For Thursday, we'll be reading Yusef Komunyakaa, Galway Kinnell, and Maxine Kumin.
As you read these poems, choose a poem from all three groups that is your favorite. Why do you like this poem? What about it stands out to you? Be as specific as you can be in your answer. Use examples from the poem if it helps.
If you cannot pick one favorite, choose 2. Read each of them aloud and see if one stands out more than the other.
If you hate all of these poems, choose a favorite anyway. Why is it the best of the worst?
(Remember, 150-200 words!)
ALSO!! I fixed the problem with anonymous commenting. If you comment anonymously, please figure out a way to identify yourself so that you get credit for your post.
-SW
While all of the poems are very interesting, I think that my favorite out of all of them is Kinnell's "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps". I have to admit that I had to read it twice to understand what was fully going on, but once I got it, it really pulled me in with its language. The most intriguing portion of language is the first three lines. The fact that "talking with any reasonably sober Irishiman" is placed with snoring "like a bullhorn" is pretty clever, and helps place in my imagination that it must be the rowdiest conversation one could have. I also enjoy the fact that the title is a part of the poem, and not just the title.
ReplyDeleteI read all of the poems, and all of them are very interesting. I feel my favorite poem is Yusef Komunyakaa's "Blackberries". This poetry was very difficult, and I read it again over and over again to catch a meaning. But I was able to almost understand what the writer wanted to say when I understood a meaning.
ReplyDeleteI feel my interesting sentense is that " The big blue car made me sweat". It was a very interesting matter for me to have expressed blackberry by the big blue car and metaphor expression. I think that I submit over-optimism itself and the feeling of the writer of blackberry to a word called "sweat".
The title was very simple, but the contents were very interesting.
There is not familiarity, and poetry is a more difficult sentence, but I still try it hard and want to read it for me.
SOSUKE NAKANO
I chose a peculiarly morbid poem, Ode to the Maggot by Yusef Jomunyakaa. Maybe you guys will think this strange, but I have always admired the equaling powers of death. After all the seemingly endless fighting and buying we have to endure in life death always has the final say, devouring any notion of free will and control we toss around in our brains before we go to sleep. All that man has done in ensuring law and order cannot stop the endless gnawing of that which destroys man and his mortal, fleeting deeds. Both beggar and Caesar are brought down by its precision. It is only a natural thing done in a world mandated by the laws of math and reason. Mr. Jomunyakaa shares this view using death’s middle man, the disgusting maggot that will eat all of our eyes one day (muhahaha). The last line is what really made me like this poem; “Little Masters of earth, no one gets to heaven Without going through you first”. No truer words were written.
ReplyDeleteThis is Cal Garbe by the way.
ReplyDeleteAs original as it may be, I have to choose the same poem Christy did.
Ode to Maggots by Yusef Komunyaka is a great poem.
The way Komunyakaa describes the maggots gives it such a haunting feel. The first line of the poem where he introduces them as “Brother of the blowfly & godhead, you work magic,” really set the tone up for the whole poem. Komunyakaa is almost praising and in awe of these disgusting creatures. Which really gives a whole perspective on maggots.
From there the line that stuck out to me the most was “Jesus Christ, you’re merciless.” This exclamation of awe in the destruction of maggots really brought the poem up a notch for me. To straight up tell the maggots they are merciless is a different way to describe it. Komunyakaa doesn’t try to beat around the bush; he just tells the maggots very passionately how cruel they are.
And the way the poem closes gives it even more of a gloomy feeling. It is a disturbing feeling to think that no matter how I leave this world, and no matter where I am going next, I have to get through flesh eating maggots first.
My favorite poem was Thanks by Yusef Komunyakaa. I was intrigued by the way he phrased each sentence, almost tossing it out but at the same time expressing reverence in his thanks. I particularly enjoyed his line about the dud grenade: "And, thanks for the dud hand grenade tossed at my feet outside Chu Lai. I'm still falling through its silence." The way he phrased the line was beautiful.
ReplyDeleteSimple phrases just seemed to make the poem more and more beautiful such as: "...played some deadly game for blind gods" and "deflecting the richocet against that anarchy of black." I enjoyed the language in all of Yusef Komunyakaa's poems and the visual images he created.
As a side note, I really like the line from his poem Tu Do Street.
"We have played Judas where only machine-gun fire brings us together."
All in all however, Thanks is definitely my favorite of Mr. Komunyakaa’s poems.
My favorite poem was Thrall by Caroline Kizer.It took me awhile to choose between the poems but Thrall stuck out to me.I love how in the second line she lists her father in with the furnishings like he has just been sitting there so long he has just blended in with the surroundings.
ReplyDeleteThe following stanzas she tells us how he won't love her until she is older basically.It's like the thought of a child just annoys him and he can't love her.Before flipping the page it said something about reading "La Belle Dame sans Merci" which means "The Beautiful Lady Without Pity" which makes a little more sense.
The last two lines are a bit more discrete. “You wait for his eyes to close at last / So you may write this poem. “ It just kind of drifts off there.What I thought she was implying was that her father was older which would explain why she would give him the medicine and she was just waiting for him to fall asleep.
Thrall is a great title for this poem because it means mentally enslaved. And at the end she feels that she must wait for him to fall asleep to write this poem. And throughout the poem the readers know she is being enslaved in words and actions.
It’s overall an interesting poem about this girl who is nothing but a nuisance to her father at first but in the middle she begins to become someone he can love and boast about.
Hey everyone. This is Kate. I have to say my favorite poem is "Thanks" by Yusef Komunyakaa. God knows I'm not very relgious or even close but this poem stuck out to me as "Is this how every soldier feels when he gets home and looks back at all the 'close calls'he experienced during war?" I love how he relates every near death event with something beautiful like "Thanks for the vague white flower that pointed to the gleaming metal..." The last line seemed a bit sacrilegious to me but that made it all the better when he says "I know something stood among those lost trees and moved only when I moved" he still conveyed that it could have been the christian God but he didnt seem 100% set on it so therefore it could relate to almost all relgions. This poem gave me a peaceful eerie feeling though, especially reading it outloud it seemed as if he found peace after war which I would imagine is impossibe or next to impossible after experiencing and participating in war.
ReplyDeleteHis language and ties of good and evil through it just made it so amazing. "The tree between me and the sniper's bullet" "Some voice always followed" "monarch ... tied to a farmer's gate" etc. were all brillantly played up that you can actually see what hes remembering and what he experienced.
Initially, I would have chosen the "Ode to the Maggot" because I think sometimes we forget how important and prevalent the smallest of insects are in our lives. BUT now I really like Maxine Kumin's "Woodchucks". I like the imagery "and then took over the vegetable patch nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots." I also like when authors can convey emotions. She is able to make me feel sorry for the destructive animals even though the speaker doesn’t feel remorse for shooting “the littlest woodchuck’s face” or “another baby next.” I’m glad she explains the speaker’s reason for not feeling bad taking a pro-active step in removing the unwanted animals: she’s “a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace/ puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing”. And the last 2 lines were a strong image-bearer “If only they’d all consented to die unseen/ gassed underground the quiet Nazi way”… as if the animals chose not to die and the people torched in the concentration camps did have a choice. This is a very sharp ending.
ReplyDeleteHey this is Blake, My favorite poem had to be Ode To The Maggot by Yusef Komunyakaa. The main reason i enjoyed this poem is because it seems incredibly real, and extremely brave. I feel as if the poem praises the power of maggots in one line, making it seem like this very positive, strong thing and in another uses vulgar language to bring it back down. My favorite line in the poem is "no one gets to heaven without going through you first." I had not previously thought about maggots like this, so this poem was very mind opening to me. I no longer seem them as this disgusting creature. I see them as this powerful, almighty force that all will succumb to, just as one succumbs to death.
ReplyDeleteThis is Nathan! I'd have to say I have two favorites: "Blackberries" by Yusef Komunyakaa, and "Blackberry Eating" by Galway Kinnell. I think I'm a sucker for poems about blackberries because I love them, and have very clear memories about blackberries.
ReplyDeleteNow, Yusef's poem, in my opinion, focuses on imagery with the use of colors and intense details. I read the first stanza over and over again: it's simply beautiful. I realize at the end that the narrator intends to sell his collected berries, and I find it extremely normal that he doesn't feel his hurting fingers until he's away from the blackberry bush(es). Poems like these make me feel young again.
Indeed, Galway's poem about blackberries takes a different approach. With lines like, "...a penalty/they earn for knowing the black art/of blackberry making..." and "...icy, black language..." I almost felt a sense of darkness in Galway's writing. I thought it interesting that Galway would compare blackberries on his tongue to words on his tongue. This was definitely interesting, but an amazing poem, nonetheless.
The End