DDCPoetry

Poem Found Here:  "A Bewilderment" by Bianca Stone This poem plays with images and memory, and the title of "A Bewilderment" fits the way on how the images are structured and shown.  But we start with a hyperbole first, "I have lost all luscious dreams / beyond all kingdoms of thought."  What's accomplished in the hyperbole is a set-up for the reader -- we're not in a narrative structure, but more of a lyrical one focusing on dreams and thoughts. "But then I feel happy thinking of you / the way we invite our love to the table / to eat what's left"  I like these lines since these lines are trying to bring in the conceptual -- the love of the "you" figure and bring it to something more, something concrete as the images continue on with the you. "I make a stream / connecting the baseball card in my wallet /  with the you in my mind."  I think these lines are essential in the poem.  Here is the display of the signifier...

Poem Found Here: "Forty-Seven Minutes" by Nick Flynn I've been here.  Many a times.  Teaching poetry to anyone is tough already.  Poetry is one of those forms of literature where there always as search for a bigger meaning in a short amount of words and time.  Yes, poetry has been used to teach critical thinking but not necessarily a love of literature.  Everything must mean something. Well with this poem, the concept of everything is in question. The poem starts out with a disorienting sense of time, "years later."  Maybe this poem is part of a collection or something is in conversation with this poem because the poem is not situated for me and  I don't think this poem is trying to do that in this way. Anyway, the poem  takes place in a Texas high school classroom where the instructor is asking his students to "locate an image in a poem."  And it such a good class to have their heads bowed to the page.  A classroom of probably 30 odd te...

Poem Found Here:  "Here Dead We Lie" by A.E. Housman The version I linked is from the poets.org website which is a quatrain;  However, I analyzed a different version which is in two quatrains.  I actually like this version better because there's more dramatic tension in the line breaks. "Here dead we lie/ Because we did not choose" ends the line with a blame mentality.  We didn't choose to die, but something else caused us to die, "To live and shame the land / From which we sprung."  The first line of the two lines has more of a weird overall feel until we get to the specific in the next line of where they "sprung" or originated from.  This brings a sense of nationalism and patriotism in a simple form. The first line of the first stanza is the outcome of a mixture of emotions: blame in the second line, then a bigger reason as the purpose in the third line, and the last line focusing on the specific, but unnamed place in which these people...

Poem found here:  "Hair on Fire" by Jim Daniels The adjusted lines foreshadows that things changing from one side to another.  On one side, the idealization of youth through very specific images; but on the other side, there is the, no so much the reality, but a shift on how the images differ with age and/or time. The beginning there's arts and crafts that the all encompassing we does: ironed fall leaves between wax-paper sheets melted crayons into candles Kool-aid into popsicles For me, it's interesting to see that the images themselves transform into one state to another -- crayons to candle, liquid to solid.  There's a lot going on in the first few lines and images that work hard to convey a shift  I'm not sure what "cloves into oranges" mean but the next line of "We grew roots" brings attention to itself through the enjambment and directness which slips away with "on sweet potatoes tooth-picked in water. At this point, the images a...