The Farewell
Edward Field
They say the ice will hold
so there I go,
forced to believe them by my act of trusting people,
stepping out on it,
and naturally it gaps open
and I, forced to carry on coolly
by my act of being imperturbable,
slide erectly into the water wearing my captain's helmet,
waving to the shore with a sad smile,
"Goodbye my darlings, goodbye dear one,"
as the ice meets again over my head with a click.
This poem is called The Farewell by Edward Field. I chose this poem because I was interested by the title. I wanted to know what The Farewell was. After reading the poem I realized that it was the farewell of a captain to his crew. But it was much more than that as well. His crew made him believe that this "ice" would hold him, that he was safe goibng out on the
"ice" alone. He trusted their judgement and ended up sinking beneath the ice never to by seen again. The captain remains calm while he is engulfed by the ice and it "meets again over [his] head with a click." Above this poem there were words in italics: todays poem is about trust and distrust. The lesson is the story is that you cannot always trust other people. Sometimes you must trust wourself above all others and whatever choice you make you must live with it.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Last Wolf
The Last Wolf- Poem 167
Mary Tallmountain
The last wolf hurried toward me
throught the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowed high rises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless
Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping
gait
closer the sounds in the deadly
night
through clutter and rubble of quiet
blocks
I hear his voice ascending the
hill
and at last his low whine as he
came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west,
waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered
Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.
This poem is called, “The Last Wolf.” It is by Mary Tallmountain. I choose this poem because I am always interested when someone writes about nature and the animals that must live inside it. This poem was very unique because it combines nature and the grime of the city. It describes a woman who knows this wolf and can understand him. The wolf is the last left of his kind and when the wolf walks into the room where the woman is waiting; she says, “Yes, I know what they have done.” This implies that someone or something has killed the other wolves. The wolf feels incredibly alone and howls out while he is running through the city toward the woman. This woman is the only thing that the wolf has left and he feels compelled to come back to her and express his grief. This poem could be about the destruction of the world and its creatures. It could be a premonition of a time when the cities of the world are overrun by wild life and people no longer appreciate the worlds beauty and kill off all of the wolves in their fight for survival in this new doomed world. This poet uses amazing imagery in describing the crumbling city and the emotion on the wolf’s face. She breaks her poem apart line by line in order to create a more dramatic affect. One word may go on a line. This emphasizes the lines in certain stanzas and creates a ‘body’ to her poem. There is a distinct introduction, of herself and of the wolf, then the body, then the conclusion where she understands the wolfs suffering.
Mary Tallmountain
The last wolf hurried toward me
throught the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowed high rises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless
Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping
gait
closer the sounds in the deadly
night
through clutter and rubble of quiet
blocks
I hear his voice ascending the
hill
and at last his low whine as he
came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west,
waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered
Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.
This poem is called, “The Last Wolf.” It is by Mary Tallmountain. I choose this poem because I am always interested when someone writes about nature and the animals that must live inside it. This poem was very unique because it combines nature and the grime of the city. It describes a woman who knows this wolf and can understand him. The wolf is the last left of his kind and when the wolf walks into the room where the woman is waiting; she says, “Yes, I know what they have done.” This implies that someone or something has killed the other wolves. The wolf feels incredibly alone and howls out while he is running through the city toward the woman. This woman is the only thing that the wolf has left and he feels compelled to come back to her and express his grief. This poem could be about the destruction of the world and its creatures. It could be a premonition of a time when the cities of the world are overrun by wild life and people no longer appreciate the worlds beauty and kill off all of the wolves in their fight for survival in this new doomed world. This poet uses amazing imagery in describing the crumbling city and the emotion on the wolf’s face. She breaks her poem apart line by line in order to create a more dramatic affect. One word may go on a line. This emphasizes the lines in certain stanzas and creates a ‘body’ to her poem. There is a distinct introduction, of herself and of the wolf, then the body, then the conclusion where she understands the wolfs suffering.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Three Poems
Neglect
R. T. Smith
Is the scent of apple boughs smoking in the woodstove what I will remember of the Red Delicious I brought down, ashamed
that I could not convince its limbs to render fruit? Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart.
I should have lopped the dead limbs early and watched each branch with a goshawk's eye, patching with medicinal pitch, offering water,
compost and mulch, but I was too enchanted by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture, too callow to believe that death's inevitable
for any living being unloved, untended. What remains is this armload of applewood now feeding the stove's smolder. Splendor
ripens a final time in the firebox, a scarlet harvest headed, by dawn, to embers. Two decades of shade and blossoms - tarts
and cider, bees dazzled by the pollen, spare elegance in ice - but what goes is gone. Smoke is all, through this lesson in winter
regret, I've been given to remember. Smoke, and Red Delicious apples redder than a passing cardinal's crest or cinders.
Neglect is a poem by R.T. Smith. This poem’s title is what caught my eye. I was interested to see what it was about. When I started reading the poem I was able to relate the different fruits to people the way the different fruits are handled to the way people treat one another. If one is neglected he will eventually feel worthless and forgotten. The line, “Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart” was a terrific piece of imagery that made the reader identify with the apple tree. This one stanza creates a feeling of lost hope, something that should have been taken care of but since there was neglect it grew to be twisted and black, hard and unforgiving. No longer would the tree create a delicious fruit. It could only be used as firewood now. This particular part reminds me of the neglect of a child. If a child is neglected he will learn to trust no one, to become hard and dark in order to protect himself.
After Us
Connie Wanek
I don't know if we're in the beginning or in the final stage. -- Tomas Tranströmer
Rain is falling through the roof. And all that prospered under the sun, the books that opened in the morning and closed at night, and all day turned their pages to the light;
the sketches of boats and strong forearms and clever faces, and of fields and barns, and of a bowl of eggs, and lying across the piano the silver stick of a flute; everything
invented and imagined, everything whispered and sung, all silenced by cold rain.
The sky is the color of gravestones. The rain tastes like salt, and rises in the streets like a ruinous tide. We spoke of millions, of billions of years. We talked and talked.
Then a drop of rain fell into the sound hole of the guitar, another onto the unmade bed. And after us, the rain will cease or it will go on falling, even upon itself.
This poem by Connie Wanek is called “After Us.” It is a poem about the rain. The way that it helps living things and the way it silences all other sounds. It speaks of the way the rain keeps everyone inside until it starts to come inside too. It speaks of the darkness of rain, of the way it will continuously fall no matter what. The rain will not stop. It will keep on moving. Weather it is good or bad it still continues. There is no way to stop it and no way to prevent it. You can only protect yourself, and even after that the rain will still fall.
Some Clouds
Steve Kowit
Now that I've unplugged the phone, no one can reach me- At least for this one afternoon they will have to get by without my advice or opinion. Now nobody else is going to call & ask in a tentative voice if I haven't yet heard that she's dead, that woman I once loved- nothing but ashes scattered over a city that barely itself any longer exists. Yes, thank you, I've heard. It had been too lovely a morning. That in itself should h
ave warned me. The sun lit up the tangerines & the blazing poinsettias like so many candles. For one afternoon they will have to forgive me. I am busy watching things happen again that happened a long time ago. as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair under a sky of incredible blue, broken - if that is the word for it - by a few billowing clouds, all white & unspeakably lovely, drifting out of one nothingness into another.
This poem is called ”Some Clouds” by Steve Kowit. It is about a man who has lost someone that he loves very much. This poem demonstrates loneliness and hurt. The man does not want people to call him now. He does not want to talk about it. He wants to be left alone in the lawn chairs. He wants to be left alone to look at the clouds. The piece of imagery of the clouds represents peace. This peace is to be shared with the dead. There must some sort of grounding. This man’s ground is the sky.
R. T. Smith
Is the scent of apple boughs smoking in the woodstove what I will remember of the Red Delicious I brought down, ashamed
that I could not convince its limbs to render fruit? Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart.
I should have lopped the dead limbs early and watched each branch with a goshawk's eye, patching with medicinal pitch, offering water,
compost and mulch, but I was too enchanted by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture, too callow to believe that death's inevitable
for any living being unloved, untended. What remains is this armload of applewood now feeding the stove's smolder. Splendor
ripens a final time in the firebox, a scarlet harvest headed, by dawn, to embers. Two decades of shade and blossoms - tarts
and cider, bees dazzled by the pollen, spare elegance in ice - but what goes is gone. Smoke is all, through this lesson in winter
regret, I've been given to remember. Smoke, and Red Delicious apples redder than a passing cardinal's crest or cinders.
Neglect is a poem by R.T. Smith. This poem’s title is what caught my eye. I was interested to see what it was about. When I started reading the poem I was able to relate the different fruits to people the way the different fruits are handled to the way people treat one another. If one is neglected he will eventually feel worthless and forgotten. The line, “Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart” was a terrific piece of imagery that made the reader identify with the apple tree. This one stanza creates a feeling of lost hope, something that should have been taken care of but since there was neglect it grew to be twisted and black, hard and unforgiving. No longer would the tree create a delicious fruit. It could only be used as firewood now. This particular part reminds me of the neglect of a child. If a child is neglected he will learn to trust no one, to become hard and dark in order to protect himself.
After Us
Connie Wanek
I don't know if we're in the beginning or in the final stage. -- Tomas Tranströmer
Rain is falling through the roof. And all that prospered under the sun, the books that opened in the morning and closed at night, and all day turned their pages to the light;
the sketches of boats and strong forearms and clever faces, and of fields and barns, and of a bowl of eggs, and lying across the piano the silver stick of a flute; everything
invented and imagined, everything whispered and sung, all silenced by cold rain.
The sky is the color of gravestones. The rain tastes like salt, and rises in the streets like a ruinous tide. We spoke of millions, of billions of years. We talked and talked.
Then a drop of rain fell into the sound hole of the guitar, another onto the unmade bed. And after us, the rain will cease or it will go on falling, even upon itself.
This poem by Connie Wanek is called “After Us.” It is a poem about the rain. The way that it helps living things and the way it silences all other sounds. It speaks of the way the rain keeps everyone inside until it starts to come inside too. It speaks of the darkness of rain, of the way it will continuously fall no matter what. The rain will not stop. It will keep on moving. Weather it is good or bad it still continues. There is no way to stop it and no way to prevent it. You can only protect yourself, and even after that the rain will still fall.
Some Clouds
Steve Kowit
Now that I've unplugged the phone, no one can reach me- At least for this one afternoon they will have to get by without my advice or opinion. Now nobody else is going to call & ask in a tentative voice if I haven't yet heard that she's dead, that woman I once loved- nothing but ashes scattered over a city that barely itself any longer exists. Yes, thank you, I've heard. It had been too lovely a morning. That in itself should h
ave warned me. The sun lit up the tangerines & the blazing poinsettias like so many candles. For one afternoon they will have to forgive me. I am busy watching things happen again that happened a long time ago. as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair under a sky of incredible blue, broken - if that is the word for it - by a few billowing clouds, all white & unspeakably lovely, drifting out of one nothingness into another.
This poem is called ”Some Clouds” by Steve Kowit. It is about a man who has lost someone that he loves very much. This poem demonstrates loneliness and hurt. The man does not want people to call him now. He does not want to talk about it. He wants to be left alone in the lawn chairs. He wants to be left alone to look at the clouds. The piece of imagery of the clouds represents peace. This peace is to be shared with the dead. There must some sort of grounding. This man’s ground is the sky.
Friday, February 29, 2008
And I Have Known the Arms Already, Known Them All
After analyzing this poem with the assistance of the "Prufrock Analysis Worksheet" I realized that this poem is far more in depth then I thought before. There are far many more metaphors than I had originally thought. The amount of Imagery is also much greater. The man uses thses things to describe himself through out the poem. He speaks of his insecurities and his fear of growing old. He speaks of hope and want and knowledge. He speaks of a great time in his life that he is afraid will end and after this great time in his life he won't know what to do because he had had his whole life planned out until this point. He also makes several alusions to other literary works.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
One Man, One Love Song
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Throughtout reading this poem there was a great sense of self consciousness and fear of being judged by others.There some great metaphors including one describing a cat walking around a house. At first I thought it was a dog protecting the house then I realized that it was a cat with the lines "The yellow fog that rubs its back on window panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes." The color yellow can be associated wiht cats because many cats eyes are yellow in color. Also a cat will normally rub against someone or somehting when it wants attention. After this line I realized thios was also a metaphor for the person who wrote the poem. He wants to have attention, but is afraid of what 'they' might think of him.
Throughtout reading this poem there was a great sense of self consciousness and fear of being judged by others.There some great metaphors including one describing a cat walking around a house. At first I thought it was a dog protecting the house then I realized that it was a cat with the lines "The yellow fog that rubs its back on window panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes." The color yellow can be associated wiht cats because many cats eyes are yellow in color. Also a cat will normally rub against someone or somehting when it wants attention. After this line I realized thios was also a metaphor for the person who wrote the poem. He wants to have attention, but is afraid of what 'they' might think of him.
Friday, February 15, 2008
On the Inside
Immigrant Blues
People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.
It’s an old story from the previous century
about my father and me.
The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.
It’s called “Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”
It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,”
called, “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”
Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.
But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?
And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?
You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.
Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.
If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.
It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening
called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”
called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,”
called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”
How can one describe what it is to be inside? It is the very act of tearing open the skin of an object and looking at the guts. The inside is what is truly there; this cannot be tampered with by any outside forces. This is what is going on in someone’s mind in someone life. It may be concealed by a skin that keeps all of what is on the inside away from the world. The truth is on the inside. The truth is what can be found when one tears away a layer like one tears apart an onion.
People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.
It’s an old story from the previous century
about my father and me.
The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.
It’s called “Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”
It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,”
called, “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”
Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.
But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?
And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?
You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.
Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.
If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.
It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening
called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”
called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,”
called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”
How can one describe what it is to be inside? It is the very act of tearing open the skin of an object and looking at the guts. The inside is what is truly there; this cannot be tampered with by any outside forces. This is what is going on in someone’s mind in someone life. It may be concealed by a skin that keeps all of what is on the inside away from the world. The truth is on the inside. The truth is what can be found when one tears away a layer like one tears apart an onion.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Far, far away
The Distances
Henry Rago
This house, pitched now
The dark wide stretch
Of plains and ocean
To these hills over
The night-filled river,
Billows with night,
Swells with the rooms
Of sleeping children, pulls
Slowly from this bed,
Slowly returns, pulls and holds,
Is held where we
Lock all distances!
Ah, how the distances
Spiral from that
Secrecy:
Room,
Rooms, roof
Spun to the huge
Midnight, and into
The rings and rings of stars.
This Poem uses a lot of IMAGERY; it paints a clear picture of the house and the hills and the children sleeping. Each thing is described to form a picture. The poem is done in FREE VERSE and changes STANZAS after the LINE "Lock all distances." After this change in STANZAS the direction of the poem seems to change direction. It no longer speaks of the Image that we have just made in our minds as readers. It changes perspective and describes the distance that comes out of secrecy. It speaks of spinning away from this house toward the stars. Also, there is an ALLITERATION when he says "Rooms, Roof." This emphasizes the way that one exists the room and reaches out and away towards the stars.
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