Poetry

In school I did not like poetry. This summer I have come to enjoy poetry much better. This have been a great learning experience for me. What's next?

Robert Lowell

I read "The Old Flame". The poem were very easy to understand. The poem told of returning to the home where a man and his wife lived. It describes how the house looked when they lived their and how the house looks with new landlord. From doing some research I read Lowell addressed this poem to his first wife. This poem was kind a like a love poem. I liked the poem very much.

Elizabeth Bishop

The poem I enjoyed the most was The Fish. Since I like to fish, I could relate to fishing and catching fish like Bishop described. In the poem the fisherman catches a tremendous fish but decided to let it go. A good poem.

Langston Hughes

I enjoyed all the poems I read. One of the many poems I liked was "Mother to Son." This is a very inspiring poem. As Hughes write, life will never be easy, it is hard. But even in the rough times, keep on trying and do not give up. This is a wonderful poem. I am going to use it with my youth at church. Hughes poems are simple and straight to the point. He is a wonderful poet.

Hart Crane

The only poem I read of Hart Crane's poetry was "My Grandmother's Love Letters." The poem tells of a boy finding his grandmother's love letters tucked in a corner of the attic and deciding whether to read them.

T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot poems were long . I did read Prelude. In this poem, Eliot is describing the different types of the day: 6:00 pm. before dark, morning because everyone is going to coffee stands, early afternoon and evening between 4:00-6:00 p.m. Eliot is describing living in an urban city.

Marianne Moore

I had never heard of Marianne Moore. She writes in an unusual way. I did read The Grave. In The Grave she is writing about observing a man looking at the sea. In the poem it seems that eveyone has the same right to look at the sea. It was a OK poem.

Robert Frost - After Apple -Picking

Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets. In the poem After Apple -Picking
After a day’s work, the person is tired of picking apples. He is getting sleepy and after working hard at picking apples he thinks of how he will dream about apples.
He is trying to be careful not to drop any apples; because if he does the apples will bruise. Bruised apples in After Apple -Picking are not any good except to make cider.

He compares worthless apples and dropping things to having bad dreams or having a good night’s sleep. He wonders if it will be a long, deep sleep, like a woodchuck who hibernates in the winter or just a normal sleep.

Emily Dickinson

I read several of Emily Dickinson's poems since they were short. I found her poetry drepressing. Dickinson often wrote about issues of death, faith, and immorality, but with nature as part of the theme. In reading Poem #324 Some keep the Sabbath goin to Church... In this poem Dickinson wrote instead of going to church on Sunday, she stayed at home by herself enjoying nature alone.

Walt Whitman There Was a Child Went Forth

After reading, There Was a Child Went Forth, I think Whitman was writing about nature, then a school, his parents, the streets, the houses and the nature again. Because of that, I think that he is talking about how a child grew up which he compared to nature. First he was a baby all cool and calm. He is living in the country with nature ( flowers) all around him. The he grew up moves from the country to the city and started to going to school. He encounters many changes along the way. Disciplined for his actions by his parents, then he grew up and get his own house, then he retires and is cool and clam again with nature.

I also noticed in, There Was a Child Went Forth, there was a balance in his poem: mother/father, country/city, and childhood/adulthood.

Considering I am not a fan of poetry, this poem was pretty easy to understand.

Walt Whitman - Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is a poem about a man taking the ferry home from Manhattan at the end of a working day to Brooklyn . Whitman begins Crossing Brooklyn Ferry about although people are very different, we all look at the same tides and currents of the water. He also writes about future generations seeing the same things that he and the current people on the ferry are seeing.

I enjoyed Crossing Brooklyn Ferry very much, since I just returned from New York. I could relate to the sights and sounds in the poem, since had just visted New York even thought the poem was written in the 1800's.