A Work of Artifice
Marge Piercy
(b. 1936)
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.
This poem reminds me (after reading the Awakening) of a criticism of a restrictive society. Just as the gardener doesn't let the tree grow as strong as it normally would and tells it it is better off this way, a lot of societies who oppress (not the right word, but close enough. restrict maybe?) some of their members do the same thing. When people had slaves, they told them that they were supposed to be unintelligent and weak and dependent on whites and that the slavemasters would care for them and life was bettter that way. This, of course, was entirely untrue. Women in many socities are also like this, as I think the poet intended to say. The reference to 'the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers' is a reference to women. Women in old China were forced to bind their feet to make them mroe attractive. This was very painful and made it difficult to walk. Also, women in many societies were (and in some cases still are) assumed to be not as intelligent as men and so were not given the chance to express their intelligence. The hair in curlers, as women curled their hair, also references women. I think it is interesting to compare these injustices to a bonsai tree.
Showing posts with label poetry response. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry response. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Friday, 21 November 2008
Poetry Response:
A Study of Reading Habits
Philip Larkin
(1919-1985)
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.
Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.
Don’t read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who’s yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
I think that this poem is about somebody who reads a lot and then is disappointed when his life is nothing like what he reads in books. Though I can certainly understand the meaning of 'losing yourself in a good book', ie feeling like you are part of the story when you are reading something really interesting, I think that if you can't distinguish reality from fiction- ie expect your life to be like that in books (you really feel like you are (Dracula or Superman or Jack the ripper or whatever) then you have a problem. If you read books and expect yourself to become like the characters in them, that's not good, because obviously you won't be. Books are not 'a load of crap' just because the reader doesn't grow a pair of fangs and bite people. (This is also you won't turn into the personality as well).
Philip Larkin
(1919-1985)
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.
Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.
Don’t read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who’s yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
I think that this poem is about somebody who reads a lot and then is disappointed when his life is nothing like what he reads in books. Though I can certainly understand the meaning of 'losing yourself in a good book', ie feeling like you are part of the story when you are reading something really interesting, I think that if you can't distinguish reality from fiction- ie expect your life to be like that in books (you really feel like you are (Dracula or Superman or Jack the ripper or whatever) then you have a problem. If you read books and expect yourself to become like the characters in them, that's not good, because obviously you won't be. Books are not 'a load of crap' just because the reader doesn't grow a pair of fangs and bite people. (This is also you won't turn into the personality as well).
Friday, 31 October 2008
Lost Brother
Lost Brother
I knew that tree was my lost brother
when I heard he was cut down
at four thousand eight hundred sixty-two years;
I know we had the same mother.
His death pained me. I made up a story.
I realized, when I saw his photograph,
he was an evergreen, a bristlecone like me,
who had lived from an early age
with a certain amount of dieback,
at impossible locations, at elevations
over ten thousand feet in extreme weather.
His company: other conifers,
the rosy finch, the rock wren, the raven and clouds,
blue and silver insects that fed mostly off each other.
Some years bighorn sheep visited in summer—
he was entertained by red bats, black-tailed jackrabbits,
horned lizards, the creatures old and young he sheltered.
Beside him in the shade, pink mountain pennyroyal—
to his south, white angelica.
I am prepared to live as long as he did
(it would please our mother),
live with clouds and those I love
suffering with God.
Sooner or later, some bag of wind will cut me down.
—Stanley Moss
This is a poem about a man (the poet) who heard that a really old tree was cut down. He relates himself to the tree, calling it his lost brother because they had the same mother. The mother that the poet speaks of is 'Mother Earth'. The poet tries to envision the tree's life in order to come to terms with its death. The poet's reference to living as long as the tree is not literal. Presumably, he means that he will live in heaven. 'Suffering with God' is an odd sentence. Perhaps it is because the poet thinks that life is a better place than death in heaven. I like the last line the most because of the phrase 'bag of wind'. It could be a deliberately vague reference to anything that could kill him (this relates to trees because a strong wind will blow a tree down) Additionally, a 'windbag' is a derogatory term for someone who talks a lot about nothing meaningful. It sort of means 'pompous idiot'. Since the poet is presumably a literary, intelligent person, it's sort of funny that he thinks such people will kill him. It could be sort of a veiled insult.
(FYI: I really really really hate poetry. It's just a bunch of words thrown together in an ungrammatical order that can be construed to mean whatever you want it to. A kindgergartner could throw together a string of random words and call it poetry, and if you didn't know who had written it, you would believe that it was real. Poetry is a way of saying what you mean in the weirdest, vaguest, most incomprehensible way possible. It does not appeal to me. I hate being forced to 'understand' something that has been willfully encoded in unsentences and unparagraphs and ungrammar. It's more like decrypting a secret spy-message than reading and appreciating great thoughts and ideas. Therefore, I have an incredibly difficult time writing about poems because I hate them, I don't care about them and the ones on our list are either extra-super-random (or so deep that it is brain-defyingly beyond my ability to comprehend) or too obvious to write much about or just plain weird.)
(Sorry about the rant. I just do not like poetry at all. There is occasionally a phrase or a poem I will enjoy, but 99.9% of the time, I hate poetry.)
I knew that tree was my lost brother
when I heard he was cut down
at four thousand eight hundred sixty-two years;
I know we had the same mother.
His death pained me. I made up a story.
I realized, when I saw his photograph,
he was an evergreen, a bristlecone like me,
who had lived from an early age
with a certain amount of dieback,
at impossible locations, at elevations
over ten thousand feet in extreme weather.
His company: other conifers,
the rosy finch, the rock wren, the raven and clouds,
blue and silver insects that fed mostly off each other.
Some years bighorn sheep visited in summer—
he was entertained by red bats, black-tailed jackrabbits,
horned lizards, the creatures old and young he sheltered.
Beside him in the shade, pink mountain pennyroyal—
to his south, white angelica.
I am prepared to live as long as he did
(it would please our mother),
live with clouds and those I love
suffering with God.
Sooner or later, some bag of wind will cut me down.
—Stanley Moss
This is a poem about a man (the poet) who heard that a really old tree was cut down. He relates himself to the tree, calling it his lost brother because they had the same mother. The mother that the poet speaks of is 'Mother Earth'. The poet tries to envision the tree's life in order to come to terms with its death. The poet's reference to living as long as the tree is not literal. Presumably, he means that he will live in heaven. 'Suffering with God' is an odd sentence. Perhaps it is because the poet thinks that life is a better place than death in heaven. I like the last line the most because of the phrase 'bag of wind'. It could be a deliberately vague reference to anything that could kill him (this relates to trees because a strong wind will blow a tree down) Additionally, a 'windbag' is a derogatory term for someone who talks a lot about nothing meaningful. It sort of means 'pompous idiot'. Since the poet is presumably a literary, intelligent person, it's sort of funny that he thinks such people will kill him. It could be sort of a veiled insult.
(FYI: I really really really hate poetry. It's just a bunch of words thrown together in an ungrammatical order that can be construed to mean whatever you want it to. A kindgergartner could throw together a string of random words and call it poetry, and if you didn't know who had written it, you would believe that it was real. Poetry is a way of saying what you mean in the weirdest, vaguest, most incomprehensible way possible. It does not appeal to me. I hate being forced to 'understand' something that has been willfully encoded in unsentences and unparagraphs and ungrammar. It's more like decrypting a secret spy-message than reading and appreciating great thoughts and ideas. Therefore, I have an incredibly difficult time writing about poems because I hate them, I don't care about them and the ones on our list are either extra-super-random (or so deep that it is brain-defyingly beyond my ability to comprehend) or too obvious to write much about or just plain weird.)
(Sorry about the rant. I just do not like poetry at all. There is occasionally a phrase or a poem I will enjoy, but 99.9% of the time, I hate poetry.)
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
1943
1943
They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium
Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round
of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died
in the third wave at Tarawa. Every morning of the war
our Brock-Hall Dairy delivered milk from horse-drawn wagons
to wooden back porches in southern Connecticut. In winter,
frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,
Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,
or the right engine faltered into Channel silt, or troops marched
—what could we do?—with frostbitten feet as white as milk.
—Donald Hall
This is a poem about WWII. It is saying that the people prepared for going to war, and died, and for the people back in America, life went on as normal while people died, and they couldn't do anything back home to help stop people dying. This is sort of like today's war, where nobody in America can do much to support the troops besides just saying we support them. In WWII, people collected scrap metal and made clothing and grew vegetables and things for the people fighting. Today, we do not. Also, life continues as normal for us, too, even more than the war in which the poem is about (no rationing or anything). I think it is like this for most wars fought away from the mother country, because the citizens themselves are not in danger. When a war is fought within or very near the borders of the mother country, though, people are more concerned and do more and their lives change.
They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium
Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round
of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died
in the third wave at Tarawa. Every morning of the war
our Brock-Hall Dairy delivered milk from horse-drawn wagons
to wooden back porches in southern Connecticut. In winter,
frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,
Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,
or the right engine faltered into Channel silt, or troops marched
—what could we do?—with frostbitten feet as white as milk.
—Donald Hall
This is a poem about WWII. It is saying that the people prepared for going to war, and died, and for the people back in America, life went on as normal while people died, and they couldn't do anything back home to help stop people dying. This is sort of like today's war, where nobody in America can do much to support the troops besides just saying we support them. In WWII, people collected scrap metal and made clothing and grew vegetables and things for the people fighting. Today, we do not. Also, life continues as normal for us, too, even more than the war in which the poem is about (no rationing or anything). I think it is like this for most wars fought away from the mother country, because the citizens themselves are not in danger. When a war is fought within or very near the borders of the mother country, though, people are more concerned and do more and their lives change.
Monday, 29 September 2008
Lilacs in September
Lilacs in September
Shocked to the root
like the lilac bush
in the vacant lot
by the hurricane—
whose black branch split
by wind or rain
has broken out unseasonably
into these scant ash-
colored blossoms
lifted high as if to say
to passersby
What will unleash
itself in you
when your storm comes?
—Katha Pollitt
The interesting part of this poem is the lest three lines. Often, when tragedy strikes or a crisis happens, unexpected parts of people’s characters are seen. Sometimes unnatural heroism or courage manifests itself, like when some people have an adrenaline rush and feel strong enough to save someone from drowning, or snatch them out from under a bus or a car. In that way, those people are like the lilac bush; good parts of them come out when faced with terrible things. Other people, however, don’t react well under pressure. The worst parts of their nature may come out. They may lose their tempers or lie or simply be too scared to deal with anything. The last lines read like some sort of warning: what do you think you’ll do if faced with a horrible situation?
Shocked to the root
like the lilac bush
in the vacant lot
by the hurricane—
whose black branch split
by wind or rain
has broken out unseasonably
into these scant ash-
colored blossoms
lifted high as if to say
to passersby
What will unleash
itself in you
when your storm comes?
—Katha Pollitt
The interesting part of this poem is the lest three lines. Often, when tragedy strikes or a crisis happens, unexpected parts of people’s characters are seen. Sometimes unnatural heroism or courage manifests itself, like when some people have an adrenaline rush and feel strong enough to save someone from drowning, or snatch them out from under a bus or a car. In that way, those people are like the lilac bush; good parts of them come out when faced with terrible things. Other people, however, don’t react well under pressure. The worst parts of their nature may come out. They may lose their tempers or lie or simply be too scared to deal with anything. The last lines read like some sort of warning: what do you think you’ll do if faced with a horrible situation?
Friday, 29 August 2008
My Fear
This poem stood out to me for some reason when I was reading through the poems tonight. I wasn’t sure why, then I remembered that we had briefly discussed nightmares in Spanish class. My subconscious must be telling me something.
Anyway, I think this poem is about a person having a nightmare. The whole thing aboviously deals with fear, which is an integral part of any nightmare. What makes me feel as if this is specifically about a nightmare is the last line: ‘before I slept, and met you’, thus implying that the person is asleep and dreaming.
The poem personifies fear as a person carrying a one’s fears in a sack in order to give these fears to the recipient/victim/dreamer. The Fear-man (I have a picture in my head of him looking sort of like the grim reaper) also keeps a list of what scares the person the most, including death. Death was probably mentioned because almost everyone can relate to having a fear of death, since very few of us actually want to die, or are unconcerned about our eventual demise.
The dreamer also wishes for whatever fears are brought to him in this nightmare to be simple and not very scary fears, like bats and crickets. ‘Small’ fears he calls them. These are fears that do not affect someone in a great way and are easily overcome. I, for example, fear bugs. They freak me out. Yet I am not extremely bugophobic and can deal with bugs and smash them when they invade my room. (Ants and cockroaches and silverfish and spiders are horrible things). I’ve found, though, that in dreams even little fears that aren’t serious can turn drastic. If one fears papercuts, for example, but only to the extent that one is usually careful turning a page but isn’t too upset when one actually gets a papercut, one might have a horrible nightmare about papercuts in which one dies from blood loss. In dreams our fears are often exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness and yet, while asleep, are still frightening.
Anyway, I think this poem is about a person having a nightmare. The whole thing aboviously deals with fear, which is an integral part of any nightmare. What makes me feel as if this is specifically about a nightmare is the last line: ‘before I slept, and met you’, thus implying that the person is asleep and dreaming.
The poem personifies fear as a person carrying a one’s fears in a sack in order to give these fears to the recipient/victim/dreamer. The Fear-man (I have a picture in my head of him looking sort of like the grim reaper) also keeps a list of what scares the person the most, including death. Death was probably mentioned because almost everyone can relate to having a fear of death, since very few of us actually want to die, or are unconcerned about our eventual demise.
The dreamer also wishes for whatever fears are brought to him in this nightmare to be simple and not very scary fears, like bats and crickets. ‘Small’ fears he calls them. These are fears that do not affect someone in a great way and are easily overcome. I, for example, fear bugs. They freak me out. Yet I am not extremely bugophobic and can deal with bugs and smash them when they invade my room. (Ants and cockroaches and silverfish and spiders are horrible things). I’ve found, though, that in dreams even little fears that aren’t serious can turn drastic. If one fears papercuts, for example, but only to the extent that one is usually careful turning a page but isn’t too upset when one actually gets a papercut, one might have a horrible nightmare about papercuts in which one dies from blood loss. In dreams our fears are often exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness and yet, while asleep, are still frightening.
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