In celebration, our discussion this time centers around the sometimes simple, but more often complicated genre we call poetry.
You have two discussion options -- please read over the directions carefully before making a choice. If you wish to make an "A" on this discussion, please remember to comment on someone's post with more than "this is good/cool/interesting."
Note: If you are unfamiliar with the term "Poet Laureate," please see this link for more information first.
Discussion Option 1 -- Access the link on NPR about America's Poets Laureate to learn a bit about poets who have received this recognition. If you discover one that you like, find a poem of theirs on Poets.org. Re-post this poem in your comment with the title and author, and answer these questions:
- Why did you like this poem?
- How do you think this poem reflects the author?
- Do you think that this poem proves that this poet deserves recognition of being Poet Laureate, and why?
Discussion Option 2 -- Access the link on NPR about America's Poets Laureate to learn a bit about poets who have received this recognition. Then, think about poets or lyric writers you personally enjoy. Answer these questions:
- If you could choose one poet to be next year's American Poet Laureate, who would it be, and why? This person could be dead or living.
- Find a sample of this person's poetry on Poets.org or another web site and re-post it with title and author in your comment.
- Explain how the poem you chose is proof that this person deserves the recognition of Poet Laureate.
Directions:
- Choose a discussion topic, and answer it completely according to the directions. Indicate in your comment which discussion question you are answering.
- Use the pen name you provided at the beginning of the year.
- Use correct spelling and grammar at all times.
- In order to receive an "A," you must not only post your answer, but comment on a peer's ideas as well. Please remain positive and polite when doing so.
Due Date: This post will remain open for comments and discussion until Monday, April 29, 2013 at 5:00 PM; after this time comments will close.
What Work Is.
ReplyDeleteWe stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work
You know what work is — if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. -Philip Levine
1. I liked the poem because of his story telling about his time spent waiting.
2.He has patience and determination to get this job.
3.I do think he does because he tells his tell of how anyone life can take on something that you require to survive.
i agree with you when you said Philip Levine should be Poet Laureate because he is a poet like William Ernest Henley that can connect to a wide arrange of audiences
DeleteI agree with you as well. What makes this poem significant is not only the meaning behind it, but the voice he puts into it. Saying things like "Forget you" made the feeling of anticipation for such an exciting opportunity slightly humorous. Besides the person I picked, Philip Levine would be a good choice for Poet Lauraete!
DeleteI agree with you because you also chose Philip Levine and that you said that he should be Poet Laureate.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBrandon Grudecki
ReplyDeleteOut of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.-William Ernest Henley
1:I liked this poem because I can relate to cowering in fear of the night when I was a child.
2:The author can relate to this poem because almost every kid is scared at one point or another.
3:I think this poet deserves Poet Laureate poems are supposed to connect to everyone and William Ernest Henley
does an excellent job of that.
I think this poem is great! Everyone has fears and this poem helps people conquer them, especially when Henley says, "I am the captain of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."
Delete1. Making a First
ReplyDeleteBy: Naomi Shihab Nye
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered, "When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
This poem speaks to me because I know that life is not forever. I know that life will end at a certain time, but to be thankful that I am still alive. This poem inspires me to not fear death, but to enjoy every second that I am able to make a fist.
I believe the author, at the age of seven, was scared of death. She probably wanted to know when she was going to die so that she may be able to prepare for that day. However, with her mother's wise words, she realizes that she should not be scared of death and to enjoy life when she can.
Because of this poem, which is able to touch every single heart, Nye should win the Poet Laureate award. Her poem relates to people of all ages and teaches people not to be afraid of the inevitable: death.
I really like the poem you posted. I agree with you that life is not forever, and that we should all try to enjoy it as much as we can. Also, I think that Naomi Shihbab Nye is a very good poet and that she deserves the recognition of Poet Laureate.
DeleteNintendo144gms April 28, 2013 9:35 P.M.
DeleteI agree with you, because all of us are going to eventually face death sometimes later. But we got to live a meaningful life and don't worry about death.
Each time I go outside
ReplyDeletethe world is different.
This has happened all my life.
*
The clock stopped at 5:30
for three months.
Now it's always time to quit work,
have a drink, cook dinner.
*
"What I would do for wisdom,"
I cried out as a young man.
Evidently not much. Or so it seems.
Even on walks I follow the dog.
*
Old friend,
perhaps we work too hard
at being remembered.
-Ted Kooser
I like this poem because of the simplicity in the message, yet it makes the reader wonder about themselves. The straightforward way he wrote the poem makes it comprehendible to everyone, not just people who have a knowledge in poetry. This poem reflects the author as it is short, simple, and gives an underlying message, just like the poet's actions when he sent valentines to people. I believe that this poem is a very good example of why Ted Kooser deserves the recognition of Poet Laureate as it is simple, yet encompasses a great meaning of life, making the poem a message to everyone, even though it has a playful tone. I really think that he deserves the recognition as he is a poet that can influence people by using the simplest of words that everyone can connect to.
Discussion Option 1:
ReplyDeleteShe is the vessels on the table before her: the copper pot tipped toward us, the white pitcher clutched in her hand, the black one edged in red and upside down. Bent over, she is the mortar and the pestle at rest in the mortar—still angled in its posture of use. She is the stack of bowls and the bulb of garlic beside it, the basket hung by a nail on the wall and the white cloth bundled in it, the rag in the foreground recalling her hand. She's the stain on the wall the size of her shadow— the color of blood, the shape of a thumb. She is echo of Jesus at table, framed in the scene behind her: his white corona, her white cap. Listening, she leans into what she knows. Light falls on half her face.
+Natasha Trethewey
1. I loved this poem because it has a similar writing style to the ones I usually. Lately, I've been lacking inspiration but this poem sparked up new ideas for further poems i could write.
2. Trethewey is a poet that usually writes about things centered in her life. In this poem, she made the person and the ordinary household kitchen objects have similar qualities. This was supposed to give an insinuation that she was useless, however, this was shortly dis-proven at the very end of the poem where she used a biblical allusion to give her a higher preference.
3. I surely believe that this poet deserves to be recognized in Poet Laureate. However, this poem is only a piece of a puzzle. I think in order to fully and correctly recognize her, ALL of her poems needs to be displayed, though this was a masterpiece.
LE:
ReplyDelete1) I liked this poem because Natasha was in a hurricane and she compared her experiences with Hurricane Camille and based on what she saw, the imagery she used made the poem really stick out to me.
2) Well based on part of my answer for number one, this poem reflects the author because she was in a hurricane, was able to write about her personal experiences and tie her experience and the other hurricane together into one poem.
3) I don't think this poem proves that this author deserves recognition of being Poet Laureate because it's a good poem but it's not the best. A positive thing about this poem is that it's special because she wrote about her being in a hurricane and adding stuff about another hurricane that happened in 1969.
Providence
By Natasha Trethewey
What's left is footage: the hours before
Camille, 1969—hurricane
parties, palm trees leaning
in the wind,
fronds blown back,
a woman's hair. Then after:
the vacant lots,
boats washed ashore, a swamp
where graves had been. I recall
how we huddled all night in our small house,
moving between rooms,
emptying pots filled with rain.
The next day, our house—
on its cinderblocks—seemed to float
in the flooded yard: no foundation
beneath us, nothing I could see
tying us to the land.
In the water, our reflection
trembled,
disappeared
when I bent to touch it.
#1
ReplyDeleteEyes Fastened With Pins
by Charles Simic
How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed
I like this poem because of how he takes death, something so scary and weird to us, and shows it as a regular kind of adult doing regular kinds of things. Its creative but also still kind of dark because of how its still death doing all these actions.
It shows how dark his types of poems are and how he prefers to take a twist on common ideas, such as this poem. Maybe he was going through some dark times when he wrote these poems or maybe that's his general outlook on life.
He certainly has a very interesting and creative way to write his poems but its a bit too dark for my opinion. But he still has creative ideas, good imagery, and overall pretty good writing skills so yeah I think he does deserve the recognition.
From Boxman Jr.
I agree with you. He writes this in a way that makes it seem like no one really knows someone else's "story." It's kind of hard to explain.
DeleteYea i think so too. This poem is dark, when he talks a lot about death.May\be something bad happen, or a family member died.. and he didn't spend enough time with them.
Deletepoohbear23:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433
"We Real Cool"
By: Gwendolyn Brook's
Im doing Option One:
1. I like this poem because it's talking about how we people think that we're real cool becuse we can leave school whenever we want to. And we so proudly about it and that we can listen to Jazz June music.
2. I think that this poem reeflects the author because maybe she been through alot and now that she left school withput being told to she thinks she's real cool. And also she think if we stay that way that we might die soon and want be living anymore. If we stay cool.
3. Yes,I think this poem deserves recogintion of being Poet Laureare, because it tells us a message. This poet wrote this poem for a reason to tell everybody that reads it that we can be real cool but not all the time. We might listen to Jazz June but we also might die at the end. That's bascially why this poem in this poet should get recogintion for this poem that she has written.
"A Happy Birthday"
ReplyDeleteBy Ted Kooser
This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.
-Option 1
-I liked this poem because I think that it talks about taking advantage of the time you have. So many people in today's world just sit around and be lazy. They take the time they have for granted.(Not everyone)
-I think that this peom reflects Ted Kooser because he is a really "raw" writer. He "documents the dignities, habits, and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance in natural and unnaturally human worlds."
-There are many poets who deserve the title Poet Laureate, but based on what I've read about Ted, he really deserves it. AGAIN (He already served as Poet Laureate, but oh well). He writes about all the little things in life that people miss and so much more.
---------(He was the 13th Poet Laureate, 2004-2006)
Discussion #1
ReplyDeleteWe real cool.
We Left school.
We Lurk late.
We Strike straight.
We Sing sin.
We Thin gin.
We Jazz June.
We Die soon.
1)I like this poem because it summed of the lives of several people in eight short lines.
2)This poem made the poet seem very blunt and straight to the point.
3)Yes, I do believe this poem proves the poet deserved recognition because being able to sum the lives of several people in only a few lines shows the poet's pure talent.
What work is
ReplyDeleteWe stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work
You know what work is — if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants.
1. I like this poem because it gives you a strong visual of the scene and it comes from a personal experience.
2. This poem reflects the author because it shows his opinion about work and this is a personal experience he had.
3. This poem shows that the poet deserves recognition because of the depth and strong visual elemnts like describing the rain
The Two By: Philip Levine
ReplyDeleteWhen he gets off work at Packard, they meet outside a diner on Grand Boulevard. He's tired, a bit depressed, and smelling the exhaustion on his own breath, he kisses her carefully on her left cheek. Early April, and the weather has not decided if this is spring, winter, or what. The two gaze upwards at the sky which gives nothing away: the low clouds break here and there and let in tiny slices of a pure blue heaven. The day is like us, she thinks; it hasn't decided what to become. The traffic light at Linwood goes from red to green and the trucks start up, so that when he says, "Would you like to eat?" she hears a jumble of words that mean nothing, though spiced with things she cannot believe, "wooden Jew" and "lucky meat." He's been up late, she thinks, he's tired of the job, perhaps tired of their morning meetings, but when he bows from the waist and holds the door open for her to enter the diner, and the thick odor of bacon frying and new potatoes greets them both, and taking heart she enters to peer through the thick cloud of tobacco smoke to the see if "their booth" is available. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there were no second acts in America, but he knew neither this man nor this woman and no one else like them unless he stayed late at the office to test his famous one liner, "We keep you clean Muscatine," on the woman emptying his waste basket. Fitzgerald never wrote with someone present, except for this woman in a gray uniform whose comings and goings went unnoticed even on those December evenings she worked late while the snow fell silently on the window sills and the new fluorescent lights blinked on and off. Get back to the two, you say. Not who ordered poached eggs, who ordered only toast and coffee, who shared the bacon with the other, but what became of the two when this poem ended, whose arms held whom, who first said "I love you" and truly meant it, and who misunderstood the words, so longed for, and yet still so unexpected, and began suddenly to scream and curse until the waitress asked them both to leave. The Packard plant closed years before I left Detroit, the diner was burned to the ground in '67, two years before my oldest son fled to Sweden to escape the American dream. "And the lovers?" you ask. I wrote nothing about lovers. Take a look. Clouds, trucks, traffic lights, a diner, work, a wooden shoe, East Moline, poached eggs, the perfume of frying bacon, the chaos of language, the spices of spent breath after eight hours of night work. Can you hear all I feared and never dared to write? Why the two are more real than either you or me, why I never returned to keep them in my life, how little I now mean to myself or anyone else, what any of this could mean, where you found the patience to endure these truths and confessions?
I like this poem because 1. he shows the truths about poems and that not everything can be what you expect it to be and 2. he puts bacon in his story.
The poem reflects the author because it shows that only the author truly knows what's going on in the poem.
I think the poet deserves the recognition because this author shows that even though you may think you might think whats going on but only the author is the only one that knows.
Author: Natasha Trethewey
ReplyDeleteTitle: Theories of Time and Space
You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.
Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:
head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off
another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion – dead end
at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches
in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand
dumped on a mangrove swamp – buried
terrain of the past. Bring only
what you must carry – tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock
where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:
the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return
1. I like this poem because it made me think hard to understand its meaning. I had to read it and think about it a couple of times before I actually had an understanding of. I enjoy poems that make me think.
2. This poem relates to the author because the setting and places talked about in the poem are in Louisiana and that is where the author is from.
3. I don't believe that this poem shows why she deserves recognition of being Poet Laureate because I honestly don't believe that this is her best work but it is good.
The Two By: Philip Levine
ReplyDeleteWhen he gets off work at Packard, they meet outside a diner on Grand Boulevard. He's tired, a bit depressed, and smelling the exhaustion on his own breath, he kisses her carefully on her left cheek. Early April, and the weather has not decided if this is spring, winter, or what. The two gaze upwards at the sky which gives nothing away: the low clouds break here and there and let in tiny slices of a pure blue heaven. The day is like us, she thinks; it hasn't decided what to become. The traffic light at Linwood goes from red to green and the trucks start up, so that when he says, "Would you like to eat?" she hears a jumble of words that mean nothing, though spiced with things she cannot believe, "wooden Jew" and "lucky meat." He's been up late, she thinks, he's tired of the job, perhaps tired of their morning meetings, but when he bows from the waist and holds the door open for her to enter the diner, and the thick odor of bacon frying and new potatoes greets them both, and taking heart she enters to peer through the thick cloud of tobacco smoke to the see if "their booth" is available. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there were no second acts in America, but he knew neither this man nor this woman and no one else like them unless he stayed late at the office to test his famous one liner, "We keep you clean Muscatine," on the woman emptying his waste basket. Fitzgerald never wrote with someone present, except for this woman in a gray uniform whose comings and goings went unnoticed even on those December evenings she worked late while the snow fell silently on the window sills and the new fluorescent lights blinked on and off. Get back to the two, you say. Not who ordered poached eggs, who ordered only toast and coffee, who shared the bacon with the other, but what became of the two when this poem ended, whose arms held whom, who first said "I love you" and truly meant it, and who misunderstood the words, so longed for, and yet still so unexpected, and began suddenly to scream and curse until the waitress asked them both to leave. The Packard plant closed years before I left Detroit, the diner was burned to the ground in '67, two years before my oldest son fled to Sweden to escape the American dream. "And the lovers?" you ask. I wrote nothing about lovers. Take a look. Clouds, trucks, traffic lights, a diner, work, a wooden shoe, East Moline, poached eggs, the perfume of frying bacon, the chaos of language, the spices of spent breath after eight hours of night work. Can you hear all I feared and never dared to write? Why the two are more real than either you or me, why I never returned to keep them in my life, how little I now mean to myself or anyone else, what any of this could mean, where you found the patience to endure these truths and confessions?
I like this poem because it made feel a deep connection with the author and the poem
Nintendo144gms April 28, 2013 9:30 P.M. Discussion #1
ReplyDeleteA Story
by Philip Levine
Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.
I like this poem because it represents family life in the suburbs and how beautiful trees and woods were in that area. The poem reflects the author, because he might have gone through an event or problem that is illustrated in the setting. I think Philip Levine should be a Poet Laureate, because this poem can explain the house life that the poet probably went through, or can explain a similar type of experience. The author probably used these experiences to connect with other people in an environment like this.
A Codex
ReplyDeleteIt was a late book given up for lost
again and again with its sentences
bare at last and phrases that seemed transparent
revealing what had been there the whole way
the poems of daylight after the day
lying open at last on the table
without explanation or emphasis
like sounds left when the syllables have gone
clarifying the whole grammar of waiting
not removing one question from the air
or closing the story although single lights
were beginning by then above and below
while the long twilight deepened its silence
from sapphire through opal to Athena’s iris
until shadow covered the gray pages
the comet words the book of presences
after which there was little left to say
but then it was night and everything was known
I like this poem because it relates to how it feels when i am writing an essay. It shows how everything goes blank when distractions and boredom take over imagination. I think this relates to the author since he has felt this feeling when he writes essays. W.S. Merwin deserves recognition since this relates to the problems every writer faces.
carmelspidermonkey:
ReplyDeleteweekend disscussion #22
1.I like the poem because he explaining his experience on an ancient battlefield.
2. This reflect off the author from his ties with the military as an air force guy.
3.I think he deserves his recognition because of his good detail of imagery.
spiderman48:
ReplyDeleteAbortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
• Why did you like this poem? I like this poem because it has a very deep meaning to it and it makes you wonder why do people still have abortions if they love the babies.
• How do you think this poem reflects the author? I think this poem shows that the author went through this or knows someone who did. It also shows that if she went through this she did care about the babies.
• Do you think that this poem proves that this poet deserves recognition of being Poet Laureate, and why? I do,because it has an important message and it is written very good.
Monroe98:
ReplyDeleteFlying at Night
Ted Kooser
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.
I liked this poem because it was really simple and to the point. It wasn't a poem that I really had to think outside of the box with.
I think that this reflects the author because he's known for his love poems and this is really cute and simple. I think that Ted Kooser did deserve to be recognized as poet laureate because his poems are really beautiful but easy to understand. I agree with I_like_candy because in Ted Kooser's poem "Happy Birthday" Ted really does talk about taking advantage of the time we have.
destroyer618:
ReplyDeleteVespertina Cognitio
Natasha Trethewey
Overhead, pelicans glide in threes—
their shadows across the sand
dark thoughts crossing the mind.
Beyond the fringe of coast, shrimpers
hoist their nets, weighing the harvest
against the day's losses. Light waning,
concentration is a lone gull
circling what's thrown back. Debris
weights the trawl like stones.
All day, this dredging—beneath the tug
of waves—rhythm of what goes out,
comes back, comes back, comes back.
I like this poem not because of the actions of it, but the emphasis of it. It really speaks out to those that weren't caught up in the storm by emphasizing how it possibly felt to be in the storm. It reflects to the author in my opinion as compassionate, because to me, she makes a beautiful thing out of a hurricane. She possibly does this to comfort victims and say everything is going to be alright. This poet sincerely deserves recognition from Poet Laureate because of its compassionate, but disastrous mix of beauty and hurricanes.
Samurai Song
ReplyDeleteby Robert Pinsky
When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.
When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.
When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.
When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.
When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.
1: i liked this poem because sometimes you when you don't have something you think about something else.
2: Because he made all kinds of poems : Happiness and sadness.
3:yes because it what we human sometime do...(check his other poems).
theories of time and space-Natasha Trethewey
ReplyDeleteYou can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.
Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:
head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off
another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion – dead end
at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches
in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand
dumped on a mangrove swamp – buried
terrain of the past. Bring only
what you must carry – tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock
where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:
the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return
1)I like the poem because its beep at the end about the photograph.
2)I believe that the poem reflects the author because of how her life was before Katrina and how her life is now, they're different.
3)I believe that she deserves to be poet laureate because of her experience and the fact that she wrote about something that many can relate to should deserve recognition.