Consider...

Isn't it wonderful that someone is capable of condensing all our emotions in a few lines...

Suicide's Note

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

His poetry is not only simple and easy to read but just touches so many chords and pangs; he talks about inequality, pain, racism but in the end it all boils down to being one(being American is what he stresses).

Another poem I loved was Theme for English B. A part of it goes like this..

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.

Somewhat more free..we all are trapped in that paradigm, aren't we?
Hughes also wrote a series of Madam poems. Madam and her madam, Madam and her phone bill, etc. They are about the African-American woman living in the city on her own terms, but facing the inequality.

Hughes : tempting and impassable. A must read.

American Poet - One

Our Post Graduate course has poems by Densie Levertov. Woman poet, writing against the Vietnam war, writing erotic poetry...One cannot dislike her.
The one i liked was one called the "The Ache of Marriage"


The ache of marriage:
thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it,
it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion
and are turned away, beloved,
each and each

It is leviathan and we
in its belly
looking for joy, some joy
not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of
the ache of it.


The best way to admire such a poet, i believe, is not to study or analyze him/her but to enjoy. What i loved about this poem was the rich passion and how the climax and the anti-climax are the same. The realization and futility of that love or sex are recognized in this ache. (~have begun theorizing..~)

...one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one...
(From Looking, Walking, Being)

To be continued...
Next American poet : Langston Hughes