DDCPoetry

Poem Found Here:  "In the Dumps" by Heather Christle "Who are 'we'?" and "leave open" is how past me described the first stanza.  The poem's design and content feel like a spillage of some sort -- not so much of emotion, but of content: image, ideas, and so on, "Just because we've broken my head / doesn't mean we must glue it together."  There's a sense of humor behind the tone of the second line which is punctuated with the third line of, "There's other work to be done"  What work is more important than getting one's head back together. The descent into adjusted lines adds a sense of disjointedness -- but the poem doesn't go for an emotional disjointedness, rather a metphorical one, "and dark -- / grass freezing / There is some old light / to read by"  Note that there is a comparative metaphor of the dark grass and the implication of an old light to read by.  Dark where to stand, light that...

Poem Found Here:   "The Long Hand Wishes It Was Used" by Jackie Clark "Sometimes I wish I didn't think in words".  For me, this is a powerful opening line that holds potential emotional weight: wishing for something so mundane as words, but so complex as thought.  But instead of words, what?  The following three lines add a cumulative effect, not only how to think, but also the technique of repeating "and" to put a simple addition:      and that instead for each thought I thought I drew upon an image,      and that I was able to organize each image in a linear way that would be like sort of like reading      and that instead of trying to describe the edges around something      I could just think of the color around the edges of the image to be darker, So the cumulative effect focuses on the concept of lines -- the border of the image.  To "organize each image in a linear way that would be like sort of ...

Poem found here:  "Night Piece" by James Joyce Three sestets that build off the simple prompt of "Night."  Now, why specifically night piece?  There's definitely a feel of free from consciousness with the lines, association of the physical and the mental, Especially with the first line, "Gaunt in the gloom," where the construction sets up an ambiguous subject, at first, then the focus on above, "The pale stars their torches, / Enshrouded, wave."  Note how the construction falls apart here with the emphasis on "enshrouded," then the attached descriptor of "wave" to elicit motion -- a constant enshrouded feeling.  However, there's the connection of the image to, "Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume / Arches on soaring arches, Night's sindark nave."  I wasn't to sure on what or who sindark is, but note how the connection is to the heavens, which is an easy connection but the image become...

Poem found here:  "Belfast Tune" by Joseph Brodsky The poem is in quatrains with an alternating rhyme scheme (abab).  And there is a sense of musicality within the poem, but the content within the poem has broader implications. But, with the beginning of a tune, there's something specific, a girl:      Here's a girl from a dangerous town      She crops her dark hair short      so that less of her has to frown      when someone gets hurt. Note the how ambiguous the town is described versus the specific intent of the girl.  Also the girl is reacting to the danger -- of someone getting hurt.  And note that the specific detail of the cropped hair  not to hide but to see.      She folds her memories like a parachute.      Dropped, she collects the peat      and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot      here where they eat. The image of the parachut...

Poem found here:  "Valentine" by Tom Pickard With a short poem, techniques definitely stand out more, for example the alliteration of "s" in the first two stanzas:      simplicity      say sleep      or      shall we      shower seductive, erotic, the alliteration of "s" adds onto the choices -- sleep or shower -- in a more playful way.  And then the line, "have an apple" breaks away from that dream-like play.  Just like a famous biblical apple that comes to mind.  It's the break from the language and a move on to rhertoical questions of what happens next:      you are      as I need      water      shall I move?      do you dream? Here the speaker acknowledges the dream like state that he's in.  Here, when the speaker asks "shall I move?" the question is not where, but from what.  And then the question "...

Poem found here:   "Perhaps not to be is to be without your being" by Pablo Neruda The poem is untitled.  Or rather, the first line of the poem is the title of the poem, and even with the first lines there seems to be an identity crisis, "Perhaps not to be is to be without your being."  Not in the sense of the serious existential who am I crisis, but this one is born out of identity of a couple and self -- which is just a serious, but not as deep. The speaker defines what it means to be without in the next couple of lines, "without your going, that cuts noon light / like a blue flower, without your passing / later through fog and stones," note how the images are very image and nature based bringing a pastoral sense, and note as well that, by using nature, there's a greater expanse of loneliness exhibited, "without the torch you lift your hand / that others may not see as golden," Now by going of the sense of sight, this line, "that perha...

Poem found here:  "Burlesque" by Amaud Jamaul Johnson Written in quatrians, the poem undresses this anonymous hymn.  The shift in tone throughout the poem creates a sense of awkwardness, but also transformative as well. "Watch the fire undress him / how flame fingers each button,"  Note how intimate the first two lines are and how the metaphor of the fire has more action versus the "him" with inaction -- the fire is the one, "rolls back his collar, unzips him / without sweet talk or mystery."  Now the fire has anthropomorphized action, but also intent from the speaker.  The idea of "sweet talk" and "mystery" are gone.  There is this singular action of undresses to undress him.  And what does completely undressing him expose:      See how the skin begins to gather      at his ankles, how it slips into      the embers, how it shimmers      beneath him, unshapen, iridescent The body of the male i...

Poem found here:   "To my Oldest Friend, Whose Silence is Like a Death" by Lloyd Schwartz I'm the silent one in the poem.  Not literally, but I know that I don't talk to people in forever and I don't tell why.  This poem is sentimental -- which is against everything that I was taught how to write as far as content is concerned, but as a reader, this poem hit me pretty hard. The poem is written in couplets with the occasional one off line -- which can easily represent either the "friend" or the "speaker," but first exposition:      In today's paper, a story about our high school drama      teacher evicted from his Carnegie Hall rooftop apartment      made me ache to call you--the only person I know      who'd still remember his talent, his good likes, his self- The line breaks in this poem makes these lines, the end of the first line with "high school drama" to reinforce the connection between the speaker and the ...

Poem found here:  "April" by William Carlos Williams The poem, in my head, alludes to T.S. Eliot's, "The Wasteland" with the famous line, "April is the cruelest month."  The response though starts with a proposition, "If you had come away with me / into another state / we had been quiet together."  There's interesting techniques used here.  First, the reader doesn't know who this "you" is, and, adding to this ambiguity, the single line of "into another state" could refer to a physical or mental place -- but the end result would've been a "quiet together." But the poem goes into the opposites -- or expectation of opposites with the conjunction of "but" leading turns within the poem through a single word -- conjunction or adverbial phrase..  "But there the sun coming up / out of the nothing beyond the lake was / too low in the sky."  Note this first usage of "too" in the p...

Poem found here:  "Robins in Love" by William Logan I don't know why I seek the shape of the poem when I reread it.  In my mind, the three quatrains and a couplet automatically makes me assume there's something to do with a sonnet where there's a turn at the end.  It's somewhat there, but it's the shifts in perspectives and tone throughout the poem that interest me. Even with the first line, "Branched like an artery" is a somewhat cliche simile, but not so much at the same time.  The visual is, but to start out with it without a noun places myself only knowing the other half of a comparison -- as though I'm expecting something different, but it doesn't happen, "the dying oak leafs out / with February month" exposition lines which shifts with the language of, "This is their layover month," a somewhat technical term of "layover" and then the excitement of, "down to the Keys and back. / True snowbirds!...

Poem found here:  "The New Dentist" by Jaimee Kuperman Internal monologue.  It's what people do when they drive alone in their cars, or at least when that is what I do.  This poem encapsulates those thoughts.  But here's the context, even though the poem is entitled "The New Dentist" -- the focus is on the concept of "new" and not so much the dentist part. "Driving to the new dentist's office / the slow drive of a new place / with the McDonalds that I don't go to"  The lines are very narrative, and very train of thought.  These lines are set up lines, but the only thing here is that the "McDonalds that I don't go to" feels more of a time frame set-up and then place with, "on the left, the mall two miles away." With more of the focus on the place there's this interesting line, "The Courthouse and the Old Courthouse" -- two paths diverged.  "road signs that break apart, the fork in the road...

Poem found here:  "DetoNation" by Ocean Vuong The poem starts off with a linguistic pun -- detonation as the explosion, and the focus on "Deto" and then "Nation."  Could this be a overly political poem?  A poem that's too on the nose? It seems to start that way, but the shift of subject is set up with the first couplet, "There's a joke that ends with-- huh?  / It's the bomb saying here is your father" a joke told with the punchline first, and the punchline is a "bomb" saying "here is your father."  So the question is what is the focus: the bomb or the saying? The poem has a sense of repetition throughout, but starts with the saying as though to emphasize what has happened, "Now here is your father inside / your longs.  Look how lighter / the earth is -- afterward."  Yes, the focus on "afterward" might overly state the regret in the line, but the poem is transitioning and coming back to this over...

Poem found here:  "from Anactoria" by Algernon Charles Swinburne Anactoria Based on the wikipedia article, this is just a portion of the longer poem which talks about Sappho's love and inspiration -- Anactoria.  But this is not the adoration love poem.  The first line of the rhymed couplet poem starts out with, "Yes, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine".  The Dionysian introduction brings a sense of push and pull in this relationship as the pull is, "Except these kisses of my lips on thine / Brand them with immortality;"  -- What the speaker thinks will happen versus the present.  There's definitely a play of lust here. "but me -- / Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea,"  Note the idolization is to "Anactoria" and not to the speaker himself.  By downplaying himself there's a weird thing.  Yes, the love is being cast above him, but he is making himself memorable by stating he won't be memorable, "Nor mi...

Poem found here:  "Romance" by Edgar Allen Poe So on my version there's a stanza break -- ten line stanza and then an eleven line stanza.  I think, looking over my notes, the separation makes a difference between tone.  Romance, romance repeated twice -- this poem is definitely a definition of the term as it is anthropomorphized with, "who knows to nod and sing / With drowsy ahead and folded wing."  And, to me, the first thought to come to mind is that romance is angelic -- or at least appears that way.  This is important to note as the poem goes down the pastoral with, "Among the green leaves as they shake / Far down within some shadowy lake."  And, yes, "shadowy" might be a little too foreboding but hey there is, "To me a painted paroquet / Hat been-a most familiar bird" So there's the tie in with the winged creature -- angelic but then actualized into the form of a paroquet (parakeet).  But note how the speaker introduces him...

Poem found here: "A Glimpse" by Walt Whitman Do you know those scenes in Romantic movies where time slows down, the music stops, and then our couple looks in each other's eyes and the connection is there.  Well that's what is portrayed. The overall feel of this poem is that moment.  However, the speaker admits this moment through the title itself, "a glimpse" who is the one peeking "A glimpse, through an interstice caught, / of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room, around the stove."  Note how the poem starts on the outside and focuses in.   Here the crowd is of "workmen and drivers," innocuous enough, but also note that this is in a bar-room, "late of a winter night -- and I unremark'd seated in a corner;" in which it is cold and the speaker separates himself from the others. But the semi-colon of the line connects his need to be alone with, "Of a youth who loves me, and whom I love, silently approaching, and /...