Only a Snow Man Can

This is this weeks poetry response. I'm starting to feel the cold weather so The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens stuck out to me this week. The poem is simple, only four stanzas with only three lines each. "Pine-trees crusted with snow," makes me think of all the pine trees that surround us here in Colorado and how they look when it snows. He says "one must have a mind of winter" this is true when winter is here and you look out your window you see the snow covered ground and trees. With the first snow people start to think about winter; getting their snow boots and coats out. "In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place," this shows famililarity and consistency. Some of the only things that are consistant is the season, winter, spring, summer and fall. That is what is nice is knowing that winter is coming or going and so is the feelings of winter. Brrr I'm getting cold just reading the poem, so I'm going to go get some hot chocolate.

Under Water Experience.

This is last weeks poetry response cause I kind of forgot about it. On Reading Poems to a Senior Class At South High by D.C. Berry is the poem I choose this week. I found this poem to be inspiring. D.C. Berry has a splendid way of creating an image in your head as you read this poem. It feels as though the poem comes to life every time my partner and I have to do poetry in class. The experience is fitting: I could see myself as one of the "fishes" in the "aquarium" listening to Mrs. White help up pick apart poems. I could also see myself as the teacher slowly drowning in the water trying to teach the fishes poetry. The poem exposes the feeling of teaching poetry through an allegory. The first stanza says, "I noticed them sitting there as orderly as frozen fishin a package," I thought of this as fish that have been killed (not in a gory mean way) just simply bored or waiting for life. Then as the reader begins to read the poem the room fills with water and becomes an aquarium with live fish. It ends with the cat bringing him back life which is ironic because cat's eat fish. The poem was just intriguing to me. The imagination is fasinating and almost childlike which again is ironic because he is reading to a senior class. Imagining our classroom fill with water and Ana Garcia, Corey Coffman and the rest of our class swim around like fish makes me wish I was a kid again.

Once Upon A Spooky Night.

This is how it goes... Being a senior of course I procrastinated with my poetry blog and was like "hey I'm old and Halloween is for the young so I can do it Sunday!" Then I started watching Shutter Island with Emily Kirk and Ellen Lenz my best friends and we fell asleep by nine. When I arrived to my house around ten knowing it was a school night I was suddenly kidnapped by gouls and goblins. Hence I'm not writing my blog this week. The end.

P.S. Happy Halloween

Did Curiosity Kill the Cat?

According to Alastair Reid "Curiosity will not cause us to die- only the lack of it will." The reasoning is in the beginning of poem: the cat did not die because it was curious, it was just not lucky. When I read this poem I felt like it wasn't a poem at all but merely like reading someone's thoughts on death or curiosity. This is odd because I've been known as the one in my family that is the most curious and being curious has helped and hurt me. To be curious means you want more knowledge and that is the greatest thing of all, is to gain more knowledge. I agree it is " Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all." Some of the most heroic or advanturous people had to be curious to begin their journey. Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther King Jr., even Helen Keller had to be curious, and it is their stories in which we learn about repeatedly in school. In the poem Reid personifies cats and dogs; it is as if the dogs and cats were human. Cats are the ones who are curious and live, and dogs are the ones who die with no story to tell and no life that was lived because to live you have to be curious. The conclusion of the poem is astonishing, Reid says, "dying is what the living do, and the dying is what the loving do- dying is what, to live, each has to do." You have to live to die and you have to die to live- even if that means you have to be curious. The poem starts off as a thought toward being curious and ends in how to live or die.

Some Words are Wallflower Words.

"Wallflowers" by Donna Vorreye sounds like it isn't about words, but it is. This poem brings words that aren't used to life by explaining how there are words that aren;t used very ofter and are the wallflowers of words. She uses words in the poem like gegenshein and zoanthropy which don't relate to the poem at all and mean almost nothing. It makes me think about why she wrore this poem. What made her think about unused words? The whole poem is a personification of words which makes in enteresting.

Behind on number six

For poetry response number six I choose to read and respond to "In Blackwater Woods," by Mary Oliver. This poem showed good imagery, I could picture the woods and I could feel myself in the poem. There is a lot of metaphores and personification. The trees come to life and wood is a person itself. The whole poem is three sentences broken up into nine stanzas each with four lines, this showed how the woods are so real and how it felt being in them. This poem is from a book by Mary Oliver called, American Primitive. It is a book of collected poems by her. The poem almost puts off a melonchally tone and could make you almost feel sad or maybe just relaxed. The part I thought most about is when she says, "... every pond no matter what its name is, is nameless now." It made me realize how true that could be and how things that once mattered could simply not matter anymore. "In Blackwater Woods" is an enteresting poem.

Back in the day.

"1943" by Donald Hall is one of the poems we have decussed in class, but I feel as though it's a little hard to get my opinion out when I'm sitting there. Here it is. After reading this poem my first reactions were I felt like the poem was taking me back in the day. The war was obsorbing the men just as they got out of high school or were still in high school. Hall expresses how he felt about the war, the duties and sadness the war caused. You can really see the emotions in the poems words and style. two lines to the five stanza's is just right amount to express 1943. The poem is excellent and is one that could have an interesting antecedent scenerio. That is up for your oppinion.