A poem about poetry

An Obsessive Combination of Onotological Inscape, Trickery and Love
by Anne Sexton

Busy, with an idea for a code, I write
signals hurrying from left to right,
or right to left, by obscure routes,
for my own reasons; taking a word like writes
down tiers of tries until its secret rites
make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS
can amazingly and funnily become STAR
and right to left that small star
is mine, for my own liking, to stare
its five lucky pins inside out, to store
forever kindly, as if it were a star
I touched and a miracle I really wrote

This poem is awesome. I love how it poetically it talks about the process of writing poetry, especially the line, “taking a word like writes down tiers of tries until its secret rites…” To me, thats about as good as writing gets, when you can make a point like Sexton made with this line and do it in such a way that it illustrates that point, you’ve accomplished something great. I can really feel the passion Sexton has for poetry in this poem. Lines like, ” RATS can amazingly and funnily become STAR,” and “I touched and a miracle I really wrote” Illustrate this passion. The latter line is one I really love. She feels she has experienced what she wrote about because she felt so passionate about it. Writing poetry is so fulfilling to Sexton that she actually feels she is living her poetry.

This poem is a reminder of what poetry should be like, meaningful and entertaining. I’m glad I read this because it helped me appreciate poetry more than I already did. Reading poetry shouldn’t be a chore (even though I read Gerald Manley Hopkins it feels like it) and this poem is a good example of why.

Jennifer Lost the War

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers – Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid

The minute I read this poem, I knew it was one I could write about. Usually it takes me awhile to find one I’m comfortable with but this one really stuck out. I believe that Aunt Jennifer is a woman in an abusive marriage with the uncle that is mentioned. The wedding ring is a “massive weight” that prevents her from expressing herself in her art. When the aunt is dead she is “still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.” Her husband was her master and her art was a way of escaping that. The tigers that she creates “do not fear the men beneath the tree.” The tree represents all of the oppression that Aunt Jennifer is put under, and the men are the ones that force the oppression. The tigers stick out in this world because they are not under the men’s control. They are “Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.” However, even after Aunt Jennifer is dead, her art and her message still live. Just because she is gone doesn’t mean she can’t speak to the world through her art.

This is one of the best poems I’ve ever read, it’s up there with “The Drum” by Komunyakaa. Aunt Jennifer was one woman, but with her life she created art that sent a powerful message. This poem reminds me of V for Vendetta, which happens to be my favorite movie. One theme that is common in that movie is that “ideas are bulletproof.” Even if the person dies, the idea can’t be destroyed. I think this poem is a tribute to art and how it can be used to escape reality to send a message.

Bop the Bishop

Sonnet – Elizabeth Bishop

Caught — the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed — the broken
thermometer’s mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!

For some reason the imagery in the poem struck me. It starts off with images about something that is caught between two sides and can’t figure out what to do. The poem talks about a compass needle that is wavering and a “creature divided.” The compass is supposed to tell you exactly where to go but in this case it is wavering because it doesn’t know. Then something happens, and the person is set free. The image of mercury from a thermometer is a strong one because the mercury is confined to a skinny tube and is forced to move up or down based on the temperature. The mercury can’t move on its own and it’s every action is decided by the enviornment. The empty mirror is another strong image because it suggests that maybe someone was looking in the mirror and now that he’s been set free he doesn’t need to question himself anymore.

I think this poem is breaking out of the confines of society and living an authentic life. Everyone has a desire buried within them somewhere to go out and live life on the edge. Since a sonnet is suppose to be about love maybe this is Bishops way of preaching the kind of life she would like to live. This poem reminds of books like Into the Wild and Hatchet where people are displaced from society and live off the land. In the case of Hatchet, the main character is forced by outside circumstances to live this kind of life but he loves it so much he can’t bring himself to go back to his normal life. Personally, living an authentic life sounds great but will never happen since I’ve already been corrupted by society.

Ave Maria

Mothers of America
                                   let your kids go to the movies!
   get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
   it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
                                                                 but what about the soul
   that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
   and when you grow old as grow old you must
                                                                   they won’t hate you
   they won’t criticize you they won’t know
                                                                they’ll be in some glamorous country
   they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

   they may even be grateful to you
                                                     for their first sexual experience
   which only cost you a quarter
                                                 and didn’t upset the peaceful home
   they will know where candy bars come from
                                                                       and gratuitous bags of popcorn
   as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
   with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
   near the Williamsburg Bridge
                                                oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
   so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
   they won’t know the difference
                                                  and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
   and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
   instead of hanging around the yard
                                                        or up in their room
                                                                                      hating you
   prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
   except keeping them from the darker joys
                                                                   it’s unforgivable the latter
   so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
                                                                          and the family breaks up
   and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
                                                                                         seeing
   movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young

This Frank O’ Hara poem struck me, obviously, because of the strange way its written.  The subject matter coupled with the strange style made it a very interesting poem.  O’Hara is talking about why parents should allow their children to enter the outside world rather than stay cooped at home being sheltered from real life.  He wants children to experience being a human rather than being trapped in an idealistic world.  This kind of reminds me of Adam and Eve.  They get kicked out of the idyllic Garden of Eden but in the process they become human.

Personally, I agree with what O’Hara is saying.  Don’t shelter your kids because your afraid of what they might see in the world.  Experience is the best thing for a person to have and you can’t experience anything if you can’t leave your house.  My parents were always pretty good with letting me watch movies and other things that some parents might freak out about and I think I’ve become better because of it.

I DONT WANNA SEE THE DAY!!!!!

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

I chose this William Blake poem because I remember seeing it in a past english class and I wanted to revisit it since I have some experience reading poetry.  What I got from was Blake questioning creation and moral extremes.  He’s wondering how it’s possible for such a fierce tiger to be created by the same god who created the docile lamb.  He talks about what tools could be used to create such a fearful beast.

This poem is still extremely relevant today.  People often wonder how it’s possible for humans to become as evil as the Janjaweed in Darfur or as giving and caring as Mother Teresa.  It also calls back the days where John Locke and Thomas Hobbes debated whether humans were inherently good or bad.  Religious people often question how their respective diety could create people of such different moral standing.   Personally, I believe how a human grows depends alot on what the enviorment around him is, this sounds obvious but it makes sense to me.

Cervantes the Pirate

 Emplunada by Lorna Dee Cervantes

When summer ended the leaves of snapdragons withered taking their shrill-colored mouths with them. They were still, so quiet. They were violet where umber now is. She hated and she hated to see them go. Flowers  born when the weather was good – this she thinks of, watching the branch of peaches daring their ways above the fence, and further, two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other, arcing their bodies in grim determination to find what is good, what is given them to find. These are warriors  distancing themselves from history. They find peace in the way they contain the wind and are gone.

 

For some reason, this poem by Lorna Cervantes struck me.  What I got from it is that a girl is depressed about the change in seasons and then it focuses on the hummingbirds who accept the change and go on with their lives.  I believe the message being sent is don’t fear change you can’t control because there is nothing you can do about it.

 One thing I hate is when people whine about getting older.  Sure it’s no fun but what are you going to do about it? Get botox? have surgery? It’s a natural process of life which is unavoidable.  I read an article about a comedian who accepted his eventual death and instead of loading himself up with medicine and constant painful trips to the hospital, he had the time of life doing whatever he wanted.  He was like a hummingbird in this poem.  My grandmother refused to be put in a nursing home as she approached death and opted instead to live the life of her choice at her home.  It might have taken soem time off of her life but instead she enjoyed her remaining years as she wanted. The language in this poem reminds me of that situation

 

Little Drummer Boy

Gazelle, I killed you
for your skin’s exquisite
touch, for how easy it is
to be nailed to a board
weathered raw as white         
butcher paper. Last night
I heard my daughter praying
for the meat here at my feet.
You know it wasn’t anger
that made me stop my heart         
till the hammer fell. Weeks
ago, I broke you as a woman
once shattered me into a song
beneath her weight, before
you slouched into that         
grassy hush. But now
I’m tightening lashes,
shaping hide as if around
a ribcage, stretched like five bowstrings.         
Ghosts cannot slip back
inside the body’s drum.
You’ve been seasoned
by wind, dust & sunlight.
Pressure can make everything         
whole again, brass nails
tacked into the ebony wood
your face has been carved
five times. I have to drive
trouble from the valley.         
Trouble in the hills.
Trouble on the river
too. There’s no kola nut,
palm wine, fish, salt,
or calabash. Kadoom.         
Kadoom. Kadoom. Ka-
Doom. Kadoom. Now
I have beaten a song back into you,
rise & walk away like a panther.

This poem, about the making of a drum, struck me because it was so unique. One part I really liked is when Komunyakaa talks about how the drum will drive away the “trouble from the valley, trouble in the hills, trouble on the river.”  I think that Komuyakaa speaks to the power that music has and how people can be united through music.  I also like how the drum maker gives a reason for killing the gazelle. “I Heard my daughter praying, for the meat here at my feet. You know it wasn’t my anger that made me stop my heart till the hammer fell.”  At the end of the poem, the drummaker gives life back to his kill by “beating a song” back into him.

 I think this poem is about the power of music.  The drummaker doesn’t like killing the gazelle, but his daughter wanted his music which he needed to drive the trouble away from his home.  At the end he restores the life he took with his music.  I appreciate this type of poem since I’m a HUGE music person.  People often say “music is my life,” but in my life it’s the truth.  There is rarely a time when I don’t have some sort of music playing and in my spare time I play alot of guitar hero and real guitar.  I agree that music has the power to unite us because of the deep emotional impact it can have.  Music stretches across boundaries and cultures.  I also like how this poem is written almost like a song with alot of repitition and rhyming, it adds alot of power to the message Yusef is communicating.  This is one of my favorite poems I’ve read so far.

Mirror Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

This Sylvia Plath poem struck me because of its depressing language and imagery. Words like “drowning,” “terrible fish,” “cruel,” give the poem a negative vibe.  I believe this poem is about a woman who is looking into a mirror and wondering where her life has gone.  Plath says she has become a lake and that a young girl has drowned in it.  This young girl is her younger self that has been destroyed by her anxiety.  She comments on how the mirror shows truth and not romanticized truth like the candles or the moonlight which she calls liars.  It sounds like she is obsessed with looking young and beautiful so she confronts the mirror everyday but then when she sees that she is aging she cries. (“She rewards with tears..”).  This poem is pretty much about Plath fearing the inevitable process of aging and trying to fool herself to believe that she is still young and beautiful.

Based on what I know about her personal history, it’s really depressing to read her work because it matches up with her troubled personal life.  She was quite a troubled individual and I can’t say I enjoy reading her work for this reason

Where’s Waldo?

O Captain, My Captain by Walt Whitman is a poem that struck me when I read it.   I know that Whitman is a famous American poet who was at his peak in the late 1800’s so the first thing I thought of when I read this poem was Abraham Lincoln.  His tragic death after winning the civil war completely shocked America and Whitman appears to be writing about it in this poem.  “O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won”  This quote supports my conclusion about Lincoln.  The ship represents the troops of the North who had to deal with many setbacks yet still emerged victorious.  The prize is American unity.  Although I believe the poem is about Lincoln, it could be about any fatherly figure who died after winning a long struggle. Although this man is after Whitman’s time, the poem could also be about Martin Luther King’s tragic death after winning the battle against segregation.

 Personally I love the poem.  It’s extremely powerful and I like the techniques Whitman uses.  In the beginning of each stanza, Whitman talks about the journey and how he was victorious in some great struggle.  At the end of each stanza is a 4 line section about the sorrow Whitman is feeling over the captains death and the end of each stanza is the line “fallen cold and dead.” 

Fu Fighters

Moonlit NightTonight at Fu-chou, this moon she watches
Alone in our room. And my little, far-off
Children, too young to understand what keeps me
Away, or even remember Chang’an. By now,Her hair will be mist-scented, her jade-white
Arms chilled in its clear light. When
Will it find us together again, drapes drawn
Open, light traced where it dries our tears?

The vibe I get from this poem is that the narrator is far away (In Fu-chou, a Chinese province) and his wife and kids are back home in Changan (another chinese province). He sees the full moon and wonders if his wife is watching from their room at home. He has very young children who don’t understand why he is gone.  He imagines the scene when he finally reunites with his life and wonders when the moon will see them embrace in its light.This is a pretty depressing poem.  It almost has an ethereal quality because it uses words like “mist” and “jade” and “chilled” and those words exoke a mystical feeling.  I also think its odd that the narrator talks about his wife, his children, then his wife again.  Maybe since the children don’t understand why he’s gone he doesn’t feel as guilty leaving them behind.  This guy is definitely a romantic.  The scene he describes sounds like it could be out of a movie. He will find her with her mist scented hair and jade white arms and finally see her again under the moonlight. One issue with all poems from another language, the translations are never guarenteed to be perfect so the idea Tu Fu is trying to communicate may not be present because of a mistranslation.