Against the Gutter's Curb

Advice from the Experts
Bill Knott

I lay down in the empty street and parked
My feet against the gutter's curb while from
The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
Along its ledges urged me don't, don't jump.
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I had to read this poem twice, three times even, because the poem is so short and has so much meaning packed into four lines. The poem toys with the reader's sense of perspective, and it takes a little while for the abnormal perspective to sink in. When I first read this poem, I assumed that the speaker was jumping from the top of a building. When I read it another time, however, I realized that the speaker was merely laying on the ground and putting his/her feet against the curb. The "gawkers perched/Along its ledges" are only birds looking down from the tops of buildings, staring at the speaker lying on the ground.

I've Changed a Lot

Nights
Kevin Hart

There’s nothing that I really want:
The stars tonight are rich and cold
Above my house that vaguely broods
Upon a path soon lost in dark.

My dinner plate is chipped all round
(It tells me that I’ve changed a lot);
My glass is cracked all down one side
(It shows there is a path for me).

My hands—I rest my head on them.
My eyes—I rest my mind on them.
There’s nothing that I really need
Before I set out on that path.
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I like how the speaker in this poem talks about how the plate and glass represent his/her life in the second stanza. The dinner plate being chipped is directly related to his/her life in that the chips symbolize maybe the trouble-spots in his/her life or the parts of his/her life he/she most regrets. When the speaker says, "My glass is cracked all down one side / (It shows there is a path for me)," I feel as if the speaker is looking at the long and jagged path down the side of the glass and wondering if the path will be easy or difficult.

Out of Her Element

On a Cape May Warbler Who Flew Against My Window
Eamon Grennan

She's stopped in her southern tracks
Brought haply to this hard knock
When she shoots from the tall spruce
And snaps her neck on the glass.

From the fall grass I gather her
And give her to my silent children
Who give her a decent burial
Under the dogwood in the garden.

They lay their gifs in the grave:
Matches, a clothes-peg, a coin;
Fire paper for her, sprinkle her
With water, fold earth over her.

She is out of her element forever
Who was air's high-spirited daughter;
What guardian wings can I conjure
Over my own young, their migrations?

The children retreat indoors.
Shadows flicker in the tall spruce.
Small birds flicker like shadows —
Ghosts come nest in my branches.
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I loved the imagery in this poem. I liked how, in the first stanza, the poet wrote about the bird's untimely end. The bird seems to represent and symbolize the speaker's life; how the bird died so suddenly, and how the speaker's young life, a life without the restraints of children or responsibilities, died all too soon.

Across the floors of silent seas...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot

In this poem, there is a stanza that reads,

"For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?'

This is such an interesting passage, as the speaker is saying that he measures his life in the normal, everyday things. It also reminds me of the song, "Seasons of Love," from the musical RENT. The people in the musical sing about how they measure their lives in the things they do every day and in the normal things: daylight, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, inches, miles, laughter, and strife. This stanza also shows how the speaker, even though he is young, believes that he has seen all that there is to see. He already "knows them all" and he already knows everything he'll ever need. He knows death and it seems as if he isn't phased by death because he follows "voices dying" with something about music.
"Voices dying" could also mean that ideas are dying. The speaker could be saying that he has seen ideas grow and die, things change, and people lose their convictions. He knows that things will always be the way they are, and that radical changes are not coming in the near future.

The Same Old Story

Immigrant Blues
Li-Young Lee

People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.

It’s an old story from the previous century
about my father and me.

The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.

It’s called “Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”

It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,”

called, “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”

Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.

But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?

You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.

If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.

It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening

called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”

called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,”

called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”
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This poem is about how a man is trying to be accepted and trying to accept a different culture. The poet gives titles to his experiences in order to make them more specific. He tries to put names to things so that people can understand what he's talking about.
When Li-Young Lee writes about being "inside," I feel as if he is talking about knowing or accepting. When he talks about language being inside, he means that one should love the country from which the language comes as if it were one's own. When Lee says, "Am I inside you?" he is asking if the woman thinks about him, if the woman loves him. She answers, "If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not," which means that if he does not believe that she loves him, she doesn't.
This poet uses the words, "lying between her legs," it gives the reader a picture in his or her mind. This quote is an example of imagery. The lines, "at peace with the body’s greed, at peace with the heart’s bewilderment," use personification because they are giving human qualities to objects. Bodies don't have greed, and hearts don't become bewildered, however a person can be both of those things.

"Before the World Intruded" and Reaction

Before the World Intruded
Michele Rosenthal

Return me to those infant years,
before I woke from sleep,

when ideas were oceans crashing,
my dreams blank shores of sand.

Transport me fast to who I was
when breath was fresh as sight,

my new parts — unfragmented —
shielded faith from unkind light.

Draw for me a figure whole, so different
from who I am. Show me now

this picture: who I was
when I began.

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I liked this poem because I, like the author, miss the innocence of my youth. In the lines, "Return me to those infant years, before I woke from sleep," the "sleep" is a child's innocence, and awaking from that sleep is losing one's innocence. The poem also says, "when ideas were oceans crashing, my dreams blank shores of sand." This creates a great imagery of how the sand is before anyone's walked on it and made footprints. It means that when we are young, our minds just absorb all the ideas and dreams that we have, and we are able to hope for anything and we don't know that some things might never be. This poem is most likely free verse. This poem also uses metaphores to describe how "ideas were oceans crashing" and "dreams blank shores of sand." There is also a use of simile when the poet states, "when breath was fresh as sight."

"Introduction to Poetry" and Reaction

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

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This poem is about how poetry is for enjoyment, not for precise answers. In the line, "I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out," I took it as how poems can be confusing, but the can be understood. We just have to look around for the answer. I also felt that in the lines, "I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore," that the reader is supposed to take the poem for what it is, and not to dive too deeply into what the meaning could be. I also thought that the reader should acknowledge the poet, but that the reader should not judge the poem based on who wrote it. In the final two stanzas, the poem talks about how the readers want to beat the emotion and the feeling out of a poem just to get a specific answer. This is not the reason for poetry, though, and that's what this poem is about.