Essay #3: Poetry Research Analysis
Your research essay will ask you to discuss a pair of poems according to one central concept, and to develop that
discussion by including secondary sources. You can learn more about secondary sources by viewing the Foothill Library
instruction videos referenced in the Syllabus (see Syllabus for links). You are required to use three secondary
sources–scholarly to the extent that those sources have been professionally vetted (all of the sources in the
Foothill Library databases are considered scholarly). If you have any question regarding a secondary source’s
legitimacy, please ask.
Choose one of the following:
1. Compare Julio Marzán’s “The Translator at the Reception for Latin American Writers” and “Ethnic Poetry”: what do
those poems suggest about the representation of ethnic minorities?
2. Consider Robert Frost’s “Design” and Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz–when I died”: what do the natural
objects (the creatures, etc.) in these poems symbolize?
3. Discuss Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain” and David R. Slavitt’s “Titanic”; what do these poems
suggest about death and the Titanic?
4. Consider Jimmy Santiago’s “Green Chile” and Sally Croft’s “Home-Baked Bread”: How do these poems use food imagery?
5. Discuss Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” and Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” within
the larger context of seventeenth-century carpe diem poetry.
Julio Marzán (b. 1946)
The Translator at the Reception for
Latin American Writers 1997
Air-conditioned introductions,
then breezy Spanish conversation
fan his curiosity to know
what country I come from.
“Puerto Rico and the Bronx.” 5
Spectacled downward eyes
translate disappointment
like a poison mushroom
puffed in his thoughts as if,
after investing a sizable 10
intellectual budget, transporting
a huge cast and camera crew
to film on location
Mayan pyramid grandeur,
indigenes whose ancient gods 15
and comet-tail plumage
inspire a glorious epic
of revolution across a continent,he received a lurid script
for a social documentary 20
rife with dreary streets
Julio Marzán (b. 1946)
Ethnic Poetry 1994
The ethnic poet said: “The earth is maybe
a huge maraca / and the sun a trombone /
and life / is to move your ass / to slow beats.”
The ethnic audience roasted a suckling pig.
The ethnic poet said: “Oh thank Goddy, Goddy / 5
I be me, my toenails curled downward /
deep, deep, deep into Mama earth.”
The ethnic audience shook strands of sea shells.
The ethnic poet said: “The sun was created black /
so we should imagine light / and also dream / 10
a walrus emerging from the broken ice.”
The ethnic audience beat on sealskin drums.
The ethnic poet said: “Reproductive organs /
Eagles nesting California redwoods /
Shut up and listen to my ancestors.” 15
The ethnic audience ate fried bread and honey.
The ethnic poet said: “Something there is that
doesn’t love a wall / That sendsthe frozen-ground-swell under it.”
The ethnic audience deeply understood humanity. 20
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Design 1936
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all,° holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth —
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right, 5
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth —
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had the flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? 10
2 heal-all: A common flower, usually blue, once used for medicinal purposes.
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? —
If design govern in a thing so small.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — c. 1862
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air —
Between the Heaves of Storm —
The Eyes around — had wrung them dry — 5
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset — when the King
Be witnessed — in the Room —
I willed my Keepsakes — Signed away
What portion of me be 10
Assignable — and then it was
There interposed a Fly —
With Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz —
Between the light — and me —
And then the Windows failed — and then 15
I could not see to see —
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
The Convergence of the Twain 1912
Lines on the Loss of the “Titanic”°
i
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
ii
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,° 5
Cold currents thrid,° and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
iii
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
iv
Jewels in joy designed 10
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
v
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” 15
vi
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
vii
Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great — 20
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
viii
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
ix
Alien they seemed to be: 25
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
x
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event, 30
xi
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
David R. Slavitt (b. 1935)
Titanic 1983
Who does not love the Titanic?
If they sold passage tomorrow for that same crossing,
who would not buy?
To go down . . . We all go down, mostly
alone. But with crowds of people, friends, servants, 5
well fed, with music, with lights! Ah!
And the world, shocked, mourns, as it ought to do
and almost never does. There will be the books and movies
to remind our grandchildren who we were
and how we died, and give them a good cry. 10
Not so bad, after all. The cold
water is anesthetic and very quick.
The cries on all sides must be a comfort.
We all go: only a few, first-class.
Jimmy Santiago Baca (b. 1952)
Green Chile 1989
I prefer red chile over my eggs
and potatoes for breakfast.
Red chile ristras° decorate my door, braided strings of peppers
dry on my roof, and hang from eaves.
They lend open-air vegetable stands 5
historical grandeur, and gently swing
with an air of festive welcome.
I can hear them talking in the wind,
haggard, yellowing, crisp, rasping
tongues of old men, licking the breeze. 10
But grandmother loves green chile.
When I visit her,
she holds the green chile pepper
in her wrinkled hands.
Ah, voluptuous, masculine, 15
an air of authority and youth simmers
from its swan-neck stem, tapering to a flowery
collar, fermenting resinous spice.
A well-dressed gentleman at the door
my grandmother takes sensuously in her hand, 20
rubbing its firm glossed sides,
caressing the oily rubbery serpent,
with mouth-watering fulfillment,
fondling its curves with gentle fingers.
Its bearing magnificent and taut 25
as flanks of a tiger in mid-leap,
she thrusts her blade into
and cuts it open, with lust
on her hot mouth, sweating over the stove,
bandanna round her forehead, 30
mysterious passion on her face
and she serves me green chile con carne
between soft warm leaves of corn tortillas,
with beans and rice — her sacrifice
to her little prince. 35
I slurp from my plate
with last bit of tortilla, my mouth burns
and I hiss and drink a tall glass of cold water.
All over New Mexico, sunburned men and women
drive rickety trucks stuffed with gunny-sacks 40
of green chile, from Belen, Veguita, Willard, Estancia,
San Antonio y Socorro, from fields
to roadside stands, you see them roasting green chile
in screen-sided homemade barrels, and for a dollar a bag,
we relive this old, beautiful ritual again and again. 45
Sally Croft (b. 1935)
Home-Baked Bread 1981
Nothing gives a household a greater sense of stability and common comfort than the
aroma of cooling bread. Begin, if you like, with a loaf of whole wheat, which requires
neither sifting nor kneading, and go on from there to more cunning triumphs.
— The Joy of Cooking
What is it she is not saying?
Cunning triumphs. It rings
of insinuation. Step into my kitchen,
I have prepared a cunning triumph
for you. Spices and herbs 5
sealed in this porcelain jar,
a treasure of my great-aunt
who sat up past midnight
in her Massachusetts bedroom
when the moon was dark. Come, 10
rest your feet. I’ll make
you tea with honey and slices
of warm bread spread with peach butter.
I picked the fruit this morning
still fresh with dew. The fragrance 15
is seductive? I hoped you would say that.
See how the heat rises
when the bread opens. Come,
we’ll eat together, the small flakes
have scarcely any flavor. What cunning 20
triumphs we can discover in my upstairs room
where peach trees breathe their sweetness
beside the open window and
sun lies like honey on the floor.
Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
To the Virgins, to Make
Much of Time 1648
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime, 15
You may for ever tarry.
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
To His Coy Mistress 1681
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’° side 5
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber° would complain.° I would write love songs
Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews. 10
My vegetable love should grow°
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze,
Two hundred to adore each breast, 15
But thirty thousand to the rest:
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate. 20
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found, 25
Nor in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust. 30
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires° breathes forth 35
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped° power. slow-jawed 40
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough° the iron gates of life. through
Thus, though we cannot make our sun 45
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
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