DDCPoetry

Poem found here:   "Dark Matter and Dark Energy" by Alicia Ostriker This poem is a play on specific and the unspecific.  There's also play of what's stated and what's inferred. This poem is written in tercets, and this plays a big part in the end of the poem, but the beginning of the poem deals with the specific confirmation: "My husband says dark matter is a reality / not just some theory invented by adolescent computers / he can prove it exists and is everywhere"  There's somewhat of emotional twinge with the first line "My husband says dark matter is a reality" as though the specific mentioning of the husband and what he can "prove" as real and it exist.  But the husband doesn't necessarily prove anything. Rather there's the expansion onto the unknowable, "forming invisible haloes around everything / and somehow because of gravity / holding everything loosely together"  The key with this poem is the inferences...

Poem Found Here:  "A Person of Limited Palette" by Ted Kooser So this forlorn poem about what is needed plays with the definition of "Limited Palette."  One definition is that of an artist that only has a limited skill set which shifts to an artist with a limited thought process which shifts to an artists with limited possibilities to be in a different location. The poem opens up with the focal point, "I would love to have lived out my years / in a cottage a few blocks from the sea,".  These lines think about an alternate end of life with the location first, then action, "and have spent my mornings painting / out in the cold, wet rocks," -- simple action.  Then there is a shift to being "known":      [...] to be known      as “a local artist,” a pleasant old man      who “paints passably well, in a traditional      manner,” though a person of limited      talent, of limited palette: The first ...

Poem found here:  "The Blessing" by John Updike The poem is a response to "A Blessing" by James Wright , So the question being is how much can this poem compare to the other, or does this poem stand on its own. The initial image of "The room darkened, darkened until / our nakedness became a form of gray;" in more of a suffocating image while the James Wright poem seems to expand outward, but these lines have the same vulnerabilities that Wright's poem exposes when it goes into internal projection of the horses. But here, here we have generalities:      the rain came bursting,      and we were sheltered, blessed,      upheld in a world of elements      that held us justified. Note how the vulnerabilities are easily shored up with being "sheltered" versus the "A Blessing" again going outward and being further vulnerable.  However this poem is more straight forward about "love":      In all the love I had ...

Poem found here:  "Current" by Alan Soldofsky Disclaimer:  So I've known Alan for years and when his poem popped up on the front page of Poets.org, I wanted to analyze this.  I don't know if me announcing I know the guy matters at all except for I admit my bias. So let's start, shall we?  The beginning line foreshadows the entire theme of the poem, "I'm careful where I step."  Not what's stated but the structure of the poem. Regardless of the beauty around, the speaker can't help but intrude in it, analyze it, and not be a part of the current. As with the majority of Alan Soldofsky poems, a reader has to pay special attention to the verbs: [...] Water ripples greenish blue against hot sand; pebbles mixed with quartz grains and pine needles, sharp amid the duff, blown down from the upper stories of the sugar pines clumped along the beach. Kids falling off paddle boards into the cold lake, voices like stretched brake linings in the dry air. [E...

Poem found here:  "The Oldest Living Thing in L.A." by Larry Levis This narrative poem starts out very close to the subject, the opossum, in a distant manner.  The physical description is on point as the setting of after hours bar scene and the reactions.  Then in some point in the poem, there's a literary expanse that redirects the poems point of view -- as though the speaker wants this to mean more.  By wanting this moment to mean more, the speaker then projects what everyone else's wants. But first, where are we? "At Wilshire & Santa Monica" -- I haven't been there personally, but it's probably somewhere in L.A. -- does that mean that this poem is dependent on place?  No and Yes.  The poem does go universal in some places, but I feel this poem is specifically talking about what it's like in LA -- the "opossum / Trying to cross the street" becoming more of a symbol based on reaction. And this is what the opossum is trying to do:  ...

Poem found here: "I allow myself" by Dorthea Grossman "I allow myself / the luxury of breakfast" brought me into the poem.  There's so many ways that this poem could go based on these lines: maybe a discussion about the self, maybe a discussion on poverty, maybe an overzealous poem about food.  Yes. But the following line, "(I am no nun, for Christ's sake)" overly states through understatement that this poem is tongue-in-cheek with references to religious concepts and the divine.  Isn't breakfast a bit conceptual just like religion?      Charmed as I am      by the sputter of bacon,      and the eye-opening properties      of eggs, So I feel this is a play on those informative shorts that say why breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially with the "eye-opening properties of eggs" -- yes, we can deconstruct the symbol of the egg based on eye-opening properties.  It's about rebirth, or hunger,...

Poem Found Here:   "Morning Sun" by Cathy Park Hong It's the structure of the poem that resonates with me at the end.  Yes, everything in between seems like a fast zig zag of voice, person, character, subject matter, seriousness, play, and so forth, but the first two lines sets up how this poem is read for me, "Raised on a cozy diet of conditional love, / I learned to emoji from teevee" There are two conceptual things in play here 1) the diminishing of emotional connection between self, situation, and action and 2) the portraying of scenes, regardless of gravity, as colloquial and distant as possible.  For example the first scene:        Now I’m hounded by gripes before my time.       Twisted in my genome is this thorn,                     and all I see are feuds,       even swans got boxing gloves for heads. plays with the surreal with "swans got boxing gloves for heads" b...

Poem found here: "To the Mannequins" by Howard Nemerov "Mannequins," I feel, automatically hold a symbolic quality -- aren't they just the physical representation of a human being to show something off?  So when I read this poem, I automatically was trying to figure out what the "mannequins" represented and in what context.  The first stanza's shift in perspective brings the idea of symbol to the forefront. "Adorable images, / Plaster of Paris / Lilies of the field" Note how these descriptions start out general "adorable images" then to something put on a higher level, "Lilies of the field" -- but these are just another names for mannequins which are promptly brought down with the concept of, "You are not alive, therefore / Pathos will be out of place."  Emotion -- we look at these figures without them and just look at them physically, but also note if we go along this thought train, should we look at these f...

Poem found here:  "My Brother's Insomnia" by Eric Pankey This poem is innocuous from beginning to end, and that's the appeal of this poem for me.  It's not that there can't be a a bigger grandiose meaning from the poem, but, also, this poem isn't overly accessible.  This poem just attempts to get into the mindset of the brother going through insomnia. The poem is written in couplets, but the structure and the content don't necessarily correspond until the end of the poem.  The beginning of the poem focuses on what the "brother" goes through, "A boy ties (but will not remember how) / An intricate knot that slips at the slightest tug,"  Note that the parenthetical just releases the tension in the poem a bit.  The question of "does the boy still have this insomnia" is vaguely answered with "will not remember how" making this poem more of a time piece rather than a progression. "He remembers reading that drops o...

Poem found here: "Containment" by A. E. Stallings The poem is fourteen lines, but not a sonnet, but acts like one.  There's no definite rhyme scheme or iambic pentameter, but there seems to be a volta in the poem like an Italian sonnet.  But then again, this poem plays out as a narrative -- a slightly humorous, retrospective narrative. Why state this is humorous?  I've reread this poem many times trying to grasp it, but I didn't give it time to sink in.  The aspect of this poem that caught my eye was how overblown the simile is:      So long I have been carrying myself      Carefully, carefully, like a small child      With too much water in a real glass      Clasped in two hands, across a space as vast      As living rooms, The poem first introduces the speaker self carrying this sort of burden.  What, we don't know, and this adds to the humorous aspect.  Then the simile comes in o...

Poem found here:  "Helen" by H.D. There repetition in here drew me in.  There are two styles of repetition that interest me here.  The first having the perspective of  "Greece" start off the judgement in the beginning of the stanzas as though to set up the contrast to the description of Helen.  The second is the reoccurring image of "white" as though to set up Helen as the direct opposite. But first, "All Greece hates"  -- note that this line doesn't automatically go towards Helen, but the overall emotion and feeling lingers, and then the specific, "the still eyes in the white face."  This is the first instance of "white" in the poem as it encompasses the physical appearance of Helen along with rest of the lines, "the lustre as of olives / where she stands, / and the white hands."  Note the white face and hands indicate, to me, a certain innocence, but, more importantly, sets Helen as just a figure -- nothing els...

Poem found here:  "Bavaria" by Mary Ruefle "umlaut of a cloud" is what drew me to this poem.  Not only is it an interesting visual but also made me want to look up the concept of an umlaut in which I was looking for a symbol.  And then I ran into this sentence about the description about an umlaut: "Umlaut is a form of assimilation" Now I know I'm overstretching as far as analysis is concerned, but I would like to think that the "umlaut of a cloud" brings a sense of assimilation to the village below and the clear skies above.  It's just this cloud that is different.   After this sentence, it feels that it should be a semi-colon to attach the next part to the first, but actually, the "separation" of ideas is more important here, "The little girl wore yellow gloves"  A simple sentence but it stands out -- should it?  There's a sense of defiance based in color I guess.  But the last three lines make the poem for me:  ...

Poem found here: "Peddler" by Sandra McPherson The construction of the poem, quatrains with maybe couplet or alternating rhyme scheme, adds to this sense of lack of commitment the speaker has, maybe not has, but is the definite topic on the mind.  There are there actors in this poem, the peddler, the speaker, and this ubiquitous "other" which appears at the beginning and at the end of the poem.  As the peddler disappears to metaphor, and the speaker dredges more into the self -- it is the "we" or "the other" that caught me off guard with this poem. So the first three stanzas follow a similar structure as far as content is concerned -- peddler description then self.  For example:      The man vending needles at our door   [DJD1]        Was lucky to greet you. [DJD2]        He looked poor but you acted needle-poor        Where I’d have said , I don’t need ... [DJD3]   ...