DDCPoetry

Poem found here:  "Stranger by Night" by Edward Hirsch There's a lot going on in the title.  When I researched this poem, I this is also the title of collection coming out in February 11, 2020.  I've learned to queue up posts, so I'm writing this post on January 13, 2020 and this should come out in March 29, 2020. In any case, there's a lot going on in the title because the poem plays with the idea of "stranger" and "night" throughout.  However, note the form of the poem: short lines and a bit long, but could be read.  This idea plays itself out in the first couple of lines, "After I lost / my peripheral vision / I stated getting side swiped by pedestrians cutting / in front of me [...]" The form of the poem plays with this lack of peripheral vision, something narrow can only be seen.  The form mimics this experience and too the reader, like the speaker, can only see what in from of them.  The "night" being played with i...

Poem found here:  "One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII" by Pablo Neruda Love poems.  When do they become too cute and too saccharine, or when does one past the test of time and mean something more.  Does this matter?  Love poems are definitely a mood poem to me.  Not the type to return to when I'm not into love poems -- like after a fight with a loved one or missing the loved one after a long departure, but even then it can go back and forth emotionally. For this poem, the images and thoughts are what brings me back to this poem.  This is not simply a declaration of love in verse, but something more deeper, maybe soulful. "I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, / or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:"  No hyperbole or outward expanse of love.  At least that's what I take from these lines.  The images in the poem are in negation -- don't love, and I don't know if salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations have a bigger symbolic meani...

Poem found here:  "I Didn't Go to Church Today" by Ogden Nash I think this poem is pretty self explanatory.  Please Lord, forgive me for not going to church since we die anyways.  We'll be together forever.   However, this poem can be read further and deeper than just the surface level forgiveness.  But should I?  Why not. "I didn't go to church today, / I trust the Lord to understand," and why wouldn't the Lord understand.  Isn't forgiveness of sin part of the doctrine.  The speaker must have a good reason though: family emergency, personal crisis, maybe perhaps even something as plausible as his car breaking down.   But no, the next few lines isn't an excuse, it's what actually happened,  "The surf was swirling blue and white, / The children swirling on the sand."  Yes, if I want to go deep enough I can say this is a biblical allusion to Moses trials of parting the sea and he and his children wandering the desert for 40 ...

Poem found here:  "Last Hill in a Vista" by Louise Bogan Collective poverty.  These sestets have very harsh and obvious rhyme schemes as well.  I think it's obvious to deflect the harsh reality with some humor. "Come, let us tell the weeds in ditches / How we are poor, who once had riches,"  When I read this part, I questioned why the weeds.  "We" is already in a low place and the "weeds" parallel not only their circumstance but the place they are at.  This reads like it's from the Great Depression or some sort of economic downturn. "And lie out in the sparse and sodden / Pastures that the cows have trodden,"  these lines reminds me of the Romantics and how a greater purpose could be found in the sublime through nature.  But with the rhyme scheme and the circumstance, this ideal seems to be jabbed at more so than idealized, but the lines are sincere with the mood still being light in the next two lines, "The while an autumn...

Poem Found Here:  "Coming to This" by Mark Strand Dead bedroom.  Staying for the kids.  This is what the poem feels like do to he lines, images, and tone of the poem.  This poem does take a different approach to the middle-aged old problem. "We have done what we wanted. / We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry / of each other [...]" With two lines there a build up of regret with the first line -- all that was wanted was already done.  But not done in the sense of beginning and finishing it, rather of letting go, "discarding dreams." and making a resolution to each other and that takes work like heavy industry.  Work, but not enjoyment. "and we have welcomed grief / and called ruin the impossible habit to break." Note the usage of "and" in the first stanza.  There's three instances of "and."  I feel this is on purpose to elongate the sentence to parallel this elongated relationship.  Furthermore, the "...