My Wicked Wicked Ways by Sandra Cisneros

My Wicked Wicked Ways by Sandra Cisneros

This is my father.

See? He is young.

He looks like Errol Flynn.

He is wearing a hat

that tips over one eye,

a suit that fits him good,

and baggy pants.

He is also wearing

those awful shoes,

the two-toned ones

my mother hates.

Here is my mother.

She is not crying.

She cannot look into the lens

because the sun is bright.

The woman,

the one my father knows,

is not here.

She does not come till later.

My mother will get very mad.

Her face will turn red

and she will throw one shoe.

My father will say nothing.

After a while everyone

will forget it.

Years and years will pass.

My mother will stop mentioning it.

This is me she is carrying.

I am a baby.

She does not know

I will turn out bad.

Although I can't really follow this poem, the writing style is very interesting. The short lines and phrases made up of poor grammar are different from a lot of the less modern poetry I blogged about.

Life is Fine by Langston Hughes

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

Though this poem is a bit annoying on many accounts, its optimism is refreshing. Most of the poems I've written about were very pessimistic.

In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

   The abstractness of this poem is pretty astounding. It is only two lines long, yet it is considered a classic by many. 

Something this vague is open to so many interpretations that no one interpretation can be considered correct. 

It is pretty impactful, however, just to think about it.

I, Too, Sing America by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

In this poem, Hughes strongly displays his black pride. When this poem was written (1945), it was a very influential statement in a still very segregated country.

And the Days are Not Full Enough by Ezra Pound

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass


Pound's poem is a reflection of the Lost Generation that he belonged to. It shows he general dissatisfaction with the way people were living their lives.

The Old Fools by Philip Larkin

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
   Why aren't they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
   How can they ignore it?
 
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
   This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
   We shall find out.


Another depressing poem by Larkin, this one about the elderly and death.
Larkin's poetry is very disturbing, but its so interesting because it is so strange.

Morning at the Window by T.S. Eliot

HEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids

Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air

Another poem that I can't really say I understand. What Eliot is trying to say is beyond me.

Repeat that, Repeat by G.M. Hopkins

REPEAT that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound. This concise description of an outdoor scene seems pretty generic amongst poets. It must be required of every poet to write something like this.

Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria by Langston Hughes

Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:

"All the luxuries of private home. . . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)

ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers--
sleepers in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a
long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:

GUMBO CREOLE
CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
WATERCRESS SALAD
PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons

with clean white fingers
because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends

and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get
warm, anyway. You've got nothing else to do.

The message Hughes is trying to send here is pretty clear. He is obviously disgusted with the luxurious way the rich lived in his time while so many were poor and hungry.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 1

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. This is another poem that I can't really say I understand. When a poem is written like this, it's hard to view it as anything other than a ramble. Not only are there words involved that I've never seen before, but it's hard to follow the poem from one line to the next.

This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

This poem is very strange. It is probably the most pessimistic thing I have ever laid eyes on. Larkin is essentially calling for the end of the human race. He says parents hand misery on to their children, and the only solution to this problem is to not have children yourself.

WE'LL GO NO MORE A-ROVING by Lord Byron

O, we'll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself have a rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a-roving

By the light of the moon.

It's poems like this that make me hate poetry. The author of this poem doesn't even know what he's talking about, let alone me. I guess if you can throw a couple of rhymes together you're considered a good poet.

Waterwings by Cathy Song

Waterwings

BY CATHY SONG

The mornings are his,

blue and white

like the tablecloth at breakfast.

He’s happy in the house,

a sweep of the spoon

brings the birds under his chair.

He sings and the dishes disappear.

Or holding a crayon like a candle,

he draws a circle.

It is his hundredth dragonfly.

Calling for more paper,

this one is red-winged

and like the others,

he wills it to fly, simply

by the unformed curve of his signature.

Waterwings he calls them,

the floats I strap to his arms.

I wear an apron of concern,

sweep the morning of birds.

To the water he returns,

plunging where it’s cold,

moving and squealing into sunlight.

The water from here seems flecked with gold.

I watch the circles

his small body makes

fan and ripple,

disperse like an echo

into the sum of water, light and air.

His imprint on the water

has but a brief lifespan,

the flicker of a dragonfly’s delicate wing.

This is sadness, I tell myself,

the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind,

because he will not remember

that he and beauty were aligned,

skimming across the water, nearly airborne,

on his first solo flight.

I’ll write “how he could not

contain his delight.”

At the other end,

in another time frame,

he waits for me—

having already outdistanced this body,

the one that slipped from me like a fish,

floating, free of itself.

This poem by Cathy Song is pretty sad, as it seems she is talking about her child who is growing up and learning to swim by himself. She compares him to a dragonfly due to the ripples he makes in the water. She is afraid of losing him.

On His Blindness by John Milton

• ON HIS BLINDNESS

  by: John Milton (1608-1674)

  HEN I consider how my light is spent

  Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

  And that one talent which is death to hide,

  Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

  To serve therewith my Maker, and present

  My true account, lest He returning chide,

  'Doth God exact day labor, light denied?'

  I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent

  That murmur soon replies, 'God doth not need

  Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best

  Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

  Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,

  And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

  They also serve who only stand and wait.'

• 
  
  While I do see that this poem is, at least to some degree, about God, I don't see exactly where Milton is going with this.

O Captain, My Captain by Walt Whitman

Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up -- for you the flag is flung -- for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths -- for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

This poem, which is one of the most famous American poems ever written, brings to life the bittersweetness the narrator must deal with after he has lost his captain on his way to triumph at battle.

Dust of Snow

Dust of Snow

The way a crow

shook down on me

the dust of snow

from a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

This is interesting because he describes how something as small as getting snow kicked onto him could save part of his day. Having said this, I'm done with Robert Frost's nature poems.

Plowmen

Plowmen

A plow, they say, to plow the snow.
They cannot mean to plant it, no--
Unless in bitterness to mock
At having cultivated rock.

I really just have no clue what this is talking about.

The Cow in Apple-Time

THE COW IN APPLE-TIME

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

I've come to the conclusion that 90% of Robert Frost poems just describe the weather at the time he wrote it. Also, the last line of this poem is a bit too graphic.

A Time to Talk

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, 'What is it?'
No, not as there is a time talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

This poem doesn't seem very meaningful to me. He is just talking about what he does when his friend stops by.

The Oven Bird

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
he says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

The meaning of this poem really just went over my head, if there was one in the first place. Not a fan.

Stars by Robert Frost

Stars

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

Frost does a good job of describing the stars and personifying them. The emotions he describes the stars experiencing is an interesting take on stars.

Now Close the Windows

Now Close the Windows

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
I will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.

This poem is interesting because it talks about how he feels removed watching an outdoors scene. I know the feeling he's describing, which is one of safety, watching the turmoil of the outside world from indoors.

In Neglect

In Neglect

They leave us so to the way we took,
As two in whom them were proved mistaken,
That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
With michievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

This poem confuses me. Because it is so short, I can't get a good grip on what it means, especially because it is so vague

A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I've forgotten--
If I ever read it.


Even in such a short poem, Frost does an incredible job of using figurative language, not only to describe the patch of snow, but also to make it into a metaphor of a newspaper. The poem ends on a sad note as Frost mentions things he's forgotten.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


This poem is really interesting to me because Frost is reflecting on how he chose his life path and whether or not he believes the decision benefit him. He says that he took the road less traveled by and "that has made all the difference." My peers and I are nearing the points in our lives that we will have to make a similar decision, and many of us may choose to break from the herd and take the "road not taken."