DDCPoetry

Poem found here in the comment section of my previous post until Steve Davenport decides to delete it or not:  "Sauget Dead Wagon" by Steve Davenport If that wandering gritty mid-west Americana bard replies to this analysis with another poem, I'll try to contain myself from posting my analysis of that poem the next day -- I'd still analyze the crap out of it though in my own personal time and post it at a later time and date. However, Steve Davenport's reply to my previous analysis of his poem hit a couple of weak spots of mine.  1) My MFA thesis is titled "Tourist in the Red Light District" which has similar themes and ideas that continue to interest me and 2) I'm pretty sure a good portion of my blog covers formal poetry from around the world: ghazals, sonnets, ballads, rhymed quatrains or couplets, terza rima, haiku, tankas.  So this poem, a hard rhymed villanelle with a lack of punctuation, it's too difficult for me to resist.  And, yes, I kn

Poem can be found here in the comment section until he deletes it if he wants to: "Life" by Steve Davenport  Before I get started with this analysis I want to write that I was going to do a different poem today, but I was intrigued at Steve Davenport's response to my analysis about James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota." I analyzed a poem by Steve Davenport , "Ministry Today"  from his collection Overpass , wow, years ago.  What also intrigued me about "Life" was I could get a sense of a theme from Overpass (which I still need to get) from just these two poems:  the wandering gritty mid-west Americana bard. But this analysis is about "Life". The interesting thing about this poem from the outset from a comparative angle are the specific stanza breaks: sestet, quatrain, and single line which I find the opposite of lazy (which was a theme in my analysis of James Wright poem) but ra

Poem Found Here:  "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright The poem is lazy, both in content and in form.  Short lines, long lines, referencing other lines to get a point across, stationary, laziness.  The act of inaction is apparent in the poem, but the speaker's transformation about the subject and about himself shifts throughout the poem. "Over my head, I see a bronze butterfly, / Asleep on the black trunk"  These lines could reference Pound's "In a Station of the Metro"  through the image (butterfly like petals, black trunk like a black bough(, but the comparison ends here.  What is important with these lines is to note how observant and whimsical the speaker is about his surrounding and cognizant enough to crate artifices from them (maybe). "Blowing like a leaf in green shadow, / Down the ravine behind the empty house, / This cowbells follow one another."  For a short poem, there'

Poem found here:   "'Gymnopédies No. 3'" by Adrian Matejka I'm not sure if this poem is referring to the compositions by Erik Satie or if the title refers to this sort of whimsy and dance found in the poem.  Does the poem depend on the title?  Honestly, I'm not too sure, since when I was reading the poem I was focused on the flow and movement of the images and lines. "This sunlight on snow."  A very focused image descends, "this decrescendo / of covered stomps & brush / stop for it"  The poem has a commanding tone which is subdued by the nature imagery.  But the focus is on this light and to "stop" for it. This repetition of "stop" continues in this poem, "Stop before the shed end- / over-ends / down the chin of the hill--"  Note how the punctuation mimics Cummings, but the way the poem descends on the page has a stronger visual influence to it.  Stop the poem says and read these lines and look at these im

Poem Found Here:   "Early Sunday Morning" by Edward Hirsch Old man lament in five quatrains.  The interesting thing in this poem is that the poem admits what type of poem this is within the first stanza:      I used to mock my father and his chums      for getting up early on Sunday morning      and drinking coffee at a local spot      but now I'm one of those chumps. The first stanza is not only tongue in cheek content wise, but also structure wise with the rhyme and inversion of "chums" (friends) and "chumps" (fools, but the speaker is by himself).  The question then is what the speaker does with this self-awareness -- be cynical about the structure and the idea, be genuine as though to confess some parts of the self. "No one cares about my old humiliations / but they go on dragging through my sleep"  There's a mix, yes there's humor about no once caring about "old humiliations" -- but the idea is pressed forward to the pe

Poem Found Here:  "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe A rhyming tercet followed by rhyming couplets -- the poem feels connected at first then goes off, trying to keep things together style wise.  Content wise, the poem seems so sure of itself and then the last half of the poem is full of rhetorical questions. How is the poem so sure of itself in the beginning?  Look at how it starts with a verb and exclamation, "Take this kiss upon the brow! / And, in parting from you now, / Thus much let me avow:"  Look at how the actions are precise and direct from the speaker to the subject.  There's conviction in these lines which decay as the confession continues, "You are not wrong who deem / That my days have been a dream;"  note the semi-colon here which ties in the acknowledgement of the dream with:      yet if hope has flown away      In a night, or in a day,      In a vision, or in none,      Is it therefore less gone? The confession of something as

Poem found here:  "Harlem [Dream Deferred]" by Langston Hughes So the version I have of this poem spoils the powerful opening line, "What happens to a dream deferred?"  when, I think it shouldn't.  The poem should start out as "Harlem" which is more an over-encompassing with then the first line asking a very sharp and personal question to the community and the self. What happens when dreams are put on the side?  I mean people shift their dreams for multiple reasons, but this isn't a poem about that; rather, harshly, the dream is already deferred, so what happens, "Does it dry up / like a raising in the sun?" Exists but deflated, "Or fester like a sore-- / And the run?"  The metaphor with this line goes in different direction. To fester implies to stay in one place and decay, while running means either to let it keep going or to get away.  In this case the ambiguous metaphor is searching for something.  "Or crust and sugar o

Poem Found here: "Mag" by Carl Sandburg The opening line of this poem feels so personal, "I wish to God I never saw you, Mag" that I wondered if this was a confessional poem.  I read snippets of other analysis from other people here and here  which discuss Sandburg's personal marriage with Lilian Steichen and his children.  Does this tie in with this poem.  Perhaps. But I feel the core of this poem, stemming from Sandburg's series of Chicago poems, is more ubiquitous.  And even though the woman is named, it doesn't necessarily have to be about Sandburg, but rather the speaker's frustration about "Mag" and, furthermore, what she represents. So the poem starts out with the speaker wishing, and the anaphora of wishing continues, "I wish you never quit your job and came along with me. / I wish we never bought a license and a white dress."  Note how the speaker projects his grief on Mag's actions, even if there is a "we"

Poem Found Here:  "For Once, Then, Something" by Robert Frost I still don't know how to analyze this poem.  After rereading this poem it seems very uncharacteristic of a Frost poem.  Fifteen lines, no rhyme scheme, no focus on meter.  It seems that this poem is more of Frost's musings and relating his thoughts to the scene. For example, "Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs / Always wrong to the light,"  Note how the speaker focuses on what the other's taught him and not focusing on his actions -- the wrongness of light is an interesting generalization, but the poem is just a collection of image generalizaitons: "Deeper down in the well than where the water / Gives me back in a shining surface picture"  The images state something -- there is action behind them, but there are more questions, what is the surface picture?  What shines from the "wrongness of light?" Then this curious line, "Me myself in the summer heaven

Poem found here:  "A Happy Man" by Edwin Arlington Robinson Written in four quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme, the structure in the poem is very tight nit, first two lines then a semi-colon then the next two lines and end the sentence.  Each quatrain serves as a different focus on saying goodbye.      When these graven lines you see,      Traveller, do not pity me;      Though I be among the dead,       Let no mournful word be said. The conceit is established in the first stanza.  The first two lines address a traveller (the reader) and how the reader should't "pity" -- the semi-colon with the line brings the narrative together relying on the connection of "no pity" being reiterated "let now mournful word be said."      Children that I leave behind,      And their children, all were kind;      Near to them and to my wife,      I was happy all my life. At this point and at least for me, I would be highly suspicious about the "happy"

Poem found here:  "Token Loss" by Kay Ryan "To the dragon / any loss is total" going opposite of the implication of "token" in the title, the contrast stands out more than the premise of the dragon.  This easily could have been a more fantastical poem, but the idea of loss, I feel, stands out because of the opposition therefore making the dragon more to be like a metaphor.      His rest       is disrupted      if a single      jewel encrusted       goblet has       been stolen. So what does the dragon represent?  Well, in these lines, we learn more that the dragon is "disrupted" when a "single jewel encrusted goblet" is stolen.  There's an implication that there's a lot more treasure that the dragon has.  But what is lost is something small but specific.  A piece of gold or something else would have little or no value to this dragon.  But knowing something small and specific is gone disrupts the dragon. "The circle / of him

Poem found here: "Legacy" by Amiri Baraka The poem here starts off with place "In the south," then gains traction by the usage of verbs.  For example, "sleeping against / the drugstore, growling under, the trucks and stores."  The focus here is action; meanwhile, the subject who is making the action is invisible.    But note the usage of verbs here tending to side of animalistic or basic: stubling through and over the cluttered eyes / of early mysterious night frowning / drunk waving moving a hand or lash There is mention of human action but no actual specific focus on a single one.  Here the speaker is encompassing the "blues people" by their actions Then the switch to the fun, "Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting / a hand rest in shadows. Squatting / to drink or pee."  The speaker doesn't hold back on the actions, this is not somewhat glamorous action -- these are human actions which bring the groups of people together with &qu