High Diver (Kurt Brown)

Back from vacation and back to poetry! Today's is a poem by Kurt Brown.

When I started the poem I liked its clarity and how it reminded me of 'Elegy for Jane' - another sympathetic portrait of a young girl. But as I read on, I got bored with how melodramatic it was and how seriously it takes itself. I feel as though I was supposed to see the beauty in the poem, in the diver, in acts of youth - the mocking and discovery of love, but all I kept wondering was who is the speaker in the poem? A coach? Another teen? A creepy man? This poem did not resonate with me because I wasn't enthralled with the subject nor did I sympathize with the speaker (because I don't know their intentions).

Favorite line: "Straight-backed, clean-limbed, freckled like a trout"

Affirmation (Donald Hall)

I like the straightforwardness of this poem on aging by Donald Hall. It is calm, almost didactic and I supposed frightening in its implications ("To grow old is to lose everything."), but its pace is steady, its conclusions so obvious and unavoidable that I find the poem to be comforting overall.

After all, the poem's conclusion (as its title indicates) is an affirmation that all go through aging and that that is something worthy savoring ("delicious"). So, a toast 'to life!' might as well be the same as 'to getting old!'. Enjoy them equally.

Favorite line: "New women come and go. All go."

New women come and go. All go.

June Light (Richard Wilbur)

Happy Anniversary to me and my husband (of 3! years!!). A happy day full of love made me turn to romantic, lovey poetry tonight. This poem by Richard Wilbur does nicely.

A month earlier, so not quite in season, but still the romance of the poem infuses our day today. My husband's love to me is a gift I still can't quite believe. I see what N means when he says her love to him seems like "the first great gift of all". It's extraordinary, love.

This poem is not the perfect love poem for me (I appreciate it, but I don't feel it), so the hunt is still on, but I like the sense of love=a pure gift=something in nature. Love is whole; love is true.

Favorite line: "It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight"

It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight

The Essay (Brian Culhane)

I don't really care for this poem by Brian Culhane.

I don't like the length of the lines - the boxiness of the poem. The allusions seem non-ideal and put in for show. I guess you can make the case for their academic nature, but using terms like 'Gates of Horn' and 'Etruscan' just put me off. 

Honestly, this poem seems like it has too many words - a fine draft, but that it should be edited down to its essence before you can call it done.

Favorite line: "I watch them now bend low to their work, smudging ink"

Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed!] (Frank O'Hara)

This poem by Frank O'Hara is so quick, so glib it's almost gleeful. It's fun and it's light to read, but all the subtext is lugubrious.

It's such a Hollywood poem - it deals with a movie star and a tabloid story of her collapse. It's such an inconsequential story. N of the poem is walking when his world is suddenly stopped short by this story and he seems to have such a visceral reaction to it - he implores her to 'get up', 'we love you'. It makes me wonder about that kind of connection people feel toward far-away movie stars. And it made me wonder if that feeling of connection is sad or empathetic.

I like the sense of N you get from this poem. All of the 'ands' and run-on sentences in the poem makes the speaker seem really young. And then his seemingly random concern with Lana Turner makes N seem immature - his feelings, like his thoughts are scattered and all over the place.

I like that this poem can be both a portrait of a person and also contain talk of the glibness of Hollywood culture (and also a bit about the weather in NYC!). It's a short, quick poem that contains more and more the longer I look at it.

Favorite line: "I was trotting along and suddenly / it started raining and snowing"

I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20394#sthash.cBOOhrbN.dpuf

to my last period (Lucille Clifton)

I love Lucille Clifton! Who else has written a poem about menopause - about having a last period?

This poem is unglossed - I mean, it's very direct and easy to understand. Even though I don't have first-hand experience, it's still a relate-able poem.

I like how friendly she is toward her period - "well, girl". It always brought her misery, but once gone, she misses it - or misses what it stood for - her youth and sexuality.

Favorite line: "well, girl, goodbye"

well, girl, goodbye,

What's the railroad to me? (Henry David Thoreau)

Just like says in his bio, I never knew that Henry David Thoreau was a poet. Apparently, he considered himself one - got his start there, but going off of today's poem I'm very glad he moved on to prose.

Cuz, today's poem is just not doing it for me. It seems mindless and juvenile-ly written. It's nice with its sing-song-y rhyme and I am intrigued by the sole line not in a rhyming couplet - "Where it ends." That line seems so set apart and very adult. I like that.

However, the rest of it doesn't impress or interest me. How about you?

Favorite line: "Where it ends."

Variation on the Word Sleep (Margaret Atwood)

After finding yesterday's entry, I had hoped to find this poem by Margaret Atwood which I had first found in high school. It was a poem that really made me feel something - I read a bunch of poetry in hs, but I'd mostly just 'loved' poetry in the sense that I appreciated it. This poem melted me then as it did when I reread it today.

It's a pure romantic poem. It's sweet. It's storybook-like. I learn about N - her desire for essential anonymity is particularly telling. I learn about her culture - how she imagines her love walking in a world of "wavering forest of bluegreen leaves / with its watery sun & three moons". That image is so very science fiction-y, I feel as though I have read or seen this world before in some other work.

I love the storybook in this poem. It's very linear - how the love goes from sleep to the cave to the boat and back to the body. I like to imagine that that has to do with Atwood's more famous life as a novelist.

I like her books a lot and this poem is all kinds of wonderful. The kind of love that N has for her lover is so strong and kind, creative and lovely. All of those words equally apply to the poem as well, of course. Love this poem very very much.

Favorite line: "I would like to watch you sleeping, / which might not happen. / I would like to watch you, / sleeping."

You Begin (Margaret Atwood)

OMG, I love this poem by Margaret Atwood. I'm sleepy and was browsing around for a limerick or something short/sweet when I found it.

It's not short, but it is written with simple/storybook words. It is calm; it is sweet. It is aw-inducing (in a wonderful, non-saccharine way).

I like the way it reads like a kid's book. This is ... this is.... -- all that repetition. Somehow it reminded me of Goodnight Moon. The book starts like that, but then the mother's adult voice takes over (her worries) and at the end you get the mother's gift of language (hand) - protective and caring.

Loved reading this.

Favorite line: "This is the world; which is fuller / and more difficult to learn than I have said."

This is the world, which is fuller and more difficult to learn than I have said. - See more at: https://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16789#sthash.KnRd1Wbe.dpuf

The Author to Her Book (Anne Bradstreet)

I like the idea behind this poem by Anne Bradstreet a lot. The talking to your offspring/your newly created book which has been sent off for publication.

I love the idea of your book being akin to your child; the idea that you'll have to explain to your book its deficiencies and why you let it go out.

There is a lot of humor in this poem. The language is stilted since it was written so many centuries ago. The rhyming couplets are rather great - the rhymes are almost all true rhymes (not slant) and yet they are natural-sounding and don't make the thing sing-song-y. Neat poem.

Favorite line: "I washed thy face, but more defects I saw"

I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,