Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney

I read this poem to myself a few times, and, as I did, I heard a very nostalgic and wistful tone in the speaker's voice. I actually felt kind of bad for him. I think we all know what it's like to wish we could still be little kids again and get away with pretty much anything, and that's the point that I thought Heaney was making in his poem.

Throughout the poem, I noticed that there are references to reflections in almost every stanza: the lack of one due to the depth of the first well, the white face at the bottom of the second well, the rat slapping across his reflection in the third well, the reference to Narcissus, and the way he parallels his reflection in the wells to his reflection in his writing. The fact that he created the parallel changed the entire meaning of the poem for me. Also, his reference to the River Helicon in the title indicate that there is another, negative parallel with the river to, I assume, the wells. This made me wonder whether he was really ashamed of his connection with the wells and his childhood memories.

The first stanza tells us what the speaker enjoyed as a child: wells and old pumps, and all the messy things that came with them. This establishes the feeling of nostalgia in the poem. The second and third stanza describe two wells in particular which must have been important enough to catch in his memory. The first well, in a brickyard covered with rotting boards, was deep enough that he could not see his reflection, but apparently could still hear the water at the bottom. I thought this symbolized the mysteries we find as children, which are so fascinating to us. The second well was shallow and overgrown, so that he could pull out roots from the bottom. This seemed like the impelling curiosity which pushes children to discover the truths behind the things they don't understand.

"Now to pry into roots, to finger slime, To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing" This last stanza seemed to hold a lot of meaning. Everything he had done in his childhood, everything that had made him happy and had been the essence of his innocent mind had been taken from him in his adulthood. He is forced to substitute a more mature activity, writing, for his childish adventures in order to fill the void within himself and to keep from losing his unique, inner spirit. It seems like a sad little story to me, but whether or not we like it, growing up is something we all have to accept eventually...to an extent.

Questions we have about School...

Why do we have to show up every day?
Why do teachers give mindless assignments?
Why do we need standardized tests?
Why do you hate me?
Why can't you be easy?
Why does it start so early?
Why are grades so important?
Why is school so long?
Can I go home now?

The Cat by Miroslav Holub

I actually really enjoyed this poem when we discussed it in class. The ideas we talked about were great, but I feel like I want to elaborate on some of the creative techniques that were used.

There were a few key things that I noticed the author used in the poem. The first was his vivid and creative imagery. For example, "Outside it was night like a book without letters." This simile in the first stanza is not only imaginative in creating a picture in the reader's mind, but it also has a hidden meaning. Holub did not just say the pages of the book were blank, something that would, incidentaly, imply a blankness or brightness. He said that there were no letters, which could mean that the book could contain symbols or pictures. This provides a much different connection to night than a blank page, perhaps saying that there are still things in the night, even though they are different than we would expect. Holub follows this simile with a metaphor, "...the eternal dark dripped to the stars through the sieve of the city." Normally we would imagine something dripping towards the earth because of gravity, which makes the image even stranger than it might have been. The way I saw it, it was an interesting way of painting a picture of the darkness slipping through the sieve of a city and dripping up towards the heavens, creating the stars.

I also noticed some of the more structural techniques that he used. Repitition was a big factor. The repitition of the phrases, "I said to her...," and , "a black cat...the black night," were the basis of three of the later stanzas which describe the disappearance of the cat into the night, and the cautions of the speaker to the cat. Also, Holub visually singled out a section of one specific phrase on its own, separating two parts of the poem: "But a window was opened and she went." This seems to be the turning point of the story, the moment when the cat leaves, against the speaker's wishes, leaving on impulse through a random, open window, never to be seen again. The author also begins the last stanza with , "But..." creating a connection to the singled out phrase. I have to admit that I did not completely understand the relevance of the self-reflection and reference to "northerly wind" in this last stanza, although I might be able to gain a better understanding of it if I really tried. Other than that, though, this poem was very interesting and fun to piece together.

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

The first thing I noticed about this poem was the distinct rhyme scheme (aabbccdd,etc.) coupled with the strange way the lines were broken up with a ridiculous number of dashes. It all flowed very nicely in the end, I just thought the pauses were slightly awkward.

Then there was the disheartening beginning to the poem, "From childhood's hour I have not been as others were." Which is followed by more descriptions of how the speaker could not relate to others, or love the same things others did. The turning point in this poem is the italicized "Then" at the beginning of the ninth line. This turning point also happened during the speakers childhood, apparently. Poe repeats the word "From" to start off the next six phrases, which are describing natural elements from which this "mystery which binds [him] still," is being extracted. We are never actually told what this mystery is, so we are left to infer from the context that it came from some sort of celestial power, or something to that affect, and that it completely altered the course of his foreign, misunderstood existence.

The last few lines stood out to me though, and I don't entirely understand why Poe structured them to do so. "And the cloud that took the form (when the rest of heaven was blue) of a demon in my view." This is the only spot where Poe chose to place parenthesis, which makes the line stick out in the way it both sounds and looks. I also thought it was interesting how he chose to interject the idea of the heavens, when he could have just used the word sky, in the middle of the description of a demon-shaped cloud. I assumed he was referencing some biblical aspect of his loneliness, but I could be wrong. Other than that, I thought this poem could have been summed up in about three lines, and, as nicely as it flows, I found it very unremarkable.


PS: I commented on Becky's post on Sort of a Song, and Mandee's post on Desert Places.

Song of the Powers by David Mason

At first I thought this was a creative little poem about the power which is assumed in the game of rock-paper-scissors, or at least the rock-paper-scissors concept. Each of the first three stanzas is dedicated to each element's claim of its own power, and what it could do with that power. The rock crushes the scissors, the words and images of the paper smother the rock, and the scissors' "knives [gash] through paper's ethereal lives." Mason also refers to wishes twice, in the first and third stanza, which I associated with the lucky chance basis of the game.

But then I read the last stanza and I was a little taken aback. "As stone crushes scissors,as paper snuffs stone and scissors cut paper,all end alone." This quirky personification of power in a simple conflict resolution game suddenly turned into this depressing prediction of loneliness. The powers which each of the choices contain all, apparently, lead to being alone. What Mason means exactly by "alone" I am still a little unsure of, but he seems to be fairly certain that it is everyones fate: "They all end alone. As you will, you will." This is the first time he directly addresses the reader, which I thought was a way of jolting the reader into realizing that the poem was actually referring to a characteristic of human nature, or something to that affect. He also repeats "you will" to reinforce his tragic conclusion, ending his poem on a rather pessimistic note. But of course there always has to be something bleak and unpleasant in pretty much all of our poems, so I don't know how I could have thought that. I suppose it was still a very imaginative poem in its own right, though.

It Was a Dream by Lucille Clifton

The first thing I noticed about this poem was that the actual poem is a continuation of the title. Clifton makes this more prominent by keeping the first letter of the first line lower case, but even without that it would be very noticeable, and I feel like the poem just doesn't flow unless you read it correctly. I also noticed the repetition Clifton used to emphasize a few of her ideas: she repeated the phrase-opening word "and" for three of the last lines, and she ends her poem with the line "This. This. This." Personally, I like to use both repetition and parallelism as techniques in my writing because I feel like they make more of an impact on the reader, so I really like the fact that Clifton used them.

As for the content of this poem, I thought that Clifton's idea was one that many of us have to face occasionally. My interpretation was that, in her dream, Clifton was confronted by her "greater self," livid and raging at her about what she had done with her life. Clifton asked herself what else she could have done, and the response was more screaming and generally insane behavior. The last line of "This. This. This." sounded to me like Clifton's "greater self" was screaming at her the things she could have done, in response to the question.

I thought it was interesting how Clifton referred to her dream self as her "greater self," because I thought it implied that she subconsciously agreed that she had made some sort of mistake and ended up in the wrong place in life. I also thought the phrase, "accusing me of my life," was intriguing: I never actually thought of this kind of abusive self-criticism as a type of accusation, but it's very true if you think about it. She is not necessarily accusing herself of being alive, although she would obviously be guilty of that, but of making the wrong choices during her life. I am sure we have all been guilty of this at some point or another, and there is really no escaping it. But it is interesting the way that Clifton chose to address it, through the description of a dream. Perhaps it really was a dream she had, but it seems more likely that she meant "dream" as more of a thought which expanded upon itself and turned into a self-argument which led her to visualize herself as a sort of crazy, monstrous terror who could do nothing but berate her.

Of Mere Being by Wallace Stevens

Stevens' poem had an other-wordly feel to me. This world seemed to exist, as Stevens put it, "beyond the last thought" of human imaginings. I interpreted this as a place past the subconscious in the human mind, a world where reasons are unimportant, all that matters is what actually is. It almost seemed like a part of our deepest imagination which does not conform to the outside existence of the world. Where what we have learned to think as humans never penetrates. Especially considering the bird in the palm, and its song as described in the second stanza: "without human meaning, without human feeling, a foreign song." And, according to Stevens, the reason the bird is singing is insignificant to how we feel, it is the fact that "The bird sings" and "Its feathers shine" that affects our emotions. I took this to mean that, subconsciously, it does not matter to us the reason something happens, but only that it happened. I thought this sounded a lot like what people say when they know they have no control over a situation and are essentially only affected by the fact that they experienced the situation, whether good or bad. The last stanza I saw as more description of the strange world; the palm is mentioned again, on the edge of both the mind and space and, as Stevens put these parallel to each other, it made me think that he saw them both as the same thing; the slow-moving wind in the branches added to the peaceful environment; and, once again, the bird with the golden, "fire-fangled" feathers is mentioned, yet another indication of an unfamiliar world.