Thanksgiving Poem by Hannah Abelein

Thanksgiving is a time of joy
Filled with laughter, love, and food.
So much time spent in the kitchen,
So many things to do
For one massive meal
Spent with loved ones and family.
Alas! I arrive late once again,
Thank goodness my family loves me.

A Work of Artifice by Marge Piercy

I was actually surprised by how easily I understood, and related to, this poem. Probably because of how explicit Ms. Piercy was about the whole suppression theme. Basically her whole poem boils down to this: the little bonsai tree would have had enormous potential to become a strong and thriving organism, but the gardener, thinking he was making it into what it was naturally meant to be, prunes it and keeps it small in an attractive little pot, telling it how lucky it should feel to be given so many good advantages. The poem finishes, very cleverly and accurately, saying that “with living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth.” Otherwise, they would just get too powerful and out of hand, right? But my favorite part of this poem was the title, “A Work of Artifice.” It fit so perfectly as a description of the gardener’s efforts: a work of deception using cleverness or subtlety. Perfect.

Now obviously Piercy did not get this upset about a literal bonsai tree, although it is a very good analogy. It was describing women’s rights, which, until very recently, were treated exactly like that little bonsai tree. Women were expected to be “domestic and weak.” They were meant to fit into the perfect, loyal housewife stereotype, and shame on any woman who tried to become more than that. I don’t blame Piercy for creating such a sarcastic and pointed statement, though. I think it is clever and a good indication of the strong-willed woman’s side of the old story.

I have to say that even I get a little upset when I have to think about the misogynistic beliefs some people used to, and still, have. Actually, I get really upset. I hate it when people discount a woman just for being a woman, especially when there are plenty of men out there who are not useful in any way and are less than intelligent. I also hate when there are women that are classified as feminist for ANY defenses or pro-women statements they make, but men are never classified as masculinist (and it IS a word, even if Word tells me it’s not) even when some of them are brave enough to say EVERY DAY that they are better than women. I live to prove those kinds of people wrong. Sorry for being born with the wrong set of chromosomes! Not. Anyways, I am done with my rant. This poem just brought the whole idea up for me again. And Piercy pretty much said it in the perfect words, so I am glad I chose to read this poem…and get my diatribe out there, even if it’s not going anywhere.

The Possibility by James Fenton

Everything about Fenton's poem seemed downhearted and hopeless. Everything he described, everything that should have been good, was somehow sapped of its' beauty and worth to Fenton. I felt sorry for him: how would it feel to go through life unable to appreciate the beauty surrounding you, even in the tiniest things or instances? How depressing would it be to know that something should look beautiful or make you happy, but to never have the ability to feel good about it? Everything would be meaningless: if nothing could make you happy, if there was no "possibility of good," what would motivate you to keep going every single day?

"And solitude was beautiful when I was sure that I was strong. I thought it was a medium in which to grow, but I was wrong." Fenton seems to think that, at a time when he was stronger, solitude was a good thing that would help him to "grow" and become a better person. However, it appears that the solitude merely sucked the goodness out of everything he saw. That the way he saw the world was tainted, that when he should see something beautiful, he saw only the bad in it.

"The jays are swearing in the wood. The lizard moves with ugly speed. The flower closes like a fist. The possibility recedes." In the last stanza, Fenton describes things that used to be good but have turned bad in his eyes, thus ruining any chance for him to regain any "possibility of good." And I have to say, I kind of disliked this extreme, disheartening tone. I was also pretty disappointed with the unfinished end to Fenton's idea: he says that because of his solitude, "the possibility recedes," and then he kind of leaves us hanging there. It left me with a hopeless and empty feeling, like whatever had happened to Fenton in his solitude to cause this depressing state would never be remedied, which seems rather contrary to what i thought the title initially suggested. In retrospect, I just wish that Fenton could have kept this all to himself so that I wouldn't have to try and analyze his depressing and futile thought processes, or at least that he would not have tried to mislead me with a hopeful sounding title.

Happy Halloween Mrs. White!!! :)

Vergissmeinnicht by Keith Douglas

I found the conversations which this poem brought up very interesting when we discussed it in class. It made me think of our discussion last year in Modern America, when we learned about the dehumanization which most of the American soldiers sent to Vietnam had experienced, and the corruption most of them went through in order to become the ruthless killers they were.

It also brings up a truth from both sides of any war: a soldier is more than just a killer. Everyone is born to at least one parent. I am sure many soldiers have friends or family who very much love them. But humans fight. It is a part of this world, and there are people who have to carry out the fighting. So the young and skilled are recruited, and taught to fight and kill and, often times, see the enemy as some beastly, unfeeling imitation of a human being. In Douglas' poem, he simply brings up a moment which I feel many soldiers must have experienced in the past: the realization that the enemy, however much it had attempted to kill him before, was not only human, but also capable of loving and feeling and hurting. Douglas describes a scene where "the lover and killer are mingled." He finds a "dishounered picture of [the soldier's] girl who has put Steffi.Vergissmeinnicht." Forget me not.

Sometimes men forget who they really are. They forget that the men shooting at them from across the field are humans. They forget that they have loved ones who would be horrified to see the kind of things war does to men. And then, sometimes when it's too late, as it was for this soldier, they remember the people who love them and the person he or she was before being blinded by the fear and violence of war. They die for being a soldier, and are remembered by the enemy as such, but remembered by their loved ones as human: "death who had the soldier singled has done the lover mortal hurt."

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High by D. C. Berry

I opened my poetry packet today and the first thing I saw was the first paragraph in this poem. “Before I opened my mouth I noticed them sitting there as orderly as frozen fish in a package.” Well that was quite an attention getter, a very unusual simile, to say the least, and I was curious as to what the author was talking about. So I read the whole thing, and I was definitely not disappointed. I loved it. It was so perfect, something I would never have thought of before.

The whole aquarium concept was intriguing. The author says he tried to “drown them with [his] words,” but instead the students had “opened up like gills.” Maybe it was because he had expected a different reaction from the students to the regaling of his poems, that they were just more interested in what he had to say than was anticipated. At least, that’s how I perceived it.

“Together we swam around the room like thirty tails whacking words till the bell rang puncturing a hole in the door…” Whacking words around sounded like a sort of discussion, so I assumed they had been analyzing his poetry, or at least just talking about it. But this description left such a comical image in my mind after I finished it that I couldn’t help but wonder how exactly the author felt about the students and his poetry. I couldn’t really tell whether he was happy that the students were not completely absent from reality while he was talking, or if he was indifferent to the defrosted fish sitting in front of him. .

And he didn’t seem too interested in what his audience thought of him: in that respect, he was very unaware and indifferent. In fact, he didn’t seem to care about anything in this poem, I felt like there was no real importance in anything he was trying to say. It was just a quiet description of a room full of students turning into fish as they listened to poetry. There was no passionate idea or essence of the author that I could find, it just existed. But I feel like that fit the subject of this poem very well: many people hear poetry impassively, not absorbing anything from it, and continuing on with their daily lives like nothing happened, even if what did happen was extraordinary. There are, though, those somewhat rare people who will take a poem and really think deeply about it and immerse themselves in the ideas it may introduce. So I considered this poem not only a simile of students to fish, but a comparison of our society to unresponsive, dispassionate beings when it comes to the appreciation of poetry.

The Secret by Denise Levertov

Levertov seems to be describing the "discovery" of a secret which, like so many others, is found by the naïve mind of a child. The secret is found in a "sudden line of poetry." It is not a painfully thought out concept like that of a politician or a philosopher, it is realized in an instant, it is an epiphany found by two girls.

The author goes on to tell us that, although she wrote the line in one of her poems, she does not know what the secret is, and the girls have no intention of telling her. In fact, they have probably already forgotten it. This reminds me of all the "secret" things I had when I was young with my friends. We organized secret clubs, we found secret treasures, we had secret places to play; we never had the secret of life, though. And most of it ended up being forgotten eventually; fading behind all the more important experiences we had over the years. Yet it was our simplicity, our belief that we had something which no one else in the world had, something special, that made it all so “secret” that we never told anyone about it.

“I love them for finding what I can’t find.” The girls have found a miracle in one of the speaker’s poems. They have found something that unintentionally became momentarily life altering. And the speaker loves them for forgetting it, because that means the girls can find it over and over again in different places and occasions for the rest of their lives, perhaps saving some of their innocence.

The last thing that Levertov writes is that she loves the girls most of all for assuming that there was this secret of life, and for wanting to know it. She loves the girls for their hope and ambition to find something worthwhile in, or about, life. And, as a whole, I don’t think there is any secret meaning to this poem, or any deep dark implications of death or loss. To me, this is a poem about the optimism of the author when she sees the potential in the dreams and desires of a future generation, and the innocence of said generation.