the defenses we don

to make do. The poems in Lines of Defense are wry and elegiac, precisely

observed and wide-reaching. As with the best of Dunn’s work, they take stock of

the quotidian aspects of life, of the essential comedy of getting through the day:

finding a lost cat; not being invited to a party; taking a granddaughter to a carnival.

The lines of defense are the lines of the verse itself, as poetry forms a stronghold

against mortality. This essential volume showcases a poet writing at the height of

his powers.

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 Literary Works # 9

Pagan Virtues by Stephen Dunn

In this meditative and incisive collection, Stephen Dunn draws on themes of

morality and mortality to explore the innermost machinations of human nature.

Shifting in tone but never wavering in their essential honesty, these poems reflect

on desire, restraint, and the roles we play in an ever-evolving society. In Pagan

Virtues, Dunn reminds us of his penetrating eye for the universal and the specific,

and his ability to highlight our contradictions with tenderness and wit.

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 Literary Works # 10

A Raga for George Harrison

by Sharmagne Leland

These poems reveal a passionate concreteness of imagery and a rich

allusiveness. All the poetic qualities that touch the human heart are here.

Liveliness is the most characteristic quality of these poems that show intense

emotion and vivid imagination.

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 Reflexion

This work has been a great experience for me due to I knew many

Contemporary American Poets, people who has contributed to the world with

their literary works, it is very interesting to read these poems and literary works

and realize the different kind of ways they use to express their ideas and how

they catch the attention of the readers in their works. Each one of them has a

particular way to portray his/her writing, but the purpose is the same, to share,

inspire, educate and make people enjoy their literature.

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 Conclusion

We were able to observe the history of the of the Contemporary American

Poetry, its different poems and literary works. We leaned that It arose first as

efforts by American colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th

century, well before the constitutional unification of the Thirteen Colonies.

Maya Angelou recounts, with vigor and almost without affectation, in her most

personal autobiographical account, how she was sexually assaulted several

times, the first at age 7 and later she became a dancer, singer, actress, writer,

film director.

Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he brings

home Beau, a large, malnourished golden retriever in need of loving care. Joining

Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family, Beau bounds back into life.

The American Literature is very important because it allows us to know the

different authors and how they express their ideas through their literary works.

35
 Bibliography

https://www.todostuslibros.com/

https://www.todostuslibros.com/busquedas?keyword=Sharmagne+Lela

nd

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/country/America/contemporary/Ameri

can_poets.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_poetry

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/maya_angelou/poems/496

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/maya_angelou/poems/494

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/ai

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