Blog Five

Of Politics and Art

This poem is written from the point of view from the child in the classroom during the storm. This point of view gives us a lot of details about what went on in the classroom during the storm, but we don't get any idea of what the teacher, other children, or outsiders are thinking. This is very representative of a child's point of view because they are usually self focused rather then analyzing the thoughts and feelings of those around them. We also still don't know if they ever got rescued from the storm, if so how? This also reminds me of a child telling a story because they often get sidetracked or leave out large portions that most people would want to know to feel like they are getting the entire story. We also get the idea that the speaker thinks very highly of the teacher, she even says "sometimes a whole civilization can be dying peaceful in one young women". This again gives us the sense of that classroom and teacher being the child's center of life, as school is for a lot of young kids, but it also tells you just how deeply this child probably is to their teacher. The poem would be written very different if it had come from a child's point of view who did not appreciate their teacher in the same way, it may have focused more on the storm or wanting to get out of the small schoolhouse. I would not call this a elegy because even though it is speaking about someone that died, I don't get a sense of lament but rather of celebrating how wonderful this women was. I would consider this to be a narrative poem because the majority of the poem is spent reflecting and telling the story of the day that they got stuck in the storm at the schoolhouse, but then there is also this moment of reflection where it jumps to a memory where the speaker heard two other women talking about Melville, who their teacher was reading from when the storm happened. This jump in time sort of interrupts the narrative flow of the poem. Almost the entire poem is written in enjambment. The place that it stood out to me the most was in the fourth stanza where there is conversation among two women. Dialogue has a particular form you follow when you are writing a conversation between two people. He writing of the conversation however stands out particularly in the "Because there are No women in his one novel". If she had started the line with "Because" then you would have lost some of the impact "No women in his novel" made. Because the writer had that line standing alone however that is where my focus went when reading that particular quote from the conversation.

Blog Four

Pat Mora was born in 1942 and was raised in El Paso, Texas where she also obtained her undergraduate and her masters degree in art.  She is married and has three adult children. Her poems reflect bother her mexican culture, southwestern background, and religious beliefs. She especially enjoys writing stories for young readers while her poems are focused more for adults. Much of her work I have come across has had the theme of religion, specifically Catholicism. In the Catholic Church often uses saints to pray to and relate to. Pat Mora wrote an entire book of poems that are meant to be prayers to the saints. Being Catholic myself and having grown up in a large hispanic community I could really relate and identify with her style and subject. The poem I chose is one she wrote as a prayer to the saint Mary Magdalen.

Saint Mary Magdalen/Saint María Magdalena

"Her sins, which are many, are forgiven,"
Christ said, looking down at the dark rivers
of your hair, your head bowed, repentant.

For years, I thought of you as the great Sinner
with a capital S, a woman of the flesh
who made my tías frown, a paramour.

I stared at your image, at Christ's bare feet       enmeshed
in the swirls of your hair. You kneel, bow low,
bathe His feet with your tears, such sorrowfulness.

You rub the tangle of your hair although
polite society frowns that you dare dry
His feet with yourself, a beautiful tableau.

Opening your alabaster box, you apply
perfumes, sweet essences. You defy
sour mutters, kiss His feet, the righteous horrify.

Soft, your hands stroke Christ openly, not shy.
You are not tangled in the myth that flesh is evil
until men write your story. They simplify.

They say you flee to the desert, with a skull
and Cross, a wanton woman alone
in a cave, her banishment self-willed.

For years, I too thought you should atone
for smoldering, but who are we to judge you,
prim critics in our pompous monotone?

Blog Three

Laundry

BY RUTH MOOSE

All our life

so much laundry;

each day’s doing or not

comes clean,

flows off and away

to blend with other sins

of this world. Each day

begins in new skin,

blessed by the elements

charged to take us

out again to do or undo

what’s been assigned.

From socks to shirts

the selves we shed

lift off the line

as if they own

a life apart

from the one we offer.

There is joy in clean laundry.

All is forgiven in water, sun

and air. We offer our day’s deeds

to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer,

our arms up, then lowered in supplication.

I chose to use alliteration as my poetry term. An alliteration is the repetition of the same, or of like sounds, at the beginning of words that are close together. It tends to give poems a more rhythmic, repetitive feeling rather then so free flowing or open. The place that alliteration stands out the most to me in this poem is in the phrase "from socks to shirts the selves we shed lift off the line" I think that using the repetition to get the sense of rhythm and meter is important in this poem specifically because laundry is often thought of as a mundane, repetitive task that has it's own predicable rhythm to it. My understand of this poem is that she is applying the everyday talk of laundry to a much bigger picture. It is like she is speaking of a fresh start, and just using clean laundry to represent that. 

Blog Post 2

Memphis Resurrection
BY HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS

Who died and made you Elvis?
      —Bumper sticker

The big rock by my door

is a plaster prop, after

all. I’m back to hear

screams for what I can’t

do, couldn’t do forty

years ago. Awkward

pelvic thrusts fooled

the camera and virgins,

but I have no more fish-

fry tunes left to dress

up on brand new plates.

This time around,

I spend all day singing

cracked Mississippi

homilies. Why

did I want to live

forever in the first place?

Salvation felt better dead,

floating home free

while my bones, secret

and brown, mingle

with old dirt.

The speaker of the poem is Elvis. The title of the poem was my first hint of Elvis being the speaker since I knew he had a home and died in memphis. To me it seems like the writer of the poem was not a big Elvis fan. She personifies him to be sort of arrogant and overrated. He was famous for his pelvic thrust being seductive and compelling, but in the poem they are refereed to as awkward. You even get the idea that he sees himself as a fake and undeserving as he "fooled" the camera. He is such an iconic figure in the music industry, the negative feelings toward him kind of surprised me. I think that this poem would be considered a narrative because it tells the story of Elvis looking back at his life. I liked the playful tone that the author sets you up for by quoting a bumper sticker before starting. It is also normally thought that we should not speak badly of the dead, so it is kind of ironic that the poem is actually the dead speaking illy of themselves. 

Namesake Poet

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born, raised, and died in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was an introvert and for that reason not much is known about her personal life. Only two of her poems were published in her lifetime and the majority of her work was not discovered until years after her death. Her work is held in high regards among many and is said to have had one of the largest influences on 20th century poetry. 

A Bird Came Down

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, splashless, as they swim.

The most striking part of this poem to me is the incredible imagery Dickinson is able to use in such a relatively short and conversational level diction. The reading of her poem alone has a rhythmic almost lullaby like feeling that matches the beauty she is describing in nature. It is interesting to me how she sees the watching of the bird almost as an interaction between her and the bird, bringing such a common animal to human importance; even the worm that the bird is eating is referred to as "fellow". In a way Dickinson is expressing an extreme appreciation for the beauty of nature. This was best done in the last stanza in describing the bird taking flight. I often think of when a bird is scared by a human they disappear in a frantic scurry out of instinct. Her words however allow me to see the wings splitting like an oar in the water with smoothness and grace. 

Favorite Poem 1

Digging

By: Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

I initially tried to go looking for another poem to do my "Favorite Poem Blog" on, but could not get this one out of my head. Even though it is not a particularly long poem, I just felt like it had so much packed into it, and every time I read it I get something knew out of it. I loved the somewhat ambiguous tone that Heaney set, where at the beginning I was not sure if he held resentment toward his family before him, or held them in high regards. The diction used is so simple when you break it down individually, but together produces a much more complex and deeper meaning. I can so vividly see a young man looking out a bedroom window having flashbacks of his family’s history. The detailed sound and visual words like rasping, stooping, sloppily, and digging really brought the poem to life. Then the fifth line from the end was my favorite where he alludes to his roots. There is so much meaning and symbolism in that short phrase. I read it as though he does not want any part of the literal "roots" that his grandfather and father worked with, but that their story would always be a part of his "roots" and where he came from. 

I am a person who holds my family’s history and heritage very dear to my heart. My mom has passed down her love for genealogy to me and I think that is why this poem resonates so well with me. When my great grandfather came over from Greece his family opened a small diner in Hot Springs, Arkansas where they were famous for their “3 Way Lunch Platter” (chili, spaghetti, and cheese). My grandfather did not carry on the tradition of the restaurant business; he instead made a better life for himself and went on to medical school. He did however keep the recipe and it continues to be our Christmas Eve meal each year. I may never reopen the “Pappas Brothers Restaurant” but I will forever hold onto that recipe and always allow my roots to be a part of me and of my future family.