A few words on..."The Photos"

When reading "The Photos", it seemed more like a story, it is written in a way unlike any of the other poems we, or better said, I have read. After more exploration I noticed all of Wakoski's poems are in a way, very unorthodox. Her writing is very complex, fun, colloquial and still very... ambiguous. 

"The Photos" tells the instance where the speaker and her sister examine a photo with their father in it. they discover it was a photo intended for his second wife, the one he left their mother for. Their mother an old "sad rag bag of a woman" asks to see it, and the speaker questions this instance. Did they unconsciously want to hurt their mother? Why did they even let her see it? But she moves on and drives home. But it is their where she sees her reflection, and "hates her destiny".

Does she feel her mother's condition and "luck" is destined to clench her life as well? There is still many things to figure out. Any help would be greatly appreciated. The line "I have killed my children" definitely intrigues me. I fear the poem is not as simple as it seems, or perhaps it is...

Walking "Into Death Bravely"

The jist of this poem is explained within its title. The question is "who" or "what". The poem places the season of winter in the inevitable predicament. But being a poem, it is quite obvious that the poem is not exactly a lament for winter, but a metaphor for anyone or anything.

My theory is of war. How winter came with its "great white shield" breaking "thin arms of twisting branches", and then howling a throaty laughter from its small victory. Then causing more trouble, having owners sell their cattle who get rid of his work; "rake snow for stubble". And as he feels the final battle come over, his experiences his life memories in a few weeks,  "slow and pensive he walks away" dragging his "silver-streamed shield" "into death bravely. 

Or it can also be a metaphor for the average man, working and conquering all before him. That is until his season comes to its near end, and he sees his history being trumped by the "next big thing" (new season; in regard to literal interpretation). He is not sad, or regretful... he is content and opens his final door with out a look back.

Makeup on ( ) Space

To be perfectly frank, I do not fully understand this poem. I only have my own assumptions, and it seems to be a personal translation and understanding. It almost feels bias, which is why I type my analysis with care and prudence. Reading this poem all I kept returning to was the central idea of a cry for self-actualization, self-discovery. 

"I am putting makeup on empty space", painting and camouflaging the "empty space" which I like to think of as the speaker her/himself, and her/his ideal image, or rather, her unique being. As the poem goes on, it seemed like the speaker experimented with many things trying to find their niche, "pasting eyelashes... painting eyebrows... piling creams on empty space". Painting , pasting, and piling on the fantasy dreamt empty space, to fulfill her standards, but to no avail as she continues. "Hanging ornaments... gold clips, lacquer combs, plastic hairpins... sticking wire pins... packing, stuffing jamming  empty space". Pasting, sticking, stuffing jamming plastic hairpins, the speaker is relentless in her search for her true self but is found lost and restless in the "hanging night, drifting night, the moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep". 

"I am taping the picture I love so well on the wall: moonless black night beyond country-plaid curtains everything illuminated out of empty space", illuminated by her presence, she hangs "up a mirror to catch stars, everything occurs to me out in the night in my skull of empty space". Here the speaker has seemed to contacted her true self, in the midst of the cold night, in the depths of her mind, she is satisfied with herself as is, she is an illuminating gleam of light in the sky.  "There's talk of dressing the body with strange adornments to remind you of a vow to empty space there's talk of the discourse in your mind... I wish to venture into a not-chiseled place". Finally satisfied, she realizes the sad social-programmed fabrications of images past. 

To save myself from any further possible humiliation, I reserve any other supporting notions for the journal.

... Speaking About Rivers...

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem inspired by a trip he was on to visit his father in Mexico, just as he passed a river. How in slavery time, slaves were often sold on the rivers. The Mississippi River is mentioned because he remembered reading about Lincoln traveling through there and seeing people being sold and bought, a moment Lincoln would never forget and perhaps grew to become a significant factor in the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

As Hughes states: "I've known rivers. I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins." These rivers he has come to known is man, specifically "Negroes", all  of them. He continues  to speak n behalf of them, presenting their history through the rivers. The Euphrates and the Tigris (Fertile Crescent), The Congo and the Nile, (rivers in Africa), and the last one is the Mississippi, which was explained earlier. 

The poem repeats "rivers" very often, here and there, setting its jazzy rhythm. Near the end, "I've known rivers / Ancient, dusky rivers", dusky as in dark, night, black. "My soul has grown deep like the rivers", suggesting the history, the suffering and  the journey of his people.

Caught Writing "Blackberry Eating"

A great poem, a great play on words all through. Galway Kinnell creates a very clever metaphoric connection between actually eating blackberries and writing poetry. He manages this with such lines as "the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do". In fact, only the first few entry lines describe the setting and sense of emotions/feelings when eating blackberries, or picking blackberries. After that one line, Kinnel's metaphors slowly unravel themselves. Unbidden berries fall on his tongue, as does that great eureka moment. 

Speaking of unbidden events, as i read through this a couple more times for this post, i noticed its repetitive use of certain letters. At the beginning Kinnel throws a barrage of B's and the word black, "icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast... the black art of blackberry-making". Then near the end, he does so again, this time with S, "one-syllabled lumps, which i squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language". And the use of the word "icy" is very interesting, not quite sure why...

In "Goya's Greatest Scenes..." we seem to see...

 “In Goya's Greatest Scenes We Seem to See”  we take notice of Ferlinghetti's opinion of present human life. That present life is just as dark and marauding as Goya's painting suggest, only, in a different era. Ferlinghetti reveals his dislike of cars and their effect on the world, as they "devour America". "All the final hollering monsters of the 'imagination of disaster'... as if the y really still existed / and they do". The line "they are the same people / only further from home", suggests a feeling that Ferlinghetti hoped for a better life, or a better... situation. Stripped from the simplistic times we once had, full dependence on technology, living on a "concrete continent", bombarded with "empty" picture frames displaying assumed happiness, but epitomizing the general state...

A Souls "Howl"

I really really liked this poem. It is a rant, it is an angry yell, a howl of a tired man's mind. A huge pool of pure thoughts and feelings forged by his personal experiences. A spontaneous blend of words meant to be read in one breath after another. The fluid rhythm Ginsberg creates is what attracted me most about it, it seems endless and snowballing up to possibly reach a universally conscious thought no one would ever say out loud! And at the time this was created, a poem of this format was unheard of, and the blatant advantage of freedom of expression was shocking. We read about his life experiences, his thoughts about his era, his friends, his mocking of the world, his lament over life's hurdles. Truly, a man who definitely had a lot to say over his surroundings... But don't we all? 

We all think certain things, sometimes they are best kept unsaid, sometimes they could be said but must be worded carefully... Life ain't perfect...

 Anything you have always found your self questioning? For instance, just off the top of my head, let flow... I have always had a problem with the... concept of college, high school, or the educational system entirely. All I contemplate is why so long? We spend half of our days, and all week in school, for a third of our average life span, and then spent more than half of what remains working and scraping to enjoy life with a tired body and mind. Then we are expected to pay someone to include us into their "exceptional" league? Where we can only get a free waive if you happened to be uniquely gifted creatively or intellectually, or worked twice as hard as any other, "spending" time away from enjoying life. They tell us they need more doctors, more nurses, if that's what you want, why are you making it harder for me? Why make my tired parents take up another job?.. Shoved with a diverse group of peers all with different opinions and different morals/ ideals, different raising, different backgrounds, different experiences, and we are expected to all get along bump-free? To have the leader charge us into debt to establish a life of our own? A career we love, a career we fantasized about and forced to discard at the sight of its digits. Have "qualified" elitist's judge and question our thoughts and opinions, slowly beating our courage and mind to stale porridge. To be constantly looked down upon, always a student, always the grasshopper, always waiting to be given direction, to be condemned, to be verbally abused and made examples of. Expected and forged to listen, respect and understand from grade 1, to follow orders and schedule, routine... routine, to march in line, side by side,quietly, and take a seat... only listened to after we reach our breaking point... who knows what that's like...

  Any thoughts...?

Remember that "February Evening In New York"?

I liked this poem the moment I read the title. That fact that I was born and raised in New York is irrelevant. I  really enjoyed the admiring and creative descriptions of New York on a February evening. Examples: "A winter light / opens air to iris blue, / glint of frost through the smoke / grains of mica, salt sidewalk" pure genius, winter light opening to iris blue (perhaps her eyes or the sky), and the glints of frost/snow through the "smoke grains of mica salt sidewalk". "Feet pattern the streets / in hurry and stroll... a dance / to the compass points, out, four-way river. / Prospect of sky / wedged into avenues". Great metaphor's for the crowded street intersections of New York. 

Perhaps at a first glance New York is not the greatest looking, but it just takes time to notice the good. An example is heavy rain, I always like to watch the heavy rain fall with a streetlight lamp behind it, the silhouettes and tone of colors is just... it just really looks nice. Have you noticed any great scenes the weather (or anything for that matter) can create in this city? (A blizzard, morning snow, slush, sunshine, sun after rain, or those weird pop-up thunderstorms that literally only drop rain on one block, etc.)

"Choices" For Us All

Surprisingly enough I liked this poem (and it is not because of how short it is). Gallagher gives an ordinary nest a whole new meaning. Actually, I think this poem is very similar to "The Red Wheelbarrow" by Williams, they both focus on one object and learn to appreciate it. In "Choices", the speaker prepares him/herself to cut saplings so that they can get a good view of the mountain in the background. But the speaker discovers a nest, has a change of heart, and cuts only to reveal all the other hidden nest's. 

The meaning/message I got from this poem was..sometimes what your looking for is right under your nose. Or better yet, sometimes we're to busy looking at the entire picture or attempting to find its meaning quickly, when what makes the subject beautiful are the things we immediately figure are minute tools used to occupy space. Or, taking the poem in a literal and geographical sense, we sometimes look too far ahead and forget about what is going on right in front of us, we forget about the present. We are constantly bombarded with worrisome news, telling us to prepare for "this", do this now so you won't have to later, start saving money for retirement, in 2 years you will be..., if you do "this" now, you will be done in 5 years,  etc. etc. Another concept is enjoying what you have... forget about changing  or getting new things, appreciate what you already have and be grateful for it rather than discarding it like an old twig. 

Look!...A Red Wheelbarrow

Unlike any other poems we have read in class, this one is substantially shorter. William's..."ode" to the red wheelbarrow is so short, it almost forces us to make our own idea of it.

When reading this, I feel like the speaker is admiring the wheelbarrow, and understands its existence. The speaker, it seems, feels for it. He/she sees it "glazed", and believes "so much depends/upon/ a red wheelbarrow". Almost as if he/she believes the owners are ungrateful, and do not realize the wheelbarrow's potential and/or its pivotal mark on their lives.

Today, society is very impatient, apathetic and ungrateful. We have devices that give us contact with the entire planet, machines that get us from here to there, devices that fill moments in our life with beautiful sounds, devices that can give us physical images of a moment in time...these things have grown to be simple conventions. Williams, I think, only tried to get us to understand how beautiful this world can be, we just have to observe it is all.

Anything you have grown to get use to? Not realizing how unbelievable it was when you first experienced it? (i.e. airplanes! Floating in air while sitting on the loo!...c'mon!)

A Few Lines on "The Fish"

An interesting read indeed. Bishop constantly danced on the edge of honesty and empathy. She regularly described the fish as repulsive and archaic, and then quickly fired back with adoration and feelings of a human connection:

"His brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper...with shapes like full-blown roses" (10-13). 

"He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice" (16-19). 

"And then i saw that from his lower lip- if you could call it a lip -grim, wet, and weaponlike" (47-50).

After a few reads, and the exercises on symbols and imagery, I noticed how now and then she associated the fish as a "he" (he, his, him). The imagery and descriptions, (agreeing with Michael C.) sometimes grew long, and although at times clever, often redundant. But the point of the symbols and the imagery was to give the fish a sense of human life, it was being personified, to give the reader an easier time to relate with and decide his/her meaning of the entire poem.

Bishop's constant condescending and immediate appreciation gave me a sense of pity, respect and at then, acceptance. I think the fish symbolizes something or someone that was once lost. I.e. a significant other, after an unfortunate break up, one battles with their love and admiration over the person and equally hating and loathing, but at the end, we all sit and reminisce at the times shared and we grow and learn. Slowly letting them go.

...but that's just what I think...