Marge Piercy
The Secretary Chant
In this poem I see a broken down secretary who feels like her life has wasted away. She relates her body parts (breasts, feet, head, and navel) to office supplies and equipment. She relates her body to such things to show how she feels that they are meaningless. The author even adds in little annoying sounds to show the reader how overrun the woman is. You can tell that she is stressed and over her life because of statements like; “My head is a badly organized file,” “swollen, heavy, and rectangular,” and “... because I wonce was a woman.” Overall, I get the impression that this lady had much more enthusiasm about her life when she was younger. The office days have kooked her up much too far and it’s obvious she needs out. This is one reason I would never have an office job. I would feel a heavy burden similar to the author. I feel as if the author is a person, similar to any of us, that found a career but didn’t quite seem to come out as what they were looking for. This story reinforces your motivation to go out and chase your dreams. Find the job you really want and don’t end up miserable in a box all day like this lady.
Robert Morgan
Mountain Graveyard
This poem gives you a clear view on how simple it can be to write poet. The author writes so little, but the harmony of the words and style takes you deep into the work, discovering things underlying what’s on the paper. Morgan uses a very unique style. Morgan has been known to use anagrams in his poems, which makes them even more interesting. In Mountain Graveyard I feel like Morgan is describing what he see and also what he feels. He obviously sees objects such as “stone” and “cedars” but he is thinking about things like “tales” and “hated.” I feel like the author was thinking things like; “I wonder what were some of the tales of this guy’s life?” or “I bet everyone hated him.” This could very well be the narrator’s family and the views that he has on all of them. It’s wild how he creates such deep thinking with just the simple use of single words. Nonetheless, he goes and turns the words around to form something else meaningful within the story. This method seems as if it would be quite the task and would take a lot of time. Morgan has done a great job here expressing his feelings in such a unique way.
Regina Barreca
Nighttime Fires
The first thing I thought of after reading this poem was Faulkner’s Barn Burning. I kind of felt like the same scenario was possibly happening (that the father was starting the fires). I also, just see the father as being a dark type of guy, but I feel like he has taken it too far. I feel like there would be no need to wake up the whole family to see a fire but he felt some sort of satisfaction from it. The child could see in he father’s eyes. To me, if seems as if he was jealous of the rich people in his community because she states that if it “were a Cadillac or any car in a curved driveway, my father would smile.” Usually people with curved driveways had big houses and sometimes gates. I just feel like the darkness or “brittle” part of his heart came out at some point of his life (the fires) and it oddly satisfied him. Why he ties in the family too? We will never know.
Billy Collins
Introduction to Poetry
I feel like Collins is a schoolteacher who has a tough time teaching poetry to student, simply because it’s a hard subject to teach. I found this poem very funny. He uses very clever metaphors to show what he wants his students to do with the poetry but they just refuse. The first three-fourths of the story Collins explains how he wants them to dig into the poems and how he want them to think critically about the poems to find out what they mean. Then he sums it up by explaining how the kids basically are lazy, and just want the answers given to them. The “beat” the poem because they simply don’t even give it a chance.
David R. Slavitt
Titanic
I thought it was interesting that someone could successfully write a poem about having an enjoyable death. Instead of having a car wreck or cancer, the author makes sinking down on the Titanic seem likeable. He really captures your attention when he asks a question in the first line because it grabs you and forces you to go further. I really like the idea behind this poem and I think it turned out very successfully.
