DDCPoetry

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Double Floor" by Kay Ryan More Information about the Poet: Kay Ryan The quote kind of summarizes the entire poem, "...one sometimes does have a sense that / There is a double floor someplace..."  yes, the speaker does sense the "doublefloor" but the speaker uses different images to define the idea.      The dual pupiled      frog eye can       scan for food       and trouble      above and below      the water at once. The key for this stanza is what the frog is looking out for as the idea, the term "doublefloor" has been hinted at.  Yes, the frog can look above and below but for the purpose of looking for food and trouble.  "food" and "trouble" are ambiguous terms, but specific needs. But, the poem is focused on the definition, "Many forms of / doubleness serve / local purposes"  they key to this stanza is "local."  here the speaker is announcing  more of a specific a

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Caritas" by Rachael Boast More Information about the Poet: Rachael Boast Caritas .  I wonder how virtue plays a part in this poem, which, I think, is more of an eckphrastic piece.  As I am rereading this poem, I focus more on how the speaker addresses language as this poem is very planned down to the usage of adjectives and nouns. "These stones speak a level language / murmured word by word,"  The first two lines of this quatrain plays with alliteration: "s" "l" and "w."  The sounds come at a fast pace and pays attention to itself within the structure; furthermore, the content itself about how the "stones" speak.  At this point, I feel the speaker and the setting are very similar.  "a speech pocked and porous with loss, / and the slow hungers of weathering"  So the language turns from basic "word by word" to a more precise language which anthropomorphizes: pocked, porou

Original poem reprinted online here: "Practice Test" by Anne Cecelia Holmes More information about the Poet:   Anne Cecelia Holmes There are two "if" gambits in this poem.  When I was rereading this poem, I felt the crux of the poem is how to interpret the two "if" lines, but first the set-up:      I almost say formula      but instead say data      and I am not interested      in the kind of brilliance      this offers. I quoted the whole section because these lines feel like character description lines which indicate thought.  For example, it's not the differentiation between "formula" and "date" (although one is a prerequisite for the other) but the self-awareness of "saying" one thing rather than the other.  Note, the speaker is not "wrong" in any case, but knows and says different things.  Furthermore, the connection through the conjunction of "and" gives connects the ideas, this awareness of mix-u

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot More information about the Poet:   T.S. Eliot I know I'm out of my league in analyzing this poem.  I have a feeling that I need to know more about Christian allusions and T.S. Eliot to truly understand this poem.  It's not like there aren't good analysis of this poem already: Shmoop Modern American Poetry I only link to these.  I haven't read them at all. I just know that the two above are the most legitimate of analysis sites.  Why haven't I read them?  My analysis of this poem will not be better, but it will be my own.  Whatever conclusions may come of it, regardless of right or wrong, will be what I think at this time.  But I did like about not reading these, I only read the first sentence of the Shmoop one and it reaffirmed my belief. This poem portrays the journey of the three wise men as they go and greet the newly born Christ.  However, if you didn't get the allusion, t

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Oxen" by Thomas Hardy More information about the Poet:   Thomas Hardy When I was in grad school, my professor analyzed this poem.  I don't have anything contrary to what he saw, so this is the iteration of what Samuel Maio said about this poem.  The poem is written in quatrains with an alternating abab rhyme scheme.  Why? There's a separation or there will be a separation. But the first stanza hints at this separation:      Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.      "Now they are all on their knees,"      An elder said as we sat in a flock      By the embers hearthside ease. Here's the setting -- Christmas eves and an "elder" in which the speaker seems to listen to tells the story of how "they" are all on their knees.  Who are they?      We pictured the meek mild creatures where      They dwelt in their strawy pen,      Nor did it occur to one of us there      To doubt they were kneeling the

Original poem reprinted online here: "[little tree]" by E. E. Cummings More information about the Poet:   E. E. Cummings Well this poem has a deeper meaning, but please, it's kind of weird...maybe because I'm looking at the poem based on sensory images.  In any case, the little tree refers to a Christmas tree; furthermore, the poem conforms to a quatrain pattern to be a little more predictable.  But not really.      little tree      little silent Christmas tree      you are so little      you are more like a flower So this stanza focuses on the visual aspect of the Christmas tree, and note how the size is the qualifier for the simile -- small (more) like a flower.  The focus seems like aesthetics:      who found you in the green forest      and were you very sorry to come away?      see         i will comfort you      because you smell so sweetly.  Yeah.  The rhetorical question right after personifies the tree to be in the defeat or to be "sorry."  And then

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "A Dream, After Reading Dante's Episode of Paolo And Francesca" by John Keats More Information about the Poet: John Keats This is one of the toughest poems I've ever tried to read.  There are so many allusions in this poem and how they interplay as images, as symbols, as references, as points, that I just couldn't (cannot) wrap my head around it.  But, I wanted to come back and figure it out the best I could.  I can only do my best. But first, this is an Elizabethan sonnet with no line breaks to simulate a continuous movement.  So what makes this poem difficult is from the onset the reader and the speaker is in a dream world about a dream world.  Meta.  Dante's Inferno has so many allusions, so we have to start with the title. Dante's episode of Paolo and Francesca is in Canto V  of the Inferno.  Here's some good analysis of the scene, here's the most important piece of information to me: "Francesca, accor

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "The House on the Hill" by Edwin Arlington Robinson More Information about the Poet: Edwin Arlington Robinson This is a villanelle.  Past me tried to make sense of the form and wondered why did the lines repeat themselves, and why the rhyme scheme.  Distance does make things appear different. But that's the point of this poem in particular -- how "they are all gone now" and how this distance changes the perspective of "the house on the hill." So the two refrain lines in the poem are, "They are all gone away," and "There is nothing more to say."  The first refrain has a somber tone of leaving and the second refrain has more of a mysterious quality since the poem, indeed, says something. "Through broken walls and gray / The winds blow bleak and shrill: / They are all gone away.  The first usage of the first refrain brings more of the after effects -- they are all gone only the broken and the b

Original poem reprinted online here: "Douglas Fir" by Ken Howe More information about the Poet: Ken Howe The first thing I wrote about this poem was it looks similar to "Robinson Jeffers lines" -- long lines that have some tinge of nature to them.  And I think the poem utilizes the style of Jeffers to still revere nature but add a bit more to it as well. The first lie seems like a Jeffers line discussing the sacredness of a douglas fir, but the language is a bit different in the end, "where it is more rare."  Here the speaker talks about value in the sense of existence while Jeffers tended to be enveloped in nature.  Basically the speaker places himself as a judgement position which differs. But then the speaker seemingly refers back to nature, "Frequently alone in a meadow, surrounded by dropped fir cones, needles bestrewing its pedestal, its dais."  "dais" once again the word shifts the context of the poem which now is a stage for a p

Original poem reprinted online here: "Corpse Flower, Luna Moth," by Daniel Tobin More information about the Poet: Daniel Tobin So I want to start with the last stanza of the poem:               to say something    wordlessly -- the word we too              can neither speak                       nor sing. And this poem seems like a stream of consciousness song -- that the title, "Corpse flower,  Luna Moth" are connected through image and the speaker is trying to find out more through language, image, song, and just thought.  But there are hiccups along the way to anchor the speaker to the image as the adjectives to the subject anchor meaning.  Also since the lines are so short and the alignment, which fluctuates with each line, have a structural importance, I'm going to fluctuate between the line and the form as a I quote them depending which I think stands out more. For example, the first stanza I think the usage of the word "corm" grounds the descrip

Original poem reprinted online here: "Tense" by Cullen Bailey Burns More information about the Poet:   Cullen Bailey Burns Written in couplets where the focus of the poem is on the construction on the first and last stanza, but the rest of the poem is trying to hint at a relationship that either neither becomes fully formed or is malformed.  I know, one is set in the creation and one is set in the aftermath, but the medium doesn't pop to me (the middle of the poem) as the beginning and end does. "Am smitten, I said, and the grass lay still, / and him on it, and I barely lied."  Here is a variety of puns and subject/object play here.  When the speaker admits "Am smitten" the object should follow, right?  And when the object is "the grass lay still" there's something odd going on construction wise; furthermore, the enjambment of "him" to the next line brings doubt to what the speaker is smitten with (currently) the lack of movemen

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Architecture of Sunlight" by A. E. Stringer More information about the Poet:   A. E. Stringer So the poem, 3 septets, follows the sunlight and what it illuminates:      Imagine the sandstone sun just      before down, streaming through      the lattice of the garret's      broad windows But the key here is the very first word -- imagine.  The speaker engages the reader not to be in the scene or actually envision it -- but rather to set the scene open to imagination, but it's not necessarily what the light illuminates.  Here the light focuses on structure and form -- note the lack of judgement rather the form exposed.       [...] dusk orange      levered up on the far wall      Even your room inclines westward,      somber shadows to begin So the shift in tone follows the lack of light -- dusk orange.  The introduction of the you is to "your room" and the description of the "somber shadows" indicates, maybe

Original poem reprinted online here: "Sawhorses" by Greg Williamson More information about the Poet:   Greg Williamson Some notes I jotted down: Rhyme scheme abbacc Sestets majority pentameter, majority iambic Why did I write this down right away?  The press that published this poem is Able Muse  which only publishes metrical verse.  Would I have known about the structure if I didn't know the publisher.  Probably, the form is pretty rigid just by reading the poem.  Of course, the subject matter of "Sawhorses" comes into play as well. "Are these the fabled 'horses of the Sun,' / This team of no-trick ponies, these stick horses, / So far of now their stratospheric courses?"  What are these lines talking about?  Yes, there's a huge sense of the grandiose with language like, "fabled 'horses of the Sun" and "stratospheric courses,"  And even though I've reread the poem, the only image I can think of when talking about

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Happy first anniversary (in anticipation of your thirty ninth)" by Bob Hicok More Information about the Poet: Bob Hicok Past me wrote, "move to a different narrative," and even though this poem feels like a Best Man's speech, there is a move to a different narrative -- the singular to the plural and, perhaps, to the singular again.  The single stanza forces the connections between everything with no breaks.  However, the poem has a sense of speed due to the syntax and the language. The first person perspective in the first introductory lines has a sense of humor behind them, "I don't have much time.  I'm an important person / to chickadees and mourning doves, whose feeder / was smashed last night by a raccoon." Here the language is too real, as though to define importance by building something that was once destroyed -- and how to fix this, "Soon / I'll be wielding duct tape, noticing the dew, / wa

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Dedication" by Czeslaw Milosz More Information about the Poet: Czeslaw Milosz The use of the second person is hard to implement in poems.  The first question is always whom is the speaker referring to?  For example the first stanza:      You whom I could not save      Listen to me.      Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.      I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.      I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree. The first two lines of the poem seems as though announce the speaker addressing a specter (or spectator) with such a dire objective of "saving" someone. The speaker continues to try to persuade the other to listening to everything by saying the speech (monologue) will be simple, the speaker swears it.  But then the last line, "I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree" transforms the poem into a metaphorical rumination rather than a straight forward ta

Original poem reprinted online here: "Travel Plaza" by Heather Christle More information about the Poet: Heather Christle Rhetoric, personal, white space.  It's how I see this poem.  And even though these seem to be different techniques and outlooks composed in a poem, they fold into each other quite well. Well, that's what the poem states:      The day not redolent      of anything in particular      but more generally      it folds into itself      a little bag that hides      a large bag inside So the rhetoric here is based on a visual metaphor of a little bag holding a folded up larger bag.  But before that, there is the play with ideas (particular versus general) and the image of smell defined within those parameters of particular and general.  So the folding technique based on rhetoric is there and the speaker has to be specific behind the meaning of this, "The day promises only / to give us this more" Although not a direction, "give us this more&

Original poem reprinted online here: "Eighth Air Force" by Randall Jarrell More information about the Poet:   Randall Jarrell Cinquains with a couplet rhyme scheme at the end of each stanza.  In the poem there's the continuous image of youth through the obvious symbol of "puppy," but what's intertwined with the youth is a sense of obvious violence as well.  However, how do this images interact? "If, in an odd angle of the butment, / A puppy laps the water from a can / Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving."  So we're introduced to the setting -- there's flowers and puppies, and then there's a butment with a drunk sergeant shaving.  Not necessarily violence, but there seems to be a foreshadow of something more, but, "Whistles O Paradiso! --shall I say that man / Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?"  What's the most important part that's added here is the judgement call. Not from the speaker, but what the speake

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here:  "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish More Information about the Poet: Archibald MacLeish "A poem should be palpable and mute / as globed fruit,"  This is how this poem starts out -- humorous rhyme with the images being as realistically awkward as possible.  The funny thing is that this "Ars Poetica" or a poem about writing a poem changes but the form is the same -- couplets -- the writer and his words. "Dumb / as old medallions to the thumb"   I was thinking that this was a older version of "dumb" as in mute but here I think that the reader shouldn't take the meaning too seriously and look at the rhyme scheme for the sake of rhyme scheme. "Silent as the sleeve-worn stone / Of ceasement ledges where the moss has grown."  And in this case, there's a play of the definition of dumb coming back to the next stanza (silence) and the image of layers -- the ledge and then the moss. "A

Original poem reprinted online here: "Donne, They Say" by John Savoie More information about the Poet: John Savoie This poem is in two parts -- the "rumors" of John Donne, and the reader's reaction to said rumors.  This piece is a light piece (something Donne would write in the beginning of his poetic career) which contrasts Donne's hard and serious religious style (near the end of his life).      Donne, they say, duelled death,      preached his own funeral,      hymned his own requiem,      then slid his sunken corpse      into the clear flowing stream. The terse lines bring a sense of speed to the poem, and the verbs of the beginning of the lines punctuate his actions rather than focus on the results.  Yes, Donne died., but how: preaching, creating hymns, sliding in to a clear flowing stream.  These actions are what Donne is about. However, the key idea in this first part is deciphering "they" -- not who, but what it means.  They, in this contex

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" by Christopher Marlowe More information about the Poet: Christopher Marlowe This is my Dads favorite poem.  This was the poem he wanted to recite to my mother when they got married.  If he analyzed this poem he'd say there's a sense of romance in it.  The romance of the pastoral, "Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove" I would add that the aabb rhyme scheme adds to the sense of "couple," but the speaker is asking and he's describing his plan, "That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, or sleepy mountain yields."  The expanse that they will have, and note nothing more than what they can explore. "And we will sit upon rocks, / Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks."  Again back to the pastoral -- note that they are not doing, rather being in the scene, "By shallow rivers to whose falls / Melodious birds si

Original poem reprinted online here: "Vulture" by Robinson Jeffers More information about the Poet: Robinson Jeffers "From nothing comes epiphany"  And I think this explains the poems core -- that the majority is in the guise of nature, but it is the speaker trying to place himself in nature but not fitting in quite as well. Jeffers is known for his long lines, so I'm not too sure how to quote them.  But the poem starts out with setting first, "I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside / Above the ocean."  Simple enough, right?  The speaker is traveling and ends up looking up.  And as the speaker is about to sleep or awaken, "I saw through half-shut eyelids" a vulture appears above him like a skylark , but rather than fly upward like the skylark, the vulture, "lower and nearer, it's orbit / narrowing.' Then comes the epiphany, "I understood then".  Such a short line in a Jeffers' poem over-impl

Original poem reprinted online here: "Blackberrying" by Sylvia Plath More information about the Poet: Sylvia Plath "Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries."  I kept rereading this opening line for the past couple of days.  There's a dual focus here of the visual of the blackberries and the mindset of "nothing."  With these three 9-line stanzas there is more of a play of what is seen and what is not scene interspersed with technique and the personal in which I still don't get after rereading this poem. "Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly, / A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea / Somewhere at the end of it,"  So the blackberry and the description of the setting serves more of a distraction than set up.  Note how the speaker is able to introduce a duplicitous line like, "somewhere at the end of it" which refers to the setting, but seems to be in line with the ambiguous terms lik