Berryman

John Berryman’s 29

Berryman had a way to twist and turn his writings to make them very interesting. In his 29, Berryman seems to show a very dark picture of life. The thing that was so heavy on Henry’s heart to me was the new starts he was trying to have but seemed to never get. The mention of the, “grave Sienese face,” tells me it is a very sullen time. He mentions the woman’s body is hacked up, but no body is missing, shows me that someone has died and they were not even missed. How powerfully sad this is.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

of DeWitt on his way to Lincoln Cemetery

This was something I found on Youtube that I liked, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBHBabdNsas

I loved the feeling that was put into this poem. I could feel what the writer was saying and when I listened to it read with the paintings and art work, it helped me really get into it. No matter what he did or where he went, he was still, “a plain black boy.”

McKay

Claude McKay

The Negro’s Tragedy was published and you can not help but think of WWII. Those were very turbulent times for many people. The blacks were not given their rights and were still treated as second rate citizens. In this poem, “Only a thorn-crowned Negro and no white man can penetrate into the Negro’s ken,” made me think about Jesus because of the “thorn-crowned Negro.” The mention of the “shroud of night,” again made me think of Jesus. I believe McKay was saying at the end of the poem that our country was going to other countries to help the oppressed people but here in the United States we were overlooking our own. I thought it was a great poem, it will be one I will use one day when I start teaching.

William Carlos Williams

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime by William Carlos Williams

This poem made me think about a widow’s life. This widow had been married thirty-five years and seemed not to know what to do. I see a lot of despair. “Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year,” new grass is green and lush and should be enjoyed but with the widow she does not feel the softness of the lush grass but instead feels cold and indifferent. She describes the trees that through any other’s eyes would be beautiful but I just don’t think she can feel the beauty anymore since she has lost her husband. She goes on to say,”...but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting,” she seems not to want to see the beautiful flowers. The widow’s son tells her about the “trees of white flowers,” that at the edge of the heavy woods. Could the heavy woods be the grief that she has felt and the, “trees of white flowers,” would be the healing after the pain? I am thinking he wants her to heal so she can learn to enjoy life again.

Lowell

Robert Lowell, wow, what a writer! I really am partial to Lowell because of his love of history and his love of preserving it. My favorite of his writings is, For the Union Dead. I had to re-read my history to understand the depth of this poem. Lowell had a connection to this poem he wrote because of one of his ancestors had fought in the Civil War at the same time Colonel Shaw was serving with his Black Regiment. I was amazed at how Lowell felt about the “old South Boston Aquarium.” The whole section was sentimental to him, the aquarium and the park where the bronze relief of Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment. When they torn down the aquarium it was as if they were taking apart of Lowell’s history away. It just seemed so sad to read, For the Union Dead, Lowell was watching the aquarium being destroyed and bulldozed away and the bronze relief of Colonel Shaw was propped up with a stick, this was hard for him.

Lowell was called the “Father of Confessional Poetry,” because he was tired of the same old, same old poetry and called poetry, “raw and cooked,” he met Allen Ginsberg one time while he was in California. Ginsberg had opened up a whole new world of poetry to young people several years before. Lowell took the lead to form a new type of poetry along with Sylivia Platt, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman. What a group they were. Lowell inspired them to become great poets.

Ashbery

When reading They Dream Only of America, I felt like John Ashbery was talking about wanting the freedom to be himself in public. I could be off on this one but I think he was talking about people in America that were homosexual and how he wanted the curtain to open so they could be free to be who they really were. Now, why did I think it was about the homosexual movement? Well, several things in his poem stood out to me, one being, “And hiding from darkness in barns, they can be grown ups now,” and another one was, “The lake a lilac cube.” I looked at these two sentences at someone who had to hide who they were and they had the feeling of being boxed in with no way out. The last two sentences, “For our liberation, except wait in the horror of it,” and “And I am lost without you,” here I think he is saying how he wanted to be free to tell the world who he was but was afraid of what would happen to people if they did. The last sentence I think was quite clear, he was lost with out being with his friend.

They Feed They Lion

I came across this from http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/transcripts/2003/feb/030211.sillman.html

Mr. PHILIP LEVINE (Poet): There's no reason why a great poem can't be political, absolutely political.

SILLMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Levine says by its very nature, great art is political.

Mr. LEVINE: I don't think a great poem is likely to be a poem that urges you to vote for your state senator, but insofar as you champion, for example, the lives of trees and the purity of the air and water, you've already entered a political arena. It's almost impossible not to write a poem that is political if you are a person who loves.

SILLMAN: Thirty-five years ago, Levine often read his work at rallies against the Vietnam War, specifically this poem about what he says was the disproportionate number of young black men sent to die in Vietnam.

Mr. LEVINE: "They Feed They Lion." `Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, out of black bean and wet slate bread, out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, out of grass, out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow. Out of the gray hills of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties, mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps, out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch, They Lion grow.'

I read that 5000 anti-war poets were getting together the next day to protest against the war in Iraq. I did not see this as a political type poem dealing with war but with racism.