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.

Questions We Have About Life

Why is life so hard?
Why is life so unpredictable?
Why is life always changing?
How long will it be?
Why is life so complicated?
How many choices will I have to make?
What would life be without love?
How would life change if people didn't have religions?
What is the right decision?
Why are others lives so different from my own?
What does my life have in store for me?
-Sadie, Jacey, Elena, Terra, & Devyn

Song of the Powers

Mine, said the stone,
mine is the hour
I crush the scissors,
such is my power.
stronger than wishes,
my power, alone.

Mine, said the paper,
mine are the words]
that smother the stone
with imagined birds,
reams of them, flown
from the mind of the shaper.

Mine, said the scissors,
mine all the knives
gashing through paper's
etheral lives;
nothing's so proper
as tattering wishes.

As stone crushes scissors,
as paper snuffs stone
and scissors cut paper,
all end alone.
So heap up your paper
and scissors your wishes
and uproot the stone
from the top of the hill.
They all end alone.
As you will, you will.
-Davie Mason

As I read this poem I think about the game rock, paper, scissors. How rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper and paper beats rock. Its a clever game to settle who does what when or a game to play when one is bored. I remember many times when I have played this game. This poem is set up like a story. Each stanza telling a different part of the story, a different view. The first stanza is told by the stone, the 2nd by the paper, the 3rd by the scissors and the 4th stanza is told by someone else who comes to the realization that even though rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper and paper beats rock- that in the end they will be alone, no matter the outcome.

Sort of a Song

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait
sleepless.

-through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.
-William Carlos Williams

This poem is very interesting. As i'm reading it I can imagine the snake. I feel like the poem is describing the snake through its words. Words such as slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait sleepless. Through those words I see the snake as a preditor staking out its prey. (haha wow I just incorporated environmental science in with my Lit blog :) )
This poem is set up with two stanzas. I feel that the first one is all about the snake and the 2nd one is a bunch of ideas all running together. Almost like a bunch of broken thoughts. It is very interesting and makes the poem stand out.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide.

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

they begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
-Billy Collins

I really enjoyed this poem, it was very amusing. I liked the personification that was used to make the poem more life like. I also found the ending very amusing becasue in AP Lit we were told not to beat the poem with a hose and here that is what they were doing. If it hadnt been for this class I would have taken a total new meaning from this poem. I also noticed that there were 3 cuplings in the 3rd 4th and last stanza. The way that this poem is broken up is very unsual, but effective. It slowly tells a story with only 5 sentences. All in all a very amusing sort of poem.

Of Mere Being

The Palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the Bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Strings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

This poem is very interesting. We talked about it a lot in class a few weeks ago. The pheonix was mentioned and how it is being described in this poem. two things came to mind when the pheonix was mentioned. 1) Fawkes the pheonix from Harry Potter whos tears heal a baskilisc venom. 2) My friends dad's tattoo. He has a tattoo of a pheonix on this arm. I asked him about it and he said its because of his beliefs. He says that everyone has different ideas of what will happen once we die. His belief is that he will be reencarnated and he hopes of being reencarnated into a pheonix. The kind of animal that he is often described as. This poem took on a deeper meaning for me because of that conversation. It shows that the different experiences in life make us think and act differently but they also shape us into the kind of people that we are.

Cottonmouth Country

(I commented on Chandlers and Brittany Burkleys Blog)
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other sighns
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.
-Louise Gluck

To me this poem is talking about the chances we take in life and how sometimes those chances seem like we are tempting fate, flirting with death. We continue on this path until death comes for us. Its sudden and quick- usually, but that doesnt make it any easier on the ones that loose us because of death it makes it the hard loss. The structure of this poem is different. It has sudden breaks in the line and isnt a very long poem which further creates the allusion to me of a sudden quick death. I also find it interesting that a cottonmouth is mentioned in this poem since it is a snake and most people are afraid of snakes and of their deathly bite.

The Book

I held it in my hands he told the story.

He had found it in a fallen bunker,
a book for notes with all the pages blank.
He took it to keep for a sketchbook and diary.

He learned years later, when he showed the book
to an old bookbinder, who paled and stepped back
a long step and told him what he held,
what he had laid the days of this life in.
It's bound, the binder said, in human skin.

I stood turning it over in my hands,
turning it in my head. Human skin.

What child did this skin fit? What man, what
woman?
Dragged still full of its flesh from what dream?

Who took it off the meat? Some other one
who stayed alive by knowing how to do this?

I stared at the changing book and a horror grew,
I stared and a horror grew, which waws, which is
how beautiful it was until I knew.
-Miller Williams

This poem is really weird and a little gross, but I decided to do it anyway. I really liked the structure of this poem. It was done in a way to tell this story of how this book changed the more that was found out about it. It's almost like there is two lifes now with the book. The life of the man who wrote in it and the life of the person whos skin was used to bound it. It really makes me wonder why. why did this happen? What purpose did it serve? Its horrible that someones flesh was used for the binding of this book. I love books but I wouldnt even want to touch a book binded by human flesh.

It was a dream

in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
of what could i have done?
as she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This. This. This.
- Lucille Clifton
In psychology they say that people either dream in symbols or they dream events based on what has happened in their life. Im guessing that Clifton is dealing with some guilt in her life. It sounds like the person she is talking about is her conscience. The lines in which my greater self rose up before me accusing me of my life... makes me think that she is dealing with a lot of guilt over something she has done and her conscience is helping her deal with it and possibly helping her to set it right.
The structure of this poem is very strange. There isnt capital letters at the begining. the two parts are broken by one word what, I think that the reason this poem is structured this way is so that more emphaisis is placed through out this poem.

Untitled

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
because it is bitter,
and because it is my heart."

Jacey and I decided to pick this poem as the poem to teach to the class. It is a rather unusual poem, It doesnt have a title and its quite short and random, but I believe it to have a lot of meaning in it and that it may be viewed in many different ways. I think the meaning of this poem is Heartbreak. A bitter heartbreak in fact. I have read books dealing with heartbreak and bitter break ups and reading this poem has made me think of these books. The lines But i like it because it is bitter and because it is my heart really shows that feeling to me of a sweet bitterness. Heartbreak happens, but its something that everyone will have to deal with in their own way, some people cry and wallow in self pity, others rebound fast and others joke about it. There is also the expression of eat your heart out and that made be what this poem is about as well, since the character in this poem is literaly eating his heart out.