Still Memory
The dream was so deep
the bed came unroped from its moorings,
drifted upstream till it found my old notch
in the house I grew up in,
then it locked in place.
A light in the hall—
my father in the doorway, not dead,
just home from the graveyard shift
smelling of crude oil and solvent.
In the kitchen, Mother rummages through silver
while the boiled water poured
in the battered old drip pot
unleashes coffee’s smoky odor.
Outside, the mimosa fronds, closed all night,
open their narrow valleys for dew.
Around us, the town is just growing animate,
its pulleys and levers set in motion.
My house starts to throb in its old socket.
My twelve-year-old sister steps fast
because the bathroom tiles
are cold and we have no heat other
than what our bodies can carry.
My parents are not yet born each
into a small urn of ash.
My ten-year-old hand reaches
for a pen to record it all
as would become long habit.
—Mary Karr
A dream is a fluidly apparition at first, until it gets where it's going and the dream becomes clear, until the body wakes up, pulling the mind away from the dream, making it hazy once again. Karr's first stanza expresses this when he explains the bed " . . drifting upstream till it found my old notch in the house I grew up in . . ." It was flowing until it found the old house, then it became clear. " . . .then it locked in place."
Her dream takes her back to an old memory when her parents where still alive, her dad coming home from work and her mother cooking. This is a good memory for most people. In my dreams, sadly, I don't smell. My dreams are made up of sound, sight, and touch. I liked this poem because of the many scents Mary shows. From her dad smelling like crude oil to the smell of coffee her mom has made. To smell in a dream would make dreams even more elaborate, her discription makes her dream sound so.
In stanza seven, the author describes her sister running through the bathroom because the tiles are cold. This is something me and my sisters all experienced. I remember one time when I was little I yelled for my mom to carry me from the bathroom carpet to my room so I wouldn't have to step on the tile! This stanza brought back memories so I related to it well.
The last stanza is the most interesting. I believe she is describing the moment she became interested in writing. " . . . as would become long habit." This line shows that once she picked up the pen when she was ten to record what was happening, she never stopped and became a writer. I can't remember the first time I started writing my own poems and short stories. The last stanza gives reasoning for this poem and ties it all together nicely.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Blackberries for Amelia (poetry response)
Blackberries for Amelia
Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year’s canes.
They have their flowers, too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petalled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn
As the far stars, of which we are now told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which, some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold.
I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were —
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait —
And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds,and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.
-Richard Wilbur
My past poetry responses have been very structured, explaing poems by stanzas within paragraphs. I feel a need to change things so instead of explaing by stanza and I am going to ramble what I think.
The poem is talking about flower petals being strewn and white. Wilbur then compares this to stars which are strwen and white as well. When I look up at the sky I think of how little I am and little control I have over things. The Wilbur explains how one day the stars will shoot away and, "We shall only have blackness to behold." From natural disasters to theories such as the millenium year and "2012," the world has had it's scare of the world ending. Wilbur goes on to say how he doesn't have time to worry about such things, and I agree. If I were to live worrying about tommorow I couldn't enjoy today. I will keep lookng forward to tomorrow and next week, month, and year as if time were to go on forever. Live with no worries.
My favortie part is when he describes the Black berries in stanza three. " . . .savage-sweet and worth the wait . . ." I beleive that death will be this way too. Although we dread it now and fear it, when it comes it will be okay. avage because were dieing but sweet because were ready. Almost worth the 80 or so years of waiting.
I like this poem and it's over all message. It's sweet and ironic for the chaos brewwing about 2012, don't worry!!
Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year’s canes.
They have their flowers, too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petalled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn
As the far stars, of which we are now told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which, some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold.
I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were —
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait —
And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds,and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.
-Richard Wilbur
My past poetry responses have been very structured, explaing poems by stanzas within paragraphs. I feel a need to change things so instead of explaing by stanza and I am going to ramble what I think.
The poem is talking about flower petals being strewn and white. Wilbur then compares this to stars which are strwen and white as well. When I look up at the sky I think of how little I am and little control I have over things. The Wilbur explains how one day the stars will shoot away and, "We shall only have blackness to behold." From natural disasters to theories such as the millenium year and "2012," the world has had it's scare of the world ending. Wilbur goes on to say how he doesn't have time to worry about such things, and I agree. If I were to live worrying about tommorow I couldn't enjoy today. I will keep lookng forward to tomorrow and next week, month, and year as if time were to go on forever. Live with no worries.
My favortie part is when he describes the Black berries in stanza three. " . . .savage-sweet and worth the wait . . ." I beleive that death will be this way too. Although we dread it now and fear it, when it comes it will be okay. avage because were dieing but sweet because were ready. Almost worth the 80 or so years of waiting.
I like this poem and it's over all message. It's sweet and ironic for the chaos brewwing about 2012, don't worry!!
Friday, September 17, 2010
Fridays...
Today is the day I think to myself, "I should get started on all my homework so I don't have to worry about it over the weekend." Then I remeber that I like the suspense of only having an hour on sunday night to complete it all! :)
Sunday, September 12, 2010
"Beginning Again"
Beginning Again
“If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well,” he muttered.
Off alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor ceiling and walls
are all mirrors, what a mess
oh my God -
And still
it stands,
the question
not how begin
again, but rather
Why?
So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.
- Franz Wright
The reason I chose this poem was because of how difficult it is too understand. The words are simple and understandable but the meaning behind them is anything. What I mean by anything is that any reader could bend the words to fit to themselves or something they understand.
The first stanza is the most bizarre. The words give me a strange image of a man doing surgery upon himself in a room full of mirrors.This is not meant to be taken literally of course. From the first sentance the reader knows that the man talking is not well, " . . . I might begin to get well . . . " When I am sick or find myself under a heap of pressure or going through a tough time I feel as if I should open up my head and pull everything negative out of it. Fix or remove what is making me feel that way so then I can live my life to it's fullest, worries aside. The mirros illudes to being able to see all the feelings you don't want to have or see what you don't want to be, which would be a mess. Mirrors can be awful. If a person looks into one and does not like what he/she see's, it can be tragic.
"If I could stop talking, completely cease talking for a year, I might begin to get well . . ." This, I took literally. If I could stop talking for a long period of time and listen to my own thoughts I feel I would reach a sense of enlightenment, possibly? Something of the like.
Once Wright made me feel like taking all of the mistakes and follies out of my mind he asks me, "Why?"
Instead of asking myseld how I can do all this, ask myself why. Would someone want to go back and change some of the choices they made, take back words not meant to be spoken, undo regreted acts, change their life and hope for a better one? Or maybe keep living with the mistakes made and instead begin to better their life now. Change the present and the future instead of the past.
Backround Information on the last stanza:
Within the last stanza Wright refers to Li Po who is a Chinese poet who, in his teenage years, retired to the mountain with a religous man by the name of Tunyen-tzu.(www.humanistictexts.org/LiPo.htm)
"So we sit there together the mountain and me, Li Po said, until only the mountain remains." In the end we will all pass on and only mountains and nature will remain. In the end we will never know what would have been if changing the past was possible but hopefully know, if we got the chance to change our past, if we would or not.
I enjoyed the poem a lot because it made me think of my own life and the choices and have made and if I would change my past. I would have to say I would.
“If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well,” he muttered.
Off alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor ceiling and walls
are all mirrors, what a mess
oh my God -
And still
it stands,
the question
not how begin
again, but rather
Why?
So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.
- Franz Wright
The reason I chose this poem was because of how difficult it is too understand. The words are simple and understandable but the meaning behind them is anything. What I mean by anything is that any reader could bend the words to fit to themselves or something they understand.
The first stanza is the most bizarre. The words give me a strange image of a man doing surgery upon himself in a room full of mirrors.This is not meant to be taken literally of course. From the first sentance the reader knows that the man talking is not well, " . . . I might begin to get well . . . " When I am sick or find myself under a heap of pressure or going through a tough time I feel as if I should open up my head and pull everything negative out of it. Fix or remove what is making me feel that way so then I can live my life to it's fullest, worries aside. The mirros illudes to being able to see all the feelings you don't want to have or see what you don't want to be, which would be a mess. Mirrors can be awful. If a person looks into one and does not like what he/she see's, it can be tragic.
"If I could stop talking, completely cease talking for a year, I might begin to get well . . ." This, I took literally. If I could stop talking for a long period of time and listen to my own thoughts I feel I would reach a sense of enlightenment, possibly? Something of the like.
Once Wright made me feel like taking all of the mistakes and follies out of my mind he asks me, "Why?"
Instead of asking myseld how I can do all this, ask myself why. Would someone want to go back and change some of the choices they made, take back words not meant to be spoken, undo regreted acts, change their life and hope for a better one? Or maybe keep living with the mistakes made and instead begin to better their life now. Change the present and the future instead of the past.
Backround Information on the last stanza:
Within the last stanza Wright refers to Li Po who is a Chinese poet who, in his teenage years, retired to the mountain with a religous man by the name of Tunyen-tzu.(www.humanistictexts.org/LiPo.htm)
"So we sit there together the mountain and me, Li Po said, until only the mountain remains." In the end we will all pass on and only mountains and nature will remain. In the end we will never know what would have been if changing the past was possible but hopefully know, if we got the chance to change our past, if we would or not.
I enjoyed the poem a lot because it made me think of my own life and the choices and have made and if I would change my past. I would have to say I would.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Olvier. Poetry Responses
In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
What I understand from this section is a heavenly feel; pillars of light remind me of birght lights streaking through breaks in clouds. Also, the bodies of the trees turning into pilliars gives a sense of nature, which everyone can connect too. Nature is also ever lasting.
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fullfilment,
" . . are . . ." is reffering back to the trees. I beleive that fullfilment is connecting back to the heavenly feel I got before. It is beleived that once you reach heaven you have a strong feeling of fullfilment and purpose.
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what it's name is, is
nameless now.
This is where I feel the sensation of loss. "...every pond, no matter what it's name is, is nameless now." A pond is a pond and death is death and loss is loss. When you feel something as strong as death of a loved one, nothing else seems to matter. Things are what they are and nothing can change that.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
Not to damper the already gloomy mood but I have lost a neice to murder and have felt what Oliver is talking about, and I am sure many people have as well. When a person looses someone close to them they can't find themselves in ". . . the black river of loss . . ." The other side is salvation, wanting to get away from the death and destruction. " . . . whose meaning none of us will never know." I have asked myself plenty of times, "why her?" but I have yet to get an answer, and I don't think I ever will.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
-Mary Oliver
Mortal- something that does not live forever. Something you must cherish while you have i because one day it will no longer be. When that day comes to let it go, you must. If you don't, the life you have will be full of grief. Mary Oliver ends this poem strongly; giving three things of advice to live by. I believe if you to live by these three things that she learned in the river of loss, your life will reach its best.
Oliver explains loss, how things appear during loss, and how to get through loss. Although the vocabulary is easily understandable, some of the messages were hard to grasp. I had to read it multiple times and lock myself in my closet so I would have no distractions or interuptions. It is well written and speaks to everyone. I enjoyed it a lot!
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
What I understand from this section is a heavenly feel; pillars of light remind me of birght lights streaking through breaks in clouds. Also, the bodies of the trees turning into pilliars gives a sense of nature, which everyone can connect too. Nature is also ever lasting.
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fullfilment,
" . . are . . ." is reffering back to the trees. I beleive that fullfilment is connecting back to the heavenly feel I got before. It is beleived that once you reach heaven you have a strong feeling of fullfilment and purpose.
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what it's name is, is
nameless now.
This is where I feel the sensation of loss. "...every pond, no matter what it's name is, is nameless now." A pond is a pond and death is death and loss is loss. When you feel something as strong as death of a loved one, nothing else seems to matter. Things are what they are and nothing can change that.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
Not to damper the already gloomy mood but I have lost a neice to murder and have felt what Oliver is talking about, and I am sure many people have as well. When a person looses someone close to them they can't find themselves in ". . . the black river of loss . . ." The other side is salvation, wanting to get away from the death and destruction. " . . . whose meaning none of us will never know." I have asked myself plenty of times, "why her?" but I have yet to get an answer, and I don't think I ever will.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
-Mary Oliver
Mortal- something that does not live forever. Something you must cherish while you have i because one day it will no longer be. When that day comes to let it go, you must. If you don't, the life you have will be full of grief. Mary Oliver ends this poem strongly; giving three things of advice to live by. I believe if you to live by these three things that she learned in the river of loss, your life will reach its best.
Oliver explains loss, how things appear during loss, and how to get through loss. Although the vocabulary is easily understandable, some of the messages were hard to grasp. I had to read it multiple times and lock myself in my closet so I would have no distractions or interuptions. It is well written and speaks to everyone. I enjoyed it a lot!
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