The "C" Word

I was watching Oprah yesterday, and apparently she can't say the word "creepy". So she uses the "c" word instead.

But this poem was creepy. If this poem were directed towards me, I'd get out of that relationship quick. This guy needs to chill out. If you really need to threaten your girlfriend like that so she won't leave you, then maybe you need to be single for awhile.

This woman needs to leave. First of all, he calls her a "feigned vestal", which I think means that she is pretending to be a virgin in front of her hypothetical new partner. And then he tells her that she won't be able to find anyone who will love her the way she wants. Obviously, he is a perfect boyfriend and since his "love is spent", she might as well stay with him. How romantic.

Buuut, at the end he says he won't threaten her with this unless he has to... He's trying to reassure her that he isn't a big jerk. He'd rather have her "painfully repent". That's much nicer.

you gonna miss me when I'm gone

I liked this poem, even though it was kinda sad. Women poets always seem to have easier poems.

When I was reading this, the song lyrics made me stop and think. So during the nights, the couple is miserable until the "first light"--which is day. The days are their escape from each other, but the speaker listens to this song that probably reminds her or him of her or his partner.. "you gonna miss me when I'm gone". But what the speaker thinks of is "heaving words like furniture". Ouch.. that's not fun to think about. It's like the speaker wants to want to miss her husband/...wife... but it clearly isn't going to work. Their lives were too chaotic when they were together.. all the piles of clothing and whatnot.

The couple can only be a couple when they are separate. The relationship seemed to have formed based on physical things.. it was too superficial: "our matching eyes and hair". There was never any chemistry, so that's why the thought of them being a couple makes sense, but the application won't work.

Naked Shingles of the World

The theme of this poem basically says that people can only have trust and faith in God, who is love, because earthly things are deceiving.

The speaker starts off by saying that "the sea is calm tonight". When I think of a calm sea, I am automatically relaxed (or really annoyed because we live in Indiana). But I think they even make machines that make the noise of the ocean hitting against the rocks to relax people who are trying to sleep.

But the speaker claims that these sounds are the sounds of human misery? He obviously isn't really talking about the waves. They probably stand for like heretics or bad people.

People who tempt us (or, you know, the devil) try to disguise themselves as really approachable, nice people. Like the old man in the white van with candy.

So the sea is the world-it disguises itself as something beautiful and enticing so that it can shake our faith in God.

CHARGE

The tone of this poem is sorta nostalgic, maybe? In the first two stanzas the speaker is remembering his childhood.. They were respectful to God and even to the "elder" that sat with them. And then the next two stanzas the speaker implies that "in these years" no one wants to be respectful or reverent. But he wants that all back.. This is really where I feel a sense of nostalgia. He wants to believe that the oxen knelt in the manger, because it was a belief he never doubted as a child. The word "hoping" in this sense gives me a feeling that he knows he won't find the oxen kneeling. He won't find anyone being reverent anymore. Times have changed.

On a side note, I hate when generations decide that times have changed too much. You know why you feel that way? Because time HAS changed! Didn't they notice that they got old? Nothing can ever really stay the same, so just step back and let the young people make their own memories. I'm not saying that the older generations shouldn't be allowed to remember their past, but they shouldn't blame the world's change on us.

Batter my heart.........

I can totally relate to this poem in certain ways. Life would be so much easier if God would just take away all the temptations. Buuuut, God doesn't work that way. He wants us to make a choice. :/.

But this is how we work in real life. Imprison ourselves, so we can be free.

In grade school, if we talked, the teacher isolates us from the problem and then we actually do our work. And as we get older, we (hopefully) learn to separate ourselves on our own. If I can't study while watching the Biggest Loser, I hit the record button and turn it off.

It is funny to think that we can relate to the same struggles as a person who lived in the 15/16oo's.

Darks. Lights. Whites? and Towels

This poem actually seemed simple to understand, which probably means I'm wrong. I still didn't really get the little things.

But here I go...

When the speaker said that the big towels were reserved for the beach, I was reminded of the poem "Dream Deferred". The towels have obviously been used more than for just the beach, because they are faded. So this woman (I'm assuming) and her husband (I'm assuming again) haven't made it to the beach as often (or at all) as they would have liked. They are probably just living their mundane lives, putting of all their dreams and aspirations that they had in the beginning of their relationship.

Their lives weren't depressing or anything, just not exciting. I mean, the only exciting thing I found in the poem was the "pocket surprises", which were pretty boring.

But in the end she basically says that she wouldn't trade any of it for anything. She couldn't fill the empty side of the bed with just her own clothes.

I wonder what APO 96225 means.

{Question 8}

The speaker is so matter of fact in this poem.. He speaks from an objective point of view, so he shows no opinion on anything that happens. But although he doesn't explicitly give an opinion, I sorta get this feeling of resentment too. After the Vietnam war, no one wanted to talk about it. Soldiers weren't welcomed back home. Everything was swept under the rug; everything went back to normal. But the soldiers had to deal with it.

I think what the speaker really wanted to say was: "Don't ask me questions that you don't really want to know the answer to. You don't want to help us deal with anything, so shut up. Everyone is annoying, even you, Mom."

APO=Acting Pilot Officer.. the lowest rank in the Air Force.

So I'm going to take a guess and say that this guy didn't even want to be there, like Tim O'Brien. If I didn't want to go to war, but I was forced to, I would probably already be bitter.