Beyond

Victor Vignon "Untitled"

 

"Beyond"

By: Lauren Laguna

Beyond me fall the shadows of long forgotten things, cast by the searchlight burning my back with wanting, so much wanting directed on my head. Want to know, pick, peel, chew. Want the information kept from you. No. Do not ask. Questions will not meet answers, will only spread the black shapes, speed them further ahead— Stop! No more wanting. No more answers to be had. Throw away your searchlight. Get it off my head. Can’t you see what you’re doing placing the dark ahead, putting shadows in my future instead of letting them remain dead? You have the searchlight, but now I have one too. I choose to flip the switch, flood the room, turn on you, obliterate any shadow— Black, to grey, to white.

Beyond me falls the light.

Poem Response 11

 David Wagner "Clouds"

 

 

"I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud" 

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 

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I believe in some distant past I read this poem. It feels familiar to me, sounds familiar when I read it aloud. I wonder if the speaker dreamed about these flowers or if they actually saw them. The reference to being a cloud makes it seem like the speaker was having an out of body experience or that they feel the only way nature can be fully appreciated is by the vantage point of something else in nature. 

I think the words used, such as "Shine, twinkle, dance, and bliss",  all throughout the poem are what make the poem so "familiar" feeling. The words and tone add to the happy tone and beautiful imagery. Also, Wordsworth used a images that are widely known, such as the milky way and the shore of a bay, as well as the prominent image of an ever extending field of daffodils. 

I like the idea presented that the speaker did not know what "wealth" they had received in being able to see the scene that they did. This seems often true in real life. You see something beautiful, swear to yourself that you will not forget it, then time passes and it is out of mind, until you are sitting quietly, maybe in need of a little boost.

 

Boundless

Konstantia Karletsa "Sprout"

"Boundless"

By: Lauren Laguna



Tiny boundless thing

The first bud of spring


Sticking up from ground's cool thaw. 

Causing some creatures to sing in awe, 

Because they do not, cannot know 

How it made its journey.

From seed the shoot turning green from leaf to root. 

Nor do they understand its capacity, its growing strength, its spreading, stretching ways.

They sing and ask themselves. Croon and question. 

The seed that grew a patch, that grew a field, that grew a forest, that encroached on the world. 

Their voices rise in tumult,

The nagging thought too much to take, 

Then silence, all silence, 

As the question


Fades. 

Poem Response 10

Jenny Floravita "Sailing in the Hawaiian Islands"

"If You Forget Me"

 by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine 

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 Wow. The speaker sounds harsh at first. For example, stanza four says "If suddenly
you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you." This seems as if the speaker is either very adaptable or a jerk who can pick up and start a new love affair with anyone. However, after reading the poem a few times it became apparent, at least to me, that the speaker is in love with the fact that the person they are talking about loves them so much. Therefore, there would be no point in the speaker trying to hold on to an unrequited love.

The poems tone moves from loving and sweet to foreboding then back to sweet again. I'd say the whole thing is a sugar coated warning of love once lost never regained. The long stanza structure broken up by the warning in the middle is very effective at moving the reader from one set of imagery to the next. That being said, the imagery used is well thought out. Islands, boats, and the fire of love all speak to the feeling of being at home, intimate, private, or comfortable. The opposing images of roots being ripped up or being left at the shore do the opposite, rather giving the sense of loss.

 

Field

 Van Gogh
 

"Field"

By: Lauren Laguna

I've got a wandering eye and a soul searching gaze,
But no one stands out in the crowd.

Like a flower field; all so pretty, all so the same.
Faces pass by, yellow petals touch the sky.

Why can't I see it there?
The difference that makes you fair?

You look the same.
Yellow petals in your frame.

But, you seem so right in some other ways.
Should I change the way I gaze?

Change the perspective and
Change my mind?

Walking through the sea, yellow petals brushing me,
Trying not to crush them or block their sun.

I'm just passing by and passing through.
I saw you for a moment, standing out amidst the crowd.

Your petals white as cotton,
Covered in dew that caught the light.

Then clouds rolled in,
The sun went down.

My time in the field was run down.

There was the difference I had wanted so much to see,
But flowers wait for no one.

They fade before me.
Yellow petals touch the sky.

All so pretty, all so the same.
Faces pass, but yours still remains.

Poem Response 9

Bassestti Marcantonio "Portrait of an old man with a book"

 

Yesterday by W. S. Merwin

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father's hand the last time

he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I'm here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don't want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do 

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 This poem had to be read more than once. It gets to be confusing whether the speaker is talking or the "friend". I believe this is the point. It seems that the speaker has already lost their father, as seen in stanza six "oh I say feeling again the cold of my father's hand the last time". Perhaps the speaker is being reminded of their own father by listening to their friend's experience involving their own father. 

 The tone of the poem is conversational. It as if the speaker is relating word for word a previous conversation the reader was not present for, while also adding in the thoughts they had during the time. For this reason the poem is very interesting, because it is like getting inside the speakers head and knowing what someone is really thinking about during a conversation.

 The structure of the poem adds to it being difficult to read. The brain automatically wants to add punctuation when someone is talking, however there is no punctuation in the poem. The stanza breaks also don't seem very organized, I suppose a real conversation wouldn't be either. 

I didn't like the theme of the poem, but its overall effect of "regret" was strong.  

 

 

Bone

“Bone” 

By: Lauren Laguna

Bone curves. Absorbs the impact meant to break. Infrastructure, sturdy in design, but delicate in mold. For all outer beauty, the white, subtle pieces, twigs stacked together in focused harmony. Weathered by the daily abuse. The grinding inside the sockets, the constant jarring to hold up the warm, pulsing flesh surrounding them. Absorbs the impact meant to snap. The perfect puzzle mysterious to no end, once seen, seen at once and everywhere, the graceful wrist, tapering fingers, the rising construction, flying buttress. Man-made. Playing the mocking bird of the internal form of itself. Absorbs the impact meant to crush. The straight-line will break when stressed. The tense link will snap with jolt. The tout support will be crushed with hammer. The linear curve, asymmetrical ivory, bends in continuous flow. Provision for life sustained by bone.

Poem Response 8

Paul Cezanne, "L'Estaque"

"Cezanne's Ports"

By: Allen Ginsberg

In the foreground we see time and life
swept in a race
toward the left hand side of the picture
where shore meets shore.

But that meeting place
isn't represented;
it doesn't occur on the canvas.

For the other side of the bay
is Heaven and Eternity,
with a bleak white haze over its mountains.

And the immense water of L'Estaque is a go-between
for minute rowboats.
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Allen Ginsberg's poem describes Paul Cezanne's painting "L'Estaque".
This poet's mixture of direct descriptive language and imaginative
imagery is very interesting to me as it brings across a point disguised
as basic reflection. Ginsberg is making a sharp contrast between
the heavily populated shores and the unpopulated mountains still
belonging to nature. He does this by describing the mountains in the
distance as "Heaven and Eternity", while saying that the foreground is
in a race to meet the other side.

I found the statement that the "L'Estaque is a go-between
for minute rowboats" made the ocean the "safe zone". It is the one
place where humans can go, but not completely inhabit like the land.
It makes humans seem small in comparison.

The structure of the poem seems to give adequate description of each
section of the painting and what the speaker is thinking about it.
The poem speaks of separation and illustrates it in the way that it
separates the stanzas.

Night Terror

Henri Fuseli "Nightmare"

“Night Terror”

by: Lauren Laguna

Quiet of mind chased away by draining water downhill, constant dripping. Each drop a thought unspoken, flitting behind closed eyes. Subconscious past surfaces up through dark corridors of flooded memory, bubbling up through the mesh bar, bog. Laced fingers holding back torn apart in violent rushing. Release the fog waves. The outer gates, eyelids unable to open, held down with stony weight. Eyelashes curve up, reaching, stretching; a futile attempt to let go the trapped, happy thing, its clipped wings rustling, its small body pushing against its cage. Trapped in the dark clock’s chime, each second an eternity. Muscles frozen over in the deep shadows, rebelling against the driving mind.  Vertigo. Panic. 
AWAKE

Poem Response 7

 Apollo

Archaic Torso of Apollo

by: Rainer Maria Rilke

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, 

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could 
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared. 

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: 

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

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"You must change your life" is the single most stand out sentence in the entire poem. 

This is because it has nothing to do with the rest of the poem, but at the same time

 it has everything to do with it. 

It is completely separate in that it does not follow the 

rest of the poem, talking about the sculpture of Apollo's magnificence. Also, until this

line, the poem is including the reader in the sculptures magnificence as if the reader can

comprehend it, however the last line makes it seem as though the reader was never 

really included, because they need to change their life before they can fully the 

sculpture and have it affect them as the speaker suggests. 

The line has everything to do with the poem in that it suggests the reader must change
their lives to appreciate the subtle grandeur of the sculpture or maybe even life. If the 

line was not there the poem would seem to be missing something. Although the last line

may not be the kind of conclusion the reader was expecting it does sum up the poem 

and do a great job of convincing the reader to reread the poem. I reread it several times 

trying to understand. I now feel it is better to leave it as a mystery. 

I find the lines, "for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change 

your life" sound like a mention of an all-seeing, powerful God that will judge the reader. Or,

perhaps this is only meant to be understood as the idea that, because the statue does not 

have a head the entire object seems to look back at the viewer.   

The poem has beautiful imagery and seems very much like a gallery viewer's internal

monologue. Quite the mystery. 

Flower Origin

"Flower Origin"
By: Lauren Laguna




































__________________________________________________________

Looking at a book of flowers is frustrating, because their scientific names
do not fit the flowers they describe. In the past people must have called each
flower by what sounded good to them.That is what I have done. I have given
the flowers the name that I thought fit them.

Poem Response 6

 Mark Ryden "Ghost Girl"

"Ghost in the Land of Skeletons"

By: Christopher Kennedy

If not for flesh's pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That's why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It's the fact they don't know they're dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you're a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.
____________________________________________________________________

This poem was very interesting. Actually, it was unlike any other poem I've read. The topic, narrative, tone, and message all seemed slightly different to me than what I was expecting. When I read the title, "Ghost in the Land of Skeletons" I was expecting a pirate poem. Kennedy's interesting observation in the first line of this prose poem throws that idea down. He doesn't say that"without the pretty paint we are temporary shells", which is an idea I've seen expressed often in poetry, he says without the "pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons". This line was a hook that caught my interest. However, instead of giving more observations like the one in the first line, Kennedy instead begins to speak casually as if to a friend about paranormal books and why he likes the ghost stories inside them. Then, just as the poem is drawing to a close and the reader may be expecting another observation similar to the one in the first line, Kennedy throws a curve ball. The speaker is a ghost himself, or at least this is what I assume when the speaker remarks of the ghost man's dissapearance  "he beat me to it".
Besides the poems non-rhyming, casual tone, curve-ball narrative, and prose appearance, which make it different than any other poem I've read, it is hard to find a message in the poem, except maybe that the reader is meant to believe in spirits after reading. The speaker is presumably a spirit, who admires the other spirits that do not know they are dead and "refuse to go away".

Aimee

 Leonardo Da Vinci "Mona Lisa"

 

“Aimee”

She is always proper,

A dress will only grace her skin when she’s in the mood.

She doesn’t wear makeup,

Her eyelashes are so long mascara makes them look fake.

She likes ice cream,

Lavender, honey is the strangest flavor she’s heard of, therefore it’s her favorite.

She doesn’t mind dirt.

How else could she coax fresh vegetables from the soil?

She listens to music,

Don’t be fooled, she likes the sound of your voice better.

She smiles for nothing and everything,

She says slow, luxurious smiles make the world roll.

She doesn’t own a brush,

For her there’s no point in taming something not meant to be tamed.

She loves learning,

Ideas float like clouds in her head, but she still has all the time in the world.

She writes books,

They may never end, but they breath the same air she does.

She coos at babies,

Whether or not she will bare children is a secret even to her.

She dreams at night,

Smiling in your sleep is lucky, she wishes she knew if she had.

She weeps.

Her worries are kept inside, so she can trouble herself with yours.

She looks your way.

You can’t help but to wave, smile, hope she comes near.

Poem Response 5

 

 "American Gothic"

by: John Stone

Just outside the frame
there has to be a dog
chickens, cows and hay

and a smokehouse
where a ham in hickory
is also being preserved

Here for all time
the borders of the Gothic window
anticipate the ribs

of the house
the tines of the pitchfork
repeat the triumph

of his overalls
and front and center
the long faces, the sober lips

above the upright spines
of this couple
arrested in the name of art

These two
by now
the sun this high

ought to be
in mortal time
about their businesses

Instead they linger here
within the patient fabric
of the lives they wove

he asking the artist silently
how much longer
and worrying about the crops

she no less concerned about the crops
but more to the point just now
whether she remembered

to turn off the stove.
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John Stone's poem, "American Gothic" is a look inside the painting American Gothic by Grant Wood. Particularly Stone's sounds like a stream of conciousness of someone looking at this painting in a gallery. The painting is very intriguing, because of the stern faced man and woman that almost seem to be guarding something. I've never seen the painting in person, however I've had similar thoughts to what Stone describes in his poem. I've wondered what was going on around the two character's, and what they were thinking, and why a painting was done of them.

Stone writes that the Gothic window, the main curiosity of the painting, will be forever looking over the heads of the two individuals "arrested in the name of art". This line stuck out to me. The idea that the two people in the painting were forced to pose and put their chores on hold. That would explain the stern, "Are you done yet" looks on their faces. then stone gives a further explanation as to why they feel this way, crops and a stove that needs to be turned off.

Another line that caught my attention comes in stanza eight, "in mortal time". These two people have been captured in immortality. To me it seems that Stone's painting furthers this idea. He even gave his poem the same title as the Grant Wood's painting.

The painting has always left me with a sense of foreboding. Stone does this as well through his last few lines, "whether she remembered to turn off the stove". It makes it seem like there may be an explosion any minute, but just like in the painting, we are not privy to the rest of the story.

Katrina's Outcome

 Claude Monet "Impressions: Sunrise"

 

“Katrina’s Outcome”

We can stand together; Use our dirty fingers to wipe the tears from years too young. We can yell for the dark to ignite. Shine. No shadows. No shades, until the world is white with burning, but not hot to touch. Destruction is temporary. Weather, ephemeral. The building begins. Seven years later. Now ten. Those that stood together, have built back lost images of memory. Those alone are still alone. Self-pity never built anything. Block by block the city grows. We can finish. We can dance to a job well done. Rebuild our home. Rebuild life. We stood together. Conquered as one.       

Poem Response 4

 Pieter Brueghel, Hunters in the Snow (1565)

"Winter Landscape"

by: John Berryman 

The three men coming down the winter hill
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Returning cold and silent to their town,

Returning to the drifted snow, the rink
Lively with children, to the older men,
The long companions they can never reach,
The blue light, men with ladders, by the church
The sledge and shadow in the twilit street,

Are not aware that in the sandy time
To come, the evil waste of history
Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow
Of that same hill: when all their company
Will have been irrecoverably lost,

These men, this particular three in brown
Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say
By their configuration with the trees,
The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,
What place, what time, what morning occasion

Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds
At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,
Thence to return as now we see them and
Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill
Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.
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"Winter Landscape" caught my attention, because I thought it was Berryman's poetic description of Pieter Brueghel's painting Hunter's in the Snow, but it is much more than that. In the first and second stanza of his poem, "Winter Landscape" describes in great detail the scene of occurring in the  painting. His diction almost seems sad in some lines as if he himself were there at the time of the painting and is remembering it through his own nostalgia. This can be seen in the last line of stanza one, "Returning cold and silent to their town" and in stanza two "The long companions they can never reach". Even the color "blue" in stanza two gives this feeling. Based on the first two stanza's Berryman's poem is just a reflection mixed with some of his own memory, inspired by Brueghel's painting.

However, the next three stanza's of Berryman's poem completely change the direction I thought the poem would be taking, while still holding to the first two stanza's tone. Suddenly, the sadness hinted at in the first two stanza's is not Berryman's general feeling of nostalgia, but a set up of tone for the rest of the poem. Switching abruptly from a description of  Brueghel's painting to a statement on history and humankind Berryman begins his true purpose in writing this poem. The message being that time slips by quickly like sand through someone's fingers, leaving only physical manifestations of memory. like the painting, for the next generation to speculate on. I choose to believe the men in the painting are supposed to be considered lucky not to know what is to come.

The Product

Norman Rockwell "Girl Looking in Mirror"

“The Product”

By: Lauren Laguna

A young girl once thought she knew what she cared about. She’d made up her mind during the sweltering summer. Let her old self sweat off and wash away in a cold shower. When she looked in the mirror she saw the products on her face. She didn’t see the sprouting whiskers or the enlarged ears outlined in the mirror’s perspiration. She went to school and showed off her new skin all shiny and full of product. It got attention from old friends and recently interested strangers. However, the girl was only interested in attracting new eyes. She’d spray some perfume and let them watch, crave, planning her attack carefully. Hands fluttered over their mouths, covering excited whispers. She wanted their knowledge, their words. In fact, she let all else slip through her fingers.

Accustomed now, to her new skin, the young girl spent more and more time applying product in big sweeping gestures. If there were any bit of her old self not washed down the shower drain, then she would cover it most thickly. She still couldn’t see the whiskers that felt the vibrations of the words or the ears that twitched to the whispers breeze. Certainly, she didn’t feel her tiny heart flutter; she had it too deeply muffled. At school the lips moved and the eyes stared. She smiled and smelled the ripe scent of approval wafting through the twisting halls. Moving blindly though the turns, she searched for it relentlessly, her smile broadening with every wrong turn she took. Clinically, they judged and tested her. Pulling out pens from their white, starched coat pockets to scribble on yellow notepads.

The day the young girl ran out of product she looked into her foggy bathroom mirror and screamed. She couldn’t recognize herself. For the first time her fingers brushed her cheeks and pinched the air above her wet scalp, just barely discerning the whiskers and ears that were becoming more and more apparent with each passing moment. What could she do but run to the all-knowing crowd, the testers, judgers, and whisperers still scribbling in yellow note pads. She asked them her questions, begged for answers, lost the scent of approval, fell to pleading, and backed up in terror when she saw the craving fall from their eyes. Knowing of her whiskers and ears did not help. No amount of vibration and twitching could save her. The maze she had been so used to was nothing but a tiled, locker-lined prison.

Awash with confusion the young girl wandered home to stare in the mirror. She stared unblinking until the whiskers and ears faded back into perspiration. Then in a fit of rage she threw away every last empty bottle of product she owned. This was the easy part. Much more arduous a task was the buffing. Bit by bit she rubbed, chipped, and clipped away at the caked on product, scraping off the new skin she had been so proud of. Days passed before the slim scraps of her old self became visible. Her reflection no longer made her scream, but she had a new dilemma. Having built her new skin so well that no matter how hard or often she sanded it away a piece of it still remained. The old and new together didn’t look right. It had to be fixed. So, she mixed her own product naturally and used careful, neat brush strokes.

The young girl’s new creation was perfect. Her old friends agreed. She walked through the halls of the maze holding the map, key, and torch in her hand. The whispers breeze fell flat on her ear, the words passing unnoticed. Even the scrawling pens on yellow note pads didn’t draw her attention. The judgers, testers, and whisperers floated by as shadows do in the evening. Someone, not the young girl, or her old friends, or the watchers, found the bits of discarded product. It was bound to happen. This someone used their own sharp acid to reawaken the brew; they dipped inside it and emerged into the onlookers sniffing the slight scent of approval. It intoxicated them. The young girl watched from a distance, clutching at her precious map, amazed at this new creation built from her old product.

Before her eyes, history replayed. Her last wish before turning to her newfound peace was that she’d buried the product, burned it, drowned it, and set the world free.

Poem Response 3

Salvador Dali "Woman's Hands"

 "A Hand"

By: Jane Hirshfield

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles,
not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow,
not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines
with their infinite dramas,
nor what it has written,
not on the page,
not on the ecstatic body. 

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—
not sponge of rising yeast-bread,
not rotor pin's smoothness,
not ink. 

The maple's green hands do not cup
the proliferant rain.
What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. 

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

______________________________________________________________________

Hirshfield begins her poem by saying a hand is not what we all know a

hand to be, "four fingers and a thumb". However, through the poem,  

instead of answering the question, what is a hand if not "four fingers 

and a thumb", Hirshfield tells the audience all the things a hand is not. 

This cryptic way of conveying a question, with no real answer, in part

intrigues and frustrates me. Hirshfield says the question is "transparent", 

but then contradicts this by ending her poem with the statement that it is 

"unanswerable". After reading the poem several times I came no closer 

to answering the question, but I did come to a deeper contemplation 

of the poem's images and mood.

The mood is very pensive. The poem reads almost like the speaker's 

inner dialogue. As if the speaker had these thoughts as they went 

about their day taking repeated notice of the hand's function in their life. 

They speak of things the hand does, such as writing, loving, and making 

bread. Or they liken a hand to something else in nature;

such as meadows and a maple leaf. 

Noticing the poet's focus, not on the hand, but on the common things

that it touches or is intrinsically similar to, brought something to my mind.

I realized that I may have missed the point. Perhaps Hirshfield's poem was not 

so literally about the hand, but about the people that hands belong to.  

The lines, "What empties itself falls into the place that is open. A hand turned 

upward holds only a single, transparent question" now implies something 

other than a mystery to me. An open hand stands for a person's general 

acceptance of others and the question is whether or not the hand will stay open.

New and Better

 Hortense, Queen of Holland

 

“New and Better” 

by: Lauren Laguna

This princess broke her crown.

Broke it in two.

Didn’t need it, want it,

Let its sharp edges scratch the ground,

Walked on, leaving it behind.

A tripping hazard.

Someone steps on the edges,

Bleeds, or not.

Admires the broken pieces,

Fix it with glue.

They like the words:

I Am Royal.

But, it’s still broken,

Worn and thrown out.

A princess once wore it,

Broke it in two.

Better to her in the dirt, Separate.

Making her own,

Better, new.

Only touched with soft fingers,

Lily white molding dark silver,

Bent it, twist it.

Shined to mirror’s sheen.

This crown she saved from dirt and splotch.

If ever she looked back,

Saw the someone,

Bleeding, or not.

Admire the broken pieces,

She may have wished she buried it.

Poem Response 2

 

Nude in Front of Mirror By: Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

 Naked Girl And Mirror

By: Judith Wright

This is not I. I had no body once-
only what served my need to laugh and run
and stare at stars and tentatively dance
on the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun.
Eyes loved, hands reached for me, but I was gone
on my own currents, quicksilver, thistledown.
Can I be trapped at last in that soft face?

I stare at you in fear, dark brimming eyes.
Why do you watch me with that immoderate plea-
'Look under these curled lashes, recognize
that you were always here; know me-be me.'
Smooth once-hermaphrodite shoulders, too tenderly
your long slope runs, above those sudden shy
curves furred with light that spring below your space.

No, I have been betrayed. If I had known
that this girl waited between a year and a year,
I'd not have chosen her bough to dance upon.
Betrayed, by that little darkness here, and here
this swelling softness and that frightened stare
from eyes I will not answer; shut out here
from my own self, by its new body's grace-

for I am betrayed by someone lovely. Yes,
I see you are lovely, hateful naked girl.
Your lips in the mirror tremble as I refuse
to know or claim you. Let me go-let me be gone.
You are half of some other who may never come.
Why should I tend you? You are not my own;
you seek that other-he will be your home.

Yet I pity your eyes in the mirror, misted with tears;
I lean to your kiss. I must serve you; I will obey.
Some day we may love. I may miss your going, some day,
though I shall always resent your dumb and fruitful years.
Your lovers shall learn better, and bitterly too,
if their arrogance dares to think I am part of you.

_____________________________________________________________________

 If you have starred at your self up close and personal for more than a minute you may feel a bit self conscious, to say the least. Judith Wright's poem has captured the warring emotions of an adolescent girl noticing her body's changes in a mirror. Wright captures the emotions of alarm, hate, sadness, and confusion. she does this by not allowing her poem to flow in a continuous, repetitive rhyme. She halts the reader's tendency to expect a matching rhyme. Interestingly, this mirrors the narrator of the poem who is feeling several different emotions in quick succession.  

Stanza two's dialogue, 'Look under these curled lashes, recognize- that you were always here; know me-be me', seems to be the exact question my reflection would ask if it had a voice. Growing up, I remember the pure abandonment of childhood, as Wright talks about in stanza one. Running through a muddy paddock in my white school shoes, trying to dig a hole to China in my mother's vegetable garden. However, I also remember when a flip was switched sometime in the fifth grade. A whole new cast of responsibilities were expected of me as a "young lady". In turn I expected more of myself as well. As Wright says, there was a time when I had no body. The memory of what that may have been like is strewn across several boxes of family photos. Ultimately, as in the last stanza of Wright's poem, I obeyed the person I grew into and moved on.

Mimic Poem: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

 


Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

By: Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
____________________________________________________________

Happy Year of the Rat By: Edith Dora Ray


  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Rodent is my mimic poem of  Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird. The object of this exercise was to experiment with the feel of Steven's poem.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Rodent

I
Among twenty snowy heads,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the rodent.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a pantry
In which there are three rodents.

III
The rodents scurried in the murky shadows.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A shrew and mouse
Are one.
A shrew and a mouse and a rodent
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The splendor of varieties
Or the splendor of insinuations,
The rodent squeaking
Or just after.

VI
Thorns filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the rodent
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An unintelligible cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine silver mice?
Do you not see how the rodent
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the rodent is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the rodent dashed out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of rodents
Scuttling in a green light,
Even the tramps of melody
Would sing out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his outfit
For rodents.

XII
The river is moving.
The rodent must be running.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The rodent sat
In the dank corners. ­

Stevens seems to not be particularly concerned with rhyme except for what naturally occurs, but he is keen towards repetition. Also, the only real connection between all thirteen "ways of looking" or stanzas of his poem is through the object of the Blackbird.