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Persona Poem
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EXAMPLE 1
Knowit Hoheimer
I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. When I felt the bullet enter my heart I wished I had stayed at home and gone to jail For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, Instead of running away and joining the army. Rather a thousand times the country jail Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, “Pro Patria."
-- Edgar Lee Masters
EXAMPLE 2
The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter (after Rihaku)
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums, And we went on living in the village of Chokan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you. I never laughed, being bashful. Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen, I stopped scowling, I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever. Why should I climb the lookout.
At sixteen you departed. You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies, And. you have been gone five months. The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out. By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, Too deep to clear them away! The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older. If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, Please let me know beforehand, And I will come out to meet you As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
--Ezra Pound
EXAMPLE 3
Protocols
(Birkenau, Odessa; the children speak alternately.)
We went there on the train. They had big barges that they towed. We stood up, there were so many I was squashed. There was a smoke-stack, then they made me wash. It was a factory, I think. My mother held me up And I could see the ship that made the smoke.
When I was tired my mother carried me. She said, "Don't be afraid." But I was only tired. Where we went there is no more .Odessa. They had water in a pipe--like rain, but hot; The water there is deeper than the world
And I was tired and fell in in my sleep And the water drank me. That is what I think. And I said to my mother, "Now I'm washed and dried.” My mother hugged me and it smelled like hay And that is how you die. And that is how you die.
--Randall Jarrell. |
