Leslie Fiedler
Oral poetry presentation- ideas for a poem to use?
i have to memorize it, so something with maybe 4-6 stanzas and has a deeper meaning that i can elaborate on. not really a poem that describes an eagle if you know what i mean. i need to talk about it for about 9 minuets. thanks a million!
Public Comments
- Maybe a Shakespearean sonnet? They are short and easily memorised. Sonnet 18 'Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?' is popular and so is no.130 'My Mistress' eyes.' Have a look on http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-sonnets.htm and see what suits you. Alternatively there is 'Tyger" by William Blake, "the piano' by D.H Lawrence, 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' by John Keats or 'The Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe (my favorite for an oral). Run these names through google(opps I mean yahoo) and see what you like.
- Remember Christina Rossetti Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you planned: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad. Maybe too short for you, but one of my favorite poems!
- Try "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. Short Stanzas, wonderful rhyming scheme and all kinds of deeper meaning. Not to mention it was part of a collection of poetry by Frost called "North of Boston" which won a Pulitzer Prize
- the tyger is very good and can be recited very effectively.
- How about "The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats? Short and lots to talk about. There is no eagle in it, but there is a falcon: 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 Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
