Teenreads loves National Poetry Month, and so do our Teen Board members! To celebrate these 30 days of haikus, sonnets, limericks and everything in between, Teen Board member Mary M. wrote a series of poems addressing Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. As Mary notes, "In all of the poems, the 'you' is Holden. Most of them are written from a character's perspective (whose name is in the title), but two of them are written from a third-person perspective." Read Mary's poems below, and perhaps you'll be inspired to write some poems based off of one of your own favorite books!
[ SALLY ]
Don’t shout, please, Holden ─
sure, yeah, I think school’s a bore,
who doesn’t? But hey,
it seems pretty fine to me, this life and this city
of all the phonies you hate.
Weren’t the Lunts just marvelous? That’s what
I’m interested in, Holden, cute skirts
and going to a play, trimming the Christmas tree.
I’m just fine with the glitz and glamour,
even if it is fake; see, you don’t think about it
and have a marvelous time.
I don’t know what you’re even talking about,
you jump from one ─
You’re sweet. You’re a nut.
You’re talking about staying in a cabin
in Vermont and living off a hundred-eighty dollars,
but you can’t just do something like that ─
stop screaming at me, please.
We have oodles of time to do all those things,
to think and find out what’s real;
oodles of time, Holden, we’re young, marvelous,
we’re invincible. Why’d I agree to this date, huh?
We’re both practically children
and you’re grasping for something you can’t reach.
_____________
[ GO ON ]
Your brother is dead.
He got leukemia, lost to it, when you were up in Maine.
On July 18, 1946.
Dead. He’sdeadhe’sdeadhe’s dead.
So now all you have left is the memory of him,
hair so red you just knew that he’d be behind you
golfing in the hazy summer,
how he fell off of chairs laughing, or near enough,
and your parents were always
disappointed in you
and he, he was never
mad at anybody. He was the nicest, in lots of ways.
Sure. Go on, say it.
Say it, the words like cigarette smoke
in your mouth. Say it soft as ink-green poems
on a fielder’s worn mitt. Left-handed, you know. You know.
Say it casual like you don’t even care.
Dead. Say it out loud like you didn’t sleep in the garage
and break all the windows knuckles clenched
shattered glass in the black shattered night
trying failing hot and cold
shattered
you didn’t even know you were doing it.
His name was Allie.
_____________
[ BERNICE ]
I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre
last night. You know, the movie actor. In person.
He was buyin’ a newspaper. He’s cute.
New York, huh,
where you see movie stars buyin’ newspapers.
I wonder if any’ll come in here.
Whadja say?
This song’s pretty swell, huh. Me in New York,
dancing the night away. This one looks young,
but he’s awful tall.
Probably why he was trying
to get a Scotch and soda, “but don’t mix it,”
you shoulda heard him, and rum in the Coke.
What?─ He’s sure looking to be
all adult, anyhow,
and he’s a kid if ever I saw one.
Not too happy. You can see it in his eyes.
I remember looking like that,
when I got the letter about my Jimmy,
looking like there ain’t no tomorrow and
all the world’s just hollow lies.
Huh?
But that’s not for now.
We gotta get up early tomorrow;
we’re goin’ to the first show at Radio City Music Hall.
It’s immaterial to me─
the dance, I mean. But even if
the rest of it all is immaterial, too,
there’s a void to be filled
after the world’s gone to war.
And he shouldn’t have this much pain
and me, well, I should have a ring on my finger,
but there’s movie stars, dancing, New York, right?
He’s young. Hey ─ how old are you, anyhow?
_________________
[ THE RECORD ]
The streets of New York
one o’clock in the morning
hair like ice, shivering-shhivering in the December air,
you stumble alone.
Alcohol is flooding through your veins and the
memory of tears is stuck to your cheeks.
At the gates of Central Park, you drop it. The record.
It splinters into about fifty pieces,
and you bend to the broken sidewalk
to grasp the broken vinyl with your broken hands
and it is cold as crying.
And it was a gift, the record,
one that would knock Phoebe out.
You pick up the pieces ─ you know how,
with a record, with “Little Shirley Beans.”
Because you still want to give it to her,
like you want to shove all the cracked pieces of your life
into someone’s ─ anyone’s ─ hands,
but you don’t know if the fractures are too deep.
________________
[ MR. ANTOLINI ]
Frankly, Holden, I don’t know what
to say to you. You have a good mind. Brilliant, even.
Maybe not brilliant enough
to realize that your searching and seeking
and bitter jaded hatred
have left you trembling by the edge
of a precipitous clip, and I feel if you fall,
you’ll careen through the air,
faster than gravity faster than breath faster than than
I know. And you’ll never know it, either;
you won’t-can’t comprehend how terrible it is to fall.
Holden, you must apply yourself!
You’ll find that you’re not the first person,
no, not by any means,
who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened
by human behavior. You’ll learn from those others ─
if you want to. Try, Holden!
Do you follow me at all? Do you hear
what I’m not saying, that I know what a fall looks like,
teeth and blood it’s loud it’s loud
and I just can’t drape my coat again and carry that heavy weight.
Do you hear me, Holden?
You’re running right towards a crazy cliff
and there’s no one there to catch you.
________________
[ CAB DRIVER ]
2:30 a.m. an’ I’m sitting at Penn Station.
The cab don’t smell too gorgeous
but you get used to it. Late-night shifts are the worst.
Here we go, a customer.
This guy’s been in a phone booth
for ten too-long minutes since I drove up,
and now he wants a cab? He wasn’t makin’ a phone call.
He folds himself into the back seat,
gives me an address. 71st Street.
Wealthy, huh? He looks in rough shape for all the money.
Dough’s probably not all it’s cracked up to be,
but I could use some. Great, now he wants me t’ turn around.
This here’s a one-way, Mac.
And hey, what’re ya tryna do, bud? Kid me? ─
who here has the time to think about the ducks
from Central Park South?
It’s freezing, it’s traffic, it’s New York.
Eat, sleep, stop, go, that’s life, mister. That’s my life.
You prob’ly have a nice apartment, cocktail parties,
prob’ly have a nice family and you don’t have to work
the 2 a.m. shift you know you don’t want to
but there’s distinctions, see, between you and me.
The ducks? No idear, Mac,
and down here I’ll never know.
Mary M. is a member of the Teen Board.
