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




































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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.
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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.