the dancers go round

My second internal structure poem is The Dance by Willam Carlos Williams on page 1009 of the Norton.

This poem, unlike Heaven, is made up of one stanza. Only divided into two sentences, the words flow together and intermingle and recreate the hectic and festive scene in the actual painting. The descriptive language and many verbs lend a sense of chaos to the poem that can be seen in the painting. While fair-goers dance, they also "impound" alcohol, and the language crammed into the blocked structure show the drunkenness and even bawdiness of the people.

If this poem was divided into stanzas, it would be too organized. All the action in the poem remains clumped together in the one stanza, so it seems to be bursting out of it. Despite the dynamic action and syntax of the poem, it is really about the painting, which is a motionless, docile thing. The repetition of the line "In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess" at the beginning and the end serves to frame the description of the painting that occurs in the middle.

It's still the wild west

My first internal structure poem is Heaven by Cathy Song, which you can find on page 1011 of the Norton.

The poem, told from the perspective of a Chinese-American (I assume) woman living in the mid-West with her family. Each stanza signals a reflection on a different person, starting with the speaker's "son the dreamer," then herself, then her grandfather, and once again herself, speaking of her son.

The speaker's biracial son, whose "blond hair" separates him from other Chinese and Chinese-American people, thinks of China with longing. He even has the notion that China will be his heaven when he dies, showing how much he feels a connection with that part of his heritage. He doesn't think negatively of where he lives, but simply desires to see the land, the "blue flower," of his ancestors.

In contrast to the "blue flower," the speaker, his mother, focuses on the "black dot" where they live. She speaks of "the pancake plains" with disdain and wonders "why here?" The romanticized "wild west" that her predecessors flocked to and helped create by building the Union Pacific railroad is still wild, she says, but in a bad way. It's run down, overgrown, and lawless. She cannot imagine how it came to be like this and why she has stayed there.

The third stanza displays the perspective of the speaker's grandfather, who came to America to work building the railroads. She shows how, disillusioned, he came to the "Golden Mountain," which conjures up images of opulence and success, which ultimately becomes a barren land of "ghost towns." He is also disillusioned because he planned on returning to China, but America, which at one point symbolized wealth and happiness, became his downfall and eventual death.

The final stanza returns the reader to the speaker and her son. She speaks of his desire to return as having "skipped two generations." The description of her surroundings change, however, and it appears that her son's hope and optimism enable her to see the "shimmering blue" of the mountains.

in the way a pulley is famous

My second language poem is Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye, which you can find here.

This poem uses language and conventions of language and meaning to make convey its message about the significance of seemingly insignificant things and relationships. When most of us think of the word "famous, we think of things known to a large group of people, of celebrities, of wordly acclaim. Nye takes this connotation and turns it on its head to use it to mean "well-known," but in an intimate sense. In each of the examples given, one object is of superlative significance to the other and the two share an inextricable bond, but this happens so naturally and unassumingly that it doesn't seem special or particularly noteworthy.

The point that Nye wishes to make with this is that the whole world does not need to recognize something for it to be important. She establishes the significance of the everyday and the need to celebrate it. She shares her desire to be "famous" to someone, not in any grand sense or for doing "anything spectacular," but in an everyday way, like a "pulley...or a buttonhole" which "never forgot what it could do."

When the love is gone

My first language poem is The Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Francis William Bourdillon, which can be found on page 953 of the Norton.

It took me more than one read-through to see what this poem was actually talking about. Even though it is fairly short and simple in structure, it is easy to let the comparisons bounce right off of you. The layered metaphors and clever observations make the poem rich and interesting.

The first stanza compares eyes to light. The "thousand eyes" of the night denotes the stars and the one eye of the day is the sun. It points out that though there are thousands of lights in the sky at night, it is only considered light outside when the one light of the sun is out during the day time. This examines the ironic consequence some things have over others, which comes up again in the second stanza.

Here the comparison of "eyes" is less clear than in the first stanza. The idea of an eye does not have an obvious correlation in the mind or heart, but the real comparison is to metaphor made in the first stanza. The reader is supposed to draw on that to understand what is being said here. Basically, what it says is that the mind has reason and the ability to think about many things and the heart has just one focus, love. Despite this, much like the stars and sun, the "light", the purpose, the joy, of a life goes away when the singular love of the heart is absent.

Schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands

My second setting poem is A Description of the Morning by Johnathan Swift on page 905 of the Norton.

Most poems written about the morning tend to speak of its calm, peaceful quality, of starting anew, or (as we saw a lot of in this chapter) of love. A Description of the Morning, however, shows little of that. It depicts an unglamorous city scene as it wakes up in the "ruddy morn." As the poem progresses, more and more people wake up to go about their routine business; the streets fill with people but do not have any more of a warm, welcoming feel about them. Moll's "dext'rous airs" as she mops and the grooves in the road "worn" by coach wheels passing over it every day show the dull monotony these people live with.

Despite this feeling of mundane repetition, the poem also reveals some out-of-the-ordinary (but perhaps not uncommon) occurences. The glimpse into the servant's affair with her master and the prisoners stealing back into jail after a night out lend a sense of forbidden excitement. While there is now a more dynamic feeling to the city, it is not a necessarily positive addition to the reader's perception of it. Altogether, this poem offers a different, harsher (but more realistic) depiction of the morning.

the fealty changing under my foot

My first setting and situation poem is Midsummer by Derek Wolcott, which is on pages 909 and 910 of the Norton.

This poem describes the Americanized aspects of Trinidad from the point of view of someone who lives there. The title of the poem tells the reader that it is midsummer there, a time when there should be a lot of activity and commotion. However, the speaker descibes everything as empty and desolate. Even the ball park (which, in America at least, would be filled at that time of year) stands deserted. The reader would think that Trinidad, a Caribbean island, should be lively and inviting, but the whole scene seems lonely and cold, from "the absent roars/of the beach" to "the gray, metal light" of the morning. The poem uses this irony to highlight its message about America's role in other countries. The waters of the Caribbean sea are somehow "cold as Maine's," once again referencing Aermica and its negative influence (whether literal or figurative). The only things not like this are the airplanes stationed in the hangar, whose sides the light "warms." They are the only things mentioned so far that are not stationary. They can leave the island and are presumable "eager" to do so.

The speaker does not understand illegal immigrants that come to Trinidad, covetous of the American industrialization they have there. The regular interactions of nature, such as the sun bearing down on the sea, now have chemical and destructive qualities. The dreary "drizzle" is even American, eating away at the native sand by "stitching stars" into it. The immigrant "envies" this stamp, this reminder of American presence and affectations in the country, but the speaker fears this change he or she sees as Trinidad's "fealty" becomes more Americanized.

The yellows momentarily mesh

My second speaker poem is Bringing My Son to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted by Shoshauna Shy, which you can find here.

Besides the title and the mention of going through Weapons Check, there is abcolutely nothing to tell the reader what is occuring in this poem. The mother chooses to block out the whole experience because she is upset and does so by noticing trivial aspects of her outfit. If this poem was from the point of view of the son, the reader might hear about his fear, his remorse, or perhaps his arrogance and lack of remorse.

The mother's close attention to detail of each color (which are all pretty, calm pastels) and element of her clothing characterizes her as a perfect, superficial housewife-type. She refuses to accept her son's arrest or wrongdoing because it makes him imperfect. The fact that she gets "slightly queasy" upon noticing that the yellows of her blouse and skirt do not match, but remains indifferent to her son and bringing him to the police office shows the reader how disillusioned she is.

When she does mention the police office, she capitalizes "Weapons Check" to signal its importance, yet only speaks of it in passing. Instead she focuses on how the "yellows momentarily mesh" and make her feel better, resolving the conflict of the two items of clothing but not that of her repressed issues with her son. The sunny yellows create a veil of ignorance and false happiness so she does not have to acknowledge her son's delinquence. There is very little action in this poem, but the speaker and her point of view make it affecting and significant all the same.

At the Golden Shovel

My first speaker poem is We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks, which you can find on page 879-80 of the Norton.

I chose this poem because in its simplicity, it conveys a very powerful and modern message even though written in 1950. The speaker and his or her attitudes and opinions are very clear and noticably different from that of the poet.

The short, halting sentences and the speaker's diction support the picture painted of the speaker: one of a group of young kids, drop outs, just hanging around at the pool hall enjoying themselves. The way the speaker plainly lists what they do shows that the don't really care one way or another about it or about the reader knowing, lending a laid-back sense of bravado. Since the speaker is one of the pool players as opposed to an onlooker, the lifestyle starts to entice the reader, and they feel sympathetic towards the speaker. However, the last sentence, "We/die soon," introduces a chilling reality that is relevant today. This part marks Brooks' voice coming through and allows the reader to step back and reevaluate why they thought the speaker so cool in the first place.

Another aspect of this poem I found interesting was the repetition of the word "we" and its placement at the end of (almost) every line. The speaker talks of "we," but in doing so emphasizes the group and the potential lack of individuality in it. Together as a group, the pool players are "cool," but on their own they might not be as cool and need the others to give them a sense of purpose. This takes the bravado seen in the poem as a whole and adds a sense of vulnerability, which also shows the reader that the speaker might not be as cool as they once thought.

Gwendolyn Brooks reading "We Real Cool"