DDCPoetry

Poem found here:  "Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief" by Maxine Kumin An airport as a metaphor for transitioning to the afterlife.  But this poem is a bit tongue in cheek too.  The poem is in two octaves and a quatrain with each stanza going closer and closer and then expanding outward from the speaker.      Blue landing lights make      nail holes in the dark.      A fine snow falls.   We sit      on the tarmac taking on[...] So stopping here before the list of things occurs. note how the focus is on the play of dark an light in the beginning and also how the snow appears -- fine, small enough to look at individually in general which foreshadows the way the speaker sees who is going aboard with her:      the mail, quick freight,      trays of laboratory mice,      coffee and Danish for      the passengers Note how personal these items appear to others "mail, quick freight", then dispassionate, "trays of laboratory mice" to something for the passengers, c

Poem found here:  "Rosewater" by Nikos Gatsos Grief.  The first lines of the poem uses high metaphor in order to express and mask the speaker's grief, "When you reach that other world, don't become a cloud / don't become a cloud, and the bitter star of dawn, / so that your mother knows you, waiting at her door." Here's the trick with the first few lines.  The conceit of the dead happens with the first phrase of "When you reach that other world" and the focus is the separation between the speaker and the "you" speaker -- words apart. Then there's the repetition of "don't become a cloud" which I take as a ubiquitous transformation metaphor with a catch.  Note how the metaphor expands outward to "the bitter star of dawn". Yes, the adjective of bitter tells much about the speaker's perspective on this grief, but what's more telling is the line, "so that your mother knows you, waiting at her doo

Poem found here:  "Minnows 2" by Ray Amorosi Situational awareness.  This is a term that I here often where I live, meaning, this poem, to me is about the surroundings and how the surroundings influence the speaker's wanderings. "Whatever the cost I pay up at the minnow pools, / I don't know anything of the misery of these trapped fish / or the failure of the marsh I'm so hidden."  Regardless of how the scenery is, the speaker places himself in there to comment about what he knows or doesn't know -- well more likely doesn't know: doesn't know the cost, doesn't know misery, and doesn't know failure.  Apathy. "Up above the island with its few houses facing / the ocean God walks with anyone there."  So the tone here is more informative than moving, but note that the mention of the speaker shows more of a separation since there is a lack of action with the acknowledgement, "I often / slosh through the low tide to a sister /

Poem found here: "Long Trail" by Stephen Scaer This is an Elizabethan sonnet in which there is a comparison between two different ideals and sometimes people.  This separation is indicated in the first line, "You can spot the better hikers by".  And so starts the conceit of what it means to be a better "hiker." "the lightness of their steps, and how their packs / seem much too small.  They've learned they shouldn't try / to carry their whole lives across their backs."  Note aspect that's most prominent to me in this poem is the speaker's tone -- a little sarcasm through cliches "lightness of their steps, " over embellishment, "packs seem too small," and then embellishment, "to carry their whole lives across their backs. But the poet goes even further with the tone, "Inside their tidy rectangles they keep / the minimum they need to make their homes."  Compartmentalized, compressed, clean -- the sp

Poem found here:  "A Man Young and Old" III. The Mermaid" by William Butler Yeats This poem is like an Aesop fable even with the didactic message at the end.  And even though this poems intent is a bit obvious after reading the poem, it doesn't mean that this poem cannot bear interest after each read. "A mermaid found a swimming lad, / Picked him for her own, / Pressed her body to his body."  At face value, this beginning has the mermaid take the lad as her own.  But note, there is no mention of love, just ownership.  Also, when her body presses up against his there's a sense of fusion or rather something akin to Adam and Eve, Eve and Adam. "Laughed; and plunging down / Forgot in cruel happiness / That even lovers drown."  It's not the didactic tale that keeps me reading this poem, it's how the poem is shaped syntactically.  The stand alone verb of "Laughed" reinforced the past tense with a more visual verb (pressed is visual

Poem found here:  "A Hundred Years from Now" by David Shumate A self-eulogy.  The speaker himself as the specter of the past trying asking someone in some time about the future, "I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now.  I'd like to see how it all turns out."   These feel like ending lines of a self-eulogy, but these lines serve as an opening on how "it all turns out." "What language most of you are speaking. What country is swaggering across the globe."  For me, the verb of swaggering brings in a different appeal to the poem. Granted, I have a negative connotation with the verb (swag), but at least this is a signal of how the language changes through the rhetorical questions. "I'm curious to know if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent children are as they parachute down through the womb."  There are two important aspects of this poem.  One, instead of the poem being complete rhetorical

Poem found here: "Clonazepam" by Donald Dunbar Clonazepam is a drug that treats a variety of diseases or symptoms like MS, Anxiety, panic disorders, or alcohol withdrawal symptoms. And the first line of the poem plays with the idea of something being solved. "Finally, stability."  These two words set the pace of the poem -- a sense of finality or perhaps what constitutes as stability, "Finally, the fractal iteration of kings."  Definitions. "The legless herds lie still in the fields / and eventually the fences crumble / and the wilderness returns."   Here the return of the pastoral has a sense of cynicism behind it because there is no basis -- finality and stability breaks down to the fractal iteration -- something is being hidden in the pieces. "Like cinnamon coaxed back out of the tongue, / this book is a formalist approach for a kiss. / or vice versa."  The level of self-awareness of the speaker debunks the stability set in the begi

Poem found here:   "Smartmouth and the Mysteries" by James Malone Smith This poem has a mixture of couplets and singular lines.  But what intrigues me with this poem is how the religious references play into the poem and the perspective, first person, applies such religious icons to the speaker. "Year upon year I know less and less / about time.  It gits like nobody's business,"  Note how the first line depends on the enjambment.  How the line expresses an overall lack of knowledge to a specific source, time.   But the following made me think of what "gits" mean.   Maybe it's more of a colloquial term depending on the speaker, or perhaps, just forced perspective from the overall theoretical intro line.  The focus, in the end, is back to the speaker. "though I suspicion it is not.  Verily, / I am content with dust snug in corners. / I wander around scroungy as John the Baptist "  First, the suspicion line feels out of place grammatically,

Poem found here:  "My Kind of Love Poem" by Rafael Campo Author Website: Rafael Campo So the melody of the poem pulls the poem a little too close and a little too intimate  within itself.  The question being what is "My Kind of Love Poem" -- a more content driven title.  But I contend that this poem may or may not depend on the content rather how the poem adapts to the content. For example, the first two lines, "Unluckily, the day begins: a bomb / has detonated in Mumbai. Again,"  So the content is grounded more or less in reality, but note how the internal rhyme of "begins" and "again" flow within the poem.  Note how the sound of the poem has this sense of routine.  So the rhetorical question, "we ask ourselves: Is this what we've become?" which is a bit broad, but brings a collective concious to this "love poem." The speaker repeats "Unluckily" as though to continue the descent, "Unluckily, the n

Poem found here:  "A Crazed Girl" by William Butler Yeats So when I reread this poem, the pop image that came to my mind was Sia's video "Chandelier" .  Beautiful, artistic, but looks crazed. It's not that the girl in this poem is "crazed" -- this doesn't define her -- rather what is the cause of the "crazed emotion."  And, this poem being a bit vers libre and a but reverse sonnet, proclaims here core passion, "That crazed girl improvising her music / Her poetry, dancing upon the shore."  Her music, her poetry. Note the first stanza is more of an interpretation of her actions from the speaker upon seeing her art, "Her soul in division from itself / Climbing, falling she knew not where, / Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship."  Note how the speaker starts creating a narrative of this crazed girl as to understand her actions, "Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare / A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing / Heroi

Poem found here:  "Complete Destruction" by William Carlos Williams This is a parody of "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost .  Both poems have a sense of humor about destruction, but this poem is more personal, I suppose.  Well.      It was an Icy day,      We buried the cat.      then took her box      and set it on fire So there's the place of the initial lines of "Fire and Ice" content and structure wise -- discussion about the duality of fire and ice.       Some say the world will end in fire,       Some say in ice.       From what I’ve tasted of desire       I hold with those who favor fire. But what differs is the personal nature of Williams.  The ice is attributed to the day, and the fire is something to cleanse the box; meanwhile, Frost takes more of an ideological stance on destruction. The last four lines of Williams poem does go more ideological, but in a humorous way:      In the back yard.      Those fleas that escaped      earth and fire      

Poem Found Here:  "The Archaic Torso of Apollo" by Carol Light This poem is "freely after Rilke" -- Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo .  While Rilke's poem has more of an existential  -- this poem has a tongue and cheek feel starting with the first line, "This guy's lost his head but, Jesus," through the tone.  From the lost head the speaker focuses on that luscious body:      what radiance gleams beneath the pectorals,      and, as the eye follows the contours      south towards genesis, well,      one could go blind smiling. The lines feel tongue in cheek in what past me called, "physical reverence."  Who doesn't like a some good pectorals and contours?  However, the poem turns a bit with the innuendo of "genesis" for the male part.  Yes, the humor is in innuendo, but there's something too tactful about the word choice.  And the poem goes somewhat into it after the stanza break. On a side note, this poem isn't a

Poem found here:  "Atmosphere" by Maxine Chernoff Montaigne The existential crisis brought on by the surroundings or what is there to think about trapped because of the atmosphere? "Rain pummels windows, words unshake trees"  Note the shift between image and metaphor and how the combine together without an conjunction, they just exist together.  But, for me, the metaphor has the greater impact in the line because I'm curious what "words" the speaker is referring to.  "I have not looked outside all-night."  In any case these words aren't visual, something maybe more auditory or conjured in the mind. "As if distance were merely a loose wire."  Loose wire to what?  I think the idea here is how someone deals with a loose wire -- a reconnect from distance.  "We are talking, nowhere but here / and here, my love."  Something tells me to take the idea of talking as connecting with a grain of salt due to the previous line which

Poem found here:   "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel So everything depends on how to interpret the last two lines of the poem.  I've been going back and forth on how I feel about it. However, let's start in the beginning.  The poem starts out with an informational tone:          In the 5th century B.C.      an Indian philosopher      Gautama teaches 'All is emptiness'      and 'There is no self' This is the conceit of the poem in which the Barbie figure responds to.  I think the build up here is the response and the informational tone is more of the "straight man" premise to the "humorous response.  Note how this section is a quatrain and how the next part (still within the same stanza) is a quatrain as well:      In the 20th century A.D.      Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man      with such a belly could pose,      smiling, and without a shirt. The first line referencing time feels like an inversion of what would be normally stated