The Debt (Paul Lawrence Dunbar)

More guilt, than gilt, I'd say. (Hehe, I be clever.) This poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar describes the feelings of debt that N has since 'one riotous day'.

I wonder what exactly N did that on that one day to cause years and years of anguish. I wonder if the incident was money related, since N uses debt and related words to describe the event.

It's an older poem. I think it was written in the late 1800s. Perhaps due to that, there is a rhyme scheme - AABB. Obvious and dodding. Mimics the guilt N feels.

Favorite line: "Pay it I will to the end—/Until the grave, my friend"

MIA

Ah, shoot. I should, perhaps, not have, stated my renewal to this website in the week in which I seem to be suffering from insomnia.

Sorry, cannot. Manana.

How Do I Love Thee? (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

And oops, but today has been wholly not good and all I want to do is limp to bed, so I will cheat this night and direct your attention to a wonderful, classic poem. The #1 most popular poem at poets.org. Fancy that.

If a Wilderness (Carl Phillips)

It's been more than 10 days. No real reason, just a mental vaca, I suppose. But now it is the weekend and I wanna start again. So, today's poem is "If a Wilderness" by Carl Phillips.

Hmmm, N "wagered on God in a kind stranger". And after the sexual encounter turns sour, the stranger leaves (more mentally, I think, than physically) and N thinks: "The difference between/God and luck is that luck, when it leaves,/does not go far". And ouch.

So, N wagered on God in the stranger, who leaves him. N feels as though he has been not only rebuffed by the lover, but by God too. That's a lot of symbolic weight to place on a casual encounter, don't ya think, C.P.?

And I think he realizes it too, but is stuck. Just like how the sweat lingers on the leather of the bridle, N could stop looking for large theoretical answers in tools like harnesses and bridles or in the beds of 'nice strangers', but as N says: "I don't want to."

Favorite line: "I wagered on God in a kind stranger—/kind at first; strange, then less so—"

National Poetry Month

Who knew? April is National Poetry Month. I bet that's so because April is the door to spring and spring is such a font for poetry. Yay! poetry. Take a look at this page for all the books of poetry coming out this season. I think it really does make a difference to your understanding to be able to read a poem as part of a collection. Not a collected works of, but a book of poetry. Like a book, a novel, books of poetry have themes and unifying symbolism. I find that when you read a book of poetry the poems in them are easier to understand than if you find the poem in an anthology. Context is everything.

Spring is like a perhaps hand (E. E. Cummings)

Today has been gorgeous. It was the first time I haven't worn a coat all day. Just glorious.(Perhaps winter has been a tad too long for me this year.)Anyways, this poem by e.e. cummings was immediately appealing to me.

Yesterday was not a good weather day. A bit chilly. So today was exactly as cummings describes: "comes carefully/out of Nowhere". Good deal.

I like how the two single, stand-alone lines make a couplet. "changing everything carefully//without breaking anything." And that makes for a pretty pat definition of spring. Everything is altered, made new. Nothing is broken, since it's all natural, part of a cycle. It's just a shift.

Favorite line: "changing everything carefully"

Still I Rise (Maya Angelou)

Still on a Maya Angelou kick. Love her. Her only other poem on poets.org is Still I Rise.

I would love to hear it spoken. It just seems like it was made for spoken word. I guess I didn't have a strong reaction to the poem, a nodding of the head - yeah, that's it - because I've never felt downtrodden. Yeah, yeah, I'm not a White male, so I'm not quite at the top of the heap, but being White, I am close. So, while I like the poem, I don't quite feel it.

But, you know, being a woman I sure do respond to this line:

Favorite line: "Does my sexiness upset you?/Does it come as a surprise/That I dance like I've got diamonds/At the meeting of my thighs?"

Alone (Maya Angelou)

I'm currently reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and am loving it, so I searched for a poem of hers and found this one.

It's a poem sure, but my more immediate connection with it went something like, 'mmmhmm, hey! it's a song!'. It's so incredibly musical. It has a chorus: "That nobody,/But nobody/Can make it out here alone." It has changes in meter and rhythm which signify changes in verse and even isolates a bridge: "Now if you listen closely/I'll tell you what I know...."

It's pretty groovy stuff.

Favorite line: "Lying, thinking/Last night"

MIA

YAAAAAAAAAWN.

Later.

Red Slippers (Amy Lowell)

Sorry, but I do not have the time to write a real post tonight. I'm simply going to copypaste the 'talk' of someone else about this poem by Amy Lowell.

"Much like the moment in "Sex and the City" when Carrie Bradshaw peers into the shoe shop window and sultrily addresses a pair of heels through the glass as "Hello, lo-vah," this poem perfectly captures the iconic status of the shoe—especially for women. It hones in precisely on the shoe as a fantasy, an aspiration, an untouchable object of desire. By contrasting the gray and white of the everyday world of shops and windy sleet against the "crimson lacquer," the "stalactites of blood," the "red rockets" of these slippers hanging in the window, she heightens the shoe to this intense, pulsing otherworldly object, held just beyond reach, behind glass."

By: Meghan Cleary

Favorite line: "Snap, snap, they are cracker sparks of scarlet in the white"

My Shoes (Charles Simic)

'You never truly know someone until you've walked a mile in his shoes.' That well trod (pardon the pun) idiom must have been an inspiration for this poem by Charles Simic. "Shoes, secret face of my inner life"

I'm not a shoe lover, so honestly, I don't really see shoes, pieces of your wardrobe, as windows to your psyche. Maybe in the same way that your shirt or your socks are entries to Who You Are, I can see shoes as representing some part of a person.

However, I get that C. Sim thinks so: "With your mute patience, forming/The only true likeness of myself." Windows, mirrors. Shoes are the key.

Apparently.

Favorite line: "Ascetic and maternal, you endure:/Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men"

MIA

Sleep now. Poem later.

Drunken Winter (Joseph Ceravolo)

Hee. I'm a little tipsy and so (or more) is this poem by Joe C.

It so does not make sense. I like the first line. The insistence and one-mindedness of the opening "Oak oak!" followed by the emotionality of "like like". It's an automatic draw to the meat of the poem. To be drunk. It makes no sense.

The poem is sort of fall-like. Or winter, so says the title. It's drunk, for sure. Ha, maybe the last line "Oak sky" is an explanation of where/how N ends up, gazing at the trees' branches reaching to the infinite. Infinite...fuzzy like the non-firmness of the poem with its nonlinear patterns, mayhaps.

Favorite line: "so sky then:"

When You are Old (W. B. Yeats)

It's been a week. A generally horrible week in which I discovered that when things go crappily I have no heart for poetry. I know that there must be downer poems, ones that would have fit my mood, but the poems I love and respond to are full of light and love. And since today starts a new (hopefully much better) week, I now turn to this poem which is full of quiet contentment.

W. B. Yeats is one of those must-read poets. I associate him with boarding schools as in the movie 'Dead Poets Society'. I honestly don't know his poetry very well though, so I can't tell if this poem is typical of his style or no. I like it though.

A life-long relationship. A loving partnership. Peace. This poem reads so quietly. There is no boasting, no dramatic declarations. It smacks of honesty. And that makes the sentiment that much more intense.

Favorite line: "But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you"