It was a dream

“It was a dream” was a simple poem by Lucille Clifton. Clifton describes her dream, taking an outside view looking at herself and what she has done with her life. There is a sense of anger with her self throughout the whole poem. Clifton starts the poem like this, “in which my greater self rose up before me accusing me of my life with her extra finger whirling in a gyre of rage at what my days had to come to.” From the start, it is revealed that obviously she hasn’t become exactly what she wanted, and her “greater self,” the one who knows she could have reached her dreams if she would have tried harder confronts her defeated self. I picture the same girl but one is business like, looks better off, and then I picture one who looks sloppy and a little lost, and the better off of the two is pointing a finger with rage not understanding why it was so hard to try harder. The second part of the poem is basically her reaction to what her greater self had said to her. “what, i pleaded with her, could i do, oh what could I have done? and she twisted her wild hair and sparkled her wild eyes and screamed as long as i could hear her This. This. This.” For this second part the angry tone is heightened, and the frustration from the greater self has become even greater. Thegreater self is showing that she isn’t going to accept the excuses and that there were so many things she could have done to better her self... there is always something. This poem has that angry tone, but I also think it has that fear in it too because of the word “pleaded,” and the lack of capitalization of “i,” and at the beginning of sentences gives off that sense of being fearful, belittled, or very unsure. If I were to interpret this dream I would think that this just represents the fear in a person of not realizing their dream when there were so many things that can be done to reach those dreams in life. In a couple of ways it reminds me of us seniors and going off to college, it scares a lot of us and the fear of failure and not reaching our dreams is scary and what can we say if we don’t succeed… what could have we done… who wants to admit that theydidn’t try hard enough? At the end of the day, this sounds less like a dream and more like a nightmare, for the realization of the possibility of failure can scare anyone and bring out a lot of anger within oneself.

Introduction to Poetry

“Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins is the perfect description of how I was with poetry in the beginning of the year. Collins describes how he wants people to read a poem and talks about how a poem should be understood. “I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,” meaning he asks readers to really get a sense for the poem, discover what it is about, and search for the meaning. “Or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.” By that I believe Collins is describing how a reader should feel the poem, touch the poem, and be able to feel the feelings the poet wanted to portray. “I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.” Basically, the poet wants the reader to have fun with the poem, enjoy it like they would waterskiing, and not whine at the sight of a poem. Collins describes what I did at the beginning of the year so perfectly, “But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it.” This is crazy how true this statement is because it is like from a young age we have been taught that there is always one meaning to a poem and only one. But when you get older and the poems get more complicated one will find that there are many of ways any given poem can be interpreted. Some still don’t get that, and they are in constant search for the overall meaning, and then that is when poetry becomes no fun and groans fill the room at the sight of it. My Dad put it like this, “A poet is like a man who makes a very nice sports car. He wants you to feel the engine and it’s power, he wants you to enjoy it, and he wants you to discover what the car has to offer. But he doesn’twant you to buy it only to take it home and tear it apart because then you have missed the fun and have missed out on why he really made that car.” A poet does have meaning behind every poem, but it is their own meaning, and when they think of the readers they hope that they can come up with their own meaning and enjoy it rather than suffer through it… beating it with a hose to find out what it really means…

The Hat Lady

“The Hat Lady,” by Linda Pastan, was a sad poem that took the reader through the death of a cancer patient with the use of hats. The “hat lady” possibly represents a doctor or a care giver for this lady who has cancer. She comes and “measures” for the mother’s hat, and it represents the docter measuring her health and how long the patient has left. “Last year when the chemicals took my mother’s hair, she wrapped a towel around her head. And the Hat Lady came, a bracelet of needles on each arm, and led her to a place where my father and grandfather waited, (…)” This is the part where the doctor or care giver takes the “needles and pins,” and gives the patient the drugs to help her slip peacfully into a different place and pass a way. When it says, “led her to a place,” I ultimatly think that references the care giver helping the cancer patient pass over to heaven. This poem takes hats and I don’t really know how else to describe it, but it makes them show death in a way? The first stanza helps describe my thinking, “In a childhoodof hats— my uncles in homburgs and derbies, Fred Astaire in high black silk, the yarmulke my grandfather wore like the palm of a hand cradling the back of his head— only my father went hatless, even in winter.” In this stanza I believe the hats represent the many that the poet knows who have had cancer and it has taken their life. She says that her father went hatless… so I can only conclude that he didn’t ever have cancer, but still is no longer with her because her mother meets her father again in heaven in the last stanza. At the end of the day, this poem was sad, yet it was very interesting; it really makes the reader think about cancer and how it affects many people in the world.

Song of the Powers

“Song of the Powers” by David Mason was an interesting poem that left a the reader with a simple moral or lesson. Mason’s poem is basically a simple description if rock paper sissors. He uses rock, paper, and scissors to represent those who hold power. Mason puts it like this, “As stone crushes scissors, as paper snuffs stone and scissors cut paper, all end alone.” This basically shows how those with power are in a fight against each other for more power, but in the end, however powerful one may be, they are now all alone. I think one of the strongest messages this leaves, is that power isn’t a very good thing and it should be shared, and maybe the best power is the power of unity and the power to refrain from greed and the need for all power. Mason makes it clear that there is that fight for power by the use of “mine” to begin the first three stanzas. Each stanza changes to the different object (rock, paper, scissors), but always starts with mine and then continues by describing the destruction of the other objects. An example of the greed and need for power looks like this, “Mine, said the stone, mine is the hour. I crush the scissors, such is my power. Stronger than wishes, my power, alone.” With any kind of power that is obtained there is always that want for more, and like the poem, “they all end alone.” At the end of the day, it is easier to share power than fight for only one to hold that power, for they will just end up alone and probably powerless when it is all said and done…