Malte's+Eating+Poetry

=History Project= = = = = =media type="custom" key="6267983"= = = = = =//__School Poems: Malte Heissel__//=

"On reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High"
// D. C. Berry // Before I opened my mouth I noticed them sitting there as orderly as frozen fish in a package. Slowly water began to fill the room though I did not notice it till it reached my ears and then I heard the sounds of fish in an aquarium and I knew that though I had tried to drown them with my words that they had only opened up like gillsfor them and let me in. Together we swam around the room like thirty tails whacking words till the bell rang puncturing a hole in the door where we all leaked out They went to another class I suppose and I home where Queen Elizabeth my cat met me and licked my fins till they were hands again.

D.C. Berry's Higher Purpose

"Theme for English B"
by [|Langston Hughes] The instructor said,

//Go home and write// //a page tonight.// //And let that page come out of you—// //Then, it will be true.//

I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in [|Winston-Salem]. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above [|Harlem]. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you. hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me—who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn’t make me //not// like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white— yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That’s American. Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that’s true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me— although you’re older—and white— and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Langston Hughes' Higher Purpose

Trying to protect his students' innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The [|Spanish Inquisition] was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as "How far is it from here to Madrid?" "What do you call the matador's hat?"

The [|War of the Roses] took place in a garden, and the [|Enola Gay] dropped one tiny atom on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the [|Boer War] told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off.

Billy Collins' Higher Purpose