Poetry of Dorothy Koppelman
Stalk
The yellow thing was long, and cast its shadow
Green among the other shadows in the fields.
Green shadow of a thing in sunny fields
Flat and spreading wide, the fields
Are rampant with the growth of yellow things
Growing tall, growing tall, and throwing
Shadows to the earth; green.
© by Dorothy Koppelman
I wrote “Stalk” in April of 1948, during the Poetry Group, taught by Eli Siegel. The form of the class, like that of the Time Enough Poetry Class he taught years later, was three parts. In the first part, Mr. Siegel gave a short talk—and these could be as various as on Milton or Mother Goose or on a contemporary poet showing whether and how a poem was truly that or not. In the third part of the class there was discussion of the poems written “on the spot,” as it were. Thinking of it now, I see it as wonderful, aesthetically wonderful, that Mr. Siegel’s honesty, his sincerity and depth of expression, could evoke poetic expression from some of us so fortunate to hear him. —Dorothy Koppelman