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:  "Hospital for the Ear & Neck" by Shanna Compton Originally read: January 21, 2013 More information about the Poet: Shanna Compton With this poem, I listen for the sound of the poem (which I get from the title).  And here's something that past me mentioned in stanza 2, "This is a mouthful"  However, when I read the line, "cluster flocklike" out loud today, I mixed two words together.  And I think this poem does a lot of play with sound. In stanza one there's "tones" and "tune."  In stanza three there is "knobs" and "notes."  In stanza four there is "grass" and "groups."  These words sound similar when read out loud; however, when I read them over and over again, I understand them as separate entities. Yet, still the poem plays with sound in a different way, anaphora.  In stanza five, the repetition of "we are" brings in a group feel; howev...

Original poem reprinted online here: "In the Ear of Our Lord" by Brendan Constantine Originally read: January 4, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Brendan Constantine I had a different experience of the poem just right now.  And it's a like a "duh, I'm so stupid moment" for me.  Yeah, sure there's stuff I write about the content of the poem, you can take a look at the pic and find what I think of meaning; however, today is the first time I really sat down and read the poem out loud -- slowly. I, somewhat knowing my hymns and verses, and knowing some biblical verses, didn't pick up the way the poem sounds like a mash of various parts of the bible.  Now I don't know everything of the bible, but I know some things. The lines, "In the beginning was the whir / I thought you said & the whir / was good"  When I read it out loud today I saw that the lines are a riff of the first lines of Genesis (or whatever translation of Genesis -- ...

Original poem reprinted online here: "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens Originally read: December 13, 2012 More information about the Poet: Wallace Stevens I was particularly harsh with this poem when I first read it.  Well actually when I read this poem on the 13th, I probably read this poem a couple times because I think I received a Christmas Card with this poem on it.  I never looked in depth in it thought because I thought, "okay winter poem." And on first written analysis, I took the poem as a nature poem trying to have something hidden beneath it and I wrote comments like, "Bland and a bit cliche," or "There's something hidden here but somethings not fitting"  because the description of nature isn't that surprising or the technique in the poem to transfer the season to the mind has been done many times before. However, when I read the poem out loud this morning, I found that I really like this poem based on sound.  Everything flowed...