November

/ Madison Ave. / 9-11 || Peter Balakian || * Just by looking at the title I could tell that the poem would be set in New York City 1, 2011 || In San Francisco || Randall Mann || * I thought it was interesting how the speaker uses the word "queer" in the first line to describe the situation he or she is about to lay out in the poem as strange, but then later in line 8 on uses the same word, "queer", to express his or her own homosexuality. In fact, the speaker uses the weird "queer" in every single stanza, every stanza except the first using the word to describe a homosexual. Is the speaker trying to say something about himself? Perhaps he or she is trying to make somewhat of a statement on society's view of homosexuals? 2, 2011 || / Summer '68 || Peter Balakian || * While reading this poem, I pictured the speaker sitting alone in a darkened back room of a library, perusing old Emily Dickinson poems 3, 2011 || 7, 2011 || 7, 2011 || 13, 2011 || 17, 2011 || //An impressive collection with comprehensive commentary. Seems like you are having fun as well.// ||  ||
 * || Title || Author || Comments || Date ||
 * 58 || Warhol
 * Also inferred from the title, the poem outlines the speaker's experience in New York on 9/11
 * However, the speaker does not focus on the sight of the towers falling - the speaker chooses to describe the melting face of Marilyn Monroe, a picture of whom the speaker was standing in front of at the time of the event
 * I thought the way the speaker described the melting Monroe was really interesting - she is one of the most iconic symbols of Hollywood. In a way she is a symbol of America as a whole, and her melting face could be representative of America falling apart after 9/11 || November
 * 59 || The Mortician
 * It was clever how the speaker turned the the common expression "why cry over spilled milk" into a pun that helps to emphasize the apathy shown by many toward Harvey Milk's murder.
 * In the poem, the speaker is presenting a horrible situation from the eyes of a mortician - politician Dan White had shot both the mayor of San Francisco and Harvey Milk, and had even been praised by some by giving the world "one less queer". || November
 * 60 || Reading Dickinson
 * The speaker seems very much engrossed in Dickinson's poetry throughout the course of the poem, so much so that the words of Dickinson's poems have life in them that transcend into the three-dimensional world ("the caps like jolts to the neck")
 * I particularly liked the line 8 - "and the tongue was raw then cool with ice". || November 2, 2011 ||
 * 61 || Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts || Mark Halliday || * While reading through this poem, a wave of sadness enveloped me. With every line I could feel the dad's emptiness and hopelessness in attempting to stay connected and loved by his child.
 * I thought the perspective from which the poem was told was interesting. It is not often that you get to see the perspective of a divorced father in relation to his child - most of the time the focus in art works is on the child's feelings or the relationship between the two divorcees.
 * I like how matter-of-fact the speaker is about the situation, using repetition of the word "understandable" it, as if it is not atypical at all. Perhaps the speaker had to witness their parents' divorce or experienced a divorce themselves. || November
 * 62 || Woman and Child || Judith Beveridge || * As I read through the poem, I could feel the mood of the speaker slowly dampen. At first the speaker speaks joyously about the beautiful day that surrounds the mother and child and the many lovely pieces of nature that are flourishing. However, the speaker then moves into the mother's inexplainable unhappiness, which then takes over the poem entirely.
 * I was really intrigued by these lines: "She works the garden, / a pot of rusting gardenias has given off its ales / and infused the danker germinations of her / grief."; they are the first hint at the mother's unhappiness and is really quite beautifully written, the happiness and liveliness of the flowers in the garden mixing together with the melancholy of the mother's thoughts.
 * My favorite line is "like a cat’s tongue licking a moon of milk". It creates a beautiful image and reminds me of nursery rhymes that I knew as a child. || November 7, 2011 ||
 * 63 || At the Parrot House Taronga Park || Vivian Smith || * The way the speaker describes the colors on the feathers of the parrots in the park is stunning. The colors in theory clash with each other, but somehow they come together on the back of a bird and create a picture of pure beauty.
 * To the speaker, the birds in the park seem to have distinct personalities, like people. The macaw is like a teacher, and the two gray birds are like an old married couple, taking care of each other in their old age.
 * The last line ("for all the softness, how the beaks are hard") sticks with me. It is almost ominous, warning readers that as beautiful and intriguing birds are, they can still be quite dangerous and have the capability to inflict pain. || November
 * 64 || Robert Frost at Eighty || Peter Boyle || * The speaker in this poem outlines his or her constant desire to find "poems greater and stranger than any I have known", perhaps poems that he or she has yet to have written
 * It seems to be the case that the speaker believes he or she will never stumble upon the aforementioned poems. The speaker provides metaphors, suggesting that inspiration for them always come with the speaker is away - "they knock on the door when I am out"
 * The speaker extends this idea within the poem, conveying that we more often than not do not obtain what we want, though at times it might appear to be just out of our reach. The speaker sums it up nicely in the final two lines: "Sometimes, but almost never / we touch what we desire" || November
 * 65 || A Country Incident || May Sarton || * In the first stanza, the speaker of the poem outlines a situation in which he or she was planting plant bulbs in a garden when a neighbor came up and started talking to them, interrupting the speaker's calm, joyous time alone
 * The speaker is at first very irritated with the neighbor, and even "willed her to be gone", but then upon reflection of the situation as well as on the action of his or her father, the speaker has a change of heart and wishes to ask forgiveness from the neighbor for being rude
 * The speaker, though he or she still sees admirable qualities in his or her father ("courteous in every other way") appears to be inspired not to be like his or her father, who was very serious about his hobbies and intolerant of those who interrupted them || November
 * 66 || White-Eyes || Mary Oliver || * In this poem, the speaker brings life to wind by depicting it as a bird flying among the trees with "white eyes"
 * The wind-bird is described as "restless", that "he wants to go to sleep". I particularly like image continuous bursts of wind given by the lines "shoves and pushes / among the branches", it makes the wind seem violent and in a rage.
 * However, as night falls, the wind-bird finally finds peace, resting for the night in a metaphoric nest that he creates in "the pine-crown", ending the poem on a note of serenity. || November 14, 2011 ||
 * 67 || The First Line is the Deepest || Kim Addonizio || * The opening lines, "I have been one acquainted with the spatula, / the slotted, scuffed, Teflon-coated spatula", suggests that the speaker has had jobs in a food industry, most likely one of minimum wage. You could go as far as to infer that the speaker has not made the most of her life and he or she is down on her luck
 * The speaker goes on to outline her acquaintance with various sex toys - she even names one of them "Tex - suggesting her lack of romantic companionship as well. She is perhaps a very lonely person.
 * The speaker also says that she has measured her life in various pills taken for various mental disorders (depression, anxiety, etc.) implying great mental distress on her part. Although, there are a great deal of pill names that are listed, suggesting that she maybe does not have all those disorders but is taking them for their side-effects, whatever the benefits of those maybe. || November 14, 2011 ||
 * 68 || Democracy || Dorianne Laux || * I really enjoyed reading this poem. The speaker offers a lot of really vivid imagery, mostly of the people sitting on a public bus. Though most of the people were visually unappealing, slightly frightening, or annoying, hearing the description of riding the bus made me a little nostalgic for the time when I had to ride a public bus nearly everyday.
 * The speaker is at first so deterred from riding the bus because of the people on it that he or she would rather face the merciless, unyielding cold. The speaker seems more comfortable with the cold because it is familiar to them; they are not used to riding public buses perhaps.
 * I particularly liked the in-depth description of the veteran that was boarding the bus right before the speaker. It graphic nature of the description really emphasizes the disgust the speaker feels as he or she enters the bus and how unfamiliar the whole situation is for the speaker. || November 17, 2011 ||
 * 69 || A Winter Song || Jean Ingelow || * From what I can gather, the poem is being told from the perspective of a child's mother, some time after her husband and her daughter die one winter night.
 * I like the repetition of the line "night is the time when the old must die" (or some variation of it) in every line. It gives the poem a really creepy mood.
 * I do not fully understand why the daughter is found dead at the end of the poem. The father obviously has some sort of illness, but I cannot come up with a logical explanation for the girl's death. It seems as if some dark forces are at play, especially with the image in the seventh stanza of "a wrathful moon hung red in the sky". || November
 * 70 || Love Song: I and Thou || Alan Dugan || * As the poem revolves around love, as indicated by the title "Love Song: I and Thou", I would think that the first few lines describing how puzzles pieces will not fit together perfectly of the poem are metaphoric for love - two people are never perfect for each other, there is always some sort of "gap or pinch" (lines 4-5) between them
 * The motif of Christianity within the poem is interesting - my favorite line in particular containing this motif is "God damned it. This is hell but I planned it". It has some assonance with the words "damned" and "planned" which really makes it flow nicely.
 * It was a little disturbing to think that the speaker that the person the speaker dreams of loving is the same person that he wants to help nail his hand to a crosspiece like Jesus to the cross. I suppose it's metaphoric, but still. The speaker is asking for his lover to inflict some sort of pain on him. || November 21, 2011 ||
 * ||  ||   || //21 November 70/42-70//