Poem :)

After the orange faces become wilted and droopy
And the leaves are covered in snow

We stuff our faces until we lay on the couch full and  a little loopy
Giving thanks and gratefulness to those we know

But why just this one day a year you ask?
Good point, more often then once seems like a simple task.

So give thanks to those around you on a regular basis,
Enjoy and appreciate those familiar faces!

Freebie

Sorry I forgot to post this, but the weekend of Halloween I took my free week. Thanks!

Those winter Sundays- Robert Hayden

The first time I read this poem I took it as a bitter son looking back as his youth and criticizing his father. After I reread it I took it as the complete opposite. I pictured a grown man remembering how his father went unappreciated when he was growing up. He probably was now having to face the same challenges of working and providing for a family that he had taken for granted when he was growing up. My mom always jokes about how "I'll appreciate her someday!" well this is "someday" for this guy. He realizes that he was just expecting to have his house warm and shoes shined when he woke up every morning, and didn't realize that his father was behind this with cracked and aching hands. This poem was pretty straight forward, but still very true. I'm not as blinded as this boy seems to be, but I know I do take a lot of things my parents do for me for granted, and I'm in for a surprise when I start to live on my own, just as this boy in this poem is experiencing.

The Snow Man- Wallace Stevens

        The first line of this poem Wallace makes his main point, "One must have a mind of winter," which relates to the title of the poem and is inferring that a person needs to look through the eyes of a snow man to really appreciate and find the beauty in not only winter and nature, but life as well. People usually get so caught up in life and the rush of everything they're just thinking about how their car isn't going to start, or that it's colder than what they like. By becoming "one" with nature Wallace is saying that we can appreciate all the little things like "pine-trees crusted with snow" and the "junipers shagged with ice." He points out the fact that a snowman can find these joys which are in the exact same place that we are, but we just don't stop to look.
       The last two lines of this poem are very complex and made me think: "And, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." After reading it out loud to myself quite a few times, it still didn't really make sense and reminded me of some 70's profound saying that nobody really understood. The most I could get out of it was that this whole poem is personifying the snowman as a real object and then brings the reader back to reality saying that since the snowman isn't real neither is the concept of humans ever understanding nature fully. But that's all i got!

A Work of Artifice- Marge Piercy

        After looking a little more into the background of Marge Piercy's life, this poem definitely made more sense. She was born in 1936 and her family went through the Great Depression. She had raised in a racially segregated neighborhood. Her Jewish grandmother took care of her, along with her mother who was imaginative and outspoken which was unusual for that time period. So she was raised among many stereotypes that were repressed and judged for their race, religion, gender, etc. She became active in civil rights, and then started writing poems about woman's rights.
         The bonsai tree in this poem represents women who are cut back and made to look pretty, instead of being able to reach a potentially huge level, even of eighty feet tall. She talks about how men have the mind set that women are lucky to have the protection that they provide, the tree having a pot to grow in, and it is expected to remain loyal to their "wifely duties", becoming domestic and weak as she puts it. The poem starts out to seemingly be just about the tree, but as it progresses she hints more and more that is about womens rights adding in words like "domestic and weak," "crippled brain," "hair in curlers," and "hands you love to touch," personifying the tree progressively more as a woman. I can definitely see how this poem would have become extremely popular at the time because women really didn't speak out, and if they did they were ignored and disrespected. Now that this isn't as much of an issue because we've come so far in increasing women's rights, this poem didn't really hit me that hard, but I still definitely liked the style and idea behind it!

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class At South High - DC Berry

       Poetry is one of those subjects that most students stay as far away as possible from because it seems too deep and unrelateable to a young person's age and life. It's poems like these and with this kind of structure that draws students into reading poetry and even liking it. Berry's style is very conversational and loose, which makes the reader listen and feel comfortable. He uses modern day language, but still with symbolism and description to pull the reader in and create mental images.

       When he says "I noticed them sitting there as orderly as frozen fish in a package" it makes me think about my psychology class, and Mrs Langford, and how society (and the school system) teaches us to be and learn in a certain way, which is usually all the same. As the the poem reader starts to read the poetry to the class he is even surprised that it affects them until the "water" reaches his own ears. Just as they are starting to take it all in and understand and discuss the bell rang, "puncturing a hole in the door where we all leaked out." For me, there was a very vivid visual of a gymnasium where a guest speaker was reading poetry and the students were in there with the expectation that it was just a waste of time, but as he started to read to them, the room started filling up as they all started to discuss an get excited. Then, just like most of our assemblies, they forgot about it and moved on to their next class to focus on something else.

          Although this poem wasn't too hard to interpret, I still really liked the message and writing style.

Aquainted with the Night- Robert Frost

       The theme of night that runs throughout the poem is a symbol for loneliness and depression from something he may have done in the past or something he feels has ruined his life and left him feeling that it's meaningless. That dark mental image of night symbolizes the darkness and depression happening in his own life. He says he has, "outwalked the furthest city light," meaning that he is far beyond any hope for happiness or the belonging to a happy life. The light symbolizing all these ideas and is a huge contrast to all the darkness in the rest of the poem. The man has been wandering endlessly and feels that as he passes through these towns at night that nobody can understand what he is going through and not even the watchmen because he drops his eyes as he walks by. Maybe he feels like the people know what wrong he did or the reason behind why  he is depressed and doesn't want to face them or try to explain himself. It really shows his separation from the world when he says, "when far away an interrupted cry came over houses from another street, but not to call me back or say good-by." That shows that little bit of hope that maybe someone was calling for him or caring to understand him, but then realizes they are calling for another reason; leaving him in the darkness again. People who are depressed also usually lose track of time or resent time as he talks about the "luminary clock." He feels like he's just going through the motions of life and time just keeps continuing and hanging over his head in the sky, while he's wishing it would either get better or stop.
       I actually did really like the style and symbolism in this poem though. There is a steady rhythm throughout and repetition with the very first and last line which makes it seem like an endless cycle that this man is in. I loved the descriptions the author gave that created an image and connection to what was going on.