I Felt a Funeral in my Brain

I Felt a Funeral in my Brain
by Emily Dickinson

Found at http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/I_Felt_AFuneral.htm

I have never read to much of Emily Dickinson's work and was therefore quite stunned to find so many of her poems realted to or dealing with death. I truly enjoyed how this poem used death or a funeral as a metaphor to represent how the speaker feels a part of her is dying. It seems to me that the speaker is at a loss of control, or has no control over her conscience. In other words, it seems like the speaker can't make sense of herself due to the chaos. In a sense this is an exact opposite of funerals which are very structured and are controlled. Furthermore, in this poem the very first line states that the speaker is "feeling a funeral in her brain." Using the idea of a metaphor, I began to think that since a funeral is in a sense, a passage from one state to another, the idea of the speaker feeling a funeral eludes to the idea that she is feeling the passage from comprehension and understanding to another state of chaos and misunderstanding.
Even the structure and grammar adds to the change in state within this poem. In the beginning, the use of her punctuations are quite orderly and structured. However, as the speaker begins her descent into madness, the use of punctuations begins to get chaotic. Commas and dashes are used much more frequently creating a sense of chaos just by looking at it on the page, as well as, reading it aloud.

I Died for Beauty by Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth,--the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms.
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

Beauty and truth are associated in this poem. Both the speaker and the man in the adjoining died but each died for a different cause. Although the two are in different rooms, they are “brethren” and “kinsmen.” To die for beauty is ridiculous and undignified. On the other hand, to die for truth is noble. From the first stanza, the speaker made it apparent that she and the man in the next room are two different kinds of people. However, in the next stanzas, they are “brethren” and “kinsmen.” Does that mean truth and beauty are the same? In definition, they are not. As reasons of death, they are not. However, they are the same in that they are would be obliterated by death. Both the speaker and the man are taken over by the moss crawling up to cover their lips and their names. The moss here is a symbol of nature, of which death is a part. The moss stops the speaker and the man from speaking and wipes out their identity. Humans are, thus, powerless against nature.

from The World Doesn't End

by Charles Simic
p. 438

What first stands out about this poem is it's form: it doesn't look like a "traditional" poem, but regular prose. The title implies it's from a volume, but it's interesting that it was put in this anthology. The two "paragraphs" are also separated by a break with a dot, not normally seen. After first glance, this poem remains very interesting with it's dark imagery and great metaphors. This is one of the darkest poems I've ever read; in fact it's pretty scary and spooky. The imagery in this poem sounds like a nightmare to me. It finally ends in an extremely sad disappointment. And what makes it even more fantastic is that the disappointment is in you, the reader, so you feel exactly what the poet is trying to say.

Well Water

"Well Water" by Randall Jarrell (p. 62)

This poem contains much repetition, especially within the parenthetical portion, where the speaker repeats "errand" and "a means to." The repetition seems to resemble the routines of daily life; the first and last lines of the poem also contain the phrase "the dailiness of life," showing that each day in the speaker's life is a cycle, where the beginning of the day seems much like the end of the day. Now that I think about it, the phrase "the dailiness of life" seems to mirror the pattern of the Sun (or rotation of the Earth), where the morning Sun shines across the land from the horizon, and the evening Sun shines light across the land from the opposite side of the horizon. The middle portion of the poem describes the work required to survive: pumping water from a well. This also seems to reflect the daily routine of life during the day, where most people are active during the day. Later, however, the speaker notices that the pump operates by itself due to its own weight; this could be like the periodic rewards that we receive for our efforts each day.
I thought this poem was interesting because it seemed optimistic throughout the poem rather than becoming cynical or pessimistic. The optimism that is seen at the end of the poem also seems to show the preparation needed to start another day - where the speaker needs to feel optimistic to face the next day's errands.

That Light One FInds in Baby Pictures by Jay Hopler

THAT LIGHT ONE FINDS IN BABY PICTURES
1/ Being born is a shame—
But it’s not so bad, as journeys go. It’s not the worst one
We will ever have to make. It’s almost noon
And the light now clouded in the courtyard is
Like that light one finds in baby pictures: old
And pale and hurt—
2/When all roads are low and lead to the same
Place, we call it Fate and tell ourselves how
We were born to make the journey.
Who’sTo say we weren’t?
3/ The clouded light has changed to rain.
The picture—. No, the baby’s blurry.
4/That’s me—, the child playing in the sand with a pail
And shovel; in the background, my mother’s shadow
Is crawling across a soot-blackened collapse of brick
And timber, what might have been a bathhouse once.
The tide is coming in—. Someone has written HELL
On its last standing wall.


Since I have not blogged on my own poem, I will use Jay Hopler’s poem. It definitely striked me as simple at the beginning with words such as “baby pictures and light”. However, progressively it became more difficult to connect all the pieces/stanzas and find the common connection between them-just like in the poem 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Especially, what made me select this poem was the ending with the wall written with HELL grafittied on it. Now, that made me realize that under its simple lines , there must be something the poet was trying to get to. Unconsciously, my first reaction was that this poem did not only involve the simple objects of pictures and light, but rather something more solid, that I could not grasp, is working its way through the poem. I did notice that a lot of cliché was used such as, “being born..journey” The connection of life as a journey has been overdone over and over again. Also “baby pictures are alwsy described as old, sad, reminiscing, pale,etc,etc,etc,etc.”:everyone knows this connection . This reminded of Richard Siken’s Crush because he also used something common as “film” in order to show his conflict. Perhaps, Hopler is also using this strategy in order to describe another underlying meaning that I have missed. I see the similarities of Siken’s and Steven’s poem in which they grab a common ordinary overused object and mold the reader’s mind to view it in a different value. I capture something diffrent of baby pictures- I mean I have never connected pictures with Hell and graffiti – but it defiantly makes me see more introspectively of baby pictures. I also noticed how the third stanza id more indented than the others and it is also peculiar that this is the stanza I have more trouble on understanding than the others. Its odd structure adds to its odd word arrangement. “The baby” and “fate” is italicized and “HELL” is bold….what is the connection??? This reminds me of predestination but that could be or could be not the case here.

You Kindly

You Kindly
by Sharon Olds
pg. 497-8

This poem represents another side of Olds' poetry, as compared to The Glass, which I will be writing my paper on. This poem has great sexual details, while The Glass has more details regarding death and decay. Olds heavily uses details of the female body throughout the poem, in terms of sexual pleasure and the physicalness of the relationship between her and her partner. Though it is a very sexual poem, it is more descriptive, and not necessarily passionate. To quote the poem, it is "like a grey flower / the color of the brain", it is not full of love and exhileration, instead it is more a physical experience. Also interesting is the fact that Olds brings her father into the poem, yet again. She mentions she "did not think of her father's hair" while she is brushing her lover's hair back. To think of your father at a time like this is very unusual and unexpected; it seemed very out of the blue and jarring. The mention of her father also made the passion of the sex degrade, especially.

The Sun Rising

The Sun Rising
John Donne

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sunrising.htm

I love the attitude and tone of this poem. It is all based around the speaker and his attitude towards the woman he loves. It really expresses how those in love block out the rest of the world and it really can "conquer all." Donne goes as far as talking to the sun and scorning it for disturbing him and his love, calling the sun a "saucy pedantic wretch." This harsh and descriptive diction is so powerful, and I just love that line. The poem's focus is two lovers in a bed, and the speaker continues to act as if nothing powerful in the world compares to the power of their love. He says he can "eclipse and cloud [the sun's beams] with a wink." He compares his love to the highest of princes and kings. This poem reminds me of Donne's "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" as it has the same underlying theme of love being able to endure great obstacles; this is part of what I love about Donne's poetry. It not only has this appealing theme, but also addresses it in a unique, but very direct, way. There is rhyme in this poem as well, but I feel it adds a flowing and elevated nature. I really enjoy this poem and the speaker's attitude towards the world and the sun in particular is a great way of sticking it to the skeptics who think that love is not all powerful.

To the Republic

To the Republic
by James Galvin

Past
fences the first sheepmen cast across the land, processions
of cringing pitch or cedar posts pulling into the vanishing
point like fretboards carrying barbed melodies, windharp
narratives, songs of place, I'm thinking of the long cowboy
ballads Ray taught me the beginnings of and would have taught
me the ends if he could have remembered them.
But remembering
was years ago when Ray swamped for ranches at a dollar a day
and found, and played guitar in a Saturday night band, and now
he is dead and I'm remembering near the end when he just needed
a drink before he could tie his shoes.
We'd stay up all night
playing the beginnings of songs like Falling Leaf, about a
girl who died of grief, and Zebra Dun, about a horse that
pawed the light out of the moon.
Sometimes Ray would break
through and recall a few more verses before he'd drop a line
or scramble a rhyme or just go blank, and his workfat hands
would drop the chords and fall away in disbelief.
Between
songs he'd pull on the rum or unleash coughing fits that
sounded like nails in a paper bag.
Done, he'd straighten and
say, My cough's not just right, I need another cigarette, and
light the Parliament he bit at an upward angle like Roosevelt
and play the start of another song.
Then, played out and
drunk enough to go home, he'd pick up his hat and case and
make it, usually on a second try, through the front gate
and gently list out into the early morning dark, beginning
again some song without end, yodeling his vote under spangles.


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15472#



Galvin is able to play with his poem and make use of indentation. The whole poem is written as a column, but Galvin has managed to use interesting placement of the first lines of his stanza, and it makes your line of sight curve down as you look at the page. Galvin also breaks against the phrase, and this also helps not only with the column arrangement, but also gives a sense of urgency to his writing. He makes good use of alliteration, and it gives the poem a slow feeling of trudging along. One of the first things that drew me to this poem was the title, “To the Republic,” which immediately reminded me of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Galvin plays with a similar set of images. For example, “yodeling his vote under spangles” brings to mind voting and the Star Spangled Banner, which are both patriotic images. But spangles could also be interpreted as a button, or pin upon a military coat. There are also more images that evoke a sense of Americana, like long cowboy ballads, ranches, horses, and Roosevelt. He is able to allude to an older, simpler time, with a bittersweet nostalgia.

Journey into the Interior

by Theodore Roethke

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

------------
The first thing that I thought was peculiar about the poem was how it is talking about the journey into the "interior", which to me gives a sense of an internal search within oneself, yet much of the imagery that is used in the poem aludes to the outside world. It is not just any environment either; it takes about places that seem very barren far from any human contact. I thought that these contrasting images used to compare someone's "interior" to vast, lonely places was very interesting. I also thought that it was contradictory to say "journey out of the self" but into the interior at the same time. The ways the author described the journey worked in the way that it made that journey seem not only dangerous, but one that someone must face him/herself. I did not get a sense for any type of connection with an outside person besides the within the writer. By the end of the poem, I am not exactly sure if the journey was completed or not. It talks about how "the way" was "blocked at last", and immediately the scene darkens and gets uglier, as if the situation is closing in on the person. Interpreted in this way, it would seem that trying to find something deep within oneself is almost an impossible task. Either that, or the journey is still unfinished, with more obstacles to come in the way.

The Heaven of Animals by James Dickey

The Heaven of Animals by James Dickey

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle's center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

In comparison with James Dickey's The Hospital Window, this poem is very similar. One of the first similarities I notice is the short, staccato sentences. Both poems have short lines with very strong "t" sounds. The poem also flows very well with repetition of sounds like "To match them, the landscape flowers,/ Outdoing, desperately/ Outdoing what is required:/ The richest wood,/ The deepest field". Dickey does a great job of emphasizing the nouns with the use of "the" and then saying "outgoing" to articulate different thoughts.

Another similarity I find is the way Dickey uses the words "rise", "floating", and "glory above them" in this poem. Although he is talking about animals in this poem, the way he talks about his father in The Hospital Window draws a picture of a similar heaven. He creates a sort of grim image with "It could not be the place/ It is, without blood./ These hunt, as they have done/ But with claws and teeth grown perfect" but then makes up for it in saying that this is where all animals can be at peace because although they must experience pain, they somehow find a way to live again in this heaven.

“Looking into History” by Richard Wilbur [pg. 126-128]

Like Wilbur’s other poems, he uses end rhymes and four lined stanzas. In this poem, the rhyme pattern is abab. The gives structure gives an air of formal writing: the verses are neat and particularly organized. The formality of the poem is more expressed by capitalizing every letter in the beginning of each line. The overall feeling that the speaker has is a sense of lost. I see the speaker looking at an old picture of soldiers. This object triggers the emotion that the speaker goes through. It is also the element of the speaker’s thinking. Wilbur alludes to other literature and history in his poem. In the first line, Mathew Brady, a Civil War photographer, is mentioned. This gives the clue that the speaker knows the details of the Civil War, or at least the photograph. The speaker refers to himself as Hamlet, referencing Shakespeare, to convey his internal emotions of confusion. The pictures act as a barrier separating the speaker from the men in the picture. The speaker can only wonder the thoughts of the soldiers captures on camera. Wilbur also alludes to Macbeth in mentioning the illusion of Birnam Wood. He uses the reference to describe the situation he pictures the soldiers in. The first part of the poem focuses on him looking at the picture. It is the most distant kind of interaction with the soldiers. The second part has the speaker imagining him at the location of the soldiers. It gets closer in the third part, when the speaker understands his feelings for the soldiers. The speaker feels as if time separates him from the past.

Parents

Parents by William Meredith

What it must be like to be an angel

or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.

The last time we go to bed good,

they are there, lying about darkness.

They dandle us once too often,

these friends who become our enemies.

Suddenly one day, their juniors

are as old as we yearn to be.

They get wrinkles where it is better

smooth, odd coughs, and smells.

It is grotesque how they go on

loving us, we go on loving them

The effrontery, barely imaginable,

of having caused us.  And of how.

Their lives: surely

we can do better than that.

This goes on for a long time.  Everything

they do is wrong, and the worst thing,

they all do it, is to die,

taking with them the last explanation,

how we came out of the wet sea

or wherever they got us from,

taking the last link

of that chain with them.

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,

to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.

I think there's a lot of interesting language in this poem that really stood out to me. One thing in particular is the description of parents' love for their children and the children's continued love for their parents as "grotesque." I wonder if he actually felt this way. I don't think he does. I think that the strange language Meredith uses such as "grotesque" and "the effrontery, barely imaginable/of having caused us" combined with some positive images and descriptions clue the reader into the fact that Meredith, like most people, have a relationship with their parents based on both love and hate. That sounds incredible cliche but it feels to me like that is what Meredith is trying to portray in this poem.

The Best Slow Dancer by David Wagoner

The Best Slow Dancer By David Wagoner
In this poem, my first impression is a feeling of floating and a feeling of being caught up in a slow motion camera. With the words he uses, I feel as if I am the taking part of the dance ; I immediately identified myself as the girl rather than the “you”. –perhaps because I always take the feminine side of everything almost always. The Title is sort of contradictory at first to me because I always imagined a dancer as fast-moving with expertise but perhaps by reading this poem, those two words , “best slow” are a perfect combination to describe the slow passion undertaking through these “slow” dancing movements. The poem accurately describes the physicality of the dance and by doing this one can transform physically and mentally into the dancer he is describing. Since dancing is all physical, this poem entails physical descriptions of human contact in order to instill the feeling of basically “feeling” the touch of the dance. After the last human contact of the lips, the speaker shifts physicality into contemplation of wanting to tell her something. It all shifts into mind of the boy and how he is not a boy any longer. It is interesting how right after the physical contact of lips with ear that this physical dancing contact is gone between the two. Perhaps it is because, the lips was the aim of the dance and the other human contact was needed in order to get to the pursuable-the lips. Through the lips he can tell his story and that is what he indeed wanted. I also like how the poem has a lot of “s” sounds in order to make the dance slow with lots of hushes and he and her exist with this hushness around them.

90 North

"90 North" by Randall Jarrell (p. 56-57)

I was drawn to this poem because of the title; I assumed that the number 90 in the title referenced the number of degrees in the angle to find the North Pole (90 degree angle/right angle). At second thought, the title seems to be slightly redundant in that North is obviously 90 degrees North of the Equator, and North is simply a direction that indicates directly "upward" from the Equator.

The poem is broken into eight stanzas, each with four lines (with the exception of the third stanza, which contains a fifth indented line). The number of stanzas seems to fill the space between each 10-degree mark from the Equator, and every line could count for about two degrees. At the beginning, and end of the poem, the speaker seems to be at home, about to sleep at night in bed. He first mentions a long voyage with his "furs" and "dogs," and only in his voyage he mentions that he has a black beard. The imagery seems particular; he only describes the way the snow falls and the thoughts he has after his "voyage." This could signify that reaching a final goal in life requires the determination to survive through the cold and ruthlessness that will attempt to bring suffering into one's life. He seems to mention this idea of pain especially at the end, where he essentially states that wisdom is pain: without pain (physical or psychological), we will not learn, and therefore to possess wisdom is to have experienced pain previously.

The speaker seems to have described the processes that occurred when he fell asleep in his bed at night, and then woke up the next morning, as mirrored as like that of what seems to be the dream of traveling to the North Pole with dogs. The climactic point of the dream is probably when he places the flag into the ice at the North Pole, and the process of waking up could be seen through his travel South. The last three stanzas seem to mainly speak about his thoughts after waking up and reflecting on the dream, where he realized that in surviving through the darkness (sleeping through the night), he was able to learn that life requires pain to reach a climactic point.

The Heaven of Animals

by James Dickey
p. 155

I really enjoy this poem because it is a great example of what I believe poetry is supposed to do: to make you think while bringing on a new, maybe even overwhelming emotion. After reading this poem for the first time, my feelings at the time, and even my sense of time and space, were completely displaced, and I felt the happiness, the feel of "Heaven," expressed by the poem. In the blurb about Dickey, Dickey is quoted of speaking of poetry being "the emotional, half-animal, intuitive way in which we actually experience the world" and "the forfeited animal grace of human beings." This is another great thing about this poem, the connection of humans to primal feelings, putting the reader to a primal state of mind that anyone can understand. "The soft eyes," "the riches wood," and "the deepest field" are things anybody (or at least in my case), not just animals desire after leaving this life. I especially love the way the poem ends, talking about the Heaven of those animals that are preyed upon, and them having "full knowledge" and "no fear, but acceptance, compliance." For me, the "Heaven" expressed in this poem is indescribable, a real work of art.

The Illiterate

The Illiterate
William Meredith
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/Illiterate.html

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

I liked this poem when I first read it because it was fairly easy to understand and maybe I'm just lazy but I like poems that I can understand easily. Part of what makes the poem straightforward and easy to understand is that it is written with no enjambed lines and very clear and concise language. It contains an extended simile comparing what it feels like to feel "goodness" from another person, which I take to sort of mean that someone was kind to the speaker for the first time or perhaps even showed the speaker love, to someone who is illiterate and received a letter for the first time. Not only is the experience new, but the illiterate person has no idea how to make sense out of the letter and what to do with it. There seems to be some deeper meaning I've yet to discern based on the last two lines, but if I'm going to write my paper about this poem then I should probably figure it out.

The Reckoning

The Reckoning
by Theodore Roethke

All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.

What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/28.html

Roethke titles his poem “The Reckoning,” which at first glance gives you mental images of revenge of a lover, or some other emotional situation that involved getting what is due to you. But instead we are presented with another picture of drama, this one being incurred by “numbers” or taxes. I love how Roethke is able to twist the meanings or words around and use them in fresh ways to make his poems appealing and witty. He uses slant rhyme in stanza two, so the rhyme scheme is abac. In this poem he has end rhymed the first and third line of the first two stanzas, and in the third used eye-rhyme. Roethke is able to make his poem flow by using iambic tetrameter. He also uses internal rhyme with alliteration that also helps with the flow. In addition, Roethke also makes use of imagery. We are able to see the people in the poem frantically work go over math on a legal pad trying to figure out their mistake. He also juxtaposes each image of addition with something that takes away, or subtracts from it to keep in mind the “reckoning” of his subjects, creating logical poetry.

I Knew a Woman

I Knew a Woman
Theodore Roethke

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/122.html

This is a very loaded poem with some beautiful language and many deeper meanings. I love the first stanza as it describes the woman in all of her beauty and how amazing she is. At first I saw this as a woman the speaker adores and loves in a romantic way, but as I got to the second stanza, where there are references to teaching, especially things like standing and that she stroked his chin, I thought of the possibility that she is a motherly figure the speaker loves and looks up to. The last three stanzas of the poem have a great deal of metaphors and thought provoking ideas with deeper meanings in them. These are the most difficult to decipher exactly what is going on in the poem, but it all seems to attract the reader and really strikes me. The rhyme scheme is very set and gives a light flow as each line progresses to the next. It isn't a sing-song type of rhyme, but rather a connecting one. There is also an interesting use of parenthesis at the last line of every stanza. This seems to offset ad accent that final line. I find it interesting that if you read only the parenthesized lines, it all seems to be one flowing idea. Almost a mini poem that gives a feel of the original as a whole.

I Knew a Woman

by Theodore Roethke
page 45-46

I chose to blog this poem because I saw some parallels to the "Dream Song" poem that my group presented in class. After reading this poem, you get a sense about this man in love, who has nothing but praise and kind words about the woman in the poem. The way in which he describes her is very far from cliche, and although his descriptions may be a little unclear at first, everything in the poem comes together to give this very soft, delicate feeling towards the woman. Words and phrases such as "undulant white skin" and "dazzled at her flowing knees" make the woman very feminine, almost fragile in a sense. Roethke says that "when small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them". Comparing this woman to a small bird puts her above any other woman; like a small bird, she is a very sweet, pretty thing to look at. Also like a small bird, if you get too close to fast, you will scare her away, so the author acts towards her with the utmost gentleness. The line "of her choice virtues only gods could speak" further separate her from any other woman, almost like she is from somewhere higher than this world. Although the rhyme varies throughout the poem, the general scheme for each stanza is ABABCCC, with changes here in there in a couple lines. The way the rhyme scheme separates each stanza makes the reader pay more attention to each stanza on its own, making it obvious where one idea ends and the next begins, not because of the end of the stanza but of the final rhyme.

The Gas Station

The Gas Station
by CK Williams
pg.426

The author of this poem, CK Williams, chose to write his poem with longer and more complete sentences as opposed to small phrases, like many poets do. By having these long sentences, the poem seems like it could be a paragraph, if it was written out in such a format. The languages is very descriptive; this also supports that it could act as a paragraph in a novel. The structure of the poem compliments the long sentences that fills the poem. The poem is describing a long train ride, so it is likely that the poem's long lines on the page as well as constant indents represents the length of the train ride, and the indents being the jerks of the train as it rattles down the tracks. CK Williams occationally has short abrupt sentences, in the midst of the long drawn out ones. These made me stop and read it as if the speaker was more startled, as if they were observing these things and taking quick notes on what they saw.

The Waking

by Theodore Roethke (p.45)

This poem has an interesting feel to it. It seems to be about taking everything in step as they come. This idea seems emphasized by a line that is repeated throughout the poem "I learn by going where I have to go." The relaxed nature of the poem seems to characterize the mindset that is setup by the title "The Waking." The images and feelings that the poem describes are very natural, and seem to point to a very dreamlike awareness.
Another take on the poem could be the acceptance of an inevitability that may not be desirable, such as death. The poet writes "I feel my fate in what I cannot fear." this seems to be an acceptance of the inevitability, and later in the poem he writes "This shaking keeps me steady" as if to say that although he may fear death, he also lives for an end so that he can make more of himself while living. This is implied by the indications of taking thing in turn, an not trying to rush ahead. If each action is dealt with individually there is no need to fear an ending. In the repeated line "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow." The author suggest everything that lives must die, so why not take waking, living, slow. Also by referencing "Great Nature" the poet seems to reference the cycle of life to be beyond the control of man, fate is something much larger than himself. To further the impression of the cyclic manner of things he write "What falls away is always." which seems like a manner of saying that even after death, which can be related to falling away, it is always contained in the cycle.

“Advice to a Prophet” by Richard Wilbur [p. 130-131]

In this poem, the speaker is a person addressing the prophet. This poem most likely occurs before the prophet enters the city. It is the speaker’s response to the prophet’s action. The speaker carries a tone of indifference and knowledge at the same time. The speaker has an attitude that he already knows what the prophet would say. The poem carries a regular rhyme pattern of abba and every stanza is four lines long. This consistency gives the poem a strict persona. It would relate to the message of the poem since mass destruction is a serious subject. One of the biggest images used is one of destruction. The use of heavy words, such as “death”, “soul”, and “cold”, gives the speaker a yelling or argumentative tone. It further shows the speaker as somewhat disrespectful of the prophet. The prophet is a faceless character in this poem. His existence is only through the speaker’s reference to the prophet. It leads to question who the prophet is. From reading the poem, two references to God are made. The first one, the speaker sets the prophet as a missionary of God. He is shown as one of those people who would yell the do-this -or-you’ll-burn-in-hell speech in the populated area of the streets. The second reference is the “dove’s return” from the Noah’s Ark story. It alludes to previous messages of God. In this poem, the use of “we” and “us” hints that the speaker is mixed into the ordinary populace. Either the speaker is acting as the spokesperson or the speaker is all people in a way. My favorite part is when the “worldless rose” is mentioned in the beginning of the last verse. The contrast of the image is chilling.

The Hospital Window by James Dickey

I have just come down from my father.
Higher and higher he lies
Above me in a blue light
Shed by a tinted window.
I drop through six white floors
And then step out onto pavement.

Still feeling my father ascend,
I start to cross the firm street,
My shoulder blades shining with all
The glass the huge building can raise.
Now I must turn round and face it,
And know his one pane from the others.

Each window possesses the sun
As though it burned there on a wick.
I wave, like a man catching fire.
All the deep-dyed windowpanes flash,
and, behind them, all the white rooms
They turn to the color of Heaven.

Ceremoniously, gravely, and weakly,
Dozens of pale hands are waving
Back, from inside their flames.
Yet one pure pane among these
Is the bright, erased blankness of nothing.
I know that my father is there,

In the shape of his death still living.
The traffic increases around me
Like a madness called down on my head.
The horns blast at me like shotguns,
And drivers lean out, driven crazy—
But now my propped-up father

Lifts his arm out of stillness at last.
The light from the window strikes me
And I turn as blue as a soul,
As the moment when I was born.
I am not afraid for my father—
Look! He is grinning; he is not

Afraid for my life, either,
As the wild engines stand at my knees
Shredding their gears and roaring,
And I hold each car in its place
For miles, inciting its horn
To blow down the walls of the world

That the dying may float without fear
In the bold blue gaze of my father.
Slowly I move to the sidewalk
With my pin-tingling hand half dead
At the end of my bloodless arm.
I carry it off in amazement,

High, still higher, still waving
My recognized face fully mortal,
Yet not; not at all, in the pale,
drained, otherworldly, stricken,
Created hue of stained glass.
I have just come down from my father.

The first thing I notice about this poem is that it begins and ends with the line, "I have just come down from my father". That line can have different meanings for the author ranging from: he (the man in the poem) has literally just come down from visiting his father, he has just been released from his father's hold, or something along the lines of visiting his father in heaven. I notice that each stanza is exactly 6 lines each. Dickey uses imagery containing color and other words such as "tainted", "pale", "hue", etc. He also manages to create each image by describing sounds heard or by what he physically feels at the time. I enjoy the way Dickey portrays the present reality of life compared to the passing of the father in the poem. Dickey also makes another parallel aside from the first and last lines by giving the idea that people are born and die with the same blue color. There are also many references to windows, glass, and other items that the man in the poem can apparently see clearly through--this maybe is his internal realization of needing to be away from his father.

Dying

by Robert Pinsky p. 455-6

This seems to be mainly a meditation on death. Initially it is dealt with in reference to things, concrete and abstract that die--dogs, metaphors--and then the poem moves to "someone I know is dying" which I think is the triggering subject of the poem. Then he moves to things that are growing but also dying, as we all are. The speaker also mentions pace of dying. The dying acquaintance is dying faster than the rest of us, which makes it more significant. There are also comparisons of human death to the other living things: the moth is nerveless like the nails and hair on our bodies but it is also like a soul. I don't know what to make of the last line: "Bored and impatient in the monster's mouth." Maybe the monster's mouth is a metaphor for the universe. The feeling I get from this poem is the interconnectedness of all life and death. There are nine 3-line stanzas, about half end-stopped and the lines are relatively long but there is plenty of punctuation within the lines in the first four stanzas. I think the stanzas flow more, having less punctuation in the remaining stanzas, the pace actually quickens, which makes us feel the increased pace of some deaths compared to others.

Country Stars by William Meredith (p. 115)

This is a short poem, containing two stanzas with five lines in each stanza. The poem has the rhyme scheme of abbab and cdcdd. I like how the poem opens up with a cute scene of a child coming downstairs to get a goodnight kiss. From the title, I could picture a little house in the country, where there are beautiful sceneries and bright stars at night. However, the poem then talks about cities, a chemical plant, and clotted cars. The second stanza makes it clear that the poem is about pollution and how it’s destroying our environment. I think when the child in the first stanza “blows on a black windowpane until it’s white,” she is trying to create the brightness of the stars. Through the black windowpane, the child could see a great bear passing over the apple trees. I take this to mean the pollution smokes that resemble the shape of a big bear. Thus, the child covers that by blowing on the windowpane. The last line of the first stanza also says that “she puts her own construction on the night,” meaning that the child creates her own surroundings where there are no smokes but the brightness of stars, like the “bright watchers” in the last sentence of the poem.

Prodigy

Prodigy
by Charles Simic

I grew up bent over
a chessboard.

I loved the word endgame.

All my cousins looked worried.

It was a small house
near a Roman graveyard.
Planes and tanks
shook its windowpanes.

A retired professor of astronomy
taught me how to play.

That must have been in 1944.

In the set we were using,
the paint had almost chipped off
the black pieces.

The white King was missing
and had to be substituted for.

I'm told but do not believe
that that summer I had witnessed
men hung from telephone poles.

I remember my mother
blindfolding me a lot.
She had a way to tucking my head
suddenly under her overcoat.

In chess, too, the professor told me,
the masters play blindfolded,
the great ones on several boards
at the same time.

The first line of this poem is what immediately caught my attention. The image it created for me after reading it was so powerful that I knew I would be forced to read the entire poem. "I grew up bent over/ a chessboard" creates this image of the speaker being used for someone's benefit or in this case due the the title being prodigy, someone's replacement. Further along into the poem, Simic is able to create all this chaos in the background and yet a peaceful and beautiful situation in the speaker learning the game. For example, "planes and tanks" were shaking the "windowpanes" and the speaker had "witnessed me hung from telephone poles" but yet is engulfed in a game. There is also a very distinct and clear image presented when the speaker delves into the game. It is as though nothing else matters, but the exact details of every facet of the game. For the speaker talks about how the "paint had almost chipped off the black pieces," and the "white King was missing and had to be substituted for," clearly showing the degree of detail in this aspect and lack of it elsewhere.
I also really enjoyed the comparison between the speaker's mother and masters of the game of chess, in that both were excellent at their profession or their duties, such that the mother protected the speaker and the masters could play blindfolded. Furthermore, there is this idea that the mother blindfolded her from many things and that master play blindfolded, giving off the sense that her mother was in a way preparing her. Personally, I feel that because the mother had kept the speaker "blindfolded" throughout most of their life, the speaker should be able to understand and comprehend the art of playing as though she were a master, blindfolded and on several boards at once.

Description of a Pear on a Pewter Dish by Young Smith

Description of a Pear on a Pewter Dish

See the blue there shadowed
beneath the yellow’s gloss.

That blue is the sky
within the cutis of the pear.

At night this sky grows dark
and unfolds a crust of distant stars.

It is these pale fires within its skin
that give the pear its taste of heaven.

Young Smith

What I enjoy most about this poem is the imagery used. Smith used the same colors to represent the three different subjects he was referring to: blue of the sky, yellow of the sun and stars, and pear seems to signify earth. Not only did he use colors but he also gave the distinction of light versus dark with the words "gloss", "dark", "pale", and "fires". "Cutis" refers to the atmosphere surrounding the earth and sky. I also like that he refers to the earth as a "pear" but it can also be considered a person. This person can only look up to see the sky and sun illuminating. Then, as the sun goes down and dark arises, the stars are the "taste of heaven". I like the idea that stars are what can be considered heaven. The fact that Smith says "these pale fires within its skin" can be thought of as people being unholy and the idea of heaven is what can revive them once again to see outside of the "cutis of the pear".

Theodore Roethke Lull

The mind is quick to turn
Away from simple faith
To the cant and fury of
Fools who will never learn;
Reason embraces death,
While out of frightened eyes
Still stares the wish of love.

Theodore Roethke Lull

What I enjoy most about this poem is the simplicity of it. Roethke puts what would be two sentences into poetic form. The first thing I noticed is that each line has 6 syllables. The words flow off your tongue when it is read. Roethke did an excellent job of relaying the message that all people can sometimes be distracted by what others say when love is right in front of them. With the way it is line breaked I think that more thought goes into what the poem is actually trying to say.

The Colossus

The Colossus
Sylvia Plath
page 368

I think this poem is about a house. I could be wrong but there's some things about it that make me think that it's about a house like the last line "On the blank stones of the landing." If I'm right, I really like how the house is personified throughout the poem and compared to a Colossus in the title. Plath uses different body parts such as ears instead of windows. Of course it may not be a house at all and i may just be reading it completely wrong. I don't know.

Mad Girl's Love Song

Mad Girl's Love Song
by Sylvia Plath

The diction used in this poem creates a very surreal image for me. Words such as "stars," "moon-struck," and "dreamed" all help to create this surreal image for me. Furthermore, the idea of God toppling, stars waltzing, and blackness galloping all help to further a surreal sense. I feel like I am put into a childhood fantasy, a dream of some sort. It is quite weird for me to see certain lines within the poem put into parentheses. It gives me a sense of from this dream-like state, the speaker is adding in a sense of reality and is therefore putting in parentheses because it interupts the dream-like state.
The other aspect of this poem that caught my attention was the rhyme and rhythm contained within it. It flowed with ease, in a way, furthering the sense of a dreamy state. It was really easy to read through the first time and the rhyming invovled throughout the poem seems so suttle so as not to ruin the scheme of the poem with the rhymes. However, what strikes me is the fact, as someone else who read this poem, that the entire poem is in quotations, signifying a direct speaking of some sort. It is as though the speaker is telling the poem first hand, instead of writing it in a form of rememberance. For me personally, the quotations add a sense of "in the moment" in that the speaker is stating what happened exactly in that moment instead of taking the time to analyze and focus their thoughts on what had occurred.

Red Bricked by EVELYN LAUER

Red Bricked
by EVELYN LAUER

This is her spot:
a child in an apple tree, eyes falling
into the way things want to be
seen: fence sky lilacs stones:
what matters next is what
might just happen: the color
of bricks in her mind,
more red than they actually are,
brown really, but she makes them
as red as she wants them to be,
under a leap-year moon when the boy
enters her mouth, and leaves her
full of clouds.

http://42opus.com/v6n2/redbricked


For me, what actually caught my attention was the first line and not the title. “This is her spot:” The semicolon brought more curiosity to my mind and thus, I read on further. It was a poem of the view of a young child full of pursuances for imagination in her world. Her world is full of manipulations through the tool of her eyes… “into the ways things want to be seen”. Immediately, the speaker gives the reader an idea of who she is… a child.-it gives us a perspective and from who we are receiving these ideas supposedly. We are “warned” beforehand that this is a child and views from her can be an entirely different view we, as adults, hold of the world. Especially a child in an apple tree is a child full of life connected with nature and its miraculous details ranging from “fences,sky,lilacs,stones…”---. I also like how what really matters is the future.. “what might just happen”. This is kind of referring to how the imagination can take you to further places beyond us into perhaps how to mend the future even though we are not there yet; simply, it is possible through the imagination to create new things for the future and these “inventions” might just matter. I like how the young girl is hopeful for the color to shine and be “redder” than it actually is. This makes me classify her as a young spirit who is always hopeful for the best and strives to see everything as beautiful with the strength of her imaginative mind. She sparks beauty and molds her world like she wants it and does not let any other factor interrupt her creation of “redder bricks”. She does this under perhaps the strong force of the moon,perhaps like a strange force from the moon overtook her to create these inventions of her mind. The girl has experienced a kiss and is left with uncertainty and it is not clear as it was before with her red red bricks. She could manipulate the color and minor details easily with her mind but a kiss is left as something indefinable and can not be manipulated as she thought she could with everything. Thus, she is left in the clouds with a nebulous answer she cannott grasp. I enjoyed how the word “falling” is actually falling as the last word in the line and also how seen is isolated at the beginning of the line –emphasizing the importance of seeing-. I also observed how the words “fence, sky, lilacs,stones, “ have spaces in between them in order to give these usual common words are usually left without importance and how by being spaced out—they are given the attention they deserve as creations of life. I realized that colons are used three times; this possibly was used in order to show the child main spot of the child and base of mind of the child ----“a child in an apple tree,falling into the way things want to be---seems to be the main theme of the child’s mind in which everything is centered in. The structure of the poem is short and the structure reminds me of an hourglass—it is small at top , gets bulgier, once again short, bulkier, and then the last line is small once again. She was at first in a definite concrete place but after she is left in an indefinite place of clouds. Of course, it was this experience of a kiss that left her without a solid ground to stand on.

The Horse

"The Horse" (p. 311-312)
by Philip Levine

When I first read through this poem, it seemed as if there was an old horse that wanted compassion from a stableboy, but in its blindness it killed the stableboy without knowing. The ending of the poem, particularly the last stanza, signal that the horse must be used as a metaphor; I had the impression that the horse was a metaphor for a dancing couple who are unsure of their relationship, and only discover each other through dancing. After reading through the poem a second time, I noticed that it was dedicated or sent to Ichiro Kawamoto, "survivor of Hiroshima." In this new context, I perceived all the imagery in the poem, especially that of the first stanza - "without skin, naked, hairless, / without eyes and ears, searching...tattered walls, butting his long / skull to pulp...where iron fences corkscrewed in / the street and bicycles turned / like question marks" - to show the pain and suffering of the Japanese people who experienced the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. The second stanza further mentions a burning river and still rocks, which further show the burning flash of the explosion and the silence of death that occurred after the blast. The third and fourth stanzas explicitly discuss death - the stableboy and some outside spectators all with their mouths open as if they were suffocating continue to show suffering. The fifth stanza talks of new growth coming from the dead, as if a rebirth occurred after many had died. The sixth stanza begins with "There had been no horse," saying it as if the death of the horse was so terrible that it is better to not mention the horse at all. In this respect, it might be a sense of closure to say that it is better to forget the deaths that occurred during the blast, and that the "rage" that could have ensued should dissipate after the rebirth.

This poem first caught my eye with the title - it somewhat reminded me of The Sound of Animals Fighting's full-length album, Lover, the Lord Has Left Us, which mentions horses in a couple of its song titles. In particular, the imagery of a morbidly dead horse with scenes of death made me feel as if I had experienced so much death myself. In addition, stanzas that began with a large indent seemed to say "but wait, there's more," as if the pain and suffering would not end. The last two stanzas, thankfully, seemed to end the death and leave the state of my mind in a somewhat cold, dark, yet accepting mood.

Writing

- Howard Nemerov
p.118

This was a particularly interesting poem because the subject of the poem, was about writing itself. It depicts the flow of letters from a pen as a graceful and artful act, like ice skating. The poet also points out how powerful writing is. By simply moving the "small bones of the wrist" the world can largely be captured and recreated. Writing not only reflects outside images, but the poet also describes how the manner of writing, both based on content, and visual form can also reveal the nature of the writer.

The stanza division provides an almost a sobering image for the dreamy beauty of the written word that the poet has established earlier. Where in the beginning he was praising writing for its potentials and its forms, the second stanza bluntly points out that writing is not all that its made out to be. He writes that Writing intrinsically lacks the feel of the real world. The curvy tracks of an ice skater on ice are merely a shadow of what was there before, the tracks can never recreate the grandeur of movement of the skaters, or the wind created in their wake. The poem itself lacks any formal poem structure, and seems to be more of a short essay written in a fluid manner, although the poem does end with a slight rhyming scheme, but it seems at odds with the rest of the piece.

Thoughts on One's Head (in plaster, with a bronze wash)

by William Meredith
p. 112

What makes this poem great is the way it takes something everybody is familiar with and makes you think of it in a different light, bringing up something people don't normally think about when they see this item. And although it does make you think, it is also extremely humorous, bringing things up that are very true but not always thought about. It starts out with its title, kind of like that "Turning cliche's on their head" excercise. Meredith takes "Thought's on One's Head," and, instead of talking about what he or you may be pondering, he puts those thoughts into a bust of someone probably dead. It's title alone is great and captures attention, especially with what he inserted into the parentheses, flipping that cliche. The form of this poem is also great, and creates a sort of sing-songy vibe with seven stanzas of four lines, each stanza having an abab rhyme scheme. I think this helps build on the humor the poem creates. The subjects brought up throughout the poem, however, are what make this poem so great. It's hilarious when you think the thoughts Meredith speaks of are brought up in the heads of the people busts are typically made of: presidents, people of great achievemnts and moral, leaders of nations, and so on. "Erotic movies," making "love and money," even telling "some few extremely funny" jokes make me want to just giggle. It then ends on how he himself dislikes his own head because of the "thoughts on one's head." I really like this poem, it's humor, and how it makes you think of the things the go on in people's heads.

The Compass

by Carl Phillips
page 586-587

I decided to blog about this poem because I found similarities to both of the poems that were presented in class, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and "Orange In". First of all, the poem is seems to be separated in terms of an image or idea being conveyed. The stanzas/lines of the poem do not necessarily have a logical connection to each other, but most have some association of a compass, which is like the "Blackbird" poem. For example, "a star" and "a dog with torch in its mouth" do not have any logical relation to each other, but one can see how both have some relation to a compass. Both have some association with guidance, i.e. the north star and the image of a dog with a torch in his mouth gives the reader an image of man's best friend somehow leading the way in times of need through dark times, a somewhat comforting image. Throughout the poem, random objects are mentioned but somehow there is still a sense of cohesiveness. Elements of "Orange In" can also be found in this poem, which is somewhat confusing to me. For example, there is a stanza that goes "x / that one and / that one and / what stands for". The repetition of "that one and" seems to be used not to make logical sense, but perhaps used to enhance the sounds in the poem or install a sort of rhythm here. This is the only place in the poem where repetition occurs, so I am not really sure exactly what type of significance this part has. The language used in the poem was also not very continuous, it just seemed like phrases and words were put together to make an image, although it does not make sense when just read straight through. For example, "a ship's windlass for around / what the intestine pulled out into / the salt air was bound fast" does not make logical sense, but one can imagine how the idea of a compass is integrated, being used to navigate through rough waters out at sea.

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

I like the rhyming and the rhythm in this poem. It is also very easy to read. The entire poem is a quote, which makes it different from other poems. The quotation marks make me feel like there is someone right in front of me telling me her thoughts. Thus even though the subject of the poem is in first person, the poet made it apparent that she is not writing her story nor with her perspective. From the title of the poem, it is obvious that the speaker in the poem is insanely in love. However, the love relationship is more than obsession. The speaker in the poem does not love a real person but someone whom she made up in her mind. Several times in poem. the speaker repeats “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.” When the speaker closes her eyes, nothing exists except her lover and she. This repetitive phrase in the poem makes it seem like she cannot stop shutting her eyes and stop thinking about her made-up lover. Even though she knows that her lover is not real, she cannot stop herself from creating a world where he exists. A love for someone unreal is madness, but an obsession with creating the love is extreme insanity.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
by John Donne

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/mourning.php

I have always loved John Donne's poetry, and this one just seems to really strike me and interest me especially. It is in some ways, "another sappy love poem" where a man is proclaiming his everlasting and undying love for a woman, but it is approached in a different and very interesting way. The speaker is going away from his loved one, most likely a wife, for a while, but he says that there should be no crying, "no tear-floods," because their love is stronger than that, and they are connected no matter where they are. He uses a compass, used primarily for drawing circles on a page, as a metaphor for his wife and their love. He explains how no matter how far he may move from her, they are always connected. It can never be separated or lose that strong connection, as one end will always lean towards the other. He focuses on the fact that their love is so much, higher, stronger, and pure, that there is no need to fret or be upset because in their hearts, they are one. He eliminates the common sorrow of missing a loved one who is far away. The form of the poem is pretty constant and uniform, as it also has a set rhyme scheme. I contemplated whether this makes the poem stronger or weakens it, but it does seem to give it a loving and confident tone and flows very well. I like the cadence of the poem especially when I read it.

The Vow

by Galway Kinnell p. 302

This is a short poem. One stanza. One sentence: "When the lover / goes, the vow though / broken remains, that / trace of eternity love / brings down among us / stays, to give / dignity to the suffering / and to intensify it." The line breaks are interesting because you definitely can read the phrases within the lines in different ways. For example, "the vow though broken remains" is a phrase but is chopped up into "broken remains." That has to be intentional. It makes you think of the broken remains of the vow or the relationship or the person who has been left. This is a lovely way to look at love and how something stays behind after the relationship has ended. Something eternal is there. It makes the suffering seem more meaningful. I think this poem sounds soft, if that makes sense. The consonents are mostly soft ones: l, v, th, br, r, d, s. Maybe he uses these sounds because he is talking about love, or because it is abstract concepts that he is discussing.

For an Album

For an Album
by: Adrienne Rich, pg. 358

I love how this poem has line lengths that vary dramatically. The line lengths start from a medium and then end very short. Rich does a good job using line breaks to paint vivid images, as if her poem was the camera capturing the snapshots she describes. I think it is this vivid “storytelling” that captures the reader and pulls him in. Rich also is able to disregard a rule of rhetoric, and create a new adjective, “snowlit.” However, she does well and makes it flow with her poem. Some of the other words in her poem are intentionally strange. There is a “mime of the operating room where gas and knives quote each other.” How is it possible to mime an operating room, and more so with gas and knives quoting each other? A mime is by definition silent, so it is not possible for someone speaking being a mime. Then the juxtaposition of gas and knives is also strange in the context of answering a telephone, because knives cut but gas, and I am assuming this is anaesthestical sleeping gas, will keep a person silent and still. In any case, Rich is able to impart a her meaning of stillness, and use it to create a meaningful social commentary.

“Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden [pg. 85]

This poem is filled with a number of pauses. The pauses are mainly used to accentuate a phrase or word. For example, the poem ends with “the beautiful, needful thing”. The pause gives the listener time to digest the words. It also prevents the whole poem from being swallowed too quickly since it is two sentences long. It chops the rhythm into small pieces. The writer, who I see as the speaker, respects and praises Frederick Douglass for what he did. In this poem, he only mention’s Douglass’ name once. It is seated right in the middle of the poem. Looking at it, it seems to be the core of the poem. All of the other words just surround it. This may be done to frame Douglass in the poem. The tone of respect comes when Hayden constantly refers to Douglass as “this man”. By calling Douglass a man, he wipes away the idea of being a slave. Although the word “man” is impersonal when used instead of someone’s name, it actually exalts the subject in this poem. When I read the poem, I picture the speaker holds a formal tone as if this is a public address. This poem is two sentences long. It seems as if it is a continual string of ideas and phrases that are spoken. In the first sentence, the phrases start with the same string of words. The first line is a repetition of “this…” followed by another “this…,” in a parallel structure. This is to build momentum for what is next to come. By beginning the phrases to say something, it allows the next phrases to be said louder. It resembles (if memory serves me right) Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address. In a way, they both mirror each other in parallel structure and address.

Meditation at Lagunitas

Meditation at Lagunitas
by Robert Hass
pg.463

The tone of this poem is very interesting. The speaker has a sort of lecturer or philosopher type of presense about him. It is conversational in a way, because of it's easily understood vocabulary and sentense structure. However, it can also be seen as unconversational because he does not allow for any response by the reader (as in a conversation); he is purely lecturing.
Also, some of his comparisons I felt were rather unique. Such as, "I felt a violent wonder at her presence / like a thirst for salt". (He is speaking about the girl he made love to once in the past.) Comparing the feelings he is getting from her presense to a thirst for salt is something I have never heard before. A thirst for salt implys a thirst for flavor, or something to make the situation in question more interesting to experience (or eat). I am unsure of whether or not he is regarding himself as needing more "salt", or his lover as needing more "salt"; it is rather ambiguous. Either he is thinking he himself is boring and needs more flavor, or his lover has become boring and needs to add some excitement to her routine.

The Illiterate

by William Meredith
p. 111

This poem is incredible at messing with your emotions and how you feel. Meredith puts you into the poem immediately, as you're sitting there in a room "Touching your goodness," whatever that may be, with a man holding a letter. It still seems though as if you remain in the poem as it continues, but not as "you," but rather as "I." Right after that first comma, Meredith puts you into the position as the "illiterate" man, and places all the things he feels upon you, the reader. You can feel his unfamiliarity, fear, confusion, curiosity, and pride.

The best thing to this poem, however, is its ending: the question Meredith asks of the illiterate man's feeling for the words he can't read. Words that could reveal wealth, death, or love. Meredith asks "What would you call his feeling...," however, personally, I can't describe that feeling with words. For me, that feeling would be one that is sad and depressed. But this is what's great about this poem: that feeling could be anything for anybody.

Mirage Oases

"Mirage Oases" (p. 531)

This poem talks about the illusions of oases that people see during hot days on the horizon, where mirages trick our minds into thinking that water exists in the distance. The first stanza introduces the "mirage oases" as places where people tend to "trespass," and this idea that an illusion can be trespassed seems to imply that these oases could be references to other, more concrete things such as personal possessions. The second stanza describes the contents of these mirage oases with grass, trees, and fish; it describes how delicate they are in that they can be easily "wrecked" after experiencing pressure (probably physical pressure). The third and fourth stanzas say that they only exist within our wishes and only when we are truly happy.

I found this poem particularly interesting because I would usually see these "mirage oases" when driving through the desert, where it seems like there is water on the road in the far distance. In this literal sense, I've seen such mirage oases and found that they appear in our line of sight. In that sense, such oases appear to be always "trespassed" in that when we travel forward toward them, they eventually disappear because we are too close (technically, we see them because the air molecules bend light such that we see the sky where ground should exist, giving the illusion of water, and this only works in large distances-in short distances, air molecules are not able to bend light enough). In the figurative sense of this poem, it seems that the "suspended wishes" in the third stanza refer to our wants that we cannot reach, so we resort to only thinking about them.

Solitude BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

Solitude
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.


Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.






What is a significant ands play with an eye-catcher in this poem is it play with words. (Even the title portrays a show of the own words “solitude” being solitude. ) It was interesting how ones actions reflect a consequence with the same verb. For example, “you weep and the consequence: you weep alone”, ”feast, and your halls are crowded; fast, and the world goes by” Other lines also show the reflected positive consequence coming from a “positive” action and vice versa. Solitude according to the speaker is gained through one’s supposedly negative actions as seen by others such as sighing,weeping, being sad,etc. I like how this positive/negative comparison is reflected through the indentations of the lines--- the “positive” lines come are placed more outward whereas the “negative” lines are more indented inwards as if the negative ones shouldn’t be taken as of importance just like people in solitude shouldn’t be taken as if important. Also, it is interesting how the poet started out with the possibility at the beginning rather than negativity—perhaps to emphasize that positivism is the aspect most demanded in this world –in parallel to the demand to place positivism first in the poem. the first two stanzas also contains two sentences with a semicolon after the first two lines and the third line would only have a comma and the fourth a period. Except for in the second stanza –after the first sentence “be sad, and you lose them all,-“ it has a hyphen to end the line. It is the only place in the poem where a hyphen is maintained. It is quite in the middle and perhaps to show that the most saddest consequence of the actions mentioned---this time you lose all your friends. The last stanza deviates because it has three sentences The very last sentence with two lines maintains a clear tone throughout of pain with the words such as “one by one” “we must “..showing negativity for once side by side rather than that repeating pattern of positivism/negativity. The line breaks are logical and make a complete thought rather than cutting my developing idea. The commas make a good partial stop for me to contemplate for awhile what I have just read. And if the sentence is broken at one time it is just broken before a preposition ;thus, it does not make much matter because the prepositional phrase is an entirely entity of itself.

One Art

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212

The first thing that drew me to this poem was its title. Based on the title alone, I thought it would be about drawing or painting. However after reading it quickly becomes apparent that it will be about not visual art, such as painting, but a social art, or learning to deal with loss. I love how Bishop has broken up her poem into siz stanzas, it is like looking in her mind and seeing her compartmentalize and deal with the things she has lost. She says she has “practice, losing farther, losing faster,” which seems to mee like she has analyzed and learned to deal with such loss. Bishop also is able to narrate in different persons. She switches back between first and third persons, and it makes the poem feel more personal. She is able to connect with her audience. I love how Bishop also uses some unusual punctuation and word choices. She turns vast into vaster, and does not capitalize the first letter of “my” after an exclamation point. The not capitalizing works because it just seems like she is continuing a thought. Slightly changing vast works because it makes the line seem slightly strange, but it also works because you understand what Bishop is trying to say.

The World

The World
Robert Creeley 223-224

This poem is very sensitive, discussing the relationship between a man, his love, and her relationship between her brother who is now gone. The poem has an interesting way of describing these relationships. It seems that the speaker is the new man in her life and her brother is now gone, but there is some conflict between them. They seem to be haunted by his spirit as it tries to come between them. The language in this poem is what is really appealing to me, and the syntax and line breaks add a very interesting affect. The pauses create an interesting cadence, making the reader take more time on each line. It does seem akward as phrases are offset by commas, breaking up each sentence into phrases so it doesn't flow, but I feel it serves its purpose very well.

The Shadow

by John Hollander

This poem uses very interesting imagery, it uses descriptions of light to describe the lack of it. Line breaks are also used cleverly to further the imagery of shadows. The poet writes:

"[...] in a room whose ceiling
Light was accidentally switched off-- [...]"

The line break mid-phrase creates a more vivid description for the scene the poet tries to paint. While saying that the ceiling light was accidentally switched off, the poet says at the same time that "Light was accidentally switched off" creating the image of total darkness. In numerous other lines Hollander breaks the sentences in ways such that every line can stand on its own as a striking image, as well as have meaning when the whole sentence is read. The speaker in the poem seems to be talking to another person, however from the way he refers to the other person it almost seems like he his referring to his shadow, because of how the other speaker only appears in darkness. The poem almost seems to be an homage to Allegory of the Den where a man believes reality to be what he sees in shadows.

I Went into the Maverick Bar

by Gary Snyder
page 365-366

I was drawn to this poem because of the peculiar way that the lines are broken. It seems like there is no clear pattern in the way the lines are broken; some lines are at a medium length, some lines remain long, others are broken in the middle of a line or thought. For the lines that are broken against the sentence or thought, some have the following lines start at the very left of the page but some start somewhere else. One thing that is cohesive is that if a line does not start all the way to the left, the line will start a little bit to the right of the center of the page. Most of these lines that are separated are just extra descriptions of what the above line was talking about i.e. "backed with beer" or "by the pool tables", and although the writer may want to put more emphasis on these phrases, none really made too much difference in the imagery that was being created. However, one line that is separated by itself is "America - your stupidity", which is much more different that the other lines that begin in the middle of the page. This line was preceded by a hyphen on the previous line, which is a change in the continuity, compared to the other indented lines. This causes the reader to pause a little longer at "America - your stupidity". This line is obvious a point of emphasis in the poem. All of the other indented lines were continuous from the previous line, making the the poem flow fairly easily despite the line breaks. Another thing I liked about this poem is how the imagery appealed to all the senses. For example, a "country-and-western band" playing in the background to let the reader hear the scene, and drinking "double shots of bourbon" to appeal to taste and also smell in some way. This gives the reader a better all around feel of the bar that the writer is trying to describe.

Reflective

Reflective
by A. R. Ammons

I found a
weed
that had a

mirror in it
and that
mirror

looked in at
a mirror
in

me that
had a
weed in it

Since we have been discussing line breaks over the last couple of classes, I decided to focus on a poem that contained interesting line breaks. Furthermore, both presentations focused some attention on imagery and the images produced through the use of diction. This poem clearly presents itself as having a different type of line break. Each line consist of only one to three short words, and each stanza, only three short lines. Furthermore, the word mirror is used three times throughout the poem and the word weed twice. Even after reading it over twice, I was forced to read it slowly and very carefully so as not to make a mistake. It is as if the structure and set up of this poem relates to the act of reflection and meditation, in that it must be done with care and at a slow pace. Furthermore, it is as if the poem is like a tongue twister, representing the act of twisting one's self inward to see their inner self.
The imagery presented in this poem is also very interesting. The picture that is formed by his diction shows a weed with a mirror in it, shining on a mirror in him that has a weed in it. It is clear that the flaw he notices with his eyes, sheds light on his own flaw. I truly enjoy how this poem is so simple, yet so filled with many different and interesting aspects.

Country Stars

Country Stars
William Meredith
page 115

I like the very calm and serene feel of this poem. One thing that helps this is the structure of the poem in terms of line breaks. All of the line breaks occur at the ends of phrases so the read is very smooth. Another factor that helps the poem's smoothness is the use of a lot of soft sounds such as "f" and "s", sometimes in repetition. I also really like some of the imagery such as "She blows on a black windowpane until it's white." I think this is a really creative way to describe fogging up a window with breath. Another thing I really like is the repetition of similar sounds in the same line such as "Two cities, a chemical plant, and clotted cars" and "distrust of darkness." It all really helps to make the poem a smooth read. I also enjoyed it because it's not very hard to understand and the poet's message is not buried.

Eros

by Louise Gluck, p 508-9

The first stanza is one long line. I like the way it flows. It starts a story. It sets the mood. It gives information.I like the idea of this line: "my heart had become small; it took very little to fill it." It is like your stomach when you don't eat much; it doesn't take much to fill it. And in the previous line she says she "was utterly sated" which could be about appetite. It could also be about sexual appetite. The first time I read this I thought it was about being alone--maybe after leaving her husband or being left by him. But it seems more about being alone after having an affair. After her lover has left her alone in the hotel room and she is grappling with the aftermath of it. She "acquitted myself" so there is some sense of being on trial or putting herself on trial. The last stanza is one line as well. It is not as long as the first line. It says she wanted to be naked. And she equates taking off her wedding ring to being naked. So there is a lot of ambiguity in this.

“No Kingdom” by Carl Phillips [pg. 587]

At first glance, this poem is more of a compilation of ideas than complete concrete thoughts. The lines in this poem are noticeably short and the text of the poem is shaped narrow. It makes it a quick read which gives me the idea that it is a series of quick thoughts. The only things that slow the reading are the commas and line breaks; it is really choppy to read. The rhythm of it seems very jumpy from idea to idea. It makes the speaker think of one idea after the another. Phillips puts many images into the poem in the form of nouns. Even though the sentences make little grammatical sense, the pictures of the poem give it its overall feeling: humid and cloudy. There is not much brightness in the poem to suggest something optimistic, nor is there any to suggest otherwise. It’s the words, such as “plague”, “empty”, and “small”, which gave me that overall feeling. The poem also contains many multi-syllabic words. It suggests that deeper thinking goes into the poem. Even though not much is said, much is implied. I think that the poem gives the feeling of being burdened with guilt. The entire poem is composed of four sentences; the first three are long while the last line is two lines long. What caught my eye is that one of the last lines contains “no kingdom” hidden between other words. That line keeps getting my attention since it seems important to the poem as a whole.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke (p. 44)

It is absolutely effective how Roethke wrote the first line in the poem – “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.” The line caught my attention and urged me to read on, however confusing it was. The second line indeed began to give me a hint of what the poem might be about. The fate that Roethke mentioned in the poem was the inevitable death that he eventually had to face. Roethke did not mean that he was not afraid of death. But because death is inevitable for him and for everybody, Roethke accepts it as something that he “cannot fear.” Here, saying this, Roethke express his effort to take death as something natural – something that he must not worry about. Then he said, “I learn by going where I have to go.” With this, Roethke stated his determination to live life as he saw it. He would do things that he felt need to be done. He would go wherever necessary for him to lead the life he wanted. This ties back to the first confusing line, which is repeated many times throughout the poem. Thus, when Roethke said “I wake to sleep,” he meant the cycles of his days in life. With every waking, Roethke lived his day to the fullest, since he “take my waking slow.” Later in the poem, when he said, “Great Nature has another thing to do to you and me, so take the lively air, and lovely, learn by going where to go,” one can see that he was in a very positive mood. Nature has its disasters, so whenever one can, he should enjoy the moments of life. The metaphor of the lowly worm climbing the winding stair refers to hardships in life. Even the worm is still working its way up the stairs, why would men refuse trying to fight hardships and to learn from failures. In the last stanza, when Roethke said, "The shaking keeps me steady," he meant to point out that through troubles and difficulties, one would become more "steady" in his principles and directions in life.

may i feel said he

may i feel said he
by e e cummings

When I was reading it aloud in my mind, and I found it so difficult to articulate the words. But that is not all completely due to the line breaks, it is also due to the choice of words that e e cummings used. The repetition of 'said he' and 'said she' especially made it difficult to read. This is doubtlessly intentional, because the whole atmosphere of the poem is very awkward, and I even imagined the characters studdering while they spoke. (Since they were in a very awkward position, and they, especially the girl, seemed quite nervous.) Also something interesting that e e cummings chose to use was parenthesis instead of quotations to separate the diaglogue and the narration of the poem. I honestly don't know why he chose to make this deviance from the normal punctuation, so it's just an observation. The line breaks in this poem were not abrupt or interrupting; instead they aided in separating who was speaking which line. However, the lack of punctuation (periods, comas, quotations) made it difficult to distinguish between the girl and the boy, and also made it difficult to read aloud.

Keeping Things Whole byMark Strand

Keeping Things Whole
by:Mark Strand
p.381


In this poem, the end-stopped lines happen three times in the first stanza and likewise in the second stanza. This was perhaps purposely manipulated in order to have the each stanza in proportion to each other. Due to the short lines, I tended to read faster and it seemed gradual to me. The ideas seem to intertwine much faster than if it had been laid out like in a narrative sense. After the first propositions introduced, the line breaks perhaps to give that feeling of respite to the reader and letting him focus on the nakedness of the field before he enters the poem. (The field seemed naked to me because he showed no precise description of it ;thus, the reader has free reign to roam in it.)Also, there is a parallel between field and absence since both are the words that BOLD out since they are the last words of the sentence. Another line breakage after the words “this is” shows a starting point for which the reader to relax in again. The last word “missing” in the first stanza is of importance because it is where the line ends and also the last word of the stanza; thus, emphasizing that he is missing in this field The last line “I am what is missing” is significant towards the meaning of the poem. The next 2 lines in the second stanza show movement through the words “walk” and “air” which are the last chosen words in the lines. He especially wanted to point out that he does this always not several times, but always… The line “the air moves in” has an idea trapped in that line and cannot be joined with the other line such as “to fill in the spaces” because that is a different image in the readers mind. The next line “We all have reasons” stops with that word “reasons”:which makes us want to ask immediately what reasons may you be talking about? His simple answer: I move (in one separate line to emphasize his diligence in moving) to keep things whole( second line-which is the title but written slightly different-perhaps to emphasize the idea of wholeness and its constant motion.

Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand (p. 381)

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

The lines in the poem are short. The diction and sentence structure are simple. However, the idea introduced in the poem is quite profound. Hence, the interesting line breaks help the readers slow down so that the idea could be absorbed as the poem is read. Every line has its own picture or thought that contributes to the entire idea of the poem. The line breaks put more emphasis on the meaning of each thought. There are only six sentences in the poem. Each sentence, however, encompasses more than one idea because of the line breaks used by the poet. When reading a poem, readers usually picture what they have read at the end of each line. Having lines in a poem broken in this way gives readers more time to picture the entire scene the line suggests with more details than having the whole sentence on one line. For example, after I read the first line, I can picture “the field” with plants, trees, wind, and space. If the line had been “In a field I am the absence,” the picture I would have of the field would not be so complete, because then I would concentrate more on speaker, his absence, and the meaning of his absence. Thus, the poet chose to have his lines broken in this way to stress the importance of the picture he creates in the poem. This poem is very interesting. The words are so simple, yet they express such complex meaning.

The World

The World
by Robert Creeley

I wanted so ably
to reassure you, I wanted
the man you took to be me,

to comfort you, and got
up, and went to the window,
pushed back, as you asked me to,

the curtain, to see
the outline of the trees
in the night outside.

The light, love,
the light we felt then,
greyly, was it, that

came in, on us, not
merely my hands or yours,
or a wetness so comfortable,

but in the dark then
as you slept, the grey
figure came so close

and leaned over,
between us, as you
slept, restless, and

my own face had to
see it, and be seen by it,
the man it was, your

grey lost tired bewildered
brother, unused, untaken--
hated by love, and dead,

but not dead for an
instant, saw me, myself
the intruder, as he was not.

I tried to say, it is
all right, she is
happy, you are no longer

needed. I said,
he is dead, and he
went as you shifted

and woke, at first afraid,
then knew by my own knowing
what had happened--

and the light then
of the sun coming
for another morning
in the world.

Creeley is able to do some very interesting things within this poem as far as structure and line breaks. It is clear after reading the very first stanza that he decides to have line breaks that go against the "norm." Reading this poem for the first time was somewhat difficult, in the sense that you can't just read each line, but instead you have to, as we discussed in class, be proactive while reading. You have to be able to see the sentences within the lines. However, this was quite hard to do when reading it the first time because I had no sense of what to expect. Furthermore, the structure Creeley decided to use added to the chaos and confusion when reading it for the first time. He used numerous commas throughout the poem, furthering the sense of confusion and chaos. However, after reading through it for the first time, it seemed to flow a little better the second time. Furthermore, I noticed that he had only used four periods throughout the entire poem. This seem to almost reflect the Father poem in that sense; however, Creeley's peom seemed to be relaxing and calm unlike Dickey's somewhat frantic and choppy poem. I believe the line breaks help to add a sense of surrealism to this poem. I truly like how Creeley set this poem up, creating a peaceful and elegant situation throughout all aspects of his poem.