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Longfellow
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Hiawatha lies, back to stern,
legs draped across
the sun-warmed gunnels, and rolls a corn-shuck
cigar as
the blue sky pools in his brown
eyes.
Closing them, he smokes sweet
velvet root and leaf and smiles
and sleeps in the rivers looping
arms, and trusts the current
that spins the bark boat slow
like a compass needle pointing
everywhere.
What does it mean?
It means he has arrived.
A woman stands at the eddying
bank, smiling.
“Henry,” she says.
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Whitman
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When the world dies and the last
green blade
tinges brown along its edge,
Whitman’s ghost will lie down
beside it. He will not weep and
mourn,
but marvel and praise the final
olfactory rush,
the last emerald shard; the
definitive
bright molecule
will fade and blow away
with his last words
unheard, from lips like burning coals,
“Holy, Holy, Holy,” he will say.
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Equiano
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I have not read alotta Olaudah
Equiano,
But if I had a piano, and could
sing soprano
I’d write his life an opera and
have it played in Joppa.
Then we’d tour the Olaudah
Equiano opera from Capistrano to Cipriano
Provided opening night ain’t a
floppa.
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Emily
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I reckon Emily Dickenson
wasn’t a Mexican,
by her lexicon.
Though it vexes some--
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When she writes dashes for pauses
Or to separate her clauses.
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Hawthorne
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Nathaniel Hawthorne was the
author
Of Goodman Brown and Ethan Brand,
both artfully contrived
And wrought from mind to hand.
But I like the Scarlet Letter
better.
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Poe
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Edgar Allen Poe was a morbid old
soul, and a morbid old soul was he.
Some call him morose, verbose,
and bellicose, but I call him Mr. P.
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Cotton Mather
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From what I gather, old Cotton
Mather didn’t take much to unnerve.
He was a mite superstitious ‘bout
devils and witches
And he named his son with a
verb. (Increase Mather)
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John Smith
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If we sift through the myth
of John Smith
and Pocahontas,
We find that history ain’t always
what’s been taught us.