DDCPoetry

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Mild is the Parting Year" by Walter Savage Landor More Information about the Poet: Walter Savage Landor Two quatrains with adjusted lines also with an abab rhyme scheme.  When I first look at poem, this goes through my mind before the content because style informs the content here -- and here there's a sense of something out of place, a sort of melancholy.      Mild is the parting year, and sweet           The color of the falling spray;       Life passes on more rudely fleet,             And balmless is its closing day. Here's the thing with this stanza -- the semi-colon connects the sentence as a direct correlation of time.  When the parting year happens there's a very image based connection -- sweet, the color of falling spray which is comparable to life passing away.  The key is how to interpret balmless as the lack of smell.  The after smell of sweet.      I wait its close, I court its gloom,           But mourn that neve

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Catch & Release" by William D. Waltz More Information about the Poet: William D. Waltz Addressing the subject from a distance.  I think this is what I think of when I read an epistle.  Letters are meant to communicate but there's no sense of urgency.  Yes, there might be a sense of urgency within the context, but the epistle itself awaits for a response, so, at least for a while, everything is one-sided.      Dear Reluctant Sportsman,      maybe you'll release one      into the watery teeth of the wilds      a tiny capillary      of our great circulatory system The address to the "reluctant sportsman" is further defined by how the sportsman is reluctant, "you'll release one."  "One" is an ambiguous term in the poem which can be assumed to be a fish or something else.  In either case, the usage of "one" opens up the poem to a higher metaphor of the "tiny capillary / of our great

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Early in the Morning" by Li-Young Lee More Information about the Poet: Li-Young Lee I do have to write that I think Rose  is one of the best collections I've read.  there are so many poems that are so memorable: "Rose" and "The Gift" naming just two.  This poem, "Early in the Morning" has all the trademarks of that collection: striking images, hidden (or overt) sensuality, and how a connection is made. In the first stanza there's a very specific image of, "While the long grain is softening / in the water, gurgling / over a low stove flame,"  Note the passive verb of "is softening" and how this verb sets up the tempo of the poem.  Soften and passive.  But also note the slow flame as though to build up something.  And within the same stanza, this image appears, "my mother glides an ivory comb / through her hair, heavy / and black as calligrapher's ink."  Although it see

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Body" by James Hoch More Information about the Poet: James Hoch Written in couplets, the poem is a connection between a son and a father.  Now, this doesn't spoil the poem because the techniques in the poem change and mold the ideas within the poem, mainly, what a father wants to leave a son, but the first six lines of the poem is lead up:      I hang it here, in the entry,     so it will be known simply      unmistakably as fact, the way      when you were born      you were merely a body      umbilic, barely breathing. So why so long until the context of the poem.  The first two lines of the poem are ambiguous and the "it" could only refer to the body.  So the focus is on the speaker's body and it appears that the poem is a metaphor -- hanging up the body for something.  The introduction of "you" in the second stanza indicates the son being born -- the umbilical cord cementing the scene, but the alliteration

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "River of Stars" by Akiko Yosano More Information about the Poet: Akiko Yosano Each stanza plays out like a scene of the speaker's life, but not like a movie.  Different aspects are shown of her life: the setting, characterization, and plot, but this is not a narrative poem.  Rather, this is a bunch of lyrical stanzas that create an incomplete narrative -- note the incomplete:      Left on the beach      Full of water      A worn out boat      Reflects the white sky --      Of early autumn Setting.  Although innocuous enough there's a sense of "reflection" based on the worn out boat.  The sky, the sea, and the land have a metaphorical feel to them which expands outward to the next stanza.      Swifter than hail      Lighter than a feather,      A vague sorrow      Crossed my mind. So the "reflection" goes inward and the poem adds texture to the generality of sorrow -- swifter than hail, lighter than a feather --

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Song" by Randall Mann More Information about the Poet: Randall Mann This poem comes off as a song by the usage of iambics and an off rhyme scheme -- not precise, but still there, but there's one word that throws me off of the song tempo, and I don't know if it is purposeful or not. The first quatrain alludes to a certain kind of violence with, "I found my muster station, ir. / My skin is patent leather."  The "muster" although means nothing at this point of the poem has stronger implications further into the poem.  The skin being patent leather brings an edge to external toughness., "The tourists are recidivists / This calm is earthquake weather"  Yes, the mention of recidivists seems a bit off, but fits the tempo, also earthquake weather brings the language back to this foreboding hint. "I've used up all the mulligans. / I'd kill to share a vice." Fun, fun, fun, gambling and "v

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "The Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill" by Hayden Carruth More Information about the Poet: Hayden Carruth This isn't a tough poem as far as readability as an observer.  Actually, it's a pretty fast read and I think people will get this poem without knowing the context, the people, the emotion, or the personal.  This is a hard poem to reread emotionally as a goodbye. Written in a epistolary style, the speaker is able to weave in and out of subject matters because, technically, this isn't a poem -- even the speaker admits that further in the poem.  The poem starts out addressing Sam Hamill (a great poet and translator in his own right, and a friend to Hayden Carruth), "You may think it strange, Sam, that I'm writing / a letter in these circumstances. I thought / it strange too -- the first time." Why would it be strange is pretty irrelevant at this point.  What is important is how the connection is formed through unus

Original poem reprinted online here: "Premonition" by George Santayana More information about the Poet:   George Santayana The prophet as lover. Vice versa?  This is what I was thinking when I was rereading this poem.  It's not like Marlowe's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" where the speaker tries to create the world for the love; rather, this poem works more on the general level -- as though the environment should be enough.      The muffled syllables that Nature speaks      Fill us with deeper longing for her word;      She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,      She makes a  sweeter music than is her. The first quatrain has three separate components: the speaker, nature, and the other.  Note how the speaker listens to Nature which "speaks," and creates "music"  but what does this do to the speaker -- "long" as though the sound was missing.  But note the usage of "us" in the second line bringing in th

Original poem reprinted online here: "Little Muchness" by Mary Ann Samyn More information about the Poet:   Mary Ann Samyn Even after rereading this poem, I feel like I want to tie the couplets together and make them all connect, and in some instances there's some connection between stanzas in the beginning of the poem, but when the poem goes to an end there seems to be a disconnect.  I think this might also be a ghazal (image based first line, theoretical second line -- but no name in the last stanza). "Some shouting and the tree came down branch by branch / my not so fast  a little late"  Past me noted the allusion to the lullaby with the first line.  Or at least that's my thought process when I read "tree came down branch by branch."  The line, though, could just be someone chopping down a tree with little or no allusion implanted with the first line and the weight should go on the brief second line which utilizes the speaker stating "not s