DDCPoetry

 Poem Found Here:  "[The Whale Already]" by Kimiko Hahn There's a couple of questions I had when I was reading this poem. Why do the end of the lines need to be bolded to indicate the cento?  Is the speaker assuming I'm not smart enough to recognize it (I am, but such a blatant call out). Doesn't the title look like a whale?  Words within an encapsulated form. Why this Yosa Buson quote where the language conflicts ("taken got away").  Is this a translation thing or is it something else. I also wonder why "a golden shovel" wasn't used in the form.  Maybe it'd be too conflicting of images. As usual, I have no answers.  Only a curiosity.  The tone of the poem though is less curious and more blunt, "What is endangered, the  / rest of us ignore."  Such a bold statement to start out with.  By addressing the audience, the lines of the poem and the references take more of a back seat because the audience is being attacked and has to f

  Poem Found Here: " If You've Met One Autistic Person, You've Met One Autistic Person" by  Tom C. Hunley Definition through actions and then questions.  I feel the conceit of the poem is how the saying applies to someone personal.  If someone is autistic how much does the label apply to the individual?   The form of the poem is a rondel .  This is my first time encountering a rondel, I think.  But the repetition in the poem forces us as the reader on how the repeated lines work in the poem.  But first the title, "If You've Met One Autistic Person, You've met One Autistic Person." is a common saying which  refers to how autistic individual is not a blanketed term as  Mary McClellan, Executive Director Autism Pensacola, describes  in her article, " If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism." : That’s because it is as unique as the individual who is affected by it. It’s not a one-size-fits-all disorder, and neith

 Poem Found Here:  "Dr. Fauci's Smile" by Kim Stafford I always wondered how poems that have specific people age in a poem.  This one stood out for me because of the reference to Dr. Fauci .  I wonder if this poem is read ten to fifteen years from now if it would have any impact or is this too dependent on the reference.  Also does that matter?  I think the poem plays with the idea of the future and expectation. Now we live for the day the good doctor can stand at his microphone, his  furrowed brow softening, a modern renaissance beginning as a wishful Mona Lisa smile slowly ghosts his face, and he speaks the four-beat line: We got through it. First note how the stanza is one sentence.  How this one sentence is playing with anticipation.  What are "we leaving for."  Ah, we're living for this specific moment for this one person, the good doctor, to say something.  The focus tightens toward the mouth as a smile is compared: Mona Lisa to Dr. Fauci -- both allud

 Poem found here:   "August, 1914" by Vera May Brittain Close to Terza Rima? I think the form is there, there's the rhyme scheme, and the poem seems also to be in iambic tetrameter.  What the form does to the poem is add a sense of ominous grandeur to a paradox of how God works.  Also note that the date of this poem coincided with the first month of World War I   so I don't know if there is a direct connection there, but based on subject matter, there's a sense of destruction and snark. God said, "Men have forgotten Me: The souls that sleep shall wake again,      And blinded eyes must learn to see." In God's eyes, people aren't acknowledging him, and in order to gain acknowledgement again "souls that sleep shall wake again," This line is hard to decipher.  Does this mean that the past should drudged up?  This could also mean that past grudges shall be seen.  In either case, "A blinded eyes must learn to see" degrades humanity