Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librairan does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone
The lights are dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get down on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
-Mark Strand
I find this poem very interesting. First Strand talks about really enjoying poetry,but he doesnt stop there. He actuallly eats it! then later turns into a dog and terrifies a librairan. It is a rather unsusual poem but i like it. The structure of this poem was pretty basic. Its divided into 4 stanzas and almost every line ends with a period. Strand uses an extended metaphor to show his love for poetry with changing into a dog. (YAY i used good literary terms haha :) )

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning;
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

No, no, no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
- Stevie Smith
Looking at the structure of this poem, how some of the lines are longer then others reminded me of how someone looks when they are drowning, they are continuously bobbing up and down but as they get closer to death and as the air leaves their lungs they slowly stop bobbing. I dont know if Smith planned her poem to demonstrate this. I feel that this poem is about someone crying out for his friends and family to help him but they only see what they want to see and so he feels lost and sufficated like hes drowning in his own sorrow his own fear his own guilt all alone with no ones help.

note, passed to superman

sweet jesus, superman,
if i had seen you
dressed in your blue suit
i would have known you,
maybe that choirboy clark
can stand around
listening to stories
but not you, not with
metropolis to save
and every crook in town
filthy with kryptonite.
lord, man of steel,
i understand the cape,
the leggings, the whole
bqall of wax.
you can trust me,
there is no planet stranger
than the one im from.
- Lucille Clifton
The first time I read this poem I thought that Clifton was comparing superman to Jesus. I took the kryptonite to be people for Jesus and that in the end we were his downfall. people sins were the downfall. We are why he died on the cross. The 2nd time I read this poem I realized that Clifton was just talking about superman from the perspective of someone that he could have trusted but didnt know it at the time. There are many different ways that this poem can be taken and I think that was her purpose in writing this poem. She wrote it as if it were a bunch of thoughts one right after the other, all strung together.

What the nirror said

listen, you a wonder. you a city of a woman. you got a geography of your own. listen, somebody need directions to move around you. listen, woman, you not a noplace anonymous girl; mister with his hands on you he got his hands on some damn body! - Lucille Clifton This is another poem by Lucille Clifton. Two times in a row and there is a third in this packetas well. I feel like this poem is the male perspective of a woman. Men find women to be very confusing, so there are often jokes about needing a roadmap to figure women out and how they should act with us. Also some men use women only for pleasure, which I feel that this poem is saying at the end. The structure is very unusual. Its one big long stanza like a series of thoughts all clunged together. I feel that the way Clifton structured this poem, that she intended some words to get more emphasis then others like the word listen (repeated 3 times). I think she did this to show that sometimes what we see and believe isn't always what is happening till you look at it in a different way.

the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is god i agreee with the leaves - Lucille Clifton We have done several poems by this author and I have enjoyed each one. I found it very intersting that not a single word in this poem was capitalized. Usually when words are capitalized it makes them stand out more, but by having no words capitalized the whole poem stands out more. Its a short poem and the four lines in the middle of the stanza all start with such. I liked that because it gave more description. I like the message that this poem has as well, sometimes in life we have to let go in order to find love. Just like when the leaves let go of the trees when Autumn comes around.

Writing

and then i saw it
saw it all all the mess
and blood and everythink
and mam agenst the kitchin dor
the flor all stiky
and the wall all wet
and red an dad besid the kicken draw
i saw it saw it all
an wrot it down an ever word of it is tru

You much take care to write in sentences,
Check your spellings and your paragraphs.
Is this finished? It is rather short.
Perhaps next time you will have more to say.

This is the poem that Jacey and I have decided to teach to the class. It is very interesting. I feel it is in two parts telling two different stories. The first part is of a young child telling his story of death. He talks about the blood and the mess. He doesn't say how he feels about this but he does say that he saw it he saw it all. (I am assuming that he is a boy) I feel that they way this first part is wrote really helps establish that this child is young. All the spelling errors and gramatical errors help show that this child is eager to tell his story as he sees it. He writes the words as they sound. For example he spells beside with out the e at the end and that is how the word is said. He hasnt yet learned about silent e and other silent endings. The second part of this poem is very different. I think it is by the teacher. The teacher has looked at the poem and seen all the errors instead of the story that is being told. I get the impression that this teacher feels that her student could have done better, but if this teacher would have ignored all the mistakes then she would see the story and the voice and impact this has had on her student.

Goodbye to the Old Me

Heres to the brand new me
one that floats around
and skates on air.
The person I have become.

Goodbye to the old
I once knew.
The one I wont need
once I'm there.

Heres to the now
Heres to the fun
Heres to me

I'm who I wanna be
Who that is?
- I dont really care
cuz I've got friends that love me
blue skies shinnin above me.

Free to make the choices
I wanna make
left or right?
Go or stop?
Pink or blue?

It's all up to me
I'm in charge
no longer shy or afraid.

Goodbye old me
I wont be seeing you
Heres to the brand new me.