Review of the Awakening
The Awakening Poetic Summary
The awakening
A proto feminist novel
By Kate Chopin.
Shocked the world
Back at the turn
Of the 20th century.
With its depiction
Of a young woman
Awakening to desire
Awakening to eroticism.
Throwing off conventional
Morality and all that entails.
In a futile search
For self-fulfillment
That she could achieve.
And in the end
She takes her life
Unfulfilled desires
Awakening her fears
in the end.
My commentary
- Kate Chopin’s novel, the Awakening is a proto-feminist novel written by Kate Chopin set in Grand Isle Louisiana and New Orleans in the late 1880’s.
It tells the story of Edna Pontellier who is married with two children to a Creole businessman although she had grown up in a protestant family and faced social pressure against the marriage from her family who did not want her to marry a French-speaking Catholic.
She is a sensitive, unhappy soul seeking self-fulfillment and not finding it within the convention of marriage and motherhood. She has an affair with Robert, a young man she meets on vacation. The affair awakens erotic desires in her that ultimately can not be reconciled with the ideal of being a married woman with children in an upper class family at the turn of the 20th century.
The novel ends with her drowning herself.
A powerful novel about a woman trying to free herself from the shackles of conventional morality. The novel was widely condemned at the time for its anti-family and anti-Christian themes. But it has remained an influential early feminist icon of a novel.
Note: when reading the classics written prior to the middle part of the 20th century, one is struck by the casual colonialism, racism, sexism and other isms that can be jarring to modern readers such as frequent use of ethnic slurs like the N word. The key to enjoying the classics is to ignore all of that and read the novel as it was written in the context of the time it was written, avoiding the sins of what Bill Maher and others call “presentism” or the tendency of reading classic literature from earlier times in the context of contemporary moral values. In this novel, blacks appear as servants only without a name often described as “a quadroon or as a black, and not otherwise part of the story.”
Other than that, not too much racism or sexism involved.
-
Qoutes
- “The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.”
- “The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.”
- “but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.”
- “I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself.”
- “The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.”
- “I love the sea in the morning. I can watch the white sails of a boat with a
- long, lingering look.”
-
Co-pilot provides more background
Synopsis
“The Awakening” is set in the late 19th century and follows Edna Pontellier, a young woman vacationing with her husband, Léonce, and their children at a resort on Grand Isle1. Edna begins to question her life and societal roles after forming a close bond with Robert Lebrun and Mademoiselle Reisz. She embarks on a journey of self-discovery, exploring her desires and independence, which leads to conflicts with her family and
society.
Literary Reputation
Initially, “The Awakening” was met with harsh criticism for its themes of female sexuality and independence. It was considered controversial and even “poisonous” by some critics3. However, it has since been recognized as a feminist classic and a significant work in American literature3. The novel’s exploration of female autonomy and its lyrical, impressionistic style have earned it a lasting place in literary history.
Author Bio
Kate Chopin (born Katherine O’Flaherty, February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author known for her short stories and novels set in Louisiana5. She was a forerunner of feminist literature, and her works often focused on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women.
Author’s Works
Chopin’s most notable works include “Bayou Folk” (1894), “A Night in Acadie” (1897), and her two novels, “At Fault” (1890) and “The Awakening” (1899).
Novels:
“At Fault” (1890)
“The Awakening” (1899)
Short Story Collections:
“Bayou Folk” (1894)
“A Night in Acadie” (1897)
Notable Short Stories:
“Désirée’s Baby” (1893)
“The Story of an Hour” (1894)
“The Storm” (1898)
Adaptations
“The Awakening” was adapted into a film titled “Grand Isle” in 1991, directed by Mary Lambert and starring Kelly McGill as Edna.
For more info see the following
Reading the Classics Project
Note: I read this book as part of my retirement project of reading the classics, starting with the following collections. I bolded the ones I have completed.
Reading the Classics Updated
Reading the Classics Updated Lists
Rewiew of WIla Cather’s “My Antonio”
Harvard Classics
Bolded read
(1) Franklin, Woolman, Penn
(2) Plato, Epictetus,
Marcus, Aurelius Meditations
(3) Bacon,
Milton’s Prose,
Thomas Browne
(4) Complete Poems in English: Milton
(5) Essays and English Traits: Emerson (
6) Poems and Songs: Burns (7)
Confessions of St. Augustine. Imitation of Christ
(8) Nine Greek Dramas (9)
Letters and Treatises of Cicero
Pliny
(10) Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith
(11) Origin of Species: Darwin
(12) Plutarch’s Lives (13)
Aeneid Virgil (14)
Don Quixote Part 1: Cervantes
(15) Pilgrim’s Progress. Donne
Herbert. Bunyan, Walton
(16) The Thousand and One Night
(17) Folk-Lore and Fable. Aesop, Grimm,
Andersen
Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales
(18) Modern English Drama
(19) Faust,
Egmont Etc.
Doctor Faustus,
Goethe,
Marlowe
(20) The Divine Comedy: Dante
(21) I Promessi
Sposi,
Manzoni
(22) The Odyssey: Homer
(23) Two Years Before Mast. Dana
(24) On the Sublime French Revolution Etc. Burke
(25) Autobiography Etc. Essays and Addresses: J.S. Mill,
- Carlyle
(26) Continental Drama
(27) English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay
(28) Essays. English and American
(29) Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin (
30) Faraday,
Helmholtz,
Kelvin,
Newcomb,
Geikie
(31) Autobiography: Benvenuto, Cellini
(32) Literary and Philosophical Essays:
Montaigne,
Sainte Beuve,
Renan,
Lessing,
Schiller,
Kant,
Mazzini
(33) Voyages and Travels
(34) Descartes,
Voltaire,
Rousseau,
Hobbes
(35) Chronicle and Romance:
Froissart,
Malory,
Holinshed (36)
Machiavelli, the Prince
More,
Luther
(37) Locke,
Berkeley,
Hume
(38) Harvey,
Jenner,
Lister,
Pasteur
(39) Famous Prefaces
(40) English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray
(41) English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald
(42) English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman
(43) American Historical Documents
Federalist Papers
Constitution
Bill of Rights
Declaration of Indepedence
(44) Sacred Writings 1
(45) Sacred Writings 2
The Bible
The Quaran
The Analect of Confucius
Mencius
Buddist Writing
Bhaga Vita
Lao Tzo The Tao
(46) Elizabethan Drama 1
(47) Elizabethan Drama 2
(48) Thoughts and Minor Works: Pascal
(49) Epic and Saga (
50 Books to Read Before You Die
Vol 1 starts with Volume One
Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
Austen, Jane: Emma
Balzac, Honoré de: Father Goriot
Barbusse, Henri: The Inferno
Brontë, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes
Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh
Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Cather, Willa: My Ántonia
Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quixote
Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
Cleland, John: Fanny Hill
Collins, Wilkie: The Moonstone
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
Conrad, Joseph: Nostromo
Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of Courage
Cummings, E. E.: The Enormous Room
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Idiot
Doyle, Arthur Conan: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie
Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
Dumas, Alexandre: The Count of Monte Cristo
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental Education
Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier
Forster, E. M.: A Room With a View
Forster, E. M.: Howard End
Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls
Gorky, Maxim: The Mother
Haggard, H. Rider: King Solomon’s Mines
Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
Homer: The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hugo, Victor: Les Misérables
Huxley, Aldous: Crome Yellow
James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady
Volume 2
– Little Women [Louisa May Alcott]
– Sense and Sensibility [Jane Austen]
– Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) [J.M. Barrie]
– Cabin Fever [ B. M. Bower]
– The Secret Garden [Frances Hodgson Burnett]
– A Little Princess [Frances Hodgson Burnett]
– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland [Lewis Carroll]
– The King in Yellow [Robert William Chambers]
– The Man Who Knew Too Much [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Woman in White [Wilkie Collins]
– The Most Dangerous Game [Richard Connell]
– Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe]
– On the Origin of Species, 6th Edition [Charles Darwin]
– The Iron Woman [Margaret Deland]
– David Copperfield [Charles Dickens]
– Oliver Twist [Charles Dickens]
– A Tale of Two Cities [Charles Dickens]
– The Double [Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Francis Scott Fitzgerald]
– A Room with a View [E. M. Forster]
– Dream Psychology [Sigmund Freud]
– Tess of the d’Urbervilles [Thomas Hardy]
– Siddhartha [Hermann Hesse]
– Dubliners [James Joyce]
– The Fall of the House of Usher [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Arabian Nights [Andrew Lang]
– The Sea Wolf [Jack London]
– The Call of Cthulhu [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– Anne of Green Gables [Lucy Maud Montgomery]
– Beyond Good and Evil [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]
– The Murders in the Rue Morgue [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Black Cat [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Raven [Edgar Allan Poe]
– Swann’s Way [Marcel Proust]
– Romeo and Juliet [William Shakespeare]
– Treasure Island [Robert Louis Stevenson]
– The Elements of Style [William Strunk Jr.
Vol 3 finished keeping for the historical record
This book contains the following works arranged alphabetically by authors’ last names.
Starting with volume 3 then will go back and do volumes one, two, and the Harvard classics. The goal is to finish all of these by the end of next year. I almost finished Volume One. Will do some of the WC reading books as well.
– What’s Bred in the Bone [Grant Allen]
– The Golden Ass [Lucius Apuleius]
– Meditations [Marcus Aurelius]
– Northanger Abbey [Jane Austen]
– Lady Susan [Jane Austen]
– The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [Lyman Frank Baum]
– The Art of Public Speaking [Dale Breckenridge Carnegie]
– The Blazing World [Margaret Cavendish]
– The Wisdom of Father Brown [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– Heretics [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Donnington Affair [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Innocence of Father Brown [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [John Cleland]
– The Moonstone [Wilkie Collins]
– Lord Jim [Joseph Conrad]
– The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe]
– The Pickwick Papers [Charles Dickens]
– A Christmas Carol [Charles Dickens]
– Notes From The Underground [Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
– The Gambler par Fyodor [Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
– The Lost World [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Hound of the Baskervilles [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Sign of the Four [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Man in the Iron Mask [Alexandre Dumas]
– The Three Musketeers [Alexandre Dumas]
– This Side of Paradise [Francis Scott Fitzgerald]
– Curious, If True: Strange Tales [Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell]
– King Solomon’s Mines [Henry Rider Haggard]
– The Hunchback of Notre Dame [Victor Hugo]
– Kim [Rudyard Kipling]
– Captain Courageous [Rudyard Kipling]
– The Jungle Book [Rudyard Kipling]
– Lady Chatterley’s Lover [David Herbert Lawrence]
– The Son of the Wolf [Jack London]
– The Einstein Theory of Relativity [Hendrik Antoon Lorentz]
– The Dunwich Horror [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– At the Mountains of Madness [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– The Prince [Niccolò Machiavelli]
– The Story Girl [Lucy Maud Montgomery]
– The Antichrist [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]
– The Republic [Plato]
– The Last Man [Mary Shelley]
– Life On The Mississippi [Mark Twain]
– The Kama Sutra [Vatsyayana]
– In the Year 2889 [Jules Verne]
– Around the World in Eighty Days [Jules Verne]
– Four Just Men [Edgar Wallace]
– Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ [Lewis Wallace]
– Jacob’s Room [Virginia Woolf]
Sci-Fi short stories
The Big Book of Science Fiction is a massive anthology of science fiction stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It covers the history and evolution of the genre from the early 20th century to the end of the millennium, featuring works from over 30 countries and many languages. The book contains 105 stories, ranging from classics by H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to lesser-known gems by W.E.B. Du Bois, David R. Bunch, and Liu Cixin. The book also includes comments from the editors and the authors, offering insights into their creative process and vision. The book is divided into 11 sections, each with a thematic focus and chronological order.
Here is the table of contents for the book1:
Goal read one to five per week alternating with Kindle classics and reading poetry collections finish by end of the year
Introduction: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Lens of Time: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing
H.G. Wells: “The Star” (1897)
Lu Xun: “The New Overworld” (1902)
Sultana’s Dream: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)
Albert Robida: “The Triumph of Mechanics” (1908)
Miguel de Unamuno: “Mechanopolis” (1913)
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Comet” (1920)
Claude Farrère: “The Fate of the Poseidonia” (1923)
Edmond Hamilton: “The Star Stealers” (1929)
David H. Keller: “The Lost Language” (1934)
Stanislaw Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Jorge Luis Borges: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940)
Cixin Liu: “The Poetry Cloud” (1997)
Invasions
Edgar Rice Burroughs: “A Princess of Mars” (1912) excerpt
Leslie F. Stone: “The Conquest of Gola” (1931)
Stanley G. Weinbaum: “A Martian Odyssey” (1934)
John W. Campbell Jr.: “Who Goes There?” (1938)
Ray Bradbury: “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” (1949)
Katherine MacLean: “Pictures Don’t Lie” (1951)
William Tenn: “The Liberation of Earth” (1953)
J.G. Ballard: “The Voices of Time” (1960)
Dino Buzzati: “Catastrophe” (1966)
James Tiptree Jr.: “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972)
Joanna Russ: “When It Changed” (1972)
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “The Spontaneous Reflex” (1973) excerpt
Octavia Butler: “Bloodchild” (1984)
James Patrick Kelly: “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995)
Monsters
H.P. Lovecraft: “The Dunwich Horror” (1929)
Ray Bradbury: “The Foghorn” (1951)
Jerome Bixby: “It’s a Good Life” (1953)
Julio Cortázar: “Axolotl” (1956)
J.G. Ballard: “The Drowned Giant” (1964)
R.A. Lafferty: “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” (1966)
Terry Carr: “The Dance of the Changer and the Three” (1968)
Harlan Ellison®: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967)
Lisa Tuttle & George R.R. Martin: “The Storms of Windhaven” (1975)
John Varley: “Air Raid” (1977)
William Gibson: “New Rose Hotel” (1984)
Ted Chiang: “Story of Your Life” (1998)
Experiments
Alfred Jarry: “Elements of Pataphysics” (1911)
Karel Čapek: “R.U.R.” (1920) excerpt
Stanisław Lem: “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” (1955)
William S. Burroughs: “Excerpt from Naked Lunch” (1959)
J.G. Ballard: “Chronopolis” (1960)
Philip K. Dick: “Beyond Lies the Wub” (1952)
Boris Vian: “Froth on the Daydream” (1947) excerpt
Joanna Russ: “Useful Phrases for the Tourist” (1970)
George Alec Effinger: “Two Sadnesses” (1973)
John Sladek: “Solar Shoe Salesman” (1974)
Dafydd ab Hugh: “The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk” (1986)
Generation Ships
Don Wilcox: “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (1940)
Judith Merril: “Daughters of Earth” (1952)
Brian W. Aldiss: “Non-Stop” (1958) excerpt
Robert Silverberg: “Sundance” (1969)
Pamela Zoline: “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967)
Gene Wolfe: “A Cabin on the Coast” (1984)
Bruce Sterling: “Swarm” (1982)
Geoff Ryman: “The Unconquered Country” (1984)
New Worlds
Cordwainer Smith: “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” (1961)
Samuel R. Delany: “Aye, and Gomorrah …” (1967)
Ursula K. Le Guin: “Vaster Than Empires and Slower” (1971)
James Tiptree Jr.: “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” (1976)
Frederik Pohl: “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” (1972)
Angélica Gorodischer: “Of Navigators and Traitors” (1973) excerpt
John Crowley: “Snow” (1985)
Iain M. Banks: “A Gift from the Culture” (1987)
Greg Egan: “Learning to Be Me” (1990)
Future War
Jack London: “The Unparalleled Invasion” (1910)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “The Coming Race” (1871) excerpt
George Griffith: “The War of the Viruses” (1895)
Philip Francis Nowlan: “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” (1928)
E.E. “Doc” Smith: “The Skylark of Space” (1928) excerpt
Olaf Stapledon: “Star Maker” (1937) excerpt
Robert A. Heinlein: “Solution Unsatisfactory” (1941)
C.M. Kornbluth: “Two Dooms” (1958)
Joe Haldeman: “Hero” (1972)
Harry Harrison: “The Streets of Ashkelon” (1962)
David R. Bunch: “Moderan” (1967)
Harlan Ellison®: “A Boy and His Dog” (1969)
James S.A. Corey: “Rates of Change” (2011)
Virtual Reality
Stanisław Lem: “The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good” (1965)
Philip K. Dick: “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966)
John Brunner: “The Vitanuls” (1967)
Roger Zelazny: “For a Breath I Tarry” (1966)
Robert Silverberg: “Passengers” (1968)
Rudy Rucker: “Software” (1982) excerpt
William Gibson: “Burning Chrome” (1982)
Pat Cadigan: “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986)
Neal Stephenson: “Snow Crash” (1992) excerpt
Humanity 2.0
Olaf Stapledon: “Odd John” (1935) excerpt
C.L. Moore: “No Woman Born” (1944)
Cordwainer Smith: “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950)
Algis Budrys: “Who?” (1955)
James Blish: “Surface Tension” (1952)
Gregory Benford: “Blood Music” (1983)
Bruce Sterling: “Mozart in Mirrorshades” (1985)
Vernor Vinge: “True Names” (1981)
Ted Chiang: “Understand” (1991)
Alien Minds
Arthur C. Clarke: “The Sentinel” (1951)
Isaac Asimov: “The Last Question” (1956)
Clifford D. Simak: “Desertion” (1944)
James H. Schmitz: “Grandpa” (1955)
Frank Herbert: “Try to Remember!” (1961)
Philip José Farmer: “Sail On! Sail On!” (1952)
Stanisław Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “Roadside Picnic” (1972) excerpt
Karen Joy Fowler & Pat Murphy: “Rachel in Love” (1987)
Ian McDonald: “The Tear” (2008)
Walter M MIller, JrAfter the End
Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
BOLD read
Edward Lee Masters.
The Hil
Fiddler. Jones,
Petite the Poet
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy
Mr. Flood’s Party.
James Weldon Johnson
The Creation
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The Poet
Life
Life’s Trajedy
Robert Frost.
The Death Of The Hired Man.
Mending Wall.
Birches
Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening.
Tree In My Window.
Directive.
Amy Lowell
Patterns.
Getrude Stein
Susie Asado.
From Tender Buttons A Box.
From Tender Buttons, A Plate.
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
I sit and sew .
Carl Sandburg.
Grass.
Cahoots.
Wallace Stevens.
Peter Quince at the Clavier.
Disillusionment of 10:00.
13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird.
Emperor Of Ice Cream.
A Mere Being.
Angelina Weld Grimke
Fragment.
William Carlos Williams.
Tact.
Dance Ruse
The Yachts.
From Apostlethat Greeny Flower Book 1, Lines 1 To 92.
Sarah Teasdale.
Moonlight.
There Will Come Soft Rains.
Erza Pound
The Jewel Stairs Grievance.
The River Merchants Wife Letter.
In A Station At The Metro.
Hugh Selwyn Mulberry.
From Conto. 56 Libretto Yet Ere This Season Died A Cold
Hilda Doolittle, HD.
Sea Rose.
The Helen.
From The Walls Do Not Fall An Incident Here And There.
From Hermeneutic Definition Red Rose And A Beggar. Why Did You Come?
Take Me Anywhere.
Venicc. Venus.
Robinson, Jeffers.
Gala in April.
Shine, Perishing Republic.
Cloudss at Evening.
Credo
Mararane Moore
Fish.
Poetry.
Poetry.
TS, Elliott.
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
The Wasteland.
Claude McKay.
If We Must Die.
Harlem Dancer.
Archibald MacLeash,
Arts Poetica
Edna, Saint Vincent Millay.
First Fig
Recuerdo
E E Cummings.
In Just.
Buffalo Bill
The Cambridge Ladies Have Lived In Furnished Souls.
Next To, Of Course, God, America.
Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled Gladly Beyond.
Rpophessagr
Gene Toomor.
Reapers.
November Cotton Flowers.
Portrait in Georgia.
Louise Bogan
Medusa.
New moon.
Melvin B Tolson
Dark Symphony.
From Harlem Gallery PSI Black Boys, Let Me Get Up From The White Man’s Table.
Hart Crane
From the Bridge
Poem to Brooklyn Bridge
From 11 Powhatan’s Daughter the River.
Robert Francis.
Silent Poem
Langston Hughes
Nego speaks of rivers.
I, Too.
Dreams Boogie.
Harlem
Countee Cullan
Incident
To John Keats Poet at Springtime
Yes I Do Marvel
From the Dark Tower
Stanley Kutitz
Father and Son
The Protrait
Touch Me
WH Auden
Mussee Des Beaux Arts
Epitah on a Tryant
Theordore Roethke
My Papa’s Waltz
The Waking
In a Dark Time
Charles Olson.
From The Maximum Poems One Maximum Of Gloucester To You.
The Distances.
Elizabeth Bishop.
The Fish
Sestina
First Death In Nova Scotia.
Visit To Saint Elizabeths.
One Art.
Robert Hayden.
Morning Poem For The Queen Of Sunday.
Those Winter Sundays.
Frederick Douglass.
Middle Passage.
Muriel Rukeyser?
Effort At Speech Between Two People. ‘
Then I Saw What The Calling Was.
The Poem as Mask
Delmore Swartz.
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me.
John Barryman.
From Dream Songs.
Feeling Your Compact And Delicious Body. ‘
Life, Friends, Is Boring. We Must Not Say So.
There Shut Down Once. ‘
This World Is Gradually Becoming A Place.
Henry’sUnderstanding
Randall, Jarell.
90 North.
The Death Of The Bell Turret Gunner.
The Woman At The Washington Zoo.
Next Day.
Weldon Kees.
To My Daughter?
Dudley Randall
A Different Image
William Stafford.
Traveling Through The Dark.
At The Bomb Testing Site.
Ruth Stone.
Scars.
Margaret Walker.
For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Mother.
A Song In The Front Yard. ‘
The Bean Eaters
The Lovers Of The Poor.
We Real Cool. ‘
The Blackstone Rangers.
Robert Lowell.
To Speak Of Woe That Is In Marriage.
Skunk Hour .
For The Union Dead.
Robert Duncan.
Often I’m Permitted To Return To A Medow.
My Mother Would Be A Falconress
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Populist Manifesto.
William Meredith.
Parents. Howard Nemeroff.
Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry.
Hayden Caruth.
The Hyacinth Gardens In Brooklyn.
August 1945.
Richard Wilber
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Cottage Street
The Writer
James Dickey
The Sheep Child
Alan Duncan.
Love song I And Thou
Anthony Act.
More light, More light.
Richard Hugo.
The Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg.
The Freaks at Spring General Rd. Field.
Dennis Levertov.
The Unwritten Poem
Cademon.
Swan in Falling snow.
Who is Simpson?
American Poetry.
Carolyn Kaiser.
A Muse of water.
Kenneth Koch.
Fresh air.
Permanently.
Maxine Coleman.
Morning Swim.
How Is It?
Gerald Stern.
Behaving Like A Jew.
The Dancing.
Another Insane Devotion.
AR Ammons.
The City Limits.
Corson Inlet.
Robert Blye.
Snowfall In The Afternoon.
Driving Into Town Late To Mail A Letter.
Walking From Sleep.
Robert Creeley.
The Flower.
I Know A Man.
The Language.
The Rain.
Bresson’s Movies.
James Merrill.
Victor Dog.
Frank O’Hara New York School.
Steps.
Poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed.
The Day Lady Died.
John Ashberry. New York School
Some Trees.
Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror.
What Is Poetry?
Galway, Kennel.
The Bear.`
After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps.
Saint Francis And The Soul.
Ws Merwin.
Air.
For The Anniversary Of My Death.
Yesterday.
Chord .
James Wright.
A Blessing.
Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Oh.
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Mn.
In Response To The Rumor That Otis Warehouse In Wheeling, Wv Has Been Condemned.
Donald Hall.
My Son, My Executioner.
Digging.
Philip Levine.
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives.
They Feed They Lion.
You Can Have It.
The Simple Truth.
Anne Sexton.
Her Kind
Adoption.
Waiting To Die.
In Celebration Of My Uterus.
Rowing
Adrienne Rich.
Orion
Planetarium.
A Valedictorian Forbidding Mourning.
From 21 Love Poems 13 The Rules Of Break Like A Thermometer.
Gregory Corso.
Marriage
Gary Snyder.
Hay, For The Horses.
Riprap.
Mid August As Sourdough Mountain Lookout.
Dereck Walcott.
A Far Cry From Africa.
Sea Grapes.
Find The Schooner Flight Part 11 After The Storm. There’s A Fresh Light That Follows.
The Light Of The World.
From Omeros Book. 7. 44 I Sing Of Quiet,Achiles, Afrolabe’s Son.
Miller Williams.
Let Me tell you.
Etheridge Knight
Idea Of Ancestry.
Amira Baraka, Leroy Jones.
Preface To A 20 Volume Suicide Note.
Agony As Now.
SOS.
Black Art.
Ted Berrigon .
Wrong Rain.
A Final Sonnet
Andre Lorde.
Power.
Sonia Sanchez.
Poetry at 30.
Mark Strand.
The Prediction.
The Night, The Porch.
Russell Edson.
A Stone Is Nobody’s.
Mary Oliver.
Singapore.
The Summer’s Day.
Charles Wright.
Reunion.
Dead Color.
California Dreaming.
Lucile Clifton.
Homage To My Hips.
At Least At Last We Killed The Roaches.
The Death Of Fry, Alfred Clifton.
To My Last.
June, Jordan.
Home About My Rights.
Frederick Seidel.
1968.
CK Williams.
Find My Window.
Blades
Tynan Wilkowski.’
The Mechanic.
Michael S Harper.
Dear John. Dear Coltrane.
Last Affair. Bessies Blues Song.
Grandfather.
Nightmare Begins Responsibility.
Charles Simik .
Stone.
Fork.
Classic Ballroom Dances.
Paula Gunn Allen.
Grandmother.
Frank Bidart.
Ellen West.
Carl Dennis.
Spring Letter.
Two Or Three Wishes.
Stephen Dunn.
Allegory Of The Cave.
Tucson.
Robert Pensky.
History Of My Heart.
The Questions.
Samurai Song.
James Welch.
Christmas Comes To Moccasin Flat.
Billy Collins.
Introduction To Poetry.
The Dead.
Toi Derricote .
Allen Ginsberg.
The Weakness.
Stephen Dobyns.
How To Like It?
Lullaby.
Robert Hass.
Song.
That Photographer?
Return Of Robinson Jeffers.
Lyn Hejinian
From My Life trim With Colored Ribbons.
BH Fairchild.
The Machinist Teaching His Daughter To Play The Piano.
Haik R Madhubuti Don L Lee.
But He Was Cool Or Even Stopped For Green Lights.
Upon To Compliment Other Poems.
William Matthews.
In Memory Of The Utah Stars.
The Accompanist
. Sharon Olds
The Language Of The Brag.
The Lifting.
Henry Taylor.
Barbed Wire.
Tess Gallagher.
Black, Silver.
Under Stars.
Michael Palmer.
I Do Not.
James Tate.
The Lost Pilot.
Norman Dubie.
Elizabeth War With The Christmas Bear.
The Funeral.
Carol Muske Dukes,.
August, Los Angeles Lullaby.
Kay Ryan.
Turtle
Bestiary
Larry Levis.
Childhood Ideogram
Winter Stars
Adrian C Lousis
Looking For Judas
How much lux?
The People of the Other Village.
Marilyn Nelson.
The Ballad of Aunt Geneva.
Star Fix.
Run Stilleman
Albany
AI
Cuba 1963
The Kid
Finished
Yusef Komunyakaa
Thanks
To Do Street
Facing It
Nude Interogation
Nathaniel Mc Kay
Song of the Aduumboulou
Gregory Orr
Gathering the Bones Together
Two Lines From the Brother Grimm
Origin of the Marble Forrest
Robert Hill Whiteman
Reaching Yellow River
Albert Goldbarth
Away
Heather Mc Hugh
Language Lesson 1976
What He Thought
Leslie Marmon Silko
In Cold Storm Light
Olga Boumas
Calypso
Victor Hernadez Soul
Latin and Soul
Jane Miller
Miami Heart
David St. James
Iris
CD Wright
Why Ralph Refuses to Dance
Girl Friend Poe # 3
Crescent
Carolyn Forche
Taking Off My Clothes
Jorie Graham
San Sepolcro
Marie Howe
What the Living Do
Joy Harjo
She Had Some Horses
My House is Red Earth
Garret Honjo
The Legend
Andrew Hugins
Beggoten
We Were Simply Talking
Brigit Peggen Kelly
Imaging Their Own Hyms
Song
Paul Muldoon
Meeting the British
Errata
The Throwback
Judith Orez Coffer
Quinceanera
Rita Dove
Parsley
Day Star
After Reading Mikey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed
Alice Fulton
Our Calling
Barbara Hamby
Thinking of Galileo
Hatred
Mark Jarman
Unholy Sonnet
Naomi Shihab Nye
The Traveling Onion
Arabic
Wedding Cake
Alberto Rios
Nani
England Finally like My Mother Always Said We Would
Laurie Sheck
Nocturne Blue Waves
The Unfinished
Gary Sotto
Field Poem
Oranges
Black Hair
Susan Stewart
Yellow Star and Ice
The Forrest
Mark Dotty
Brillance
Esta Noche
Bill’s Story
Harryette Mullen
Black Nikes
Franz Wright
Alcohol
Lorna Dee Cervantes
To My Brother
Love of My Flesh, Living Death
Sandra Cisneros.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Little Clowns, My Heart.
Cornelius, Eady.
Jack Johnson Does The Eagle Rock.
Crows In A Strong Wind.
I’m A Fool To Love You.
Louise Eldritch
. Indian Boarding School. The Runaways.
David Mason.
Spooning.
Marilyn Chin.
How I Got That Name?
Compose Near The Bay Bridge
The Survivor
Cathy Song .
The Youngest Daughter.
Ann Finch.
Another Reluctance.
Insert
Lee Young Lee.
The Gift
Eating Together.
Carl Phillips
Our Lady
As From a Quiver of Arrows
Nick Flynn
Bag of Mice
Cartoon Physics
Elizabeth Alexander
The Viena Hott not
Reetika Vazirani
From White Elephants
A million Balconies
Train Windows
Sherman Alexie
What the Orphan Inherits
The Pow Wow at the End of the World
Natasha Trethewey
Hot Combs
Amateur Fighter
Flounder
A E Stallings
The Tantrum
Joana Klink
Spare
Brenda Shaughnessy
Post feminism
Your One Good Dress
Kevin Young
Quivira City Limits
Everywhere is Out of Town
Whatever You Want
Terrance Hayes
At Pegasus
Lady Sings the Blues
Substack
Substack Podcast
Medium
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Day 20 Trail of Tears – My Family Connection
