10 responses to “Week 11—Poetry Reading Response (Tues)”
I admired the feelings given off by the poem “On Earth.” I believe that the poem is representing how people who have died are never truly gone. The line “The world is filled with people who have never died” is talking about the impact that people leave behind even when they’ve passed on, and you can see those impacts everywhere you look. I am, however, wondering what the author means by “How does one go about dying?” Maybe they are pondering if it is possible to die without leaving any impact on the world.
I really like the Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. I like the sentence breaks and the emotion the poem made me feel. I really like the sentence “Do not care if you just arrive in your skeleton” is a really good opening line, it sets the scene of the rest of the poem really well as well as the relationship the writer has with the person the poem is written about.
I really enjoyed reading the funny ways Gay personified love with the stink breathe as well as the similes and imageries used to characterize the blinding ways of love while revealing Love’s (the person’s) true form. I particularly liked the section where Gay writes,
“ Love, you helped design the brick
that built the walls around the castle
in the basement of which is a vault
inside of which is another vault
inside of which . . . you get my point.” Because I took this as the narrator has walls that have built and fortified over and over again because of the way Love has deceived them.
Richard Jackson’s “Ten Things I Need to Know,” struck a delicate balance between specific detail and abstract thought and prose. Reading the line, “the Carolina Wren caught in the bedroom yesterday died because he stepped on a glue trap and tore his wings off,” caused a physical shudder. This rarely happens to me when I read which made the poem immediately memorable. The specificity of a “Carolina Wren” acted as a replacement for a name for the bird. This created an instant attachment to the bird, which was immediately hurt in the second half of the sentence. The poem’s structure follows a similar pattern of calm, soft words followed by intense actions or events. This wave structure was captivating, and, to me, it represented the ebb and flow of life. The facts thrown in mimicked the casual way we pick up information and how seemingly meaningless facts can stick in our brains and relate to larger life events or feelings. The poem felt real — cutting — not like the abstractness of many other poems that I’ve read before.
Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish was a wonderful read. Personally, I love narrative poems because it tells a bit more of a clear story while still incorporating sensory and visual imagery. In Bishop’s work, she tells a story of catching a fish on a lake. The fish however, seems to be older and more worn out. She states:
Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
While describing the fish, it seems like it has gone through war. It is old and worn, it has barnacles and lice and it has weeds hanging down from it. From this description I truly thought of Luke Skywalker’s X-wing after he pulled out of the swamp using the force. Clearly, the Fish has been alive for quite some time and has been through a lot.
However the most important part, in my opinion, is the description of the 4 pieces of fishing line and the wire leader that was hanging out of the old fish’s mouth. Each piece is frayed and crimped from when the fish fought back and got away, leading to his escape from capture. She describes them as medals hanging from his mouth, showing off its victories and its won fights. This fish has escaped 5 different times, but yet Bishop was successful. It may have escaped even more times but the evidence is just not present. Elizabeth Bishop then says:
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat.
She was filled with a sense of victory because out of all the people who attempted to catch this fish she was successful, she was possibly the first one to lay eyes on the beast. She had personally defeated one of the greats in that lake. In the end, Bishop releases the fish so that it may go on fighting its battles.
Overall, I really enjoyed this piece of work and loved reading it!
I loved “Meditations in an Emergency,” I thought it was sincere which I appreciate in poems. I felt like the repetition and specificity of the lines were important to giving it that personal feel. The emotion in this poem is so clearly conveyed and strong. The bringing in of the “you” at the very end is also impactful and done really well, in a way that isn’t distracting.
The poem that stood out to me the most was A story about the body. I liked how the author built up this extreme sense of desire and kind of obsession, and then let it all fall apart over something vain. I did think it was interesting that the author was a male because I feel like this is the kind of experience that a lot of women have, where as soon as they do something that goes against some idealistic version someone has of you in their head, they lose interest. I think this piece also gave a feeling of distrust and betrayal because the man whose point of view you are reading builds this woman up as this almost goddess-like figure who he’s enchanted by. He states that he thinks he’s in love with her, but when you think about love it’s more than appearance and that makes it so disheartening when he completely loses interest due to a physical attribute.
I connected to and appreciated Cameron Awkward-Rich’s poem “Meditations in an Emergency”. The opening line drew me in, stating: “I wake up & it breaks my heart”. The setting is built up in such vivid detail, as we move through the space on the train, the people around, tents, and a city scene. It invoked my memories of New York. I love the description merged with the speaker’s internal pain, and dreaming about loving the world they are in. This poem resonates with the feelings of losing your dreams and growing up to the bleakness of the world. I can connect to the feelings and feel seen, and it reminds me of how the pandemic felt.
I really enjoyed Outing Iowa. I loved the theme of being connected to a place through knowing it’s history. I liked the way the author relates their past self to a fossil. The theme of what changes and what doesn’t, the land changes from an ocean to a desert but the authors hands will never be any larger, really stood out to me. The poem is beautiful and seems hopeful, even when it talks about the melting glaciers.
I enjoyed reading “Even the Gods” by Nicole Sealy. I enjoyed the repetition of the word “even.” I think it was a good use of the word in this poem since those who are spiritual regard God or gods as perfect beings that we hold ourselves to a standard. Yet. this poem says that gods are human as well. I wonder who the “you” is in this poem as it seems that the speaker is saying that this “you” is not perfect like a god because gods have gods too. The repetition of the word “even” can also mean equality, maybe in the sense that all of the gods are equal to each other but they are also equal to humans.
10 responses to “Week 11—Poetry Reading Response (Tues)”
I admired the feelings given off by the poem “On Earth.” I believe that the poem is representing how people who have died are never truly gone. The line “The world is filled with people who have never died” is talking about the impact that people leave behind even when they’ve passed on, and you can see those impacts everywhere you look. I am, however, wondering what the author means by “How does one go about dying?” Maybe they are pondering if it is possible to die without leaving any impact on the world.
I really like the Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. I like the sentence breaks and the emotion the poem made me feel. I really like the sentence “Do not care if you just arrive in your skeleton” is a really good opening line, it sets the scene of the rest of the poem really well as well as the relationship the writer has with the person the poem is written about.
“Love, Im done with you” by Ross Gay
I really enjoyed reading the funny ways Gay personified love with the stink breathe as well as the similes and imageries used to characterize the blinding ways of love while revealing Love’s (the person’s) true form. I particularly liked the section where Gay writes,
“ Love, you helped design the brick
that built the walls around the castle
in the basement of which is a vault
inside of which is another vault
inside of which . . . you get my point.” Because I took this as the narrator has walls that have built and fortified over and over again because of the way Love has deceived them.
Richard Jackson’s “Ten Things I Need to Know,” struck a delicate balance between specific detail and abstract thought and prose. Reading the line, “the Carolina Wren caught in the bedroom yesterday died because he stepped on a glue trap and tore his wings off,” caused a physical shudder. This rarely happens to me when I read which made the poem immediately memorable. The specificity of a “Carolina Wren” acted as a replacement for a name for the bird. This created an instant attachment to the bird, which was immediately hurt in the second half of the sentence. The poem’s structure follows a similar pattern of calm, soft words followed by intense actions or events. This wave structure was captivating, and, to me, it represented the ebb and flow of life. The facts thrown in mimicked the casual way we pick up information and how seemingly meaningless facts can stick in our brains and relate to larger life events or feelings. The poem felt real — cutting — not like the abstractness of many other poems that I’ve read before.
Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish was a wonderful read. Personally, I love narrative poems because it tells a bit more of a clear story while still incorporating sensory and visual imagery. In Bishop’s work, she tells a story of catching a fish on a lake. The fish however, seems to be older and more worn out. She states:
Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
While describing the fish, it seems like it has gone through war. It is old and worn, it has barnacles and lice and it has weeds hanging down from it. From this description I truly thought of Luke Skywalker’s X-wing after he pulled out of the swamp using the force. Clearly, the Fish has been alive for quite some time and has been through a lot.
However the most important part, in my opinion, is the description of the 4 pieces of fishing line and the wire leader that was hanging out of the old fish’s mouth. Each piece is frayed and crimped from when the fish fought back and got away, leading to his escape from capture. She describes them as medals hanging from his mouth, showing off its victories and its won fights. This fish has escaped 5 different times, but yet Bishop was successful. It may have escaped even more times but the evidence is just not present. Elizabeth Bishop then says:
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat.
She was filled with a sense of victory because out of all the people who attempted to catch this fish she was successful, she was possibly the first one to lay eyes on the beast. She had personally defeated one of the greats in that lake. In the end, Bishop releases the fish so that it may go on fighting its battles.
Overall, I really enjoyed this piece of work and loved reading it!
I loved “Meditations in an Emergency,” I thought it was sincere which I appreciate in poems. I felt like the repetition and specificity of the lines were important to giving it that personal feel. The emotion in this poem is so clearly conveyed and strong. The bringing in of the “you” at the very end is also impactful and done really well, in a way that isn’t distracting.
The poem that stood out to me the most was A story about the body. I liked how the author built up this extreme sense of desire and kind of obsession, and then let it all fall apart over something vain. I did think it was interesting that the author was a male because I feel like this is the kind of experience that a lot of women have, where as soon as they do something that goes against some idealistic version someone has of you in their head, they lose interest. I think this piece also gave a feeling of distrust and betrayal because the man whose point of view you are reading builds this woman up as this almost goddess-like figure who he’s enchanted by. He states that he thinks he’s in love with her, but when you think about love it’s more than appearance and that makes it so disheartening when he completely loses interest due to a physical attribute.
I connected to and appreciated Cameron Awkward-Rich’s poem “Meditations in an Emergency”. The opening line drew me in, stating: “I wake up & it breaks my heart”. The setting is built up in such vivid detail, as we move through the space on the train, the people around, tents, and a city scene. It invoked my memories of New York. I love the description merged with the speaker’s internal pain, and dreaming about loving the world they are in. This poem resonates with the feelings of losing your dreams and growing up to the bleakness of the world. I can connect to the feelings and feel seen, and it reminds me of how the pandemic felt.
I really enjoyed Outing Iowa. I loved the theme of being connected to a place through knowing it’s history. I liked the way the author relates their past self to a fossil. The theme of what changes and what doesn’t, the land changes from an ocean to a desert but the authors hands will never be any larger, really stood out to me. The poem is beautiful and seems hopeful, even when it talks about the melting glaciers.
I enjoyed reading “Even the Gods” by Nicole Sealy. I enjoyed the repetition of the word “even.” I think it was a good use of the word in this poem since those who are spiritual regard God or gods as perfect beings that we hold ourselves to a standard. Yet. this poem says that gods are human as well. I wonder who the “you” is in this poem as it seems that the speaker is saying that this “you” is not perfect like a god because gods have gods too. The repetition of the word “even” can also mean equality, maybe in the sense that all of the gods are equal to each other but they are also equal to humans.