DDCPoetry

Original poem reprinted online here: "Ms. and Super Pac-Man" by B.J. Best Originally read: April 29, 2013 More information about the Poet:  B.J. Best The indents reinforce the narrative.  This is the first thing I thought of after rereading this poem again.  As I tried to decipher the multitude of poetic techniques in "For Love" for a couple of days, and then going to this poem.  Well, I like this better as a flash fiction piece. I know that I bring a huge bias, but well -- the indents reinforce the narrative.  The piece is broken down into paragraphs not stanzas, and flow of the piece connects in sequential order: time and other. Let's start with "other" first.  The poem starts in the beginning, the meeting of "Ms. Pac-Man" and "Mr. Pac-Man."  Note the use of "Super Pac-man" in the title because of a multitude of reasons: foreshadowing device, investment in the relationship, to lull the reader into thinking the piece focu

Original poem reprinted online here: "For Love" By Robert Creeley Originally read: April 28, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Robert Creeley This poem.  This poem in particular is very tough to analyze for me.  There's a lot of techniques like: ambiguous pronouns, syntax, misdirection, rhetorical reasonings and questions, time shifts, tone shifts, precise images, high conceptual language, etc. that it's hard for me to pin down because I want to write about everything.  But I need to get this done for my own sanity and moving forward.  . So the poem is one of the first well known poems of Robert Creeley which has a lot of influence in minimalism, which, in theory, doesn't give superfluous details and goes to the core right away.  So when I read these quatrains and saw the restrictions, I thought to myself how controlled and precise the poem should be. This is the wrong way to look at the poem after reading this several times.  The quatrains doesn't serve

Original poem reprinted online here: "Poetry" by Alfred Kreymborg Originally read: April 27, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Alfred Kreymborg This is an funny and odd definition poem about Poetry.  This isn't ars poetica in a sense that this is the speakers definition of poetry, rather this is the speaker observing a critics interpretation of poetry and then critiquing the critic.  Convoluted, yes.  That's just me. So the first line introduces the critic and the description is humorous.  Ladislaw is his name and:      five feet six inches high,      which means      that his eyes      are five feet two inches      from the ground. The humor comes from the perspective.  Also the note that the value of "Poetry" will be decided with eyes, body language, physical response to poetry.  There's three levels here. First if "his eyes lift to five feet / and a trifle more than two inches, what you have done / is Poetry --"  Humorous because of the

Original poem reprinted online here: "Tour" by Carol Snow Originally read: April 26, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Carol Snow There's a lot of good interpretations of this short poem online.  Most of the interpretations revolve on how the speaker shows a different perspective of the scene.  Yes, and well no.  Yes, the speaker does show a different meaning to the same scene, but there's something a bit off on the lines. I think the first is the "he" in the first stanza is a representation of a monk.  Even I was like "he = monk?"  and there's the play of assumptions.  I don't know who he is.  I know the actions that he is doing -- well no I don't. The first stanza is pure description.  "Near a shrine in Japan he'd swept the path / and then placed camellia blossoms there."  This is the construction of something beautiful.  Past me wrote for this stanza, "What does it mean to place fallen camellias purposely on t

Original poem reprinted online here: "Poem" by Frank O'Hara Originally read: April 26, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Frank O'Hara I don't know if I could take this as a riff of a love poem, or as an awkward interesting love poem.  Actually, I don't know if I could take this as a love poem at all.  The drop down line isn't as angular as it could be, nor is the subject matter specific.  The poem is the line that straddles -- well -- any sort of connection and association to the poem. So here's a cute line, "if it rains hard /on our toes."  And I mean cute in the most saccharine sense.  There's the pastoral love going on -- walking, oh it's raining -- but it's on  our feet, how interesting.    But I take this as sincere, not so much as a riff.  Yes, I might be bias against the line, but the focus on how the line is read. In the second stanza, the description of the walk is a bit humorous with the focus on the we strolling li

Original poem reprinted online here: "Advice from the Experts" by Bill Knott Originally read: April 25, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Bill Knott Perspective and expectation.  Already from the title, the focus is on the "experts," but the perspective and expectation change with each line. "I lay down in the empty street and parked"  here the perspective is from the speaker but note how simple the line is.  If it wasn't for the verb "lay" the sentence is as innocuous as an everyday conversation.  But since the speaker is laying down in (not "on") the street, the verb already sets up a difference in levels. "My feet against the gutter's curb while from"  This is more of a direct visual cue.  Duh, right?  The set up though doesn't create  a sense of symbolic urgency for me though.  Yes, a person laying down in the street with a feet against the gutter isn't normal, but it isn't the focus.  My focus is

Original poem reprinted online here: "Brief Study of Parades" by Jill Osier Originally read: April 225, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Jill Osier *Perspective *Observation *Bias That's what I looked for when I read this poem.  And since the poem is in list format, there is an imposed sequence (just like a parade) which may or may not mean something.  Why the "or"?  The poem straddles the line  between meaning something and just being observant (no meaning imposed on the observation). The first three on the list I labeled, "Parade perspective" or the perspective of the ones putting on the show.  For example, "1) There must be lifting"  could refer to the physical construction, or the line can open up this to a more spiritual level by the term "lift."  Yeah, the second perspective is out there, but the ambiguous of the term open up a lot of interpretations. "2) There must be so many shoes" -- past me wrote, "mar

Original poem reprinted online here: "Seance" by Edouard Roditi Originally read: April 24, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Edouard Roditi This piece reads like an opening to a mystery novel, and I'm probably going to have a hard time proving that this is a "poem" and not a "blurb from a mystery novel"  so I'll concede defeat and state that this may not be a poem, but this is interesting writing to me. Why?  For something to be written in this prosaic, narrative style, the piece plays on the idea of focus.  Just from the title itself, "Seance" there's an expectation of the "supernatural" and "mysterious."  The focus though is the one, supposedly, doing the seance, and of course the stranger is mysterious, but then there's the two men who sit at the table and talk about travel.  The stranger, awkwardly and like a creeper joins the conversation forcing the focus back to him. Now I just noted the first half

Original poem reprinted online here: "Five Ways to Kill a Man" by Edwin Brock Originally read: April 23, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Edwin Brock "Humorous -- reads like a recipe.  The list goes more absurd then the last being poignant"  This is how past me starts out, but there's the interplay of the humor which slightly turn cynical, but the focus is always a man in war which can branch off to society or ethics or what not -- no the indivudal -- the five ways to kill a man happens with each stanza. In the first stanza there's an allusion to crucifixion with the lines, "You can make him carry a plank of wood / to the top of a hill and nail him to it." And here is more of the "result" lines, here's the recipe, "you require a crowd of people / wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar, and one / man to hammer the nails home."  Note how this list is expansive at first t

Original poem reprinted online here: "For Louis Pasteur" by Edgar Bowers Originally read: April 22, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Edgar Bowers So the version I have is from "Poemhunter" which I cannot find online now.  When I searched for another version of this poem, I found that there's a line missing in the beginning, "Who is Apollo?' College student" which serves as an epigraph to the poem.  This is vastly important because the first line of the poem, "How shall a generation know its story / If it will know no other" refers to the anonymous college student -- the one who should learn and/or know the history of others.  How important is the epigraph to the poem.  It's not the core, but the quote sets up how the poem is read -- with intense allusions, and images, and anger, and history, and a bit more anger. Like the allusion to Louis Pasteur .  There's a sense of anger because the speaker has to explain and correlate A

Original poem reprinted online here: "Autumn Almanac" by Ron Padgett Originally read: April 21, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Ron Padgett Meaning.  The end.  Well not really.  I found out about Ron Padgett from doing this blog, and I've done analysis of two of his poems, "Love Cook" and "Lost and Found" .  I think what interests me about these poems is that he plays with so many techniques: tone, audience, line breaks, expectation, philosophy that there's humor on the surface, but if you want to there's "meaning." But this poem addresses the concept of "meaning" in a poem, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  The poem opens up with this sentence, "Today there's supposed to be a break / in the weather."  Yes, there's the easy line break of "break / in" that could serve as a double meaning further into the poem, and it does.  However, the core of this poem addresses how a reader (unfortun

Original poem reprinted online here: "Holy Sonnet X" by John Donne Originally read: April 21, 2013 More information about the Poet:  John Donne Another poem that has a lot of scholarship behind it.  Also, I've read this poem years and years ago and I think it's probably one of the best Elizabethan Sonnets (disregard what past me wrote in the beginning) written.  So I'll just go over my notes of the poem -- please go to another site for better analysis. "Anthropomorphized death so the tone can be justified speaker, not 'yelling into the wind.'"  So the tone set up in the first four lines in the poem has a sense of bravado over the concept of death.  What the speaker does is attacks not only his concept of death, but the concept of death.  Also by deriding death the speaker doesn't, necessarily, show fear, but authority in which, "Those who fear death -- death takes away." "Bravado about immortality or redefinition of death -- ha

Original poem reprinted online here: "Grief" by Richard Brostoff Originally read: April 20, 2013 More information about the Poet: Richard Brostoff When I first read this poem I thought two things. 1) How risky it is to title a poem "Grief."  There's a higher percentage of sentimental verse and personal cringe-worthy experiences which can turn off a reader.  2)  What does Sargasso Sea represent in all this? So after rereading this a couple of times, I go back to the speaker who weaves together the allegory of the vortex to grief. In the first stanza, the mention of the Sargasso Sea is puzzling still.  I think I did look it up and the Sargasso Sea has a history of having vortexes -- but I was looking for more of an allusion.  I'm pretty sure the allusion is quite obvious if I took some time, but it wasn't the focus of the poem for me, rather the language used, " disappears into itself" where the ambiguous pronoun works for the sea and the idea of

Original poem reprinted online here: "Bright Star" by John Keats Originally read: April 19, 2013 More information about the Poet: John Keats This is another poem that not only has a lot of scholarship on it, but also is the title of his biographical movie.  What can I add to this?  Nothing much really.  I decided in these situations, I'll just write down the notes I wrote, and explain them the best I can. The first thing I noticed with this poem is the sonnet form -- 14 lines and it is Elizabethan -- sort of.  The first half on the poem is the personification of the bright star where the speaker envies the qualities of the "bright star" (symbol for whatever you want to make it to be).  However, the volta in this poem occurs in line nine with "No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable."  It's not a shift in topic, but in tone, then the next line shifts the topic to "earthly delights." I looked up words I didn't know like "Abluti

Original poem reprinted online here: "Midnight Loon" by Arthur Sze Originally read: April 18, 2013 More information about the Poet: Arthur Sze New York Style Buddhist.  That's what comes to mind when I read the bio for Arthur Sze, "'intersection of Taoist contemplation, Zen rock gardens and postmodern experimentation” by the critic John Tritica.'"  New York Style isn't the only "experimental" style, but when I reread this poem, the shift of events, the observant tone, the sense of play, the style fits. So first I should point out that the couplet lines shift in meaning and usage as the poem goes on.  The first couplet focuses on the present with the burglars finding nothing of monetary value -- yet the shift in to comes in the next two stanzas when the left "imprints" of nothing behind, "laundry and bathroom lights on -- / they have fled themselves."  Note how the shift changes quickly in the tense, and also the pronoun,

Original poem reprinted online here: "Paper-White Narcissus" by Lisel Mueller Originally read: April 17, 2013 More information about the Poet: Lisel Mueller In the title, the automatic assumption is that there will be a correlation between the Narcissus of legend, and the Narcissus the flower.  This is not something new, but there's different approaches to the comparative allegory. In the first stanza,  the speaker notes the comparison with the opening focusing on the myth, "Strange, how they got their name -- / a boy, barely a man, / looked into sunlit water"  And with the retelling of the tale, the speaker adds insight to the myth, "that treacherous reflection.  There is no greater loneliness,"  Okay, so the didactic part here is a bit overboard -- maybe to coincide with the tenor of the myth. But the focus is the reading of the myth -- and the flower.  The pronoun "they" and "we" comes into play.  The they signifies a more commun

Original poem reprinted online here: "Absences" by Dom Moraes Originally read: April 17, 2013 More information about the Poet: Dom Moraes Past me wrote this about the line, "Smear out the last star,"  "Strong opening line that's expansive and has an edge of epicness."  Yes, Epicness! No not really.  The poem plays on the idea of what it means to be "epic" in a sense.  In every epic tale ranging from Odysseus to Ulysses -- the conflict has to come to the forefront; however, this poem deals more of the aftermath of the conflict. The first stanza hints at where the direction the "post-epic" is going with the line, "The prolonged vowel of silence / makes itself plainly heard"  and, see, how the line break turns the noiseless into a noise and is followed through with something plainly heard and then transitions to the visual with "the ghost of a headland."  The transition to the silent to the heard regardless of heari

Original poem reprinted online here: "Elk Skeleton" by Amy Fleury Originally read: April 16, 2013 More information about the Poet: Amy Fleury When I reread this poem, I didn't know if the pieces fit together.  And I think this is one of the strengths of the poem.  The three stanzas have a slightly different approach to each and different subject matter which make the leaps a little far off, but connecting. For example, the first stanza opens with the alliteration of D "Down the draw at dusk seven mule deer" and some B "browse the blanched grasses."  There's very hard sounds here as though the speaker is forcing the reader or the speaker herself to stop and look at these deer and look at them eat -- majestically.  I write majestically because I feel the sentiment is forces within the two lines, and then the philosophical third line of "Not all has been winter-killed this early April" which brings a certain seriousness, and passage of time

Original poem reprinted online here: "Living in Numbers" by Claire Lee Originally read: April 15, 2013 More information about the Poet: Claire Lee Read the poem first.  Take it in.  Now this poem was published when Claire Lee was a (if I got my timing and information correct) a sophomore in high school and was the one of five winners for the National Student Poet's Program. Does this matter to me?  I guess.  It's more of the content that matters.  I also want to tie in this article, "Gimmicks," by Ron Padgett into my analysis of this poem. The poem is in a parallel structure and the list is a count of things like "friends," "scars," "funerals attended" -- events that should have significant emotional impact, yet are reduced to a statistical influx akin to the stock market. Once understanding this, then what?  Is this poem a gimmick?  Yes, it is, but it's not only a gimmick.  I think I read this poem in conjunction with read

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Damage" by Emma Bolden Originally read: April 14, 2013 More information about the Poet: Emma Bolden Past me wrote this for the first line, "Humorous opening line -- I hope it's (cherub's head) a statue not an allegory."  Why did I think that?  Because the title, "The Damage" is such a loaded title.  There will always be an expectation where the poem has to do about something breaking, and there's so much pressure to invent, reinvent or try something new with the expectation. With that being written, the first line fulfills the expectation.  The damage is on the "cherub's head," but since there is a specific item -- the cherub -- then there's the foreshadowing of symbolism.  What does a replica of something holy, something sacred mean to the poem. Butt of course we need a little back story, "The day before we'd driven nine hours."  The drive commitment solidifies that the

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché Originally read: April 13, 2013 More information about the Poet: Carolyn Forché Another difficult one to analyze because there's so much analysis on this poem.  A simple google search brings up meaning a definition to: the prose poem (the poem is in a messed up format here), the images, the impact of lines, the meaning behind the parrot, the meaning behind ears, the movement of the narrative, the domesticity of the beginning, the travesty at the end, the political, the personal, the obscene, and how they fulfill all expectations. Furthermore, there are interviews with Carolyn Forché about this poem -- the truth behind the poem, the historical representation, and her experience actually being there. So for me, I think to myself is there any thing to add?  Well I did add a lot onto the page and I wrote notes like, "The images get more and more violent and visceral as the poem goes."  Well, duh, a

Original poem reprinted online here: "Chez Jane" by Frank O'Hara Originally read: April 12, 2013 More information about the Poet: Frank O'Hara Every time I read Frank O'Hara's work, I marvel on the grand themes and serious discourse in his work.  That's a lie.  Frank O'Hara has a sense of humor and tricks the reader by pivoting meaning of words and phrases without sacrificing "meaning" (the grandiose themes) in a tongue-in-cheek way. But first, the set up.  The poem starts out fancy domesticity with "The white chocolate jar full of petals" and the observation of stationary boredom comes at the announcement of time "four o'clocks now and to come." Then suddenly the poem becomes surreal with the introduction of the Tiger -- the description of the tiger is "irritable" and doing a lot of action, but note "without disturbing a hair/ of the flowers' breathless attention, pisses into the pot, right down it&

Original poem reprinted online here: "Pompeii" by Charles Bernstein  Originally read: April 11, 2013 More information about the Poet: Charles Bernstein Depending on the reader's sense of background the opening line, "The rich men, they know about suffering" may come off as jolting.  I don't think the first thought that comes to mind is "suffering" when it comes to someone who is "rich" -- but the first line dictates how the reader should go about the poem -- a bit skeptically, a bit weary, but treading forward and not over thinking the lines. Unfortunately, I naturally over think lines.  But the poem exposes it's intent with the line, "Rich men say they can't control,"  and past me wrote, "proverb -- wealth versus control.  Suffering at the loass of control." The poem goes expansive after what cannot be controlled, "The tides, the erosion of polar caps / And the eruption of a terrible / Greed among those w

Original poem reprinted online here: "Pencil" by Marianne Boruch  Originally read: April 10, 2013 More information about the Poet: Marianne Boruch "Look, think, make a mark ," is the core idea in the poem.  Even though the quote refers to the drawing teacher, look how those words affected the speaker.  Now, the poem could go into a nostalgic trip where the speaker looks, thinks, and makes a mark.  The poem does indeed do this but at the end, but the rest of stanza focuses on the idea of "look," "think" and "make a mark" In stanza two, the focus is on the visual.  The imagery shifts from "white" clouds "darken" with rain, and the ability to blur an image into something entirely different "little woolies on the hillside."  At this point, there's a sense of the "cute" in here.  But the "thought" comes in  from an outsider perspective, "Look, my teacher / would surely tell me, they&

Original poem reprinted online here: "My anonymous hour" by Sarah White Originally read: April 10, 2013 More information about the Poet: Sarah White   The title leads into the poem.  I haven't thought about the uses of that for a while.  In this poem in particular, I feel that the title leading into the poem emphasizes the narrative quality, no matter how broad or specific, in the poem.  Now, why is this not prose?   Well, this poem is meta-poetic in a humorous way.  No, the speaker doesn't enforce paradigms or state what poetry should be, but rather the act of poetry.   And so the intro goes as it should -- the stereotypical recovery meeting, the introduction " Hello , Sarah" to the time spent on not doing, writing in verse:       "I had an anniversary --       six months without a line."       Applause. "But you know      how it goes-- So, I ask myself again, why is this not prose?  But the speaker talks about how she wrote a verse about a a

Original poem reprinted online here: "Enoch's Blocks" by Olivia Clare Originally read: April 9, 2013 More information about the Poet: Olivia Clare So I looked up Enoch on the first read.  I found out that he's the "Son of Cain" or "the Son of Jared whose great grandfather was Noah."  Then after rereading the title, I find the allusion doesn't quite fit -- even the poem is a bit epic in an another way.  No, the poem is more about associations -- whether it be through sound "Enoch's Blocks," letter, colors, simple associations -- that first connect. "Little Enoch learned his colors from the letter blocks"  The opening line reads as a preface to what Enoch learned, but also this is a forewarning of what the reader should learn -- how the associations happen. Then the next stanza, which is mostly in parenthetical, plays with the idea of signifier and signified.  "A is the color of a fleet, / B is the color of war and de

Original poem reprinted online here: "Apple Blossoms at Petal-Fall with Li Po" by Kevin Stein Originally read: April 8, 2013 More information about the Poet: Kevin Stein When I first read this poem, I looked up Non cogito, ergo sum which seemed like a familiar term, but there was something off about it.  So I open up that google translator thing and I write on the side, "I don't think, therefore I am."  And I'm like, oh what an interesting allusion to Descartes radical doubt theory.  Then I read the next line, "I don't think, therefore I am"  and my reaction  -- well I feel I fooled myself into looking something up and not gathering through context first. But this poem tries to be out of context of itself, but is all connected.  For example even if the scene is different, there's the same pronoun or vice versa.  The poem tries to escape in the moment and "don't think, therefore I am," but falters a bit with each stanza -- and