Poetry Response

This be the Verse 

by Philip Larkin

It is Philip Larkin’s prominent voice that is to blame for the success of this poem. Though the voice is pessimistic, it serves an effective purpose. He immediately hooks the reader with his first sentence, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”. Larkin is daring in this line, for he negatively generalizes the influence of parents on their children. I enjoy the passion rooted within each word he includes. As a reader, his words intrigue me. I cannot help but to ponder this character’s past with his parents. Larkin’s words also hold truth. His negativity is not immediately discarded for there is an undeniable truth strung within this poem, though his use of rhyme helps keep the context light.

Blood

By Naomi Shihab Nye

What I enjoyed most about this poem was Naomi Shihab Nye’s ability to capture a descriptive narrative in poem format. She both shows and tells in her text, while also leaving the reader with imaginative freedom as the poem turns abstract towards the end. I love Nye’s depiction of the young girl’s father:  

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”   

my father would say. And he’d prove it,

cupping the buzzer instantly

while the host with the swatter stared.

I can so easily imagine the characteristics of the father. He is strong, passionate, and stubborn. He holds pride in his heritage, and hopes to pass that onto his family. It amazes me that in four short lines, Nye grabs the attention of the reader, vividly paints the father, and establishes a foundation for the rest of the poem. She captures both the inner and the outer self of the narrator, leaving the reader in some suspense as the poem unfolds.

Kindness

By Naomi Shihab Nye

I enjoy the change of voice from “Blood” to “Kindness”. She holds the same passion as the voice in “Blood”, yet focuses more on the depth of the text rather than the narrative. She includes various metaphors for receiving hunger and lacking hunger, my favorite being:

“When you held in you hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness”

Nye proposes an additional way to look at kindness in this quote. She emphasizes the large region of a person’s emotions, explaining how quickly one can go from receiving kindness to having known. Nye leaves me thinking with every sentence she includes. Her words compliment each other well, and she brings them simply together, letting the text speak for itself.

I'm 20 Years Old and I Hate Myself

I am 20 years old and I hate myself.

Every morning I awake to my neighbor's rooster screeching and my baby nephew sobbing in the room next to mine. I do not know why my  neighbors have a rooster. We live in an old brick apartment on the outside of Downtown Seattle, not a farm. Perhaps the family of raccoons that live within the vines draped along the side of my building will one day get their revenge from said rooster.

I've named the littlest of the raccoons Joffrey. He reminds me a lot of myself, sitting alone by the fence of my building. I pass him every day on my way home from working at the diner--Beth's Diner, where no one gives a fuck. On the front door of the diner, the manager, Jesse, has displayed a crinkled report from the Department of Health Inspection. Beth's hadn't passed and Jesse didn't care.

(more to come)

Charles Bukowski Response

I love Charles Bukowski’s precision within his word choice. He is able to draw a lot of meaning from his small amount of text used. Additionally, Bukowski does a great job of stringing his words together. Each word, whether large are small, serves a purpose within his text, and captivate the reader’s attention.

I’ve come to think that Bukowski presents fairly simple topics throughout his poetry. Rather than overcrowding the reader’s head with various metaphorical waste, Bukowski keeps it simple and precisely eludes to his point via small groups of few words arranged together.

I thoroughly enjoy this ending to “Be Kind” he has utilized:

“age is no crime //
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life // among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
// is.”

From this ending to his poem, I feel as though I have been left with a piece of wisdom: One’s never too old to start living, just as long as one indeed starts living and doesn’t continue on the wasted life path.

In his poem “Alone with Everybody”, I am still able to appreciate the great power each of his words hold, however I am not the biggest fan of this rather solemn subject matter.

“there's no chance 
at all: we are all trapped 
by a singular 
fate. // nobody ever finds 
the one.  //

the city dumps fill 
the junkyards fill 
the madhouses fill 
the hospitals fill 
the graveyards fill //
nothing else 
fills.”

His imagery is intense, alluding to the invasion of unaccounted for heaps of trash and disturbed individuals. I enjoy Bukowski’s word choice, and I appreciate his ability to say more with less, however this poem is holds a heavier, more pessimistic voice that I do not typically seek whenever pursuing poetry.   

Creatures Blog Response

The great enjoyment of reading this story comes from the appreciation of each line of text. Marisa Silver uses every opportunity she can to add further description or internal meaning to every sentence. In the following quote, Silver effectively captures the current image of Melinda:

“But for today she’d put on her best dress, a gray silk. A centipede of buttons crept over one shoulder and up the high collar, accentuating the delicacy of her frame, her finely structured face, and her grave expression. He’d fallen in love with her precise edges—her tidy hair, her fingernails filed into perfect almond shapes, the neatness of her pale mouth—and the fact that she took the world so seriously that serious things rarely shocked her the way they might a more frivolous woman”.

It is as if every adjective and noun serves a purpose towards the plot. Silver is generous with the detail she includes, but at the same time is not redundant with her description. I love the image of “a centipede of buttons” creeping over Melinda’s shoulder. Silver’s plentiful description helps to capture the current state of Melinda.

Additionally, I really enjoyed the following paring of dialogue and description. In response to Marco’s punishment at the preschool, James says,

“ ‘Sam should grow a pair.’

Finally, Melinda laughed. How he loved to make her laugh! Her careful exterior shattered into a peal of coquettish giggles. She was not an easy mark, and his ability to get a rise out of her made him feel capable beyond measure. It was the true cement of their intimacy”.

Through Silver’s use of dialogue, I am able to comprehend James’ frustration with his son’s preschool. Silver’s commentary on Melinda’s reaction to this statement allows the reader to know that there is still an intimate fire between Melinda and James, even if it comes in a different package than before. I thoroughly enjoyed this story as well as the conflict within it. I enjoyed the format, and I thought that the relationship between real time and James’ flashbacks served well towards the minor suspense of the story.

An Ex-mass Feast Response

Aside from its cultural influences, An Ex-Mas Feast is a unique story due to Uwen Akpan’s extensive use of dialogue between his characters. A large percentage of the story’s text is through the words of various characters, creating a strong image of each character, both on the surface and in the inner self. In Mama’s quote: “Eh, now that she shakes-shakes her body to moneymen she thinks she has passed me? Tell me, why did she refuse to stay with Baby?” I was easily able to visualize the image of thick-skinned Mama, who calls it like she sees it. She is the head of the house, and Akpan enhances this idea magnificently through this single quote.

Akpan’s dialogue also aptly captures the dialect of the characters. This is a successful convention for every time the dialect is prominent, the reader is reminded of the setting of which the story takes place. As I tread through the words on the screen, the story is alive and palpable. It feels as if I am speaking the dialect, myself, for the dialect from the page processes through my mind. Though the reading process is a bit more tedious, I do enjoy this characteristic being added to the Akpan’s story.

In addition to the wonderful use of dialogue, Akpan brilliantly describes every single detail within his story. He writes:

“We laughed at the gangs of street kids massed together in sound sleep. Some gangs slept in graded symmetry. Others slept in freestyle. Some had a huge waterproof above their piles to protect them from the elements. Others had nothing. We laughed at a group of city taxi-drivers huddled together, warming themselves with cups of chai and fiery political banter while waiting for the Akamba buses to arrive with passengers from Tanzania and Uganda.”

Here Akpan utilizes the convention of showing his story to the reader. As I continue through this story, I can feel the severity of this family’s circumstances. Throughout his story, Akpan comments directly on the impacts of money (or lack thereof). Here, the reader sees the direct consequence of financial instability through the homeless gangs and their makeshift beds. Akpan’s writing is rich and heavy and he does not spare the reader a detail.

The Plunge

Our pulses tremble under our flannel

shirts and fleece vests. My numb fingers squeeze his.

“You’re the most beautiful girl in the world,”

He speaks while lifting his stone sharp jaw bone.

He says, “Baby, I’m here,” that prisons are

far and the sea is near. We stand on the

shore as he drops to one knee. Happiness

forever, wherever life may lead us.

Arms spread wide, my whole heart sings to the sky

I have found my love, I have found my hope.