Jorie Graham - Manteau Three

In the fairy tale the sky
makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
to put it
on. How can it do this?
It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-
track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages
still unconsummated,
the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies
and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books, their corridors,
resplendent memories of royal rooms now filtered up — by smoke, by

must — it tangles up into a weave,
tied up with votive offerings — laws, electricity —
what the speakers let loose from their tiny eternity,
what the empty streets held up as offering
when only a bit of wind
litigated in the sycamores,

oh and the flapping drafts unfinished thoughts
raked out of air,
and the leaves clawing their way after deep sleep set in,
and all formations — assonant, muscular,
chatty hurries of swarm (peoples, debris before the storm) —
things that grew loud when the street grew empty,
and breaths that let themselves be breathed
to freight a human argument,
and sidelong glances in the midst of things, and voice — yellowest
day alive — as it took place
above the telegram,
above the hand cleaving the open-air to cut its thought,
hand flung

towards open doorways into houses where
den-couch and silver tray
itch with inaction — what is there left now
to believe — the coat? — it tangles up a good tight weave,
windy yet sturdy,
a coat for the ages —
one layer a movie of bluest blue,
one layer the war-room mappers and their friends
in trenches
also blue,
one layer market-closings and one
hydrangeas turning blue
just as I say so,
and so on,
so that it flows in the sky to the letter,
you still sitting in the den below
not knowing perhaps that now is as the fairy tale
exactly, (as in the movie), foretold,
had one been on the right channel,
(although you can feel it alongside, in the house, in the food, the umbrellas,
the bicycles),
(even the leg muscles of this one grown quite remarkable),

the fairy tale beginning to hover above — onscreen fangs, at the desk
one of the older ones paying bills —
the coat in the sky above the house not unlike celestial fabric,
a snap of wind and plot to it,
are we waiting for the kinds to go to sleep?
when is it time to go outside and look?
I would like to place myself in the position
of the one suddenly looking up
to where the coat descends and presents itself,
not like the red shoes in the other story,
red from all we had stepped in,
no, this the coat all warm curves and grassy specificities,
intellectuals also there, but still indoors,
standing up smokily to mastermind,
theory emerging like a flowery hat,
there, above the head,
descending,


while outside, outside, this coat —
which I desire, which I, in the tale,
desire — as it touches the dream of reason
which I carry inevitably in my shoulders, in my very carriage, forgive me,
begins to shred like this, as you see it do, now,
as if I were too much in focus making the film shred,
it growing very hot (as in giving birth) though really
it being just evening, the movie back on the reel,
the sky one step further down into the world but only one step,
me trying to pull it down, onto this frame,
for which it seems so fitting,
for which the whole apparatus of attention had seemed to prepare us,
and then the shredding beginning
which sounds at first like the lovely hum
where sun fills the day to its fringe of stillness
but then continues, too far, too hard,
and we have to open our hands again and let it go, let it rise up
above us,

incomprehensible,
clicker still in my right hand,
the teller of the story and the shy bride,
to whom he was showing us off a little perhaps,
leaning back into their gossamer ripeness,
him touching her storm, the petticoat,
the shredded coat left mid-air, just above us,
the coat in which the teller's plot
entered this atmosphere, this rosy sphere of hope and lack,

this windiness of middle evening,
so green, oh what difference could it have made
had the teller needed to persuade her
further — so green
this torn hem in the first miles — or is it inches? — of our night,
so full of hollowness, so wild with rhetoric .... 



    

William Carlos Williams - Apres le Bain

I gotta
buy me a new
girdle.
(I'll buy
you one) O.K.
(I wish

you'd wig-
gle that way
for me,

I'd be
a happy man)
I GOTTA

wig-
gle for this.
(You pig)      


The title means "After the Bath." It's in French as an allusion to scenes typical of French Impressionist paintings of women towelling off or dressing after bathing -- paintings by perhaps Renoir or Degas, with that title.
Which one of the couple speaks the last line? In post-1960s slang, "pig" (short for "male chauvinist pig") has a meaning that many readers might think the male speaker here well deserves, but consider the rhythms and pauses -- the period after this -- as well as the visual cues furnished by the way parentheses are used. How would you describe the tone of the conversation? Of the last line?

Jorie Graham - Spoken From The Hedgerows

To bring back a time and place. A feeling. As in "we are all in this together." Or "the United States and her allies fought for Freedom." To bring back. The experience of killing and getting killed. Get missed. Get hit. Sun—is it with us. Holiday, are you with us on this beach today. Hemisphere of one, my soul, paratrooper, greatness I house in my body, deepset, my hands on these triggers—who once could outrun his brother—consumed with fellow-feeling like a madness that does not must not, lower its pitch—going to the meeting place, the spire of the church in Vierville, seen on aerial maps, visible from eighteen miles out, if it weren't for fog, and smoke, and groundmist, the meeting place, the appointed time surging in me, needing to be pierced—but not me—not me— only those to the left and right of me— permit me to let you see me— Me. Driven half mad but still in biography. By the shared misery of. Hatred. Training. Trust. Fear. Listening to the chatter each night of those who survived the day. There is no other human relationship like it. At its heart comradeship is an ecstasy. You will die for an other. You will not consider it a personal loss. Private Kurt Gabel, 513 Parachute Infantry Regiment— "The three of us Jake, Joe and I became an entity. An entity—never to be relinquished, never to be repeated. An entity is where a man literally insists on going hungry for another. A man insists on dying for an other. Protect. Bail out. No regard to consequence. A mystical concoction." A last piece of bread. And gladly. You must understand what is meant by gladly. All armies throughout history have tried to create this bond among their men. Few succeeded as well as the paratroop infantry of the U.S. Army, Rifle Company E, 506th. Fussell: It can't happen to me. It can happen to me. It is going to happen to me. Nothing is going to prevent it. Webster (to his parents): I am living on borrowed time— I do not think I shall live through the next jump. If I don't come back, try not to take it too hard. I wish I could persuade you to regard death as casually as we do over here. In the heat of it you expect it, you are expecting it, you are not surprised by anything anymore, not surprised when your friend is machine-gunned in the face. It's not like your life, at home, where death is so unexpected. (And to mother): would you prefer for someone else's son to die in the mud? And there is no way out short of the end of war or the loss of limb. Any other wound is patched up and you're sent back to the front. This wound which almost killed him healed up as well and he went back. He never volunteered. One cannot volunteer. If death comes, friend, let it come quick. And don't play the hero, there is no past or future. Don't play the hero. Ok. Let's go. Move out. Say goodbye. This poem was part of a series of poems named "Operation Overlord."It  was the code-name given to the Normandy landings. At this book's centre of gravity, therefore, are poems filled with filmic detail of conflict and death: "one shot taken by a / knee, bullets up through our feet, explosion of Jack's face, more sudden openings / in backs, shoulders, one in a neck, throat opens . . . " ("Spoken from the Hedgerows 2"). Graham shows us, with the collage "Hedgerows 1", that the voice of the unknown soldier or airman is also a tragic chorus. The "lost" are both anonymous and charged with the authority of witness: here, they tell of sacrifice of human life. Graham's characteristic, rhythmically urgent diction questions not what makes a "just war"; but what war, holding up mirrors of death and culpability, tells us about being human.

Jorie Graham - Salmon

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
archaic,
not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper
into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,
and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,
and a blue river traveling
in opposite directions.
They would not stop, resolution of will
and helplessness, as the eye
is helpless
when the image forms itself, upside-down, backward,
driving up into
the mind, and the world
unfastens itself
from the deep ocean of the given. . .Justice, aspen
leaves, mother attempting
suicide, the white night-flying moth
the ants dismantled bit by bit and carried in
right through the crack
in my wall. . . .How helpless
the still pool is,
upstream,
awaiting the gold blade
of their hurry. Once, indoors, a child,
I watched, at noon, through slatted wooden blinds,
a man and woman, naked, eyes closed,
climb onto each other,
on the terrace floor,
and ride--two gold currents
wrapping round and round each other, fastening,
unfastening. I hardly knew
what I saw. Whatever shadow there was in that world
it was the one each cast
onto the other,
the thin black seam
they seemed to be trying to work away
between them. I held my breath.
as far as I could tell, the work they did
with sweat and light
was good. I'd say
they traveled far in opposite
directions. What is the light
at the end of the day, deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,
the corridors, light that is no longer light, no longer clarifies,
illuminates, antique, freed from the body of
that air that carries it. What is it
for the space of time
where it is useless, merely
beautiful? When they were done, they made a distance
one from the other
and slept, outstretched,
on the warm tile
of the terrace floor,
smiling, faces pressed against the stone.      


"Salmon," from Erosion, begins with "I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run." Through a series of shifts, the adult narrator watching television transforms into a child watching lovers from the other side of a shuttered window. This final scene allows for a truly cathartic reckoning.
Such a gesture is reminiscent of the "sliding / beneath a big black wave" in Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room" -- the moment when observation turns metaphysical. However, Graham's poem further questions the girding, both physical and philosophical, of the psyche, and the disjunctive logic of "Salmon" seems more a natural process than the heightened questioning of Bishop's poem.

Graham goes much further with a formal complexity that seems to embrace disjunction as well as a structure relative to itself. When one considers the body of her work, it is a grand experiment of form she continually makes good on

William Carlos Williams - Smell

Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed
nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?
What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,
always indiscriminate, always unashamed,
and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled
poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth
beneath them. With what deep thirst
we quicken our desires
to that rank odor of a passing springtime!
Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors
for something less unlovely? What girl will care
for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?
Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?
Must you have a part in everything


Traditionally, the world knows of five senses: Sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. Throughout time we have learned that each of the 5 senses consists of organs with specialized cells that have receptors for specific stimuli. These cells have links to the nervous system and thus to the brain. All of these senses are vital to human life, the top two are sight and hearing. In the world today, we hear about those who have no sight, and even those who have no hearing, but have you ever heard of those who have no smell!?
When I first read William Carlos Williams` poem, Smell! I was like what is he talking about!? I know poet’s are supposed to be crazy and all but really was this guy writing a poem about his nose? How odd, but then when I read it a few more times, I realized that he is not only writing about his nose but he is talking to his nose. He first begins by explaining what his nose is like, and then he goes on to ask it a question. He continues throughout the poem in this way, talking to his nose about all the different things it helps him to smell, the souring flowers, to the rank oder of a passing springtime, but then at the end I think he reaches his main message he is blaming his nose for continroulsy smelling everything. His nose is always in the way and must have a wiff of everything that is out there. I think this implys the famous phrase, keep you nose out of others busniess. At the very end the last two lines of the poem, he says

WCW - Spring Storm

The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand runnels! It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered grass-stems of the overhanging embankment.

 

 

 

This is just a description of a spring thunderstorm, written in language as plain and direct as William Carlos Williams could manage.
William Carlos Williams thought that most poetry up until his time (the 1930's and later) was over-written. He thought that the words had got out of control, poets were just talking - instead of looking at things and telling precisely what they saw.
Williams set out to write a poem of plain description: making his language as ordinary, but also as precise, as a scientist would.
Often William Carlos Williams writes poems of dazzling clarity with his revolutionary technique.
Sometimes - as here - the clarity is there, but it does not dazzle.
It is a description of a storm, in as plain a language as the poet was able to find.

Jorie Graham - Just Before

At some point in the day, as such, there was a pool.  Of

stillness.  One bent
to brush one's hair, and, lifting

again, there it was, the

opening—one glanced away from a mirror, and there, before
one's glance reached the

street, it was, dilation and breath—a name called out

in another's yard—a breeze from

where—the log collapsing inward of a sudden into its

hearth—it burning further, feathery—you hear it but you
don't

look up—yet there it

bloomed—an un-

learning—all byway no birthpain—dew—sand falling onto sand—a
threat

from which you shall have

no reprieve—then the

reprieve—Some felt it was freedom, or a split-second of
unearthliness—but no, it was far from un-

earthly, it was full of

earth, at first casually full, for some millennia, then

despertately full—of earth—of copper mines and thick
under-leaf-vein sucking in of

light, and isinglass, and dusty heat—wood-rings

bloating their tree-cells with more

life—and grass and weed and tree intermingling in the

undersoil—& the

earth's whole body round

filled with

uninterrupted continents of

burrowing—&earthwide miles of

tunnelling by the

mole, bark bettle, snail, spider, worm—& ants making
their cross-

nationstate cloths of

soil, & planetwide the

chewing of insect upon leaf—fish-mouth on krill,

the spinning of

coral, sponge, cocoon—this is what entered the pool of
stopped thought—a chain suspended in

the air of which

one link

for just an instant

turned to thought, then time, then heavy time, then

suddenly

air—a link of air!—& there was no standing army
anywhere,

& the sleeping bodies in the doorways in all

the cities of

what was then just

planet earth

were lifted up out of their sleeping

bags, & they walked

away, & the sensation of empire blew off the link

like pollen—just like that—off it went—into thin air—&
the athletes running their

games in Delphi entered the zone in the

long oval of the arena where you run in

shadow, where the killer crowd becomes

one sizzling hiss, where,

coming round that curve the slowness

happens, & it all goes

inaudible, & the fatigue the urgent sprint the lust

makes the you

fantastically alone, & the bees thrum the hillsides,
& all the blood that has been

wasted—all of it—gathers into deep coherent veins in the

earth

and calls itself

history—& we make it make

sense—

& we are asked to call it

good.

Authenticated by the reach of its perceptions and its sense of obligation, the self appears magnified, even aggrandised, in the poet's repeated reaching towards an indifferent but beloved infinity amid which humans oppress and slaughter each other. The suspicion grows that the important thing may somehow be not the thing seen or understood, but the fact that the self has seen it: the intended scale of things is in effect reversed. That this seems quite guileless makes it more worrying, though not unfamiliar.
There are precedents for Graham's work in the way America adapted Romanticism – in Whitman, for example – and in traditions of Protestant testimony.

William Carlos Williams - Peace on Earth

The Archer is wake!
The Swan is flying!
Gold against blue
An Arrow is lying.
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Bears are abroad!
The Eagle is screaming!
Gold against blue
Their eyes are gleaming!
Sleep!
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

The Sisters lie
With their arms intertwining;
Gold against blue
Their hair is shining!
The Serpent writhes!
Orion is listening!
Gold against blue
His sword is glistening!
Sleep!
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.

 

The Arrival - William Carlos Williams

And yet one arrives somehow,
finds himself loosening the hooks of
her dress
in a strange bedroom--
feels the autumn
dropping its silk and linen leaves
about her ankles.
The tawdry veined body emerges
twisted upon itself
like a winter wind . . . !

William Carlos Williams

 

William Carlos Williams addresses several working-class themes that would include this renowned writer into the canon of working class literature. While often regarded as a writer of the professional-class, Williams dealt with themes very integral to the plight of the working class. These issues include: poverty, distrust of authority, work shaping one's life, urban blight, struggle, gender issues, and class consciousness.
From his occupation as a family practitioner, Williams had a wealth of first hand experience with those of the working class. Although an industrial town, Rutherford would be considered affluent compared to the surrounding North Jersey communities it served. Cities like Newark, Passaic, Kearny, Paterson, and Hackensack were where the immigrant and first generation Americans made their homes. These people were laborers, and they were Williams' patients. Robert Coles offers insight to Williams's life in William Carlos Williams: The Knack of Survival in America. He explains that when Williams was asked by a college professor where he got his language from Williams responded, "From the mouths of Polish mothers" .

Jorie Graham - The Surface

The Surface

It has a hole in it. Not only where I

                                 concentrate.

The river still ribboning, twisting up,

into its re-

arrangements, chill enlightenments, tight-knotted

quickenings

and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving

the messengers--

the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings.

glassy

forgettings under the river of

my attention--

and the river of my attention laying itself down--

bending,

reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy

obstacles--

and the surface rippling under the wind's attention--

rippling over the accumulations, the slowed-down drifting

 

                                      permanences

of the cold

bed.

I say iridescent and I look down.

The leaves very still as they are carried.

 

 

There are so many different surfaces in the world. Whether it's rough or smooth, dry or wet, soft or hard. Surfaces hold us, things, everything. I believe they are essential to our survival. In Jorie Graham's poem "The Surface" she combines the surface, the river, with wind. A leave carried in the wind across the water. It's such a simple topic, but yet Graham's writing style is intriguing. The whispering of the wind is a secret message for us humans. The leaves are the messages, flying over the river's surface waiting to get collected and read. But when they hit the surface, they leave holes. The style of this poem is very appealing and new as well. 23 lines, some of them only contain on word. Graham uses a lot punctuation to set a mood for the poem. The various use of caesurae paces the poem. It's different, which I like. The word "iridescent" is italicized in the second to last line. Why? It's a beautiful word. It means the showing of various colors that seen to change when see from different directions. This perfectly applied to the water. The colors of the water change with every new position. That's what makes it so special.

 

Jorie Graham- Sundown

Sometimes the day light winces behind you and it is a great treasure in this case today a man on a horse in calm full gallop on Omaha over my left shoulder coming on fast but calm not audible to me at all until I turned back my head for no reason as if what lies behind one had whispered what can I do for you today and I had just turned to answer and the answer to my answer flooded from the front with the late sun he/they were driving into—gleaming— wet chest and upraised knees and light-struck hooves and thrust-out even breathing of the great beast—from just behind me, passing me—the rider looking straight ahead and yet smiling without looking at me as I smiled as we both smiled for the young animal, my feet in the breaking wave-edge, his hooves returning, as they begin to pass by, to the edge of the furling break, each tossed-up flake of ocean offered into the reddish luminosity—sparks—as they made their way, boring through to clear out life, a place where no one again is suddenly killed—regardless of the "cause"—no one—just this galloping forward with force through the low waves, seagulls scattering all round, their screeching and mewing rising like more bits of red foam, the horse's hooves now suddenly louder as it goes by and its prints on wet sand deep and immediately filled by thousands of sandfleas thrilled to the declivities in succession in the newly released beach—just at the right moment for some microscopic life to rise up through these cups in the hard upslant retreating ocean is revealing, sandfleas finding them just as light does, carving them out with shadow, and glow on each ridge, and water oozing up through the innermost cut of the hoofsteps, and when I shut my eyes now I am not like a blind person walking towards the lowering sun, the water loud at my right, but like a seeing person with her eyes shut putting her feet down one at a time on the earth.

This poem is another unique piece of Jorie Graham's poetry collection. The author of the poem is at the beach walking along, when a man on a horse comes up to her. Again Graham refers to the ocean/ water a lot. It is a reoccurring theme in most of her poems. She goes into details with the seagulls and the sand. This line in the poem, "and when I shut my eyes now I am not like a blind person" reminded me of A Friend Going Blind. She talks about hard subjects, but while connecting them with something calm (like the ocean) it makes it so much easier to  read about. This quote, "water oozing up through the innermost cut of the hoofsteps" is a great image that emerges when reading this line. It's such a simple line, but makes me think about it.

William Carlos Williams -

It is a small plant 
delicately branched and 
tapering conically 
to a point, each branch 
and the peak a wire for         
green pods, blind lanterns 
starting upward from 
the stalk each way to 
a pair of prickly edged blue 
flowerets: it is her regard,         
a little plant without leaves, 
a finished thing guarding 
its secret. Blue eyes— 
but there are twenty looks 
in one, alike as forty flowers         
on twenty stems—Blue eyes 
a little closed upon a wish 
achieved and half lost again, 
stemming back, garlanded 
with green sacks of         
satisfaction gone to seed, 
back to a straight stem—if 
one looks into you, trumpets—! 
No. It is the pale hollow of 
desire itself counting         
over and over the moneys of 
a stale achievement. Three 
small lavender imploring tips 
below and above them two 
slender colored arrows         
of disdain with anthers 
between them and 
at the edge of the goblet 
a white lip, to drink from—! 
And summer lifts her look         
forty times over, forty times 
over—namelessly.

-William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams has always been known as an experimenter, an innovator, a revolutionary figure in American poetry. Yet in comparison to artists of his own time who sought a new environment for creativity as expatriates in Europe, Williams lived a remarkably conventional life. A doctor for more than forty years serving the New Jersey town of Rutherford, he relied on his patients, the America around him, and his own ebullient imagination to create a distinctively American verse. Often domestic in focus and "remarkable for its empathy, sympathy, its muscular and emotional identification with its subjects," Williams's poetry is also characteristically honest

Jorie Graham - Mind

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it
they cast for? The poplars,
advancing or retreating,
lose their stature
equally, and yet stand firm,
making arrangements
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity's
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.

Jorie Graham

 

In the first lines of "Mind," the speaker offers a metaphor for the mind, comparing it to "the slow overture of rain." Overture in this context denotes an orchestral introduction to a musical dramatic work. The speaker compares the way the mind moves from one perception to the next, one thought to the next, with the way an overture leads into the musical work itself. The mind is "unrelenting" because it never stops. It is "syncopated" (also a musical term) because, as in an overture, there is a shift to something else, maybe another perception, another subject, or another way of thinking. These lines comment both on the workings of the mind and the workings of this poem, which also shifts subjects. The speaker continues comparing the mind with natural phenomena. The speaker imagines that the hummingbird and the swallow perceive the world in.

 

Williams Carlos Williams - Approach of Winter

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden
                                   -William Carlos Williams



My intial reaction was that he was talking about the ruthlessness of winter and its grip on nature. Williams uses various adjectives to describe the scene of the poem.Williams's poetry here is very succinct. He is remarking how winter makes its presence known, and he uses imagery to show how it seems to seep into autumn, as leaves gradually fall off of trees, the air grows a little bit colder each day, and the ground hardens as you get closer to winter.

Jorie Graham - Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re- infolding, entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing motion that forces change-- this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself, also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go. I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never. It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never. - Jorie Graham      This poem, to me, starts off with her watching waves and sort of analyzing them. She takes the movemoents and actions of the waves and compares them to hard times of life. Graham uses the “unity” of minnows forming a “current”, to show that change in inevitable and it is something that she hopes to stay away from. Just as unity conforms the “minnows”, even that togetherness cannot prevent change in the world, it in inevitable and even nature must conform to that notion. When I first read this poem, I felt that it was entitled, “Prayer”, because she was so devastated and frustrated by change that she needed to look to a higher power to help her overcome her difficulties with the world. I thought that she looked to prayer, for god created the minnows and the nature surrounding her and the changes occuring within her world, therefore she would need the stability and calm that only a spiritual hope can achieve. However, while reading this poem a second time I got a completely different meaning. I felt her new message was that faith and change are both forced upon you. I get the feeling that she feels “trapped” because even faith can trap you and “change” your beliefs against your will. The main part of the poem that completely changed my view was when she stated, “motion that forces change—this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same.The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed”. I feel that she wants her own beliefs to remain intact, not the “faith” and the beliefs of others. I still feel that she is against change, but maybe in this case it is dealing with a change in her beliefs rather than change in general. I find it very interesting that she has such abstract yet meaningful poetry that I can find two completely different meanings from this poem. That is true talent.

William Carlos Williams: The Dance

In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling
about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.
- William Carlos Williams
 

This poem was hard for me to undestand at first. My initial reaction about the poem was that it was about some kind of exotic dancers that he wasnt so fond of. I kind of got a sense of lust in the words though. Upon further research, I learned that a kermesse was originally a special celebration on the feast day of the saint who stood as patron for the town or village in which it occurred. So it is safe to presume that he made these obsevations about dancers while at a party or celebration. I also learned that this poem is attached to a painting, in which he uses the poem to describe the scene in the painting. Accoding to analysis at the University of Minnesota, the poem s also fast and rollicking. We're not supposed to pause at the end of each line, as we are with some poems, but rather to keep reading, to keep the dance going. This technique of running over lines is called "enjambment," and Williams uses it here to create through form the sense of motion and circularity he describes in the poem. (Source: University of Minnesota). As I read the poem a 2nd time I realized that he actually refers to the painting. The name of the painting "Brueghels" I posted the picture abovee accurately accesses what is occuring in the picture. From the dancers to each detail of what he wrote in his poem. The last thing I would like to add, thouugh, is that for some reason I thought that the scene would have been taking place inside. (I thought this before I saw the painting)

Jorie Graham: San Sepolcro

     In this blue light I can take you there, snow having made me a world of bone seen through to. This is my house, my section of Etruscan wall, my neighbor's lemontrees, and, just below the lower church, the airplane factory. A rooster crows all day from mist outside the walls. There's milk on the air, ice on the oily lemonskins. How clean the mind is, holy grave. It is this girl by Piero della Francesca, unbuttoning her blue dress, her mantle of weather, to go into labor. Come, we can go in. It is before the birth of god. No one has risen yet to the museums, to the assembly line--bodies and wings--to the open air market. This is what the living do: go in. It's a long way. And the dress keeps opening from eternity to privacy, quickening. Inside, at the heart, is tragedy, the present moment forever stillborn, but going in, each breath is a button coming undone, something terribly nimble-fingered finding all of the stops.  - Jorie Graham
 

 

      My initial reaction to reading this poem was that, in the beginning, she basically set the scene of the poem and then goes into the story. I conceived that it was about a woman is giving birth but that the she is having complication or that the baby is a still born. I was surprised at the nature of the content of the poem. To me, it was aimed toward a more mature reader. There was not much informatioon on this poem on the internet. Leaving me to only infer more about this poem. Some symbols I noticed is, blue light, Etruscan, lemontrees, church, and the airplane factory. All of these represent seperate things. Since there was not much information on this poem, I cannot only infer what these symbols mean. I believe the theme that stands out the most, though, is the rooster. I say this because a rooster can represent so many things. It can represent the onset of something new, such as a day. It can also represent a signal, such as an alarm. I think that the rooster connects to the new life or beginning of the babies life, or a signal of distress of the complication of the pregnancy. I did find out that San Sepolcro is a city in Italy. I think that it is pretty safe to inferthat the poem takes place in this town in Italy. I also found out that a famous structure in Sansepolcro is a church. Which might be the church she is referring to in the poem.

Williams Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
 - Williams Carlos Williams

     This poem is simple yet meaningful. The opening lines set the tone for the rest of the poem. Since the poem is composed of one sentence broken up at various intervals, it is truthful to say that "so much depends upon" each line of the poem. This is so because the form of the poem is also its meaning. This may seem confusing, but by the end of the poem the image of the wheelbarrow is seen as the actual poem, as in a painting when one sees an image of an apple, the apple represents an actual object in reality, but since it is part of a painting the apple also becomes the actual piece of art. These lines are also important because they introduce the idea that "so much depends upon" the wheelbarrow. There is also alot of symbolism in the poem. The image of the red wheelbarrow is pretty darn powerful. We see it very clearly in our minds, and all our speaker has to do to paint the image for us is to tell that it is a "red wheelbarrow." If that isn't magic, we don't know what is. William does a great job in creating a vivid image in our minds of the picture of what the poem is trying to get us to imagine. I really like the simplicity and straight forwardness of the poem. It kind of represents me as a person, very straight forward and simple. One of the themes of this poem is Man and the Natural World. We see a harmonious relationship between an manmade object (reflective of the human world) and nature. The red wheelbarrow sits unused and neglected, while rain seems to wash it clean and make it look brand spanking new. Chickens hang out with the wheelbarrow and keep it company. It almost seems like this wheelbarrow is part of nature. The absence of humans in this scene makes us feel the wheelbarrow's loneliness and makes us appreciate nature for paying attention to the wheelbarrow. (Source: http://www.shmoop.com/red-wheelbarrow/man-the-natural-world-theme.html)

Kim Addonizio: The Story

My initial reaction to the poem was that it was a narrative about a casual normal family, but boy was I wrong. This poem makes many twists and turns. It starts of gradually and then spirals into what seems to be hate towards a person, and then into an erotic description of two lovers. She mentions religious symbols various times. It is hard to exactly pin point what this poem is about because of the numerous twists and turns it makes. I needed some additional help in understanding what the poem actually meant. There actually wasnt much help on the internet so I researched her writing style. She tends to write about her observations and her portrayal of sensual love, filial feeling, death or loss.This kind of explains why her poem was all over the place. She basically includes all 3 in the poem. I also found out that she likes to write about couples, particularly  young couples and about their love and sensual experiences. The poem was in her publication of "Tell Me." That publication frequently depicts couples in doomed relationships which explains the stanza about her hate for a man. I also read that she likes to actually speak to her readers directly through her poetry. Which kind of explains why she wrote about the normal family and then turned the poem into chaos, so that the reader could relate to what she was writing. To have some evidence to my theory, she once stated in an interview that,"I like poems that address the reader…Poetry isn’t necessarily about communication, but that element is important to me. I go back to someone like Whitman who knew I would be here even though he didn’t know me. He thought about the people who would be coming after him—and he acknowledged them and spoke to them! And I feel that he is speaking to me, he knew I’d be here someday! I love the concept of speaking to people who aren’t even born yet." (Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kim-addonizio) That quote gives me another reason to believe why she has so many unorthodox twists and turns in her work. So that she will be remembered after she has gone,

Walt Whitman: Leaves Of Grass

I first heard of this poem in the popular TV drama "Breaking Bad". I have always wondered what the actual poem about and this project gives me a chance to read it and analyze it. Them poem is very short and descriptive. It seems as if he is praising himself, and finding himself as as person. He mentions his soul telling him to,"come." This gives me the impression that he is very self-conscience. I had to use the help of Cliff Notes to fully understand the poem. They pointed out some key themes in the poem. One was "The Body and the Soul" which he thought that we could comprehend the soul only through the connection of the body. To Whitman, all matter is as divine as the soul. Another theme is Nature. Whitman shares the Romantic poet's relationship with nature. To him nature is divine and an emblem of God. A last theme I want to touch on is the theme of Death. Whitman deals with death as a fact of life. Death in life is a fact, but life in death is a truth for Whitman. My first reaction when I read the poem though, was that , for some reason, he was writing about a connection that he has with another woman. I believe that I conceived that thought because when many people think about loving another person, they call them their "soul mate." I do see where the poem is relating to the connection of the body and the soul. Whitmans poem is very deep and provokes thought of the reader. I really enjoyed the overrall theme of the poem which is" Finding ones true self." because I think that in order to really enjoy life, you must find who you really are and what makes you happy.