Sunday, February 27, 2011

Personal Helicon

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.


One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.


A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.


Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.


Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

In this poem “Personal Helicon” by Seamus Heaney, Heaney really focuses on strong imagery and point of view to explore the happiness of his childhood days. I remember and so do many other people there childhood memories like family barbeques, adventures through a park, daycare centers, and many other things comprise many people with their childhood. The imagery in his poem effectively helps describe the actions of the narrator’s childhood self. He uses descriptive words such as “dank,” and “soft.” Nearly every line in every stanza of the poem contains some sort of descriptive word. This gives a mental image of the scenes to the reader and also gives memories of his or her own childhood. Some of Heaney’s phrases also stand out with strong imagery. When he writes about the “rich crash” that occurs when the child drops a bucket into the well or the child dragging roots from the dirt, his audience is truly experiencing the small events in the poem. This is why the poem is so effective to catch the eyes of all of its  readers. Every person has good childhood memories that can connect the reader to the poem and to the author of the poem its self- Heaney.

This poem also has a deeper meaning. From the outside you can see it as having just a childhood experience with wells. But, from the development and change in tone and attitude the reader can conclude that the poem means a lot more. The poem displays a transformation of his perspective as the poem progresses to the end. This transformation might refer to Heaney attitudes of life itself during childhood and adulthood.
Like most poems; Personal Helicon has a deeper meaning.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Reading Myself

Like thousands, I took just pride and more than just,
struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;
I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire-
somehow never wrote something to go back to.
Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers
and have earned my grass on the minor slopes of Parnassus....
No honeycomb is built without a bee
adding circle to circle, cell to cell,
the wax and honey of a mausoleum-
this round dome proves its maker is alive,
the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,
prays that its perishable work live long
enough for the sweet-toogh bear to desecrate-
this open book...my open coffin.
This poem has a hopeless effect on me. Lowell is using an analogy of a bee and its life and comparing it to his own actions throughout his life. The bee makes honeycombs cell after cell, with of what purpose? Lowell is comparing that with his life and the decisions he makes too. He is living in the "now" so to speak and in reminisence he realizes his actions have no purpose. The structure in this poem is very interesting as well. The author uses so much punctuation. I feel like he uses punctuations in the poem so that when your speaking at a natural pause he just adds in periods and commas. This is interesting becuase he obviously does not trust the reader to read it how he speaks it, which is pretty cool.

This poem is very relatable in terms with a teenager. Most teenagers live in the moment. I like how this author shows the bad affects of living in the moment. He is always trying to get a small thrill in his purposeless life.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

It was a dream

in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
oh what could I have done?
and she twisted her wild hear
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This.  This. This.

I think the poem is very self-explanatory. Lucille Clifton the author is looking back on her own life and is critisizing it. In this "dream" Clifton has her greater self or maybe the woman she always wanted to be is telling her in rage what she could have done differently to make her past life better. I personally think she is looking on her life as if she were dead. Her dead self is remembering her life- like right before you die you see 'your whole life flash before you', and her dying self is questioning whether she lived her life to the fullest. Her dead self is regretting it and saying This is what you could have done This. This. This. Whatever 'This' is, is a mystery to me. I do not know Lucille Clifton's aspirations.

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 unculred 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.

In this poem there are a few things I looked up to help understand the meaning. Hatteras is the first. There are many accounts of ships being caught in unfavorable winds and not being able to round Cape Point. Surfmen with the Lifesaving Service maintained a close watch over the ships in the doldrums. It would spell certain disaster should the winds turn unfavorable and drive them closer to shore. One such watch reported over 100 vessels (http://www.hatteras-nc.com/history/hatteras-village-history.shtml). The second I wanted to look up was cottonmouth. The cottonmouth is a type of snake found in swamps in the United States. This make sense towards the line "An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss".

From this poem and the definitions provided I see it meaning that this poem is about changes. That both life and death bring changes to the world, probably more specifically the United States since the places and the animals referred to are only found in the US. I also think that the writer of this poem is referring himself as the snake from the line "I know. I also left a skin there." I think that he means skin as in shed skin like a snake. The snake visited this place of Hatteras and was overwhelmed with death and pollution. Birth is the hard loss because this place is so disgusted with things like death and pollution.