The Ring

The poem "The Ring" by Diane Wakoski is about a failed marriage. The narrator talks about "the ring" which she carries on her keychain which is a big ring itself. That keychain though is made of bronze where as her wedding ring is gold. On the keychain the women keeps all her keys and her wedding ring on it.

She calls it a "relic" something that was "a symbol of sharing" but is no longer that because she is divorced and her ex has moved on to "oother wives". The ring is a reminder of the past that she doesnt seem to want to let go of. And it doesnt seem to be something that she is keeping to help her learn from her mistakes. Instead it is taunting her, reminding her what she used to have and be that she has lost and will never get back.

She is damaging herself by holding onto this reminder, this ring. It's keeping her down and from moving on and living, it's holding her back.

Perhaps the World Ends Here

The poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo is centered on the theme of family and life. The opening sentence states "The world begins at a kitchen table.". The poem continues on to describe everything that gets done there and the people it brings together.

Harjo seems to be saying that the "kitchen table" is the common factor in the things we do that bring people together. For most families and in most homes, people get together and share there thoughts, ideas and daily occurrences during mealtime at the table. Its when everyone gets together and just talks and shares themselves. Its a way people stay connected.

This is were people go to for food, for completing tasks, for talking and for many other things. Its were children are taught manners. Were fights occur and were stories are told and made. Its the beginning of everything and the end of everything.

There It Is

The poem "There It Is" by Jayne Cortez is short, simple and straightforward. In this poem Cortez is making a point. She is saying here it is and what will happen if something isn't done.

"And if we don't fight

if we don't resist

if we don't organize and unify and

get the power to control our own lives."

Cortez is making it clear that you have to stand up for yourself no matter what. You can't sit back and just let people or anything else take advantage of you and put you down. You control your thoughts and actions and you need to be the one in charge of your life.

"Then we will wear

the exaggerated look of captivity

the stylized look of submission

the bizarre look of suicide

the dehumanized look of fear

and the decomposed look of repression

forever and ever and ever

And there it is "

In the last part of her poem Cortez is saying what will happen if you don't take charge, if you sit back in fear and uncertainty. Our faces will show the outcome when we don't try. Our expressions will be signs of "captivity", "submission", "suicide", "fear" and "repression". Meaning that we will not be our true selves we will be belittled versions of who we once were. For once you are down and beaten it is hard to get back up and fight.

Democracy

The poem Democracy by Langston Hughes is about the lack of equality and freedom African Americans have. Langston wrote "Democracy" in 1949, during the Jim Crow Era. During that era African Americans had even less freedom and even more violence and restrictions directed towards them due to the Jim Crow laws. Segregation was everywhere. Everything was separate, from schools and stores to restaurants and water fountains.




"I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread."



In this part of the poem Langston is basically saying that all this racial prejudice is uncalled for, he has all the right to be free and own land just as any one else. Langston says he's tried of waiting for things to change and being told that it will come when it comes. He wants a change and he wants it now. He wants to be free just as everyone else is. We're all humans but not all are treated as such.

Barbie Doll

"Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy is my favorite poem I've read so far in this class. In this poem Piercy shows us the patriarchal and societal ideals of what women should aspire to by like and look like. And how girls are taught at any early age and are continually pushed into "barbie" molds throughout their lives. Through TV shows, magazines, runway models, peer pressure and teasing young girls are going to extreme lengths to achieve "perfection" or at least what society has deemed as so. Young girls are impressionable and because of many factors like the media, a lot of girls don't grow up loving themselves. Instead they end up with low self-esteem and wanting to change their bodies. More often then not they use dangerous methods to achieve their goals.

"She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs."

Here Piercy is trying to show that woman are only seen and valued for their pyhsical apperance and that other qualities dont matter if your not "pretty". Girls are put under to much pressure by society to achieve "barbie doll perfection" that they'll do anything to get it even if it endangers their lives. It's espically hard for girls to have good self-esteem when there is so much teasing and bullying in schools espically by catty insecure girls who make themselves feel better by putting others down.

The Bath

The Bath by Gary Snyder is a relatively long poem. The poem itself on the surface is about a family bathing together. They seem to be in a sauna, the bathtub is said to contain hot water. Its a couple and their children but only one washed with them. This line from the poem gives a detailed description and adds in nice imagery to the poem-

"Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone

cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing

kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out

sierra forest ridges night—"

Its centered on a father- Gary, a mother- Masa, and two children- Kai and Gen. Deeper into the poem its meaning is about a man discovering that his family, their bodies are one. He says- "Is this our body?". He makes this statement/question twice in the beginning of the poem and as it continues it transforms into the following lines- "this our body" & "this is our body". At the beginning the narrator is questioning it but as the poem grows he stops questioning it and he says it with meaning and power. It is no longer a question but a statement of truth.

Song

After choosing Allen Ginsberg for this weeks blog I looked over and read through his poems. For the most part they were all very long and a bit difficult to understand and analyze. After a bit of searching I came upon his poem "Song". It is much shorter than some of the others, but Ginsberg's work still seems hard to analyze and difficult to fully understand. However I went with "Song" I tried to dissect and analyze it in pieces and to me it seems to be generally and foremost about love.

In the first stanza it seems to be saying that yes solitude, and dissatisfaction is a heavy burden to hold but so is love. "The weight of the world is love", that means that the world is made up of love and love is a difficult thing to do, for some its easier then for others. True love is opening your heart and letting yourself be completely vulnerable. Most people want love, they want someone there for them to help them through the bad times. We rely so much on the love of others and the support of others, we don't always do things to our full potential. "We carry" this huge want of love, we search for it, go out of our way for it sometimes.

"In dreams 
it touches 
the body, 
in thought 
constructs 
a miracle, 
in imagination 
anguishes 
till born 
in human-- 
looks out of the heart 
burning with purity-- 
for the burden of life 
is love"

Its saying here that we dream about it, think about it and imagine it and we feel it, we want it, we crave and long for it. Love is one of the hardest aspects of life. Some long so much for it, some it comes quickly to, others not. But it's love that causes so much pain. When people truly care and love they are opening themselves up for the possibility of worlds of pain.

A Letter in October

This poem is set in fall during October. The setting is very natural, containing a lot of natural scenery and giving a good sense of the outdoors and seasons. In the poem we read about an aging man. The season is fall because it correlates with were the man is in life. It shows that his life is coming to an end; he is closing in on death.

The imagery being shown is supposed to mirror the old man, it’s a mixture of reality and nature combining the two showing the parallels between humans and nature/seasons. Everything in the world eventually comes to an end.

The narrator plays with light and dark also giving a sense of life and death. In the line “Dawn comes later and later now” it’s saying that fall is turning to winter. Winter is representing the end of the old man’s time.

This poem is showing how quickly time goes by and how short life really is, we see this in the line "pale and odd, startled by time". In this line the old man is surprised; to him it feels like old age has just sprung on him it came so quickly, without notice.

The last sentence "And I, who only wished to keep looking out, must now keep looking in" I feel has to do with death. Sort of like being alive and part of the world he could do whatever, be wherever, see wherever, but with death comes confinement. He is no longer free, he is eternally stuck with no light or windows or nature. It is just his body lying still, an eternity slumbering, forever in the earth.

Under Stars

The poem "Under Stars" by Tess Gallagher is made up of four stanza's.

First Stanza:

"The sleep of this night deepens

because I have walked coatless from the house

carrying a white envelope.

All night it will say one name

in its little tin house by the roadside."

In this first stanza we see that its night out. The narrator is out "coatless" carrying a "white envelope" off to a mailbox. It seems to be a letter to a loved one, because she seems to be going a great distance to send this letter. We can assume she left the house without a coat on because it was earlier in the day and possibly warmer, but as the journey grew longer so did the day with the weather turning. The night and cold seem to be taking a toll on her. We can assume this from the line "The sleep of this night deepens because I have walked coatless from the house..." By this she seems to be getting tired and drawn out.

Second Stanza:

"I have raised the metal flag

so its shadow under the roadlamp

leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes.

Now I will walk back

thinking of the few lights still on

in the town a mile away."

We see she has reached her destination and her task is complete. We see from the line "rain-heavy bushes" that it had rained earlier, possibly while she was walking to the tin mailbox. In this stanza we also learn that the town is a mile away, and we can assume she lives in town. So the letter must have been very important for her to walk that far to a mailbox.

Third Stanza:

"In the yellowed light of a kitchen

the millworker has finished his coffee,

his wife has laid out the white slices of bread

on the counter. Now while the bed they have left is still warm, I will think of you, you who are so far away

you have caused me to look up at the stars."

From this we can assume she is looking in through the windows as she passes by on her way home. She's also thinking of someone, we can guess its a significant other, maybe her husband. When she says "you who are so far away you have caused me to look up at the stars", it makes me think that possible the person she is thinking of could have passed away, but that wouldn't make sense if she's sending them letters. Perhaps she's looking up because she knows it's the same view as her loved one, maybe they are looking up at the sky at that moment too.

Fourth Stanza:

"Tonight they have not moved

from childhood, those games played after dark.

Again I walk into the wet grass

toward the starry voices. Again, I

am the found one, intimate, returned

by all I touch on the way."

Out of the whole poem this is the part that I was most confused about. I don't feel like it connects like the other three do. It doesn't seem to me at least to fit in with the rest of the poem. I'm not sure what Gallagher is trying to portray or get across. That first sentence seems to maybe mean that whoever she's talking about their in a state of bliss, happiness, they're like children, no worries or stress. Just carefree and happy.

Facing It

The poem "Facing It" by Yusef Kumunyakaa is about a Vietnam War veteran. In this poem he goes to visit the memorial, and he seems to go often. While there he seems to struggle with the idea that he is there. Meaning he's a part of it yet he is not. He states "I'm stone. I'm flesh." Which could mean he realizes he's alive but he feels like his name should be there. Possibly he doesn't think he deserved to live when so many others died. He pays special attention to Andrew Johnson, probably someone he knew during the war, and judging by the flashback, saw die. Also I feel this sentence "half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke" reinforces what I feel. It's as if a large part of him did in fact die in Vietnam.

Also "I'm stone. I'm flesh" could be interpreted another way. If you look at the sentence before it where it says:

" I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh."

By "stone" he could mean that he is strong and powerful. He can take whatever life throws at him and whatever it takes away. He didn't want to succumb to those emotions. He wanted to be strong for himself and those he fought with.

The Fish

In the poem The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop, Bishop effortlessly conjures up vivid and clear imagery for something so mundane and seemingly uninteresting as a fish. Bishop wrote "He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely" by this we see that the fish didn't seem to have the will to fight, it seems as though it has given up that its tired of fighting back .
Along with that we also learn by the line "Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw" that this fish has been through trials and hardships, it has learned through the years how to survive. But after being caught for possibly the sixth time the fish seems to have maybe given up, grown tired of fighting back.
As she goes own she comments not only on its will but on its appearance showing the fish in a new light, comparing it with such things as flowers. Which someone would usually relate to as something pretty or nice to look at. In the very beginning of the poem it is made known that the fish was old and weathered, not something one would say is beautiful. She writes "He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime... the pink swim-bladder like a big peony", by doing so she is seamlessly comparing something that is seen as sometimes "ugly" as something, if looked at, really looked at and examined can be seen as something beautiful. People don't always see things for what they are or see the true potential of things.
I feel the fish in itself symbolizes two things. Being strong and being able to take care of yourself but also seeing things in a different light. Don't make a snap judgement on something until you really see it and know it for what it is, what it means and what its been through.
At the end the fish is released back into the water. I feel the fisherman did this not because he felt sorry for the fish but because he felt pride and self satisfaction in himself for his accomplishment of catching this fish that has gotten away so many other times.