DDCPoetry

Original poem reprinted online here: "Surface Tension" by Chelsea Rathburn Originally read: March 8, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Chelsea Rathburn The poem is in quatrains and there is no particular rhyme scheme.  There are moments of sound in this poem that has a lingering effect, "close" and "lows" in stanza two; however, there's also some repetition that doesn't fit for me, "pleasure."  And this is what I think the goal of the poem is in a sense, that there's some sonic good times that pushes the theme of awkwardness, but there's awkwardness in the repetition which comments on how the theme is utilized.  Awkward. Any the set-up the poem is a 1st person collective we narrative and this is why I find the form interesting.  With quatrains, there's always a sense of togetherness, balance in a sense -- with the awkwardness there's also the comfort (familiarity? complacency?).  So I feel the quatrains strengthens an...

Original poem reprinted online here: "White T-Shirt" by Lewis Ellingham Originally read: March 5, 2013 More information about the Poet: Lewis Ellingham So color is prevalent in this poem, and when I mean prevalent, I mean the symbol of the color white -- pure,  and black -- reclusive, nothing.  Both represented by white (young man) and black (speaker/atmosphere.other parts of the man).  So the speaker, the atmosphere, and the man himself are basically the same thing because the physical surroundings surrounding this white shirt stands out, the scenery and thoughts just fade into the mundane and the shirt is set up as totemic. I think I'm getting too far into it. Yes, I use the ambiguous pronoun of "it" because this is how the poem starts, "I caught sight of it at a bust stop."  Now, I usually don't like the use of ambiguous pronouns, but after reading a couple of poems with them and how the noun operates -- I get a sense of this.  When "it...

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: "February Snow" by Francisco Aragón Originally read: February 15, 2013 More information about the Poet: Francisco Aragón I didn't write a lot of notes on this poem when I first read it.   I think the narrative of the poem, the main core technique of this poem, and the ambiguous pronoun of "you" confuse me.  I had the read the poem a couple times to figure out there's three to four narratives (okay so it doesn't seem like I didn't figure out much, but I swear...yeah). 1) Narrative between the present speaker and a "you" who is traveling in Spain. 2) Narrative of how the war began. 3) Narrative of the Postal Worker [4) Overall Narrative of how these three narratives connect with the speaker's life.] I wrote "Narrative" too many times in the last two paragraphs; however, the poem is both dependent on understanding the three narratives and how they tie in together.  Also, form wise, if there ar...

Original poem reprinted online here:  "Persimmons" by Li-Young Lee Originally Read: May 22, 2010 in the collection "Rose" (my Goodreads review here ) Originally re-read for this blog: February 9, 2013 More information about the Poet: Li-Young Lee When I first read the collection "Rose" I thought the writing was so smooth.  The way the narratives constructed themselves seamlessly from memory to present especially in poems like "The Gift" and "Rose"; furthermore, the narrative don't come off as fables, or overly-didactic, even though the narratives themselves have a fable and/or didactic nature to them. Rereading this poem in Febuary, and now, I  knew I wanted to go back to this poem because of the technique Li-Young utilizes here.  I want to know how he constructs his narratives and learn from his techniques.  I also want to know how the poem continuously borders on sentimentality -- sometimes the line is crossed, but the majority o...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Dispatch Detailing Rust" by Adrian C. Louis Originally read: January 29, 2013 More information about the Poet: Adrian C. Louis So this is the first poem that I'm analyzing for this blog which has both narrative and lyrical elements to the poem;  furthermore, the elements are so distinctly separate that I feel that there's a progression of intent for the reader and the speaker. The first stanza is narrative where the speaker details the experience of seeing his "enemy's hand" and "gloated." So breakdown a little bit, the first half of this stanza has character development (speaker has an enemy and doesn't think him/herself old until as old) -- however, within the first few lines  the speaker identifies himself as a visual speaker and how attention oriented he/she is to the point that near the end of the first stanza the speaker realizes his/her own hands are just like his/her enemy -- or rather the enemy...

Original poem reprinted online here:  "His Elderly Father as a Young Man" by Leo Dangel Originally read: January 16, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Leo Dangel This poem is a narrative.  And while I thrashed narrative poems before ( see:  "Zombie Preparedness Plan" by Mary Jo Firth Gillett) for being "overly narrative" (too concerned with plot, having no sound in the lines, no purpose in the breaks and white space, etc.)  I don't write about these things in this poem.  Of course, I can go on and on thrashing how "narrative" the poem is; however, what I find interesting is that past me didn't care and focused on the plot.  Current me thinks this could be a pretty good short story, and as a poem, well, I'll guess I'll get into that. So  the poem is a confession, and that's what past me focused on in the analysis.  I wrote, "Sets up an interesting narrative -- the speaker (father) and the audience (child) is set up ...

Original poem reprinted online here:  "The Teller" by David Mason Originally read: January 14, 2013  More information about the Poet: David Mason So this poem is tricky.  Yes, indeed that these is a narrative.  Also this is a Elizabethan Sonnet (even though the construction is separated in eight and six), so the volta in the poem is the couplet at the end.  So within the form already there's a bit of a sleight of hand. However, it's not really realized in the first eight lines.  The poem starts off like a regular narrative about how an Eskimo named Jack got lost at sea while fishing.  This all feels like back story, but what makes this poem work for me is that the back story is literally eight lines -- all I need to know is there. Then the next five lines, I believe, chronicle the five years the Eskimo took to go back home.  I write this: The anaphora matches the passage of time.  Technique wise, it's pretty brilliant. 1 [year one] Did the En...

Original poem reprinted online here:  "I Said to Love" by Thomas Hardy Originally read: January 12, 2013 More information about the Poet: Thomas Hardy I didn't write this down in my notes, but after rereading this poem, I imagine a narrative, similar to how I saw a narrative in Ministry Today by Steve Davenport even though, more or less, this is a lyric poem.   I, once again, imagine two guys at a bar talking about love this time (other time it was about God). The anaphora of "I said to [...]" brings a dialogue quality to the poem.  When the speaker is addressing "love," really, the speaker is just exposing his own thoughts about love.  For example, in the first stanza, "When men adored thee and thy way / all else above;"  Although the speaker tries to look at the subject a bit objectively and take himself away from the "men."  The further the poem gets, the more personal the poem becomes. I think I questioned when the speaker wrot...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Zombie Preparedness Plan" by Mary Jo Firth Gillett Originally read: January 8, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Mary Jo Firth Gillett So there's always been the debate about poetry vs. prose.  The only thing I could add to that discussion is that I'd rather read this poem as a flash fiction piece than a poem.  I'm writing that it's a bad thing; rather, that there's a lot of information I would want to know about the speaker and the daughter and the poem doesn't quite encapsulate that for me. And past me agrees in the most harshest of ways, "Nothing is really added with these line breaks or description, very much like an article or a story. Then I thought to myself (after rereading this) I wondered why.  Over the past two months I noted certain poetry literary techniques like line breaks creating distortion in tone or emotion, rhyme scheme tying in themes, how images and descriptions overtake any sense of...

Original poem reprinted online here: Analysis of "Ministry Today" by Steve Davenport Originally read: January 5, 2013 More information about the Poet: Steve Davenport                                                     His Website Here After reading this again today, I created a narrative of the speaker.  Although the poem is lyric, the tone creates character.  I've been thinking about tone, and I ask myself -- is tone like accents on the page?  It's not exactly transferable, but I'm thinking of this.  There's an image that pops up with a Southern drawl, maybe of a southern Louisiana gentlemen, and then from the accent (voice) I envision a person. Now, in this poem, I really start to envision a person with the rhetor...

Original poem reprinted online here:  "The Conductor" by Jacqueline Berger Originally read: January 2, 2013 More information about the Poet:   Jacqueline Berger Off the bat, we know what's at stake and what the core of the poem is about, "There's no mention, of course, in the program / that the conductor has Parkinson's,".  Usually,  I'm unsure about having something like disease or the death of someone or something tragic really in the beginning of any poem.  On one hand, the stake is clear and so, as a reader, I know where the narrative is going.  One the other hand, as a reader I'm forced to look at the character, poem, technique through the lens of tragedy which I either have to pity the character, poem, technique (forceful emotional blackmail) or interpret actions in the poem as relating to the disease (narrowed interpretations). I think "putting the tragedy up front" works better as a short poem (Emily Dickenson " I Heard a B...