Poem Found Here: " A Gas Butterfly" by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky A feeling or emotion on the tip of the tongue but cannot be named in a single idea or word -- that's the feel I get from this poem. "Tell me what's happening to me? / Why is my heart beating so fervently?" Two thoughts came to mind when I read the first two lines. Do the rhetorical questions lead to a concept of "love" (questioning of heart beating)? Or do the rhetorical questions refer to something more sinister? I was thinking a gas butterfly would be a romanticized idea of war, especially with the images in the next line of, "Why has this madness, like a wave, / Broken through the rock of habit?" However, the poem doesn't go toward definition through questioning, rather there's a stream of consciousness about trying to understand what is going on. And trying to figure things out sometimes comes through contradiction "Is it my strength or just my to
Formerly the RetailMFA, This is the Poetry Blog of Darrell Dela Cruz