Poems for Poetry Responses For the Sleepwalkers - The Coming of Wisdom with Time - Second Six Weeks - The Possibility - Unveiling - Even If You Weren’t My Father - Toads - The Writer

Sep 23, 2026

Uploaded by Jake

Poems for Poetry Responses collects multiple contemporary and modern lyric texts, presenting speakers who confront darkness, time, constraint, doubt, family memory, and creative work. Edward Hirsch imagines sleepwalkers trusting invisible paths and hearts leaving the body, while Yeats frames wisdom as truth replacing youthful “lying days.” Marge Piercy and other poets explore how smallness, loss of possibility, and paternal estrangement shape identity. The compilation closes with Larkin’s bitter-toad metaphor and Wilbur’s stillness around a child’s story-making.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time12 min

AccessFree to download

Poems for Poetry Responses

For the Sleepwalkers

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

Second Six Weeks – 2013-2014 A Work of Artifice

The Possibility

Unveiling

Even If You Weren’t My Father

Toads

The Writer

Poems for Poetry Responses For the Sleepwalkers Edward Hirsch (b. 1950) Tonight I want to say something wonderful for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith in their legs, so much faith in the invisible arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path that leads to the stairs instead of the window, the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror. I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing to step out of their bodies into the night, to raise their arms and welcome the darkness, palming the blank spaces, touching everything. Always they return home safely, like blind men who know it is morning by feeling shadows. And always they wake up as themselves again. That’s why I want to say something astonishing like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies. Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs flying through the trees at night, soaking up the darkest beams of moonlight, the music of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches. And now our hearts are thick black fists flying back to the glove of our chests. We have to learn to trust our hearts like that. We have to learn the desperate faith of sleepwalkers who rise out of their calm beds and walk through the skin of another life. We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised. The Coming of Wisdom with Time William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth. Second Six Weeks – 2013-2014 A Work of Artifice Marge Piercy (b. 1936) The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side ofa mountain till split by lightning. But a gardener carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he whittles back the branches the gardener croons, It is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers the hands you love to touch. The Possibility James Fenton (b. 1949) The lizard on the wall, engrossed, The sudden silence from the wood Are telling me that I have lost The possibility of good. I know this flower is beautiful And yesterday it seemed to be. It opened like a crimson hand. It was not beautiful to me. I know that work is beautiful. It is a boon. It is a good. Unless my working were a way Of squandering my solitude. And solitude was beautiful When I was sure that I was strong. I thought it was a medium In which to grow, but I was wrong. The jays are swearing in the wood. The lizard moves with ugly speed. The flower closes like a fist. The possibility recedes. Unveiling Linda Pastan (b. 1932) In the cemetery a mile away from where we used to live my aunts and mother, my father and uncles lie in two long rows almost the way they used to sit around the long planked table at family dinners. And walking beside the graves today, down one straight path and up the next, I don’t feel sad for them, just left out a bit as if they kept from me the kind of grown-up secret they used to share back then, something I’m not quite ready yet to learn. Even If You Weren’t My Father Camillo Sbarbaro (1888-1967) Father, even if you weren’t my father, were you an utter stranger, for your own self I’d love you. Remembering how you saw, one winter morning, the first violet on the wall across the way, and with what joy you shared the revelation; then, hoisting the ladder to your shoulder, out you went and propped it to the wall. We, your children, stood watching at the window. And I remember how, another time, you chased my little sister through the house (pigheadedly, she’d done I know not what) . But when she, run to earth, shrieked out in fear, your heart misgave you, for you saw yourself hunt down your

FAQs

What central image does Edward Hirsch use in “For the Sleepwalkers”?

He focuses on sleepwalkers’ faith in an invisible path, where hearts “leave” the body and move through night imagery. The poem emphasizes returning home safely and waking as oneself again.

How does Yeats describe the shift from youth to truth in “The Coming of Wisdom with Time”?

Yeats contrasts the abundance of leaves in youth with the single root beneath them. He suggests that with time, the speaker may “wither into the truth.”

What does the toad symbolize in “Toads” by Philip Larkin?

The toad represents a persistent, squatting burden in the speaker’s life—heavy like hard luck and cold as snow. It blocks ambitions such as fame, money, and romantic success.

Sep 23, 2026

Uploaded by Jake