Introduction to Poetry

This poem is a lot more straight forward than most we have read. Collins starts it off in the first 5 stanzas by explaining what he thinks audiences should do with poetry. How people should just take it as it is and explore what it has to offer. He uses a lot of metaphors and similes to bring this wanted image across. Each stanza is very strong on its own and gives a new perspective added on each time. Then the last 2 stanzas display how audiences actually view poetry and how they treat it. The imagery continues through these stanzas just as well as the beginning. Collins believes we as readers try to force a meaning out of poetry instead of exploring it and in a way having fun with it.

One thing that I noticed in Collins poem was his use of capitalization. The word "I" is always capitalized like it should be but the word "they" is never capitalized even at the beginning of a stanza or sentence. In my mind, this adds to the affect of what Collins WANTS audiences to do and what THEY actually do. They in a way being a sort of enemy or lesser person.

Of Mere Being

Of Mere Being
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

The seventh and eighth lines really stick out to me in this poem. When he says, "You know it is then that it is not the reason That makes us happy or unhappy," it gives me a sort of image that happiness comes to people from within. You may not know where it is from or why it is there.

This poem is very hard to dicier what Stevens wants his readers to get out of it because it is so out there. The diction is full of imagery which leaves it open to so many interpretations. The ryme scheme and break up of the stanzas seems to be more like free verse and slightly blocky.

Cottonmouth Country

Cottonmouth Country
by Louise Gluck
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.

Louise Gluck was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on Long Island.
I think in the second to last line when she says, "Birth, not death, is the hard loss," Gluck is referring to the fact that life is a lot harder to live than it is to die. And saying "I know. I also left a skin there," is just referring to her own life that she has lived. I also like the way she says, "Fish bones walked the waves of Hatteras." The image of fish bones walking really catches the audience and creates a vivid image for readers to hold on to.

Sort of a Song

The second stanza looks more like a side note than a stanza itself. Especially with the partheses and the blocky puncuation towards the end. The two stanzas don't even look like they belong together either. The more I look at it the more it seems like the first stanza is the bulk of the poem and the second stanza is just commenting on the first stanza. It comments on the metaphore made in the first couple of lines.
"Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait
sleepless."

The Cat

Miroslav Holub once said, "I prefer to write for people untouched by poetry. ...I would like them to read poems in such a matter-of-fact manner as when they are reading the newspaper or go to football matches. I would like people not to regard poetry as something more difficult, more effeminate or more praiseworthy."
Holub is known for writing in free verse close to prose which this quote by explain completely. I like the fact that he makes his poems easy to read and not as intimidating. Holub is also known for writing intellectual and hard-hitting poetry.

As for his poem The Cat the simile Holub uses in the first stanza really catches my attention. "Outside it was night
like a book without letters."
This gives a really good image of the poem and sets it up perfectly. In the last stanza of the poem, I think he gives a synecdoche when he says,
"But you can hear her
sometimes,
when it's quiet
and there's a northerly wind
and you listen intently
to your own self."
It is like he is saying the cat is within each of us and is restless inside ourselves.