DDCPoetry

Poem found here:  "Flying at Night" by Ted Kooser "Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations."  I was thinking about this sentence for a while.  In regards to images -- above is individuals in a distance, and beneath is a collection in the distance.  What does that mean?  Well, this poem is a comparative poem like the next two lines, "Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies / like a snowflake falling on water." For me, everything stated so far is something I cannot grasp -- literally.  Stars, constellation, galaxy -- so far off, so much imagined imagery.  Even the snowflake falling on water, which seems like something to hold on to, disappears. But then the poem goes into a very specific scene: [...] Below us, some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. "A chill of that distant death" seems a bit sarcastic.  Something unable to grasp and just g...

Poem Found Here:  "A Person of Limited Palette" by Ted Kooser So this forlorn poem about what is needed plays with the definition of "Limited Palette."  One definition is that of an artist that only has a limited skill set which shifts to an artist with a limited thought process which shifts to an artists with limited possibilities to be in a different location. The poem opens up with the focal point, "I would love to have lived out my years / in a cottage a few blocks from the sea,".  These lines think about an alternate end of life with the location first, then action, "and have spent my mornings painting / out in the cold, wet rocks," -- simple action.  Then there is a shift to being "known":      [...] to be known      as “a local artist,” a pleasant old man      who “paints passably well, in a traditional      manner,” though a person of limited      talent, of limited palette: The first ...