merritt's Musings
I am an experienced English teacher who loves poetry, literature and education. Hear my thoughts on my favorite poems, as well as tips and tricks for how to help students learn. And thoughts about my dogs.I'd love to hear your thoughts on this podcast and any suggestions you may have for topics/poems for me to muse about. Please email me at svahatao@yahoo.com.
"Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats
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The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
A...
"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver
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“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
...
"God Says Yes to Me" by Kaylin Huaght
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God Says Yes to Me
By Kaylin Huaght
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it...
"The Cure of Troy" by Seamus Heaney
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The Cure of Troy by Seamus Heaney
Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
History says, Don’t hope
On the side of the grave,’
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea- change
On the far side of revenge. ...
"I am not I" by Jimenez
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“I Am Not I”
BY JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
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"I Want to Age Like Seaglass" by Bernadette Noll
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I want to age like sea glass
By Bernadette Noll
I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.
When I...
"For a Dead Kitten" by Sarah Henderson Hay
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For a Dead Kitten
by Sara Henderson Hay
Put the rubber mouse away,
Pick the spools up from the floor,
What was velvet shod, and gay,
Will not want them, any more.
What was warm, is strangely cold.
Whence dissolved the little breath?
How could this small body hold
So immense a thing as Death?
"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Whitman
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When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
BY WALT WHITMAN
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
"The Mad Gardener's Song" by Lewis Carroll
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The Mad Gardener’s Song
by Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898)
He thought he saw an Elephant
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
"At length I realise," he said,
"The bitterness of Life!"
He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister's Husband's Niece.
"Unless you leave this house," he said,
"I'll send fo...
"What I Learned from My Mother" by Kasdorf
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What I Learned From My Mother
BY JULIA KASDORF
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a...
"Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman
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Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman
(excerpts)
1.
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want...
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (with bonus e e cummings poem)
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Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms wer...
"Dust" by Dorianne Laux
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"Dust"
BY DORIANNE LAUX
Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor —
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine po...
"The White Knight's Song" by Lewis Carroll
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"The White Knight's Song" by Lewis Carroll
`I’ll tell thee everything I can;
There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
“Who are you, aged man?’ I said.
“and how is it you live?”
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said “I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell the...
"Dharma" by Billy Collins
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=40285
“DHARMA” BY BILLY COLLINS
The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.
Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance-
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy...
"Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45081/the-cremation-of-sam-mcgee
The Cremation of Sam McGee
BY ROBERT W. SERVICE
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, w...
"what if a much of a which of a wind" by e. e. cummings
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"What if a much of a which of a wind"
e. e. cummings
what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
– when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man
what if a keen of a l...
"The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare
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The Listeners
BY WALTER DE LA MARE
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"White Knight's Song" by Lewis Carrol
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https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/poetry/poems/whiteKnightSong.html
"The White Knight's Song" by Lewis Carrol
`I’ll tell thee everything I can;
There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
“Who are you, aged man?’ I said.
“and how is it you live?”
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said “I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutt...
"The Bagel" by David Ignatow
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The Bagel
I stopped to pick up the bagel
rolling away in the wind,
annoyed with myself
for having dropped it
as if it were a portent.
Faster and faster it rolled,
with me running after it
bent low, gritting my teeth,
and I found myself doubled over
and rolling...
"The Waking" by Theodore Roethke
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You can find the full text of the poem below, and by visiting: https://poets.org/poem/waking
“The Waking”
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being d...
"People Like Us" by Robert Bly
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"People Like Us" by Robert Bly
There are more like us. All over the world
there are confused people, who can’t remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can’t remember where
He was when they went to sleep. It’s
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time
To save the ho...
"Banneker" by Rita Dove
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Here is a link to this poem: https://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/banneker/
Here is the text of this poem:
Banneker
By Rita Dove
What did he do except lie
under a pear tree, wrapped in
a great cloak, and meditate
on the heavenly bodies?
Venerable, the good people of Baltimore
whispered, shocked and more than
a little afraid. After all it was said
he took t...
"What the Dog Perhaps Hears" by Lisel Mueller
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Jason Merritt reads the poem "What the Dog Perhaps Hears" by Lisel Mueller and muses on why he loves this poem and what it means to educators/parents/ministers.
Here is the text of this poem: http://www.bio.brandeis.edu/~sekuler/senpro/topic_1_stuff/what_the_dog_hears_perhaps.html
“WHAT THE DOG PERHAPS HEARS”
By LISEL MUELLER
If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him...
"Last Night As I Was Sleeping"
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https://allpoetry.com/Last-Night-As-I-Was-Sleeping
Here is the text of this week's poem:
“Last Night As I Was Sleeping”
By Antonio Machado
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a...
