short & sweet

Well, I'm back, thanks to the week I've spent planning my first middle school teaching unit on poetry! I don't much like haikus, but I absolutely love poems that could almost be haikus. Here are some awesome ones:

First, a classic by Ezra Pound.

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

It's just the perfect juxtaposition of images... the blurred image of pink faces through a rain-spattered window, the pink petals quivering in the wind.

I don't really know who Charles Reznikoff is, but I came across these clever poems in one of my anthologies.

The Bridge

In a cloud bones of steel.

Epitaph

Not the five feet of water to your chin

but the inch above the tip of your nose.

The Old Man

The fish has too many bones

and the watermelon too many seeds.

Finally, the double meaning of this one by Robert Bly just makes me giggle.

Their Sex Life

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