is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully

as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

If you didn’t see the six-legged dog,

It doesn’t matter.

We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.

As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly

And thought of other things.

Like, what a cold, dark night

To be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick

And the dog went after it

On four legs, the other two flapping behind,

Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man

Who kept kissing her neck.

The dog got the stick and looked back at us.

And that was the whole show.

BEHOLD an emblem of our human mind

Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home,

Yet, like to eddying balls of foam

Within this whirlpool, they each other chase

Round and round, and neither find

An outlet nor a resting-place!

Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,

Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.

In this poem, Wordsworth is describing the similarity between the  flecks of foam caught in a whirlpool of a stream and the stressful thoughts of an anxious and troubled mind. It is hard to calm the mind of a nervous and intensely anxious person. His mind is “crowded with thoughts” which constantly keep spinning around without rest or escape like the bubbles of foam in the mountain stream. They are “thoughts that need a settled home.”  This reminds me of  birds or leaves that fly in the wind in all directions, without a constructive goal or destination. Those thoughts need to be “settled,” to be brought “home” where they may find repose and peace.Wordsworth concludes the poem by remarking that the only solution to this problem is divine help:”Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.” ”Divine help,” could be the help of nature. The  troubled and  anxious mind of a stressed out person would find peace and rest only when it experiences and spends time with nature.

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week
while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?“

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

This poem tells a sad story, of course with just a quick read-through. A father beats up his wife and child and they try to be happy about the situation. Perhaps the most important character in this poem is the mother. A mother is supposed to  take care of her children, to calm them down, to make them feel safe.  We see that the mother tries to let the boy feel safe, but obviously he doesn’t. He sees right through her smiles and this is exactly the opposite of what a little boy should experience.  As for the fish comparison, they are simple creatures that  swim around and around aimlessly, just as the boy and his mother are beaten day after day without doing anything to make the situation better. We know that the fish dont feel the pain, anxiousness, worry or fear like the mother and son; even if they do, they have extremely short term memories.  But the boy does feel these emotions and must keep “swimming” and be “trapped in a bowl” while the mother pretends nothing is wrong.  A goldfish cannot help that it has a five-second memory, is trapped in a fishbowl until it dies, and is then forgotten as it is flushed down the toilet or fed to the cat. Maybe Bukowski wrote this poem to say that people stuck in domestic abuse can do something about their situation before they die (either figuratively or literally).  They must realize and face the situation before they are fed to the cat while onlookers force a smile, knowing they are in the same situation.

The fish can’t escape the bowl or leave it, it is trapped just below the the water’s surface.  The mother and son are trapped under the aggression of the father.

My father used to say,
“Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow’s grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat –
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth –
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”
Nor was he insincere in saying, “`Make my house your inn’.”
Inns are not residences.

When I first read this poem, I thought it was ironic that it is titled “Silence” because the whole poem is a quote.  Then I realized that is exactly why it is titled that way.  By quoting her father for most of the poem, Moore is in fact being silent. It seems like this poem is about Moore being asked to leave her own home, or her father’s home.  Right from the first line, the father says “Superior people never make long visits…” He continues to say that people should be “self-reliant” and show “restraint”.  At last the poem ends with the father being sincere in saying “my house your inn” and the narrator knowing that “Inns are not residences.”  This poem certainly displays Moore’s obedient relationship to her father.  Moore is silent through almost the entire poem and only speaks to confirm what her father has said.  Maybe Moore’s father is asking her to leave and be independent.  The poem does not have a happy or encouraging mood, however.  In fact, the mood is slightly depressing and saddening. It definitely feels like a real-life experience, especially because of the quotes.  We often see quotes and relate them to actual words people have said.  The poem could be a realization that the narrator is no longer wanted or welcomed and must unwillingly leave. Words cannot help, only the restraint of words.

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

When I think of a field, I think of wide open space, grass, fresh air, silence.  It is natural. By placing a jar in this situation, the scene changes.  The jar is a completely foreign object in the field.  The jar is man-made and disrupts the natural state of the field.  The plants continue to grow, but are different now, “no longer wild”.  And they grow around the jar, which further suggests how out-of-place it is.  It is like how cities are built and industries can take over a previously natural place.  The city becomes more important than the land and it changes the place forever.  That field will never the same.

Some winters, taking leave,

Deal us a last, hard blow,

Salting the ground like Carthage

Before they will go.

But the bright, milling snow

Which throngs the air today:

It is a way of leaving

So as to stay.

The light flakes do not weigh

The willows down, but sift

Through the white catkins, loose

As petal-drift

Or in an up-draft lift

And glitter at a height,

Dazzling as summer’s leaf-stir

Chinked with light.

This storm, if I am right,

Will not be wholly over

Till green fields, here and there,

Turn white with clover,

And through chill air the puffs of milkweed hover.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

This poem describes a mistress, who is less than perfect.  She is compared to beauty of nature (snow, ground etc.), but she of course  is only  human.  Even though the mistress was not the most beautiful person,  Shakespeare loved her nontheless. At first, the pure honesty in this poem seems admirable, it made me wonder why he was so honest.  Compared to the other sonnets on the list, this one seemed to be very straight forward and easy to understand.  Because Shakespeare’s words often have double meaning,  I wonder what made him write this sonnet as he did.  Is this sonnet talking about something other than the obvious? Is there a hidden meaning in it? Or is this exactly what it says?

A Piece of the Storm

For Sharon Horvath

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed.
That’s all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
“It’s time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.”

This poem made me think of many different things.  When I first read it, I thought that Strand was saying that it is important to recognize the smallest, quickest things in life, because they are important and can teach us a lot.  For example, looking at the “life” of a snowflake, we see that the most beautiful, intricate piece of nature is gone almost instantaneously. This poem also made me think about how little things and decisions can affect us so much. A decision as simple as choosing to sit by an open window let this character be part of a huge storm.  If the character had decided to sit away from that area, this poem may never have worked.  Lastly, I thought of how important one little snowflake is in the storm.  The huge storm is really just made up of these tiny, quick-lived icy rain.  Without the individual pieces, the whole would not work.  And connecting that with the idea that someone somewhere might experience this same moment also shows that people are really connected, even by something so distant as experiencing a snowstorm.