Adolescence-III By Rita Dove

With Dad gone, Mom and I workedThe dusky rows of tomatoes. As they glowed orange in sunlightAnd rotted in shadow, I tooGrew orange and softer, swelling outStarched cotton slips.The texture of twilight made me think ofLengths of Dotted Swiss. In my roomI wrapped scarred knees in dressesThat once went to big-band dances; I baptized my earlobes with rosewater. Along the window-sill, the lipstick stubsGlittered in their steel shells.Looking out at the rows of clayAnd chicken maure, I dreamed how it would happen:He would meet me by the blue spruce, A canrnation over his heart,saying,"I have come for you, Madam;I have loved you in my dreams."At his touch, the scabs would fall away. Over his shoulder, I see my father coming toward us: He carries his tears in a bowl,And blood hangs in the pine-soaked air.

Rita Dove:She often gives public readings of her poems and intends them to be read aloud.

This poem is the third in a series of three poems about being young that she has written.The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Harlem By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry uplike a raisen in the sun?Or fester kuje a sore-And then run?Does it sink like rotten meat?Ir crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?

Langston Hughes incorproated patterns of African-American music into his poetry. He was born in Missouri and began writing poems in the eighth grade.

Life for My Child is Simple By Gwendolyn Brooks

Life for my child is simple, and is good. He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all.Because I know mine too.And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things,Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a windowOr tipping over an ice box panOr snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outletOr a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss.No. There is more to it than that.It is that he has never been afraid.Rather, he reaches out and lo the chair falls with a beautiful crash,And the blocks fall, down on the people's heads,And the water comes slooshing sloppily out across the floor.And so forth.Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible.But never has he been afraid to reach.His lesions are legion.But reaching is his rule.Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the effects of racism and poverty.

The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

I, Too By Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother, They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh, And eat well,And grow strong.Tomorrow, I'll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody'll dareSay to me, "Eat in the kitchen,"Then.Besides, They'll see how beautiful I amAnd be ashamed-I, too, am

AmericaThe Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.Whatever I see I swallow immediatelyJust as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.I am not cruel, only truthful-The eye of a little god, four-cornered.Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.It is pin, with speckles. I have looked at it so longI think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.Faces and darkness separate us over and over.Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is.Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.I am important to her. She comes and goes.Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.In me she was drowned a young girl, and in me an old womanRises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath wrote openly and honestly about the reality of her life. Her poems read liek confessions that exposed their troubled lives.

The Language of Literature. McDougall Littel,

Lucinda Matlock by Edgar Lee Masters

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick.
I made the garden, and for the holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed-
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you-
It takes life to love Life.

Edgar Lee Masters was born in 1868 and died in 1950.
He moved a lot when he was young with his family.
He also worked with his father for a while in a Law business.

The Poems I wrote.

This Antholy is made up of peoms I found from several books. Some of them I found to be quite interesting and I liked what they had to tell about. Some of them were a lot shorter than others. Some of the poems I got from the English book. I liked this project because it was pretty easy for the most part. I liked hearing all the different kinds of poems by different writters with different writting styles.