"In a U-Haul North of Damascus"

When we first read this poem by David Bottoms, I was moved. Aside from the fact that it works really well as poetry, I connect strongly to religious imagery. Bottoms uses this imagery (and language) well.

The lines,

"And why should I care
so long after everything has fallen
to pain that the woman sleeping there should be sleeping alone?"

do an excellent job of crafting history in the relationship. He doesn't have to tell us that they were married for a while for this sense of time to be conveyed. Just through this one image, he sets up the assumption that the speaker was married long enough that the fall was hard and the empty bed is a strange concept.

Throughout the poem, Bottoms uses physical imagery effectively. The first section illustrates how lost someone can feel after a relationship falls apart, when the tree limbs are said to be slapping against the trailers, like someone lost in a thick forest. A violent argument is portrayed vividly in the second section of the poem, with a description of blood on the floor after being cut by a thrown dish.

The third section calls to mind the smell of pine and fresh air, and connects them to the hopefulness that such a refreshing scent can inspire. It doesn't overdo the hopefulness, however, and leaves the poem with a question: Can someone regain hope after every dream has been shattered?

Bottoms' poem spoke clearly and effectively to me, and that is one of the reasons I think it works so well as poetry.

-Audrey Guire

Commercial for a summer night

I have been anxiously awaiting posting about this poem for quite some time. The first time I read it, it gave me a vision of just what the title says, a commercial for a summer night.
I especially the part when it talked about the bony blondes and lean-jawed guys. Though I'm not interested sexually in them, I envisioned a whole clan of Zach Morris's (from saved by the bell those who don't know). The reason I thought of this was that I remember watching a particular episode where he had to fix up a car however always seemed to keep his hair in a perfect fashion. In addition, after the part when they mention these guys, it is said that the pretty ones are wearing the merchandise is wearing this year which I took as the pretty girls wearing the clothes that were in style which made me think of Lisa Turtle another character from the show. Though, I'm sure this is not what the author had meant by this poem I just thought it was an interesting similarity between a poem and a modern day television show that arguably changed a generation.
Moving on, I loved the description of the setting in the beginning of the poem because it really hooked me in and had my thoughts flowing early. The murmuring blue lights and TV's on the porch with the chairs remind me of a small town area where everybody has their own space and nobody has their space interfered with. The poem has so many subtleties that even if the title did not include the word summer, one would be able to tell that this was a summer poem. When I think of people sitting outside on a porch with sound off on the television off drinking beers to me is just summer in a nutshell.
With so many names being mentioned I felt that it was easy to create a face and a personality. Each of them have lines that you would be able to attribute to somebody else that you know.
I really enjoyed this poem and would recommend it to everybody especially those that are interested in getting their mind off of school and looking forward towards summer a little bit more.

Perry Wertheimer

Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier"

By Sarah C. Portner
I know we didn't read this poem in class, but I had to read it for another class and thought I would post it and discuss it here.

"The Soldier"
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the Eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by
England given,
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under and English heaven.
--1915

I like the romantic appeal Brooke has in this poem. He makes dyeing in war seem almost romantic. That somehow the country will obtain a foreign plot of land by their soldier dyeing there. I think that is an interest concept, that that foreign plot of land will somehow also obtain the ideals of the country of that fallen soldier, in this case England. What I also found ironic about this poem was that even though Brooke was enlisted to serve in the English military to fight in WW1 he died before he ever saw combat. He was never able to see the trenches or the brutality that WW1 turned out to be.

Poem for Underdog

So I was looking through the book of poems and was intrigued by the title of this poem by Matthew Rohrer. Just looking at it, I expected some sort of story with the main character(s) being weak or inferior to others.

The first line really caught my interest because it reminded me of the activity that we did in class where we had to write about a moment where we were better than everybody else. It gave the sense that the narrator saw something god-like that was heart wrenching and dramatic. I also loved the two lines where consecutively he mentions seeing an illicit mushroom's activities that are happening on the moon and also seeing panda's in a darkened park. Especially the part about the mushroom, it makes me envision a drug trip where somebody feels on top of the world and is seeing this magnificent image.

The other part that caught my interest was where he mentions the cashier at Sears who was not wearing a bra. One, I find it hilarious that while somebody would be in a work environment like that, that they wouldn't be dressed fully and that it would visible enough for others to see. It's just like from a movie where this is the girl that everybody wants to see and here this person(I assume to be a male) has seen the beautiful girl and part of her undergarments.

Right after this, the author breaks into a completely different mood and tone where he is talking about a yellow and brown cloud. I believe this reaffirmed my belief that this man is intoxicated with some sort of drugs because I have never heard of a cloud that is anything like either of those colors. I would like to know where the grandparents' house that the reader mentioned is in relation to country/state. I feel this could really enhance the poem and make it even more enjoyable for the reader.

The end of the poem also clarified my prediction about this person being cocky about how he stairs in the mirror sees two pools of humility as the others just dream of getting to look into the mirror.

I enjoyed reading this poem and would recommend it. It is a short, but fun read and has a sense of adventure. In addition it has great imagery and a cool feel of accomplishment.

By: Perry Wertheimer

"Good Poetry" Comment

I agree with a lot of what Donya is saying but I also disagree with some of it too. I’ll start with what I agree with. I agree that many times a “Poet” will publish material that is hardly considered stimulating and thoughtful. Like that guy that Matt said retyped liked a year’s worth of New York Times and published it. To me, that is just a year’s worth of New York Times retyped, not anything special. But then again, if it was published, someone must have bought it, or maybe not.
To find whether a piece of work is “poetry worthy” you have to refer to the definition of poetry. According to Princeton, poetry is “any communication resembling poetry in beauty or the evocation of feeling.” This is a pretty broad and general definition. This means that poetry could be any small piece of information that evokes emotion, and it doesn’t specify who the piece evokes emotion for. Something I have realized that I didn’t realize before taking this class is that poetry is mainly for the author’s satisfaction. Like music, when I am completely content with a song I have created, it doesn’t truly matter what everyone else thinks. I think, to many authors, the same is true. Unfortunately, when supporting yourself solely from works you have created you have to take the consumer into account, if they don’t like it then you don’t eat.
I disagreed that True/False was thoughtless and emotionless. To me, when I read any works of poetry I may not necessarily “get” the big picture but what I might “get” is a slight emotion from a phrase or even a word that I have read. I may find one phrase or word that reminds me of a childhood memory, or feeling I once had. This is what poetry is all about. I refer to the movie “Barfly” as a demonstration of my point. Barfly (if you haven’t seen it) is about a routine bar drunk that is also a part time genius poet. (Not to say this is a true story but it could be.) How can a man who so easily dismisses formal poetry education write so well? I don’t think you have to know about great works of Shakespeare, or Poe to be a great writer. Some people are just born with the ease of words and the ability to communicate emotion to the audience. In conclusion, most poetry is not for everyone, but that’s why there is a lot of it, you have a lot to choose from.

-Jay Woodward

Check out my music and other pirate ships and unicorns at www.jaywoodward.com

My New Neighbor

I found the poem, My New Neighbor by Bob Hicok, to be both unique and strange in more ways than one. The poem starts out with the voice of the poem coming in contact with a nearby cow, where he focuses all of his attention on “the congregation of flies on the eye of the cow.” After reading the first eight to ten lines, the image of a cow’s eye surrounded by hundreds of tiny fly eyeballs staring at the speaker promptly jumped in my head. I could not figure out the significance of the “flies,” possibly Hicok wanted to choose an image/bug/animal that forced the reader to think of eyes and nothing else. And when I think of the words “eyes” and “staring” I feel as though the author was trying to show that all attention was being placed on the main character of the poem. But it may have no significance at all.

In general, this poem has a very captivating use of language. Phrases such as “I want to touch the cow---and the cow seemed to ask to be touched” are very odd and do a great job of adding to the strange nature of the speaker. This strange character seems to be on a personal level with this cow, throwing around assumptions that he knew this cow’s entire life story. He was talking to the animal as if he were a person; calling him “42” as the tag on his ear denoted. Seems like a strange form of personification; considering the cow is a living thing but has few characteristics of a human being. Then he goes on about how the tag will help the cow become cheeseburgers which is the “calling of cows in these parts.”

The poem then takes a very interesting turn. The speaker notices that “42” lives in the vicinity of a Presbyterian Church and orders the other cows around. After realizing this, the speaker assumes 42 must be an atheist. He then tries to discuss metaphysical theory with the cow by explaining that agnosticism is more plausible, considering it is too hard to think of our existence without a beginning. This part of the poem seems to reassure the reader of how “confused/ill/out-there” the speaker actually is. And after this whole explanation, the cow simply looks up at the speaker and blinks (which is quite a funny image to think about). And finally, the poem ends with an interesting use of repetition; the last phrase being, “It is comforting to talk to large animals, whether they listen or not.” The line is then repeated once more, but starts with the phrase “I said”---a phrase usually used because someone, or in this case something, did did not hear the first time. He may have used "I said" because he did not hear a response the first time and said it once more as if the cow had not heard him. Basically he confuses a cows lack of attention with their inability to speak english.

---Albert Sementa