What the Seed Knows by Anita Skeen

What the Seed Knows

winter plods on like a Russian novel, spring
hints, haiku

tight blouses unbutton, jackets unzip,
skin is not just skin

rich soil proliferates
in the heart, in the hand
that can never let go

rivers flow unseen, underground, unfettered
unfathomable

some dig down, some rise up
some survive

sleep is not dreamless:
how else the orange, the dogwood?
the phalanx of asparagus?

coddled in the pod,
all the seed needs:

darkness, more snug
than light

grit splits the rock, raises
a tiny fist, screams
the world into profusion
of petaled racket

to uncurl and unfurl
to unhusk from the crust

to inhale, exhale
turn toward what's bright

Anita Skeen

Well, once again it appears I'm behind a poetry blog. I don't know quite how this happens, yet somehow every four blogs or so I notice I'm one short. Anyway, I found this poem on this new website I discovered. It's called Poems Daily (http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15047). It's really a cool website! Each day they publish a poem written by one person or another. I love it. It's like a little taste of cleverness in the morning. This poem above is so interesting. Just scroll up and look at it, without reading it as a whole. Even the words that pop out and the form is just so unique. I love how each stanza starts a new idea that is still an enjambment from above. How she indents the second line of each stanza is very unique, which is strange when it comes to interpretation. I think Skeen was trying to say through the poem that the best things in life, the most natural and real, are the simple things. Something as simple as a seed can still produce a staple of life. What interests me is her structure in not as simple as you would think- it's not the standard poem. Yet, in a way, it's a perfect balance of simple and unique. In her second stanza she says, "tight blouses unbutton, jackets unzip, skin is not just skin. " This is what I think is really the theme of this piece: sometimes we take everything too seriously. What we need instead is to realax; unzip our jackets and sit back and let life be simply marvelous. All we need to do is "inhale, exhale/turn towards what's bright."

Questioning Perfection

Questioning Perfection

What defines perfections- flaws or the lack thereof?
Is there one perfect form or many?
Is perfection a reality?

Isn't perfection subjective??

Why do I hate perfection, yet never stop seeking it?
If perfection is so impossible, how did we form a concept of it?

If the standard is set low enough, is everything perfection?

Perhaps, just perhaps, perfection is a mere idea
Incepted into our hearts to both taunt and taint-
but never to redeem.

-AP Lit group (With a little editing here and there.)

Awake by Katherine Foreman

Awake

My last night as a full-time child
I didn't want to sleep, for fear of
Waking up in a rustle of too-crisp sheets
And a creak of inadequate bedsprings
With a lightly snoring virtual stranger eight feet away.
And also I didn't want it to be tomorrow,
Because then it would be time to do what
I've denied for three weeks of subsistence
And oblivion--ignoring is bliss.
And I saw everything I never did
Lying around me, pieces and steps of the
Success I never got, reminders that
Whatever I planned, I never got far.
But in the middle of these broken promises
To myself, I could see for the first time
That I have not been broken.
And I must keep myself, all that is real,
As daybreak does, and nightfall.
I exist to others, but all I need is me.
I will be the last promise, when all is said
And kept.

I was looking at this free-verse poetry website and stumbled onto this poem. It's spectacular! I love it so much! It's a coming to age poem, which is basically where I am in life. The author speaks of how intimidated she is by her future. I love how she uses the overly crisp sheets and bedsprings as symbols of uncomfortable situations. I also love the line "I exist to others, but all I need is me." I guess she is saying we all use people to get ahead; we learn from them, we love them, we trust them. Sometimes they fail us or do us wrong. In the end, however, all you really need is yourself and the confidence that you will succeed. Other people are nice accessories to life. This poem has a really calm tone, very reflective. What I don't understand about it is the last two lines. The regular saying is "when as is said and done," yet Foreman says, "when all is said and kept." I feel as though those lines are very significant, but I don't understand what she meant by it, what the big difference is.

Introduction to Poetry- Billy Collins

I realized somewhere along the way I fell behind an entry so here's another one for this week!

This poem sounds so familiar! I'm pretty sure we read it at the beginning of the year. It's a very simple poem; simple but clever. The author speaks so eloquently of his desire to have his students discover themselves through poetry- to find light in the poems. Instead, the students "begin beating it with a hose" and "torture a confession out of it." Sadly, I completely understand what he is talking about! I always feel like there is an "answer" to the poem. Instead of sitting back and enjoying the meat of the poem, we furrow our brows and force comprehension.
"Introduction to Poetry" is a free verse written by a professor. It really is a nice poem. It has no deep theme and although the mood is light, it is evident Collins is truly passionate about poetry. Collins adds sensory details to connect with the audience. He uses such nice imagery to portray the joy he finds in prose.

Song of the Powers by David Mason

This poem is really a nice, dark twist on the child's game rock, paper, scissors. It clearly speaks of destruction and how futile violence truly is. We discussed this poem in class and I brought up this idea, which might be completely off. I think the rock might be symbolic of the government, the paper of religion, and the scissors of military. Each generally conflicts with the other and no one can stand alone. His structure is really interesting- he begins with three sestets describing the rock, paper, and scissors. He then concludes with a final stanza that breaks that form. His last words are really interesting:

"As the stone crushes scissors,
as paper snuffs stone
and scissors cut paper,
all end alone.
So heap up your paper
and scissors your wishes
and uproot the stone
from the top of the hill.
They all end alone.
As you will, you will."

All three have a viscous cycle of destruction- the battle between religion and government, conflicting with the military. This poem really has a dark tone, almost mid-evil even. It's really interesting, and actually pretty depressing.

Desert Places- Robert Frost

This week I decided rather than rave about how brilliant a poem is, I'm going to write about how much I hate it. Robert Frost- all around neutral kinda guy. I mean, sure he's a credited poet that we read from our plastic elementary chairs, but has he ever written anything of substance?? Robert Frost plays it safe. I honestly think he writes just to be read. Take this poem, for instance. Loneliness is one of the most common emotions! You can't go wrong that. It's exactly like The Kite Runner- everyone just loved it, but I saw how the author just knew how to spin every human emotion into a dramatic plot and it would be an automatic success. It's the exact same here with this poem. The words Frost writes are actually rather nice. He adds nice touches with the symbolism of the woods and delicate metaphors such as, "all animals are smothered in their lairs." The two lines I really enjoyed from this poem are in the third stanza: "And lonely as it is that loneliness will be more lonely ere it will be less." I think I love those lines because I honestly don't understand them. They just sound so nice! I feel like the rest of the poem just failed and these two lines could stand alone. Maybe he was trying to say the more lonely we are the less loneliness bothers us. I just can't figure out an interpretation that seems to suit. Other than those two lines I think the symbolism of the desert was boring and predicable, the quatrain format merely standard, and found no superb brilliance to this piece whatsoever.

"Reading Myself" by Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell was a renowned poet of the early 20th century. He won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, which makes this poem ironic. He writes, " Somehow never wrote something to go back to." In this poem, Lowell tells of his desire to write something of substance. He says, "I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire"- or rather, he knows the tricks to writing a good poem. He plays words as we would cards. He has no problem tossing together a string of words and accepting the praise of his ingenuity. He speaks of Parnassus- the mountain in Greek mythology that is "the seat of music and poetry;" he has earned a seat on the slopes, but he has long to go before he can reach the peaks. I think we all like to wonder around the slopes. We live for excuses, so we do not have to reach our potential. The magnanimity- or rather the undetermined capacity of mankind is intimidating. We admire the greatness of humanity from our rocking chair on our front porch, perhaps too afraid to know our own capacity. Just food for thought.

"Untiled" by Stephan Crane

Untitled

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said: "Is it good, friend?"

"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;

"But I like it

Because it is bitter,

And because it is my heart."

-Stephan Crane

(I apologize Mrs. White, I'm pretty sure this is the ONLY poem you're going to hear about this week, but I like it!)

So apparently this poem is very dark and bleak, but I felt like it was just very calm. I think it's a social commentary on the decay of mankind, but like Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," there was no drive of call to duty. Crane was commenting on how mankind is gradually becoming more and more selfish, yet, in a twisted sort of way, we like our selfishness. I think Crane used the symbol of the creature to represent mankind in the most natural state. Our heart is symbolic of our intentions or desires. It's also interesting to me how simple his wording is, yet it's so descriptive without being verbose! I think it really adds a nice, dark tone to this little piece. It has a minimalistic feel, which again reminds me the simplest form of mankind.

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney

This poem was written by Seamus Heaney, an Irish professor. It really sounds to me like a 'middle-aged' poem; it was written at a point where there was a lack of direction. I don't think I'm quite there yet. My life seems so perfectly planned out for me, but I'm certain that in everyone's life there comes a point where you sit and wonder how you got there, to that point in life, and ponder your next step. This is why people get sex changes at 40! The author's diction felt eloquent, yet still impressive and interesting which contributed to the middle-aged, mature style. Anyway, there are plenty of poems out there that speak of direction, but "Personal Helicon" stood out in the way in which it was written. The authors uses metaphors and symbolism to emphasize his point. The well, for instance, is symbolic of a dark time in one's life when it is hard to see one's identity. The flower and root are symbolic of the flower being the facade or one's appearance, and the roots being one's hidden qualities and strengths. The use of symbolism and metaphors gave the poem a sense of an unclear setting... almost like fog. Which in itself is another symbol. The poem had a nice tone to it; it felt somber, perhaps a little melancholy even, yet there was a nice sense of indignation to it. Almost like the author was realizing he wanted a change of direction, yet acknowledged it was in his control. I really enjoyed this poem. I felt like it effectively conveyed a message while still connecting with an audience.