The Spotted Zebra

The Writer by Richard Wilbur
This poem reveals a mother's thoughts about her daughter. It begins by the mother listening to the daughter type and ends with the mother's wishes for her daughter. The middle part, though, is what intrigues me. The mother talks about how though the daughter is young, she has had to deal with much in her life. She also talks about hiding from a creature with her daughter and being very frightened. I wonder if this creature was the father and if there was domestic violence involoved. I also wonder if this is what the daughter is writing about. Although there is no distinct rhyming, the rhythm of the poem is relaxed, like one's thoughts while creeping around a quiet house. Overall, I believe that this poem encompasses many mother/daughter relationships. A mother thinking about and spying on a daughter, hoping for the best, and feeling bad about not being able to protect her in the past. Wilbur also uses "a chain hauled over a gunwale" to describe the clatter of typing, which gives the reader an easy sound to play in their head. Overall the poem is well written and intriguing.

Question by May Swenson

In "Question" May Swenson asks the important question of what to do when her horse or her body fail her. She begins by asking what will she do when her body dies and ends by asking how will she hide in the clouds? The rhytm of the poem is quite quick with many short words and lines. She does use a bit of aliteration: "my house/my horse my hound" which gives the piece a fast tempo. There is some rhyming, but not a blatant rhyme scheme, for example "How will it be / to lie in the sky / without roof or door / and wind for an eye." Although there are not strict physical feelings being expressed, one can imagine how it would be to lie in the sky with wind for an eye: a very light, airy feel. Swenson, in the poem, wonders about death, but not in a distinctly fearful way. She perhaps sees it as a method to stop hiding, which almost seems like a suicidal outcry. The poem is short, sweet, and encompasses the wondering most people do at one time or another.

Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford
This poem is the story of a man who sees a dead deer at the edge of the road. He decides to do something about this deer, because people swerving around it can cause accidents. He feels the deer and learns that she is pregnant and the fawn is still alive and unborn. He thinks and then pushes the deer's body into the river. The structure consists of 5 stanzas, the first four being four lines each and the last one being two lines. It is written like a sonnet with the first stanzas giving a problem and the last stanza shows how the author resolves the conflict, except there is no rhyme scheme. The author does a good job of putting the reader in the situation. One can hear the car purring, see the deer in the dim glow of the tail lights, and feel the warmth of the fawn. Truthfully, I do not like this poem. It does not really have any emotion showing. I don't know what the character was thinking or feeling. It may also be perhaps that I would not come to the same conclusion, being of scientific mind. Overall, I would encourage others to pass by this poem and move onto another with more substance.

Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds
This poem powerfully talks about having sex without love. She paints a beautiful portrait filled with dancers and skaters entwining together. She begins by asking how they do it and ends by saying what they do is simply a lonely race against themself. The use of punctuation gives the piece a slow, pronunciated sound. The piece is simply one long stanza, giving the piece a dream-like thought pattern with everything just running into each other. I like the way she describes the peopel as loving the priest instead of the God. Loving the physical and forgetting the emotion. When she describes them as great runners, it is easy to feel: "they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-vascular health-just factors...the single body alone in the universe against its own best time." Completely physical and completely alone are the emotions she very articulately depicts in the poem.

Losing Track by Denise Levertov
This poem talks about the loss of love. It begins by saying that though someone is away, they still feel there and ends with a bleak picture. The structure which consists of 6 stanzas of three lines each, with the middle line of each stanza being only a few words. This gives the poem a sad and sullen mood, pausing often. The imagry in the last stanza "mud sucking at gray and black/timbers of me,/a light growth of dreams drying" give a stark disappointing picture. Also the alliteration in the last line "dreams drying, " makes it nearly impossible to say, and even just looking at it gives the impression of "dreams dying" in one's mind. There is this recurrant theme in the poem of being halfway or ambivalent. As if perhaps the person the author is talking about is not gone, but rather she is about the make a decision which will make the person "swing away." This poem overall though seems muffled like perhaps the poet did not know what she wanted to convey and thus lost track of the message, if there is a message.

Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
This poem attempts to capture the essence of one's heritage. Filled both with pride and shame, it is a girl looking back on her country's past. She begins by speaking of her fading black face, but by the end she realizes that it is not her black face that is fading. A woman may look like she is trying to erase names from the past when really she is preparing a boy for the future. Each thought is a seperate line in this poem, which is the only seperation for there is only one stanza. There are quite a few stark images the poet paints from "a red bird's/wings cutting across my stare" to "names shimmering on a woman's blouse." I think the wonderful thing about her writing is the way the colors move and come alive: "a whilte vet's image floats/closer to me," "my own in letters like smoke" and "Brushstrokes flash." The images are very realistic. The poem, though, seems removed from the actual emotion. She seems afraid of the past rather than appreciative of it.

Monologue for an Onion by Suji Kwock Kim
Kim uses a metaphor of an onion to express the grief a relationship. She begins by stating that she doesn't intended to make you cry, but ends saying that she one day will beat you to death. An onion is harmless unless you start peeling it and cutting it the way a person is harmless unless you try to get to the core of them. A person's heart is not easy to come by. The structure is several stanzas of three lines each, with most lines being the same length. This adds to the rythm of the poem, with each stanza being one arguement. The poem uses the sights, smells, and human reactions to an onion to paint a vivid portrait of a person preparing an onion. I like the idea that there is no core. She says, "And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is/ Not one." Some people have no secrets and have no heart for you. So by the end of the relationship all you have are onion pieces and tears. The overall theme of the poem is what I like best.

Home Burial by Robert Frost
Frost captures a couple's grief over the loss of their child in "Home Burial". The whole piece is a conversation between a husband and wife. It begins with the husband catching the wife staring at their child's grave. The poem ends with the wife trying to leave and the husband trying to get her to stay. It reads like a play, with lines just long enough to fill the pages of the script. At first read, it is difficult to remember which character is speaking in each stanza. I like the way the poem is true to life, and in a way, illogical and human. The poem would best be read as a scene with actors. I like the way he describes the character's movements: "She turned and sank upon her skirts at that/ And her face changed from terrified to dull." One of the best parts of the poem, I think, is simply the poems idea. People don't talk about how a marriage changes after a couple loses a child. It is not in the movie theaters, in songs, or even a casual conversation topic. It is something that happens that changes a relationship in such an extreme way, that needs to be expressed.

why must itself up every of a park by E. E. Cummings
In this poem E.E. Cummings shows his anti-war and anti-establishment views. He begins by asking a question of why a hero is simply someone that rebels. He ends the poem by stating that government itself takes away the choice to rebel. The poem seems to work in a thought process rather than as prose by spurting ideas rather than complete sentences. He utilizes quotes by others about the need for war and reason which add to his poem by showing how war is opposed. The poem is about ideas rather than things, but appeals to one's logic. It shows how politics, philosophy and poetry can be combined. I like the way Cummings talks in crude conversational english ending with "Ain't freedom grand" to show the irony of it all. The piece is relevant, stylized, and powerful.

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July by Billy Collins
This is a poem about experiencing the world through paintings. He begins by saying that he has never been fishing on the Susquehanna. He does though talk of experiences that he has had that manufacture similar sensations. He ends the poem by speaking of paintings that seemed more alive then perhaps real life when he imagines them. It is written similar to prose, but with line breaks to seperate thoughts and stanza breaks to seperate images. He very vividly describes scenes and objects, like "a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness"..."springing right out of the frame." He makes it easy for one to imagine a similar picture. The poem is based mostly the visual sense. The poem's theme is that of utilizing imagination and the recreation of life in art. One need not actually fish on the Susquehanna in July to experience it; imagination can be just as powerful. I did like the way the poet clearly seperated reality from imagination. The way he states "I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna/or on any river for that matter/to be perfectly honest" in conversational English but leaps into "I balanced a little egg of time/ in front of a painting/in which that river curled around a bend" in poetic tense shows the power of one's magical thoughts over crude reality. That also added a bit of a pleasant twist to the storyline of the poem.

miss rosie by Lucille Clifton
Ms. Clifton stands up through destruction in her poem "miss rosie." The poem begins describing an aged woman and ends showing that the author does not want such destruction. Line breaks are used to give the poem a quick beat. She uses phrases such as "wrapped up like garbage" and "waiting for your mind like next week's grocery" to put the image of an old, decrepit bag lady in my mind. Some of her imagry seems rather trite such as "wet brown bag of a woman" and "smell of too old potato peels" which makes her poem seem unrealistic; I simply do not know what too old potato peels smell like, nor does that leave a vivid image in my mind. The poem reminds me of a child looking at a mean grandparent or evil step-mother type thinking that they will become so much more than they are. "I stand up through your destruction" gives the impression of needing to overcome. Like a child, the author doesn't say how or when they will overcome and leaves the description of the person to be completely one-sided as unsucessful. This poem appears to me to be written from the point of view of someone ignorant. It does, though, elude to a theme of beauty fading. The Georgia Rose seems to have grown into someone the poet detests. Perhaps Clifton is trying to tell people they will need more than beauty to conquer age.

Margaret Atwood's "This is a Photograph of Me"
This is a very passive poem eluding to some deep sadness within the poet. It first describes a photograph of a lake and hills then says that the author drowned in the lake shown in the photograph. It is written much like prose but with line breaks that don't seem to add much to the poem and stanza breaks after each sentence or half sentence. The imagry Atwood uses is very soft using phrases like "burred lines" and "grey flecks blended with the paper" saying that the picture is old and worn. The most powerful part of the piece, though, is the way she writes so passively, using "was","seems", and "is" as the verbs. To me, it seems that the author believes his or herself to be unimportant or even dead. The important part, though, is that the author did exist. Perhaps this is speaking of a part of the author's personality, like one's energy or humor. That it used to be an important part of the author's life, but over time, drowned in responisbility. If one looks closely though, it still exists. The poem seems, to me, to be a comentary on aging.