Poetry Sharing
Example: I love how Tom Wayman's "Did I Miss Anything?" takes a common question posed by a student who has missed class and uses it to explore with sly philosophical wit how much and how little is going on in any given situation we experience.
A poem I admire is "Ars Poetica" by Czeslaw Milosz Which says
ReplyDelete"I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.
That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.
What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?
It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I’ve devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.
There was a time when only wise books were read,
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.
And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity,
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
Berkeley, 1968"
what I admire about this poem is the underlying meanings, there is so many underlying meanings from like the visible guests in our locked homes representing all the trauma, triumphs and more all the different sides to use. Showing that there is no one factor or thing that defines us nor can we restrict ourselves to just one side. I love this quality of the poem because it makes the reader really stop, think and analyze the poem instead of skimming or loosing judging it quickly before understanding it.
I read a child's song by Robert Lowell. I admire how there can be so many different meaning of the poem if you look at it differently.
ReplyDeleteI read “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost.
ReplyDeleteI admired this poem because of the message and how it is portrayed. I really liked the clear turning point of the poem. Frost depicts an image of a leaf that is beautiful but soon subsides. The imagery is very simple to understand and I like the rhythm and the fluency when you read the poem.
I read "Expect Nothing" by Alice Walker. I really like how there are three distinct stages of the poem, but they all fit together really well. I also like how it it tied together with the same beginning and ending.
ReplyDeleteI read "Days" by Philip Larkin. I really liked that the poem was short but also got to the point. The poem was a short story about days and what we do during them.
ReplyDeleteI admire the poem "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou because I never though about caged birds this way.
ReplyDeleteBut a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing
I read eating fire by Margaret Atwood, I really enjoyed the imagery, the way it was formatted and the comparison of ambition to the sun.
ReplyDeleteI read "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou. I really admire her use of repetition and contrast. She switches view between the free and caged bird throughout the poem, which leaves a bigger impact on the reader.
ReplyDeleteI liked how Rilke's "Evening" uses personification on the nature to portray an evening becoming night as a guardian of dreams.
ReplyDeleteOne thing i liked about Roethke's "The Waking", is how we really don't know much, and we assume we know more than we do in life, and we learn by doing things we are called to do.
ReplyDeleteI read "Harlem" by Langston Hughes. One thing I liked about it was how he left the ending open, giving the reader a chance to decide for themselves.
ReplyDeleteI read “On Aging” by Maya Angelou, and I liked the gracious, surrounded feel the poem gives you. It’s talking about people offering Dr. Angelou help, but her declining it, because she can still do things for herself, even in her old age.
ReplyDeleteI read Two More Papayas by Thanhha Lai from her book Inside Out & Back Again. I like the way she describes the papaya fruits, giving someone who has never tasted papaya a good idea of what they taste like.
ReplyDeleteI read the poem "Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou. What I like about that poem is that one of the paragraphs was repeated twice . I think the reason that Maya Angelou did this is up for interpretation, but I thought that the reason might be to show the persistence and relentless hope of the caged bird.
ReplyDeleteI read "Hawk Roosting" by Ted Hughes. I like the way he uses animals, like birds, to represent humans and the evilness of their nature.
ReplyDeleteI read "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath. I really liked how simple it seems on first glance, but complex it is the more you dig into it. It seems to be about a mirror and its owner, but the themes of time and appearance, as well as acceptance of yourself, tie together nicely.
ReplyDeleteI read “The Animals in That Country” by Margaret Atwood. One thing I really admire about this poem is the shift in it. It goes from this fantasy world and switches to our world to show the contrasts between them in doing so it shows a harsh light and exposes some harsh truths about our world. The shift really makes this clear and was a powerful device in this poem.
ReplyDeleteI read The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, by TS Eliot and I admire how he can use the poem to express the feelings of inadequacy through metaphors, and making us realize that most of what we consider “normal” is mediocrity or just average, and emphasizes his nature looking at the world in an almost deranged way.
ReplyDeleteI read Crow Blacker than Ever by Ted Hughes from his book Crow. I really enjoyed how Hughes' uses juxtaposition to compare God and Adam.
ReplyDeleteI read "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. One thing I admire about this poem is how every line is significant to the theme, but not easy to understand how. The overall meaning of the poem is very clear, but there are certain lines which you have to look very closely at to understand.
ReplyDeleteI read “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams. I liked how the poem is short, but has words like “glazing” that makes me form an image in my head about what’s happening in the poem.
ReplyDeleteI read "truth" by Gwendolyn Brooks. I admired her use of extended metaphors, comparing truth to the sun and the shade and darkness to ignorance. The way she showed her thoughts on truth and ignorance throughout the poem were very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI read “The Leash” by Ada Limón and I liked how she took a pessimistic approach as she described her worldview for a majority of the poem, and how you had to find the pockets in the poem where she was saying ‘oh things aren’t too bad, you just have to look around you and watch out for yourself once in awhile’. I think she mixed and contrasted optimism and pessimism, and reality and metaphors in a really interesting way.
ReplyDeleteI read "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden, and one thing I admired was the amount of emotion put into this poem. It allowed you to travel to the place where the speaker of the poem was, and you could empathize without even knowing the person. His use of imagery and powerful word choice lets us step into their world, and mourn the death of this unknown person.
ReplyDeleteI read “Occidentalism” by Sally Wen Mao, I like how she includes important historical events in her poetry.
ReplyDelete-Angelica Tzouvelis
I read the poem Bosnia Tune by Joseph Brodsky. I really admire this poem for it's message: while you're just going about your daily life and performing mindless tasks, there are people out there suffering and dying.
ReplyDeleteI read and annotated “Spring” by Mary Oliver, and I really admire the way that her poetry has vivid imagery that captures perfectly the feeling that she wants you to feel.
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ReplyDeleteI read Billy Collins's "Flames". I admire the way he brings such feeling to a poem. He doesn't necessarily even use super descriptive language, but his carefully selected word choice evokes a strong mood. Also, I admire how Collins can write about something seemingly random, but it always brings to mind a deeper message.
ReplyDelete-Anya C.
I read "Allowables" by Nikki Giovanni. I like the simple yet profound message. I also like how the message about spiders is broadened and can be applied to our world.
ReplyDeleteI read “Daredevil” by Sherman Alexie. I like how despite the fact the poem starts out very depressingly, it ends on a positive note to show that life can get better.
ReplyDeletee.e.cummings. “Loneliness” it is interesting how it only have couple of letters in each lines and he brings in Latin into his poem. It’s like a puzzle, you have to solve and i think it’s a great poem after I understood the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI read "Voltaire at Ferney" by W.H. Auden. I like that the poem, about someone often viewed as a supporter of liberty and religious tolerance, would have had a very strong message at the time it was published- 1939, just as Europe was about to plunge into WWII.
ReplyDeleteI read “Seuño” by Gary Soto. I noticed how he compared an underprivileged persons point of view to a person of an upper class. Displaying the disparity between the two and what each has to offer.
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ReplyDeleteI read 5 AM by Allen Ginsberg. I found it interesting how he spoke negatively about drugs in this poem, which shows how much his values/opinions changed over time (he used to advocate drugs).
ReplyDeleteI read “The Song of Despair” by Pablo Neruda and in this poem, I like how he uses so many descriptive phrases to convey his feelings and how much he misses the person this poem is “addressed” to. And it’s really interesting how he does it with the poem having a lot of metaphors comparing things to the sea and sailors?
ReplyDeleteI read “Sonnet XLII: I Hunt For A Sign Of You” by Pablo Neruda and I like how in this poems, it seems that despite not knowing who someone is, they are unique and different than everyone else even though they are all clumped together in a category
ReplyDeleteI read the poem, Songs For A Colored Singer by Elizabeth Bishop. I admire that in most of her poems she tries to relate it to her life even if she does it in the smallest way. For example including something about the grief and struggle of her life into her poems
ReplyDeleteI read “ My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Something I admire about this poem is the subtly of the poem’s message, and how she doesn’t follow simple rhyming, and other common poetic devices.
ReplyDeleteI read "why must itself up every of a park" by e.e. cummings. What I admire about this poem is the line that says,
ReplyDelete"stick some quote statue unquote to
prove that a hero equals any jerk
who was afraid to dare to answer “no”?"
I think this line is complicated but it definitely challenges conventions. Grammatically, it's unusual that he spells out the quotations. (I think this is to add emphasis and show sarcasm/ add a disagreeable tone). In terms of what he means by this, I think he is questioning what a hero really is and if they are truly any more special than an ordinary person put into a certain set of circumstances.
I read If I Should Have a Daughter by Sarah Kay and one thing I admired is the variety of literary devices she uses
ReplyDeleteI read “A Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I like” and I thought it was interesting that it was an argument between a fortunate women and a less fortunate man, and the way they communicate.
ReplyDeleteI read Ka'Ba by Amiri Baraka I really liked how much it made me think about it. It is not a very straightforward poem, so it is very open to interpretation. Many of his poems are like this but this one I thought was particularly thought inducing.
ReplyDeleteeamon
DeleteI read Expect Nothing by Alice Walker and admired how poetic it was while it still had such a blunt message behind it
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