DDCPoetry

Original poem reprinted online here: "Spring Training" by Maxine Kumin Originally read: March 11, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Maxine Kumin . How long did it take me to know that this was a poem with baseball imagery, probably by the second line.  How long did it take me to realize that this is not a sonnet, just recently.   I think I wanted this to be a sonnet, I just miscalculated the stanzas (one extra) when I read it the first time.  However, this is important because there's no hard volta in the poem -- not in the couplet.  I feel the tone throughout the poem is the same -- a sense of wonder built by the imagery. In the first stanza there's imagery of baselines, peanuts, and catcher's mitt -- but look how they operate.  The Baseline imagery is followed up by slight alliteration "smoothed to suede" which brings a visual dreamlike quality to the image -- something real in a surreal sense.  Then comes the the peanuts line, "ancient smell...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry" by Howard Nemerov Originally read: March 10, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Howard Nemerov Six Lines -- a quatrain and a couplet.  On top of that there's an alternating rhyme scheme, and the poem is somewhat iambic pentameter.  I'm pointing this out this time because the main separating line between prose and poetry (before the advent of free verse) was that poetry was in form and prose was not.  And I think that's it...no, really. And this poem does address the differences in an ars poetica imagistic way.  The first line sets up a blur between words like "feeding" and "freezing."  These gerands have homophonic and visual similarities which parallels the debate between poetry and prose -- similar but something is different. In the second line, there's the introduction of the you which watches the drizzle into snow -- again similar visual...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Traveling Through The Dark" by William Stafford Originally read: February 17, 2013 More information about the Poet: William Stafford I remember reading this poem a long time ago, and I didn't know what it meant.  I looked straight at the narrative about a guy dumping off a still born into the river -- saving it from a harsh life.  The images are nice and describe the tension of the decision. Yes, the poem means this.  Past me even wrote this down to reaffirm my beliefs. Now though, I'm looking at this poem differently.  First, the poem has the form of a sonnet, but not the rhyme scheme or the meter.  This adds to the incompleteness of the poem but some semblance of form is there -- form: something to reattain or discard.  Second, William Stafford, for a time, was considered in the Deep Image school of poetry with the likes of Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell, Louise Simpson, James Wright (I think these are poets all from the...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Eviction Notice" by Dan Gerber Originally read: February 8, 2013 More information about the Poet: Dan Gerber Past me write down for the opening two lines  that they have a, "sing-songy quality and humorous."  So inspecting the first two lines again, "The spider from the rug / suddenly wondered where he was" not only has a sing-songy and humorous quality, but also a fable like quality.  In the first two lines we have a character who, through the description, has a heroic journey feel to him (ala Aeneas).  Not that the poem goes for the Aeneid allusion, more of a demonstration of character which is undercut in the next line, "if spiders ever do;" which brings the focus back onto the speaker interpreting the thoughts and actions which is further explored in the the following three lines, "the world went white, / then dark, / then bright/"  not how the focus is adjective visual imagery -- simple devic...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Labwork" by John A. Nieves Originally read: February 7, 2013 More information about the Poet: John A. Nieves I feel I'm missing important here, but I looked up Reactor Field and saw that the name referred to a a place at University of Missouri.  Then I looked up the author profile and John A. Nieve s went to the University of Missouri for his PhD.   Now does so deep of an allusion irritate me.  In some ways. yes and no.  I read the poem and wanted to know more about the place; however, now I doubt I'll get every reference in the poem and therefore, wildly misinterpret it, but hey, what's new. The first two stanzas include a "we" speaker that shows the speaker is in a group, or has a collective unconscious.  The attention to the "name" of Reactor field and the aside of mutant squirrels sets up a sort of humor  in this poem.  Observational looking for the absurd.  Absurd being observational.  Maybe both. T...