- •Unit one
- •I will teach you in my verse
- •I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
- •Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
- •Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
- •Is a paling stout and spiky?
- •It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
- •Islington and Isle of Wight,
- •I like them all!
- •Unit two
- •I'm Joe Linn, I come from San Francisco. I'm leaving for Peking.
- •I'm going to learn Chinese. I know some words already
- •I hope you like Peking.
- •Unit three
- •It’s cuz we're concentrating
- •Is reality’s accordion. Unexpectedly
- •I thought this was
- •I took drama
- •Into my own hands and alongside
- •I told you not to do it and you did it again!
- •Unit four
- •Violently engaged. But it was the artists
- •I looked left toward the little bridge,
- •Incredibly enough, being led
- •In servizio sulla Linea Mediterraneo - Nord America sailing 1968
- •Unit five
- •It was “about breeding.”. Breeding yes, I flashed the thought of all the deaths
- •In the birdcage
- •In the face of “what counts
- •It’s pennies”. In o-eight
- •Unit six
- •In the feminist fable
- •Into activist or choose to manifest
- •In smokey loops
- •Unit seven
- •Is That Why They Call Them Flower Children?
- •In a high school senior play, shouting
- •In broken English and rapid Greek about tanks
- •Into citizens, just now, in the streets of Prague.
- •I was running
- •In the gutters
- •I still see blue sky and sea under sun and wind
- •Is a little dock, still a black rock beach, footprints
- •Unit eight
- •In search of Athena and Apollo’s
- •In different, steaming jungles in Vietnam.
- •Unit nine
- •Voice spilling. He will not
- •Voices soften thick air and as they sing every
- •If you run after two hares you will catch neither.
- •Unit ten
- •In rural Turkey?
- •I feel sure that was the afternoon
- •Unit eleven
- •In Athens the Greek music
- •I squint myself into your eight and ten year old eyes to conger
- •Into a monster. Other answers are better buried.
- •Sideducking Your Question
- •Family Game
- •Irresistible
- •Is a room whose boundaries invite me to compose
- •Is a room
- •Answering Machine
- •Into the room where only
- •The Business of a Clean Sweep
- •The Night House
- •Into half truths. Simply an issue of light.
- •In her house in the middle
- •University Weather
- •Clinic Wait
- •Is in an exam.
- •The Baroness of Ballard
- •In hers. He says
- •Is dying but she is hanging-on.
- •Salzbergwerk Berchtesgaden in Germany
- •I forget where we were headed but it rained.
- •It was dark, a musty smell and the guide’s voice
- •Passages in the Bad-Hotel Zum Hirsh
- •Milltown Maltbay, Cookery School
- •Fourth Day at the Literary Seminar
- •In pink overstuffed
- •You Hated to Practice
- •Our Teacher Says Music is Her Mission
- •In a room that is the color of ice. First Rehearsal of the Opera, "Andrea Chénier"
- •Emanuel Ax, Hunger & Taste
- •Barometric Pressure
- •Its little ledges of blue slow motion
- •Inflaming the cheek after the slap.
- •The Question of the Color of the Walls
- •In splats of blistering gold & refresh ourselves in grapefruit.
- •Eau de California
- •The Perfumer
- •Afterimage of the Bird of Passage
- •The Most Important Thing to Save When the House is Burning Down
- •I needed that.
In servizio sulla Linea Mediterraneo - Nord America sailing 1968
radiant white with red trim
tourist class three decks below
ninety foot beam
seven hundred feet long
twenty-nine thousand one-hundred-ninety-one gross tons
simultaneously animate and inanimate
steam turbines power two propellers
a vessel of decks, boilers and a captain's bridge above
one thousand fifty five persons eating
bread baked fresh
traveling at twenty-three knots
these days at sea
we've gone all wobbly
think in all directions
three meals
antipasto
four varieties olives greens and blacks
fish eggs
medley of paper-thin Genoa salamis
prosciutto
lunch noodles
supper soup
meat
potatoes
green salad
fancy cake
sorbet
fresh fruit
cheese on a platter
retsina
red and white table wines in glass pitchers
we drink red like water
w ev e gone all wobbly flail our arms
set time ahead an hour each night
getting harder to get to breakfast
at this pace.
past and future events of human affairs in the spray of upheaval are irrelevant
Exercise 9. Make a list of footgear. Transcribe every word. Use the nouns in sentences of your own. Repeat for clarity of articulation.
Exercise 10. Read the poem. Write down, translate and transcribe every unknown word. Describe the house where you live. Tell about your family holiday:
June Eighth Five Years After June Eighth Nineteen Sixty Eight
For Ruth. Through many blue moons, best friends.
Five
red roses.
Fresh pressed
white linen cloth
white candles wick
white light two
chairs weighted
cool champagned
fingers love glistening glasses
toy with the chill
right arms raise eyes
meet
Best friends stood
bridenmaid and best
man
before the fireplace
living room
walls candied with
Parker Paint pink.
afternoon sun streamed
well wishes
and a minister
blessed.
Toast fifth anniversary
of arguments,
the alcohol the hang-
overs the where-
were-you-last-
night’s slugfests
sudden understanding
the diamonds
swirling on her hand died
mismatched, a mistake.
Cheers.
Exercise 11. Read, translate, and transcribe the poem by C. Levin. Give comparative and superlative of adjectives:
The Journey To Change Our Lives
Our last day on Chios Ted caught an octopus
near the little village of Langados where we found
a lame old sailor in a rough beard who beat it
for us against the dusty rocks while we watched,
eviscerated it and cooked it in a firepit in its ink
in exchange for ouzo. Over an hour
it boiled in a dented pot long used
for this purpose. Ugly raw skin becoming
gelatinous, exuding dark juice. The silent
old man nodding cut hunks of hard bread,
sliced cucumbers to mix with smelly feta. And
we watched sitting on short painted stools,
village life going
quietly. No person came to cheer
our journey tomorrow. Leaving,
probably forever. It was hard
to chew and dry but we praised it
eloquently over and over
making it into
what we had trusted
it was all going to be.