DDCPoetry

Original poem reprinted online here: "Thanks for Remembering Us" by Dana Gioia Originally read: December 20, 2012 (so it says) More information about the Poet: Dana Gioia So the real meat of the poem happens at the end of the first stanza "Is one of us having an affair? / At first we laugh, and then we wonder."  I wrote down in a past analysis that this is a "hard turn."  Yet looking back this comment, I feel that the idea of a possible affair was foreshadowed or at least a turmoil in the marriage. Then in the second stanza I can't help but see the images of symbols in the relationship.  The slow decay of flowers with the more "sickly sweet" (which I call cliche in my original marks, but I think it still holds) changing into a smell like a funeral home. Now this is the point where I wrote this: "This is really good -- the lead up to the simile is lackluster description [looking back, visually the descriptions are a bit well not as great

Original poem reprinted online here: "Albert the Pig Speaks" by Adam Day Originally read: December 21, 2012 More information about the Poet: Adam Day  On my copy, I write down that the author is "Albert Day."  I am wrong, again.  Anyway on to the poem. I admit that this is weird poem for me to read, and there's a part in the poem with this adjective/noun combination "pedrastic turtledoves" which makes sense on a logical level.  Okay no it doesn't, it's just a weird combination. Also I wrote this about the beginning, "This description is too good.  It's awkward but not so much that it's out of place"  and it's true.  The title of the poem is "Albert the Pig Speaks"  from the title I'm not looking at realism, I'm looking for a sense of surrealism and how it's worded. The play of language and colors is what I like about this color.  The word play  like "Stomach, flac soled, dropsical"  -- the t

Original poem reprinted online here: "Story from Another Inquisition" by Rachel Mennies Originally read: December 20, 2012 More information about the Poet: Rachel Mennies  "The end is good; however, I feel this poem is a bit cliche kind of like 'she's torturing herself with secrets' feel"  The poem itself isn't cliche, and has two interesting narrative depiction -- one of Deborah (current) and the one of the relative in Argentina. I'm more inclined to think the Deborah part of the poem is a bit more cliche especially from the transition between 1st and 2nd stanza "but harkens to a parted sea, / a mat of smoke and ocean / on the tongue."  Looking back, it's more of that the Deborah part is more general (images, ideas, generalization) while the Argentine relative has more specific detail (speaks Spanish to mailman, speaks polish to wife). Maybe it's the volta in the poem -- the transition back to Deborah where I feel the poem beco

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Glass Corona" by Brian Henry Originally read: December 19, 2012 More information about the Poet: Brian Henry "The ending  denies [?] a certain coldness to the poem -- but there's [sic] a little hiccups of motion here and there but it's hidden within the language." I think this thought (if I remember old me) from this line "as if angle could produce / what sight announces as visitor,"  I think that's what I look for in a poem that reads like a flow chart (read: poem).  I look for a sense of emotional standpoint.  Not the whole "weep for me because..." blah blah blag (I will weep for you unknown bad poem, I will) rather how the speaker feels about the subject. The way the speaker sees his subject is different than the previous poems I covered. The closest I believe is "Panoramic View" by Shanna Compton (looking back at my first analysis -- yeah still in that 15 minute mark) where the sub

Original poem reprinted online here: Analysis of "Coal" by Audre Lorde Originally read: December 18, 2012 More information about the Poet: Audre Lorde I read this poem again out loud and I wrote this on stanza two my first read: "I could see the attraction of the extended metaphor -- this is more of a performance through sound and    loose image; yet, all phantoms -- dead metaphors stacked on dead metaphors doesn't create life -- only a reminder of the dead" Yeah, I don't know what was going through my mind that day.  Today though I liked the play of simile,  I don't know why.  Each simile describes how the speaker views words to say "diamonds" "adders" and "gypsies over my tongue to explode through my lips."  Okay so the exploding gypsies one doesn't work for me -- there's surreal and there's just silly. Anyway, I wrote this at the end of the poem, "the construction of this...I tknow why it'll work beca

Original poem reprinted online here: "Mercury Dressing" by J.D. McClatchy Originally read: December 18, 2012 More information about the Poet: J.D. McClatchy So after reading this poem a couple more times, I still don't completely understand it -- "until I feel him deep inside" is that metaphorical?  "His hooded sex its counterpart"  -- the line sounds nice but logically what is the counterpart for hooded sex...unhooded sex? Also, does it matter if I understand everything in this poem?  The poem is structured like an italian sonnet, but it's in octameter instead of pentameter.  The "question" posed in the octave is whether the speaker is able to keep this "Mercury" or actually touch it.  The "answer" in the sestet is the speaker can't but he feels his Mercury "deep inside," -- a feeling that never leaves. Why do I get a sense that this poem is "coded" for an encounter?  Why do I get this sense th

Original poem reprinted online here: "The End of The World" by Archibald MacLeish Originally read: December 17, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Archibald MacLeish I think previously, or many times before, I write about the adjective noun combination.  In creative writing classes told me to be careful of adjectives or adverbs.  And I followed those directions.  In my work for the past couple of years, you won't read adjectives or adverbs at all in my work and probably this blog post.  Yeah, I kind of take things too literally. It hasn't been until recently that I started to analyze why.  On a personal level, why I listened to them without thought.  On a "poetry" (how hoity) level, I grew bored with how predictable my style is (image based narratives with an epiphanic ending that's still "mysterious" and up to the reader -- a little bit too formulaic).   So I'm starting to notice how poems work on a construction level -- and the first

Original poem reprinted online here: "1914" by Wilfred Owen Originally read: December 16, 2012 More information about the Poet: Wilfred Owen So this poem is a timepiece which depicts the feeling/mood/era of World War I.  War poems are tricky things.  There's always the outsider looking in perspective -- the ones who judge the war, and there's always the insider trying to make sense of it all for the outside.  I'll admit, that I don't have a sense for war even though America has, technically, been at war for over ten years at this point.  It's really kind of odd when I think about it. Anyway, this is not a politics blog (oh those will come eventually, or actually I have done those in the past).  And the strongest feature in the poem are the phrases in the poem.  I note several in my written notes: "sails of progress", "verse wails", "human Autumn rots", "blood for seed".  It's not like these words create strong re

Original poem reprinted online here: "Against Epiphany" by Fred Marchant  Originally read: December 15, 2012 More information about the Poet: Fred Marchant  So I lack a sense of humor when it comes to poetry.  I think I wrote these lines before many times.  And in my analysis previously I wrote things like, "words of detachment, detrimental, down trodden" commenting on the simile of "poplars bent like / the fingers of an old man clutching / what he loved about the sun?"  In stanza two I wrote, "couples? partners?" when the pronoun of "our" is introduced.  And in the last stanza I wrote down, "the end is great."  My analysis doesn't account for humor, rather I try to break down what "works" in the poem, and what doesn't. But a funny thing happened when I got to the end of this poem -- I chuckled.  Not because I saw that the lines was humorous or that I tried to configure humor into the lines.  This was going t

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Last Night As I Was Sleeping" by Antonio Machado Originally read: December 14, 2012 More information about the Poet: Antonio Machado On my notes, I note a lot of places where I see cliches: in the first stanza, the discussion of water as a symbol for new life, cleansing, healing etc, and in the third stanza, the sun as being a life comforting force.  These images are not only cliche but a little bit sentimental with "brought tears to my eyes." Yet in the last stanza I note this about these lines:      Last night as I slept,      I dreamt--marvelous error!--      that it was God I had      here inside my heart. "I feel this is subverted; however, it can be taken literally -- so it's up to the writer reader to figure out how to figure out how to interpret the text." I like how I crossed out writer in my own notes.  I don't know anything about Antonio Machado or his religious leanings.  However, I do feel a stru

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens Originally read: December 13, 2012 More information about the Poet: Wallace Stevens I was particularly harsh with this poem when I first read it.  Well actually when I read this poem on the 13th, I probably read this poem a couple times because I think I received a Christmas Card with this poem on it.  I never looked in depth in it thought because I thought, "okay winter poem." And on first written analysis, I took the poem as a nature poem trying to have something hidden beneath it and I wrote comments like, "Bland and a bit cliche," or "There's something hidden here but somethings not fitting"  because the description of nature isn't that surprising or the technique in the poem to transfer the season to the mind has been done many times before. However, when I read the poem out loud this morning, I found that I really like this poem based on sound.  Everything flowed

Original poem reprinted online here: "Transgressing the Real (Passages 27)" by Robert Duncan Originally read: December 12, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Robert Duncan Poet as prophet. I think I took a class that analyzed the idea as the Poet as prophet.  I say "I think" because it was one of those classes where we read a lot of poetry that had to deal prophetic writers like Robert Duncan, William Blake,Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whtiman but not necessarily prophetic speakers in the poem.  I think the assumption was that the poet and the speaker were one in the same. At least, this line of thought would make sense with this poem.  I didn't write too much on this poem on the first go through.-- some comments like "Nice kind of pun flowing through[:] a person who studies -- the eye of an individual" ... what does this mean past me? Oh I'm missing a punctuation here -- posthumously added a semi-colon.  If I remember how the poet/prophet works is by

Original poem reprinted online here: "Anarchy" by John McCrae Originally read: December 11, 2012 More information about the Poet: John McCrae The description in the second line got me  interested in the poem, "Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light" and I know this is a John McCrae poem (well time frame wise) is slightly behind the (like around 15 years or so) Modernist era. But I wonder how poems are looked at after a time.  For example this poem is probably a century old (maybe a little less or more).  And I'm sure that McCrae didn't want me to read the second line as a noir-ish poem where I envision the speaker walking the streets with two types of lights -- candle lit street posts and red lamps for any comer. Then running into a drunk who states in stanza 3 "'Speak not of God! In centuries that word / Hath not been uttered!  Our own king are we.'" Then I hear laughter -- maybe from the guy who said this or maybe from

Original poem reprinted online here: "Zero Hour" by Dean Young Originally read: December 10, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Dean Young "It's like the poem is written by a sociopath who loves Opera." Well not exactly, the speaker does point out the fallacy and absurdity in life.  The first line of this poem just grabbed my attention "Like when you realize sunsets are / out to kill you,"  And, on one level, yes age is out to kill you -- kill you until you die which the poem (humorously) gestures to age with the lines, "[...] it's better the libretto's / in a language you don't understand until / you're older and damaged." So once the poem sets up the premise that the speaker brings intersting insight but isn't totally connected (or there) the poem can go wherever it wants, but it doesn't -- well mostly. In the latter part of the pom, there's a focus on fire imagery "warm" "fire" "glow

Original poem reprinted online here: "'To be with a koan'" by Dick Allen Originally read: December 9, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Dick Allen "At first I found the humor odd, but I understand this point.  It's used to break away the stereotypical  Zen Master (which [in italics] is Zen" I'll admit it, when I first think of Zen Master, I think of an old bald Asian guy giving advice in riddles or a koan.  Then if I delve further to popular media portrayals and then I think of David Carradine -- that portrayal of the monk who is silent, travels, well-learned.  But the poem doesn't reinforce the stereotype.  The mention of Hamlet, to me is more cursory than allusion even though it goes into details. Yet look at the details pointed out by the Zen Master about Hamlet, "small pigs," "tiny villages," "bee and bee keepers."  There's no mention of Yorick, or murders, or play within a play -- no, it's tiny deta

Original poem reprinted online here: "Life in a Love" by Robert Browning Originally read: December 8, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Robert Browning I'm not one for love poems, however, I wanted to reread this one (look at my notes) to figure out something.  The end is vastly different from the beginning in terms of tone.  In the beginning, I note the sequence as, "a brief sussinct [sic] conversation -- or monologue -- which kind of disavows argument.  Partly romantic...partly stalkerism [sic]"? That last word, hmm nah.  Anyways, that's how I read love poems mostly -- kind of romantic, kind of stalkerish.  It's not that the love poem is bad or anything like that -- but the poem (usually) is confined to one perspective, which usually, pines, laments, honors, worships, wants, desires.  I'm cool with reading something like that once in a while, but poems that are too lost in the moment are lost within themselves -- there's no room for a read

Original poem reprinted online here: "Chinese Quatrains (The Woman in Tomb 44)" by Marilyn Chin Originally read: December 7, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Marilyn Chin So, I thought about this poem the night before.  I remembered feeling discomfort about reading this poem the first time.  "My father escorts my mother / from girlhood to unhappiness"  from these lines -- there's no good coming from it.  However, this poem, describes the life of this woman not as a historical piece and not as a pity poem -- rather through a series of unconnected, surreal yet influential images. Or at least that's what I read the second time.  The first time I read this I was wondering how the images connect -- why the images aren't connecting -- of course there's the worm of course, but still. For me, I'm trained to follow the image or rather that images introduced in the beginning will always come around in the end as a great symbol to follow. But how abou

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Mysteries Remain" by H.D Originally read: December 6, 2012 More information about the Poet: H.D I'm not a fan of sing-songy rhyme or allusion for that matter.  In my last post, I wondered about the use of allusion and context in a poem.  How much does a person need to know to feel the poem is effective?  What if the technique of the poem stands out more than the experience in the poem. This poem is no exception, I suppose.  The rhyme scheme is really irritating to me in the beginning: remain, same rain, "These rhymes are irritating and redundant. sing-songy." I wrote. Yet this line, "Demeter in the grass" really got to me, "This image struck me the most out [of all the choices that day] and made me choose it [this poem to look at again].  I just had this image of Demeter in the grass." So this is where allusion, at least for me, kicks in hard.  Demeter lost her daughter Persephone to the god Hades. 

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Remembered Light" by Clark Ashton Smith Originally read: December 5, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Clark Ashton Smith "Ah, how reminiscent of the Romantics, the 'I' being smaller than the scene.  Memory, bigger than the self." Some days, I wonder about my education affects my worldview.  I'm pretty sure that someone who doesn't know about the Romantics and how Clark Ashton Smith, a modernist West Coast Romantic, was thoroughly influenced by Wordsworth and Coleridge. However, the poem is not an homage to the Romantics rather feeling the impact of loss and years going by in a natural setting.  The "I" can only exist for so long before "I beheld that larger world." So here's the quandary I have, and I guess some regrets as a reader of poetry.  If you look at my analysis on this poem -- it's very, Academic: "extension of metaphor", "sonically", "singular

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Gremlin" by Karl Kirchwey Originally read: December 4, 2012 More information about the Poet: Karl Kirchwey At the very beginning of the poem there is a slight epigraph, " (The Twilight Zone reruns) "  and I wrote down "I wonder why the author specified here and not in the poem." The poem itself follows a pretty simple arc -- from a focus of the show, then to the personal, then to the show, then to the personal.  The shifts create a buffer and/or enhancement to the poignancy of either aspect (personal/show). The epigraph in the beginning is such a small part, yet, again my focus is mostly towards how the show impacts the speaker's life rather than any other mode like the the speaker's life, the history behind the show, etc. I follow the idea of the epigraph to the end, where incidentally enough the poem ends with a observation of the actual gremlin (show, man, myth, symbol).  Is it bad for me to write that this

Original poem reprinted online here:  "A Servant, A Hanging, A Paper House" by Lucy Anderton Originally read: December 3, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Lucy Anderton  "It's the construction of the sentences, the flow of strangeness (in language, image, syntax, speed, and sounds) that attract me here." That's a lot to cover, but I'm thinking of the idea of adjectives in poetry.  I've been taught to be weary of adjectives and adverbs in poetry.  An image that might sound refreshing or has potential in a poem like "a bird waits" but can turn boring and cliche fast with the wrong adjective "a singing bird waits."  Not saying that "singing bird" is boring...yes, it is. Note: please don't use these adj./noun combination in a poem "blossoming heart," "joyous earth", "delicious morsel", "broken heart" -- these combinations are cliche. So here's some interesting adj./noun c

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Possible Elegy" by José María Hinojosa Originally read: December 2, 2012 More information about the Poet: José María Hinojosa So one (of my many) weakness I have as a writer/reader and as a human being is to over complicate things. That's why I try to stick to 15 minutes when I write something down.  The longer I take, the more I doubt what I write --- it's too easy to understand or I should refine my word choices, and then, after many hours, my mind (and real life) becomes a drama fest filled with tears, existentialist depression, and wanderings. [yes I did edit this again after posting it -- it's not perfect!] I want to focus on the last comment I wrote: "Yet this line somewhat bothers me 'No one knows why' What does the 'why' refer to?  The speaker started, what waters you'll drown, what land you'll fall -- If I read this line as an existential statement, then the next line, 'but, I, yes I,

Original poem reprinted online here:  Advent by Rae Armantrout Originally read: December 1, 2012 More information about the Poet:  Rae Armantrout So the last comment I wrote cut off at the end, "This poem packs a lot of 'choose your own' dichotomey [sic] choice meanings in such a short poem and yet is really clever."  I don't know what this sentence means either. Anyway, the usage of sequence is interesting in this poem -- most of my notes try to figure out how sequence works effectively in the poem.  First, the idea of Advent, being a religious season of waiting for Jesus to arrive, starts off the poem.  Then the continuous images of threes (which is parallel to the holy trinity [or that's where my mind goes because of religious reasons]). Stanza One: mother, baby, sheep Stanza Two: sky, god, girl Stanza Three: thing (close to nothing), fatherless (not really a noun, but stands alone for attention), everything So this poem hinges on the direct statement in st

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Everything that Acts is Actual" Originally read: November 30, 2012 More information about the Poet: Denise Levertov "The ending -- the idea of only seeing 'grasp alone; not the actual poem, idea, concept -- only the reader, the observers own need to understand is really strong because the end works well if a reading  [sic should be reader] wants to read the poem as a Nature poem or a Prophetic poem, or a 'personal poem,' or a combination of different ideas.  The writer/speaker let go of this poem.  The reader/interpreter/scholar/searcher has not" I don't know what I'm talking about here. I've reread the poem and my notes several times this morning, and I don't see how I got to that conclusion.  The introduction of the ambiguous "you" (a much favored technique by many) in stanza one is well done. Although the "you" used in stanza one borders on being a command or a simple addressin

Original poem reprinted online here:  "The Iron Gate" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Originally read: December 1, 2012 More information about the Poet: Oliver Wendell Holmes There's a lot going on in this poem: form, rhyme scheme, tone changes, perspective changes, irony, etc which are really well rendered and all lead to the same conclusion of death, or Death.  However, when I was reading this over again I was thinking of "quote worthy lines." Maybe I was thinking this because it's too early in the morning for me to do an 15 minute analysis on a single aspect on a poem that has a lot going on, but the idea of epigraphs came to me when reading the poem again. Epigraphs are quotes from another source in the beginning of poems, stories, whatev. The epigraph in the beginning serves several purposes like a) contextualizing the piece, b) the piece is responding to the quote, c) focuses the reader on looking for the same aspect the quote brings (i.e. if the quote is abo

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Two Plays" by Lloyd Schwartz Originally read: November 30, 2012 (I don't know) More information about the Poet:  Lloyd Schwartz I want to focus on the last comment I wrote which was: The ending is clever -- it's one of those expected endings.  I guess that's why I am dissapointed [sic]  a bit.  The narrator foreshadows the poem pitch perfect, yet after the second or third read the foreshadowing doesn't keep me interested. Besides the atrocious spelling and grammar errors, I wonder why I thought the way I did when I read it.  So I reread the poem again and the problem for me consisted of two things. 1) Part I was heavy on the exposition.  Exposition is not a bad thing.  Of course I want background on things in writing and in real life.  Example: "Hey did you hear that <insert person here> is in jail for life?" "Oh really, what happened" "Well <insert exposition here about like traffic tick

Original poem reprinted online here: "Dear Reader" by Rita Mae Reese Originally Read: November 29, 2012 (Maybe) More information about the Poet:  Rita Mae Reese   When reading this over again I was thinking about the comments I made about the the tone.  I think the tone is really well done here.   First, the speaker is the nurse taking care of an elderly person who forgets.  I thought the elderly person was a man throughout the poem, but it can be an elderly woman because I don't see any indication of gender, and the same could be said about the nurse (I think it's a woman, but there's no specific gender in the poem).  I won't get into that.  Sexist reinforcing gender tropes.  Let's just move on, shall we? Anyway, the tone, dispassionate, morbidly humorous tone in the second stanza spoken from the outsider -- the nurse -- offsets the "sentimentality" in stanza three, "she is / eveything--you gave / me a shake--everything / to me." The l

Original poem reprinted online here:: " Panoramic View" by Shanna Compton Originally Read: November 28, 2012 (I think) More information about the Poet: Shanna Compton Hopefully you can click on the picture and it expands to something viewable, but not legible (it's already too late for that.) After reading this over again -- notes and poem.  I still like how the extended metaphor works as a dampening (not distancing) device for emotional sentimentality. How can one feel anything if it's like"this" and then this "this" is like "that"? I wrote on the bottom, "The poem hinges on sentimentality near the end, then you (as the reader) realize what is there to be sentimental about" there are never really any clear and focused details -- like viewing a panoramic picture for the first time (you see what I did there -- not good). And see, less than 15 minutes, League is still down though.  Next poem tomorrow I suppose.

This blog has been up for over two years, and I haven't updated it in a year. Why? Life happens after the MFA. I'm not writing about literary accomplishments or (the multitude) of literary failures. Rather life -- you know the things you experience in person than in a book so that you can write a book about your experiences you had in person. This is not an "I'm living my life" blog -- this blog is meant to set up something that I want to do. ------------- So after I "celebrated" my 30th birthday, I decided to read some poetry everyday for various reasons: 1) I wrote and read a little bit here and there the past couple of months leading up to my birthday -- mostly during the Summer. I didn't want to be distracted by video games while applying for jobs, and I didn't want to focus on how many employers ignored my resume -- so I turned to poetry. To be honest, I don't know why. 2) Retail places didn't hire me unfortunately, but I final