DDCPoetry

 Original analysis here:  https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-elegy-by-jose-maria-hinojosa.html Another self-conscious post by me. Anyways, Looking over the poem again the rhetorical questions about failing to get to a destination: "Alone I sailed, / Where will I arrive?  "If the hot air balloon were lost, / on what land would it fall?"   "If the ship were to wreck, / it would sink in what waters?" there's a sense of place, especially with the line "what waters?" Should that matter when someone is going through a traumatic disaster?  But this is all metaphorical.  The important part is at the end "Alone I started / No one knows why. / But, I, yes I, Know!" The exclamation at the end refocuses the poem to the resolve and the purpose of the speaker, regardless of possible metaphorical disasters happen and places to be.  It's the spirit of adventure and a tongue in cheek feel to the "possible elegy." It's be...

 Original Analysis Here: https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-by-rae-armantrout.html And when I choose one, the meaning of the poem changes -- kind of like a choose your own adventure book. For example mother, god, nothing don't fit, so the focus is on the other two options: sheep, baby, girl, sky, fatherless, everything create a whole new experience for me.   When I reread my analysis, I feel that there was pretty good analysis of the first two parts of the poem.  But nothing about the last part of the poem -- the aftermath of making a choice.   "Some thing" the item discarded. "close to nothing" if something doesn't belong, that something could be seen as nothing, but that something still exists.  Like a memory for example.  Once that impression is there, that impression in some shape way or form stays.   "flat" with the drop down of flat, I feel this reinforces the idea of impression, a painting looks flat. "fatherless,"...

 Analysis found here:   https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-that-acts-is-actual-by.html I'm using ChatGPT to help me with this Re-Analysis.  I asked for Denise Levertov's bio and famous poem and this poem wasn't on the list.  This part of her bio caught my interest: Levertov's poetry is known for its strong political and social themes, as well as its focus on the natural world and spirituality. She was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and participated in numerous anti-war protests and demonstrations. In addition to her poetry, Levertov also wrote essays and edited several anthologies, including "The Stream and the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes" (1997). When I reread this poem, I'm just so astonished by the techniques this poem does.  From the initial anaphora, the break in the form that leads to these lines, "can you pull me // into December?" as my attention becomes pulled into the next stanza. I don't know w...

Original Analysis here:  https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-iron-gate-by-oliver-wendell.html I have a hard time analyzing long poems.  For this poem, I know I'm self-conscious about it as I wrote about it.  After re-reading this poem a couple of times trying to figure out what to write about it, I'm still a bit lost.  But what I know is the form is in quatrains with an abab cdcd type of rhyme scheme.  Most of the lines are end-stopped so I get a sense of a contained narrative with the poem. I'm unsure of the narrative.  The speaker asks where "this patriarch" is and defines this patriarch familiarly, "Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him -- / Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;" and after such physical description of this being, the speaker admits, "Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance, / And now my lifted-door latch shows him here;" Then the poem goes philosophical the next couple of ...

 Original Analysis Here:  https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-plays-by-lloyd-schwartz.html This was a harsh critique of the poem.  I feel I've changed my way of looking at poems.  To me the criticism I wrote felt like I was trying to hard to make a point rather than looking at the poem.  Also, me being so self aware of myself feels like I'm still getting over my nervousness of writing anything at all. Who is "Beatrice Joanna"?  What is the "Changling"?  Who is Thomas Middleton?  Those are the first questions I should ask when reading this.  "The Changeling" Let this be a lesson to look up references in poems.  The first two stanza are exposition that tell the scene of Beatrice realizing her betrothed has been assassinated by Deflores who desires her but she finds repulsive. The second stanza sums up the rest of the play of how Beatrice ends up falling in love with her twin, the ugly assassin. Part 2 of the poem continues a...

 Analysis found here:  https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-reader-by-rita-mae-reese.html I was looking her up and found this bio of her on Poetry Foundation .  Her quote on Anti- got my attention: I'm against poems that aren't against anything. Poems that only have one mind (or fewer). Poems that go in one direction only. I'm even more against poems that go very slowly in one direction. I'm against poetry that's never smoked, can't take a joke and can't remember my name. When I was rereading her poem, "Dear Reader," I kept the statement, "can't remember my name" in mind because I think I missed something in my original analysis of the poem. The poem is also pretty straight forward narrative about caring for someone that's slowly losing their mind -- perhaps dementia which, weirdly enough, is also a poem with one mind or rather one complete mind that can comprehend things, the speaker's perspective. And that...

Original Analysis Here:  https://ddcpoetry.blogspot.com/2013/02/analysis-of-view-by-shanna-compton.html It's been ten years since I first started posting analysis of individual poems.  In that time span I analyzed poems everyday to not doing analysis for the entirety of a year to being spotty, and now I'm just going to try something once a week with two projects: analysis of poetry, and looking back at old analysis and just writing about it. I wanted to look up the poets and really see their background.  Since the original analysis, Shanna Compton  has published so much: four books of poems and multiple publications.  Looking at her later poems like "I wore my dress"  and "Seven Steps to Better Listening" : there's a bit more space and play with white space.   For this poem though, the first thing I noticed is that I didn't do a real good job of analyzing this poem.  I was so self-conscious on how I'd appear as a critic as I was graded harshl...

 Poem Found Here:  "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens Stevens' title are great.  "The Emperor of Ice Cream" comes to mind.  I think he made the title, "The Snow Man" to be associated with joy and holiday cheer and for the poem to systematically break down those meanings into a moment of nothingness. "One must have a mind of winter" is a line that will be defined as we go further down the tercets.  The initial way to have the "mind of winter" is  to regard the frost and the boughs  Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;  And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, Note how the poem starts off with strong imagery of "frost and bough / of pine-trees with snow" and with the addition of time asks the reader to consider the whole process of winter: of how snow falls to encrust the trees and create ice on junipers.  The speaker is asking the reader to observe in which the next lines, "Of the January ...