What the mirror said

listen,

you a wonder.
you a city
of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.
listen,
somebody need a map
to understand you.
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

Lines 1-6: There is complexion to this woman's body. Clifton is describing a girl, but not just any girl. He does not put her in any classification, she is a one of a kind.
Lines 7-11: Once again, the woman he is describing and unique. What may work or what he may know about other woman will not work on her. I find humor in these lines.
Lines 12-16: This woman is special to him and deserves the utmost attention. She didn't come from "noplace" and she won't end up there either. This entire poem can be seen as a confidence booster.
Lines 17-21: These last lines twist the entire poem. My first thought was a prostitute. If this is true, it creates the entire poem to be a plee for this woman to stop soliciting herself because she is "some damn woman." This leads me into the last three one word lines. These lines do not hold any negative connotations. By "some damn body" Clifton is expressing that her body is fantastic, it is a compliment, and that she shouldn't be abusing it like she is.

I like this poem, I didn't at first until I pulled my own understanding from it. I also really enjoy the "slang" in this poem. It adds to the meaning and the tone and also to the humor in lines 7-11. Nice upgrade from my last poem!

A Poison Tree

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

                                                -by William Blake
 
The first stanza is explaining how when Blake is angry with his friends he tells them of his anger and it is resolved but when he has frustration towards an enemy it only grows larger because he does not tell them of his anger.
 
The second stanza goes on explaining how he treats the anger for his foe. It reminds me of a plant. He waters it with tears instead of water. And he suns it with smiles instead of, well, the sun.
 
He cared for his anger so well that it grew evidence. His foe found this evidence (the apple) and knew the meaning behind it.
 
At night he went to the tree(anger) and tried to discover the meaning (apple) but it ended up killing him?
The ending confuses me terribly but the moral to this poem is to tell people when you have problems with them.
 
I didn't like this poem. The imagery was really nice but it made me think cliche.

from Howl

The entire poem is extremely long and I will only be blogging about the section Amy White has given to me!

from Howl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness
    starving, hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking
    for an angry fix.
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
    to the stary dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyes and high sat up smoking
    in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across
     the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw
    Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs
    illuminated,
who passes through universities with radiant cool eyes
    hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-llight tragedy among the
    scholars of war,
who were expelled from academies for crazy and publishing
    obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their
    money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through
    the wall,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank Turpentine in Paradise
    Alley, death or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, and alcohol
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar
    to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
yacketyakking  screaming vomiting whispering facts and
    memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of
   hospitals and jails and wars,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off
    the roof waving genitals and manuscripts
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully,
    gave up and were forced to open antique stores where
    they thought they were growing old and cried . . .

                                                -by Allen Ginsberg.

First off, a solute. I have read the entire thing and this is a great section from it. Best piece of writing I have read so far. Brutally honest and to the point. It makes you think, it scares you, it makes you cringe. Only the best pieces of writing can do that to it's readers. After reading it the first time I couldn't help but read it five more. The truth lies in this poem!

"Ginsberg, Allen (3 June 1926-6 Apr. 1997), poet, was born in Newark, New Jersey, the younger son of Louis Ginsberg, a high school English teacher and poet, and Naomi Levy Ginsberg. Ginsberg grew up with his older brother Eugene in a household shadowed by his mother's mental illness; she suffered from recurrent epileptic seizures and paranoia. An active member of the Communist Party-USA, Naomi Ginsberg took her sons to meetings of the radical left dedicated to the cause of international Communism during the Great Depression of the 1930s. "    -famouspoetsandpoems.com

He also to drugs. There is evidence that he took psychedelic stimulants that helped in vision his poetry. I am not promoting drug use or agreeing with his decision to use, but this is a fantastic poem.

Parts of Ginsberg life definitely has contributed to his rather dark poem and short writings.

I feel like if I try to analyze this poem I will ruin it. I will end up beating it with a damned stick and leave it bleeding horrible. Everyone will get something different from this poem and in no way do I want to influence those thoughts. Breath taking!

Sindhi Woman

Sindhi Woman

Barefoot through the bazaar,
and with the same undulant grace
as the cloth blown back from her face,
she glides with a stone jar
high on her head
and not a ripple in her tread.

Watching her cross erect
stones, garbage, excrement, and crumbs
of glass in the Karachi slums,
I, with my stoop, reflect
they stand most straight
who learn to walk beneath a weight.

                                             - by Jon Stallworthy

Bazaar: A market in a Middle-Eastern country.
Undulant: Resembling waves in occurrence, appearance, or motion.
Excrement:Waste matter discharges from the bowels; feces.
Karachi: A major city and port in Pakistan. Capital of Sind Provenience.

Once again, a fairly simple poem with a nice message behind it. What I find interesting is that in the end he tells you exactly what the meaning of this image is. The lady gliding through the bazaar means something to the end and instead of leaving words to help the reader figure it out, he tells the reader at the end.

The resemblance he makes with her cloth and waves is lovely. I imagine the end of the cloth turning into water. Could just be me though!

The simplicity of this poem is not a bad thing at all. It is a nice, easy to read poem with a simple message that still can leave the reader thinking. The imagery is also spot on. (I'm British now)

I imagine a scruffy man sitting on his stoop. Watching the world pass before him, his attention is captured by one woman who happens to be moving like fluid through an extremely bust side street in the worst of areas. Her clothes standing out against the dull colors of garbage, excrement, and crumbs of glass. The though hits him, she has probably dealt with more problems than any of the slums loitering those streets but yet she walks the most erect. That is what it takes to make it through darker times, confidence.

the lesson of the falling leaves

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 agree with the leaves

                                -by Lucille Clifton

When I can let go, I truly love. When I can truly love, I have faith. When I have faith, I have been graced. When I have grace, I have god with me.
It's a poem about a cycle of letting go, love, faith, grace, and god.
The leaves are tied in to create a common noun that everyone is familiar with or has experienced.
She does not capitalize anything because the entire poem is simplistic and is over a very "soft" subject. Capitalizing words would give unnecessary importance to things when she is trying to simplifie everything. She is trying to show that this is how the cycle goes for everyone. Not capitalizing God or I makes everyone equal.

The Golf Links

The Golf Links

The golf links lie so near the mill
      That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
      And see the men at play.

                            -by Sarah N. Cleghorn

Proves how little words can have huge impact. This is a small poem of social class. Industrialization and sweatshops are the first things to come to my mind. Why pay men minimum wage when children can be forced to do it for $1 an hour? Laboring children and playing men are the only topics discussed, anymore words said within this poem would of bothered it I believe. By bothered I think I mean it would of added annoyance? It would become to "wordy?" The Innocent poem with huge impact effect would be diminished, leaving a smaller impact? Any of the above, I say.

The poem has a sing song effect to it which was done purposefully. It has a touch of irony in it. It resembles a kids melody while describing men at play. It is used as another mechanism to explain how reversed the roles are of these people!

Although the poem is small there is a lot of imagery. Imagining small children working it sweat shops while watching grown men play in a large green field right in front of them, it's horrible.

"Oh No" by Robert Creeley.

Oh No

If you wander far enough
you will come to it
and when you get there
they will give you a place to sit

for yourself only, in a nice chair,
and all your friends will be there
with smiles on their faces
and they will likewise all have places.
                                 
                                  -by Robert Creeley

My initial reaction is of heaven. When you get there you will be highlighted and greeted by everyone you love and you will be happy. They will all have their own chairs and will be greeted by their loved ones just the same. Knowing that Mrs. White gave us this poem I knew there must be darker undertones. ;) So I went a digging.

I thought of Hamlet and the scene where he is in the graveyard talking amongst the diggers and skulls about how everyone, rich or poor, will end up the same. While in the dirt is a lot different than in a special chair surrounded by loved ones, I believe the same message is being sent.

I also thought about a retirement home. Once someone gets far enough in life they will find it. With nothing else for the aging people to do, they sit them in a chair and surround them with smiling loved ones, all knowing what is going to happen to thee person and how their turn will be soon enough.

I do believe that darker undertones can be found but I also get the sense of peace. A statistic I came upon says that the older generations are the happiest. The don't have as much stress, worry, or pressure. So I do believe that their is supposed to be a sense of comfort.