DDCPoetry

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Mild is the Parting Year" by Walter Savage Landor More Information about the Poet: Walter Savage Landor Two quatrains with adjusted lines also with an abab rhyme scheme.  When I first look at poem, this goes through my mind before the content because style informs the content here -- and here there's a sense of something out of place, a sort of melancholy.      Mild is the parting year, and sweet           The color of the falling spray;       Life passes on more rudely fleet,             And balmless is its closing day. Here's the thing with this stanza -- the semi-colon connects the sentence as a direct correlation of time.  When the parting year happens there's a very image based connection -- sweet, the color of falling spray which is comparable to life passing away.  The key is how to interpret balmless as the lack of smell.  The after smell...

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Catch & Release" by William D. Waltz More Information about the Poet: William D. Waltz Addressing the subject from a distance.  I think this is what I think of when I read an epistle.  Letters are meant to communicate but there's no sense of urgency.  Yes, there might be a sense of urgency within the context, but the epistle itself awaits for a response, so, at least for a while, everything is one-sided.      Dear Reluctant Sportsman,      maybe you'll release one      into the watery teeth of the wilds      a tiny capillary      of our great circulatory system The address to the "reluctant sportsman" is further defined by how the sportsman is reluctant, "you'll release one."  "One" is an ambiguous term in the poem which can be assumed to be a fish or something else.  In either case, the usage of "one" opens up the poem to a higher metaphor of the...

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Early in the Morning" by Li-Young Lee More Information about the Poet: Li-Young Lee I do have to write that I think Rose  is one of the best collections I've read.  there are so many poems that are so memorable: "Rose" and "The Gift" naming just two.  This poem, "Early in the Morning" has all the trademarks of that collection: striking images, hidden (or overt) sensuality, and how a connection is made. In the first stanza there's a very specific image of, "While the long grain is softening / in the water, gurgling / over a low stove flame,"  Note the passive verb of "is softening" and how this verb sets up the tempo of the poem.  Soften and passive.  But also note the slow flame as though to build up something.  And within the same stanza, this image appears, "my mother glides an ivory comb / through her hair, heavy / and black as calligrapher's ink."  Although it see...

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "Body" by James Hoch More Information about the Poet: James Hoch Written in couplets, the poem is a connection between a son and a father.  Now, this doesn't spoil the poem because the techniques in the poem change and mold the ideas within the poem, mainly, what a father wants to leave a son, but the first six lines of the poem is lead up:      I hang it here, in the entry,     so it will be known simply      unmistakably as fact, the way      when you were born      you were merely a body      umbilic, barely breathing. So why so long until the context of the poem.  The first two lines of the poem are ambiguous and the "it" could only refer to the body.  So the focus is on the speaker's body and it appears that the poem is a metaphor -- hanging up the body for something.  The introduction of "you" in the second stanza indicates the son being bor...

Original Poem Reprinted Online Here: "River of Stars" by Akiko Yosano More Information about the Poet: Akiko Yosano Each stanza plays out like a scene of the speaker's life, but not like a movie.  Different aspects are shown of her life: the setting, characterization, and plot, but this is not a narrative poem.  Rather, this is a bunch of lyrical stanzas that create an incomplete narrative -- note the incomplete:      Left on the beach      Full of water      A worn out boat      Reflects the white sky --      Of early autumn Setting.  Although innocuous enough there's a sense of "reflection" based on the worn out boat.  The sky, the sea, and the land have a metaphorical feel to them which expands outward to the next stanza.      Swifter than hail      Lighter than a feather,      A vague sorrow      Crossed my mind. So the "reflectio...