Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green.
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings,
None of them are strange
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

This poem is crazy. I don't exactly understand much of it at all. The title kinda gives away that the poem is a dream or a confusing form of imagination during the night (Ten O'Clock). I think it just shows imagination at work within a writer's mind. Its a very strange poem though I will give it that...

Unveiling

In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking besides
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad
for them, just left out a bit
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite yet ready
to learn.

-Linda Pastan

This poem struck me as though a child was thinking. When a child learns about death they don't think of it the same way as an adult, but also to recover for that a child is not given the same explanation as an adult would receive. A child usually thinks of death as a "trip" or a "journey" that the person who has passed is going on. That is what I see in this poem. The author speaks of their deaths as though they are in a secret place and the author feels "left out a bit" speaking of death as a mysterious secret. The secret is preventing the author from understanding the true concept of death. But, earlier in the poem the author talks of her previous life with these people as a child, so that is what I am confused about. If the adult is looking back on the childhood then why is the adult still viewing death as a child would? That's puzzling...

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle

This poem reminds me of a church. The discription of the array of colors showed to me the different stain glass that surrounds an old chapel. The "Thick black lines, in shapes of sheild and cross" shows to me the perfect example of the different bible versus come to life around you while you are in church. I did not know what Saint-Chapelle is of the different composers until research, but I figured these were the names of several different churches...I was obviously mislead. It is cool to see how a poem can show several different points of veiw though, that is cool.

The Hollow Men

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                     For Thine is the Kingdom

-T.S. Eliot

In this part of the poem the author is making the point about how disfunctional the human mind is. The author is envisioning the world as a wasteland; the prickly pear is a cactus showing a desolate world man exists in. No people can live or thrive in a desert, making the point that no people can live and thrive in the world now with sightles minds and bad judgement. The hollow mind of man can not thrive in humanity fully or in peace with God, "For Thine is the Kingdom". Eliot repeats the lords prayer several times after the one written above; repetition of song and prayer showing the cultural differences in the mind of hollow men, and the division within social hiearchy. The ironic thing is that truly the social instances barely matter in my mind because Eliot is making the point that we are hollow men so our social being is not significant anyways.

For A Duro

For a duro you got a night out of the wind.
(A duro was a five-peseta coin bearing
 Franco's profile, the hooked nose tipped
 upward as though he anlone recieved
 the breath of God. Back in '65
only he did recieve the breath of God.)
For a duro you could lie down in the hallway
of the Hotel Splendide in your Sunday suit,
sleep under the lights, and rise in time
to bless the Son's first coming. For a duro
you could have a coffee and a plain roll
that would shatter like glass. For a duro
you could have it all, the cars, the women,
the seven-course meal and a sea view,
with the waitress bending your check
to ask reverently, "More butter?" for a duro
I bought a pack of Antillanas gave one
to the only traveller in the deserted terminal,
a soldier in uniform. When he bowed
to receive a light I saw the milky nape,
unlined. He must still be there, waiting.
The hotel is gone, the building remains,
a pet hospital and animal refectory
overseen by Senior Esteban Ganz arrayed
for work this mornig in white coat,
dark tie, and soiled sneakers. Modestly
 he shows me three lobo pups, pintos,
saved from slaughter, the striped feral cats
pacing the big cage like tigers, the toucan
levelled by an unknown virus but now
alert and preening. Riotous colors:
reds, greens, and illuminated golds
suitable banners proclaiming inter-
galactic peace  the moment it arrives.

Philip Levine

This poem was very hard to relate to. I interpret it to be showing a time period in Spain or Mexico which was very dark. I researched what a duro was and the explanation was that of a surrency used when Spain joined the Latin Monetary Union in 1869. By the words in this poem it sounded like this time in history was very dark and poor. Levine says "for a duro you got a night out of the wind". When I think about this line I get the impression that not many people lived in luxury and lots were poor, almost like the Great Depression in America. The poem was also talking about an "animal refectory" I researched this term as well. The word refectory came to be defined as a dining hall in a church or monestary. There is a new meaning to the poem that has come to veiw, I believe now that the author is talking about politicians or leaders as animals- "the toucan levelled by an unknown virus but now alert and preening. Riotous collors: reds, greens, and illuminated golds." The use of the word riotous gave away a new meaning to me showing me what he thinks of the government and forms of leaders as animals with viruses spreading everywhere. Obviously this was a very dark time in history for Spain; filled with the poor and rebellious leaders.

Blackberries for Amelia

Blackberries for Amelia

Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaces reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.

They have their flowers, too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petalled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn

As the far swtars, of which we now are told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that anight may come in which, some say,
We chall have only blackness to behold.

I have no time for any change so great,
But I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were-
Dark berries, savage-sweet and worth the wait-

And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds, and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.

Richard Wilbur

                This poem was very relaxing for me. It was as if summer was set into motion again and all the worries of school, friendships, and stress were eliminated. When the author writes "I have no time for any change so great" I was struck into jealousy of how the life of this poem will always be the same the words always representing stressless summer days and summer nights.
               When I read this poem, at first, I imagined a child living in a place much like Colorado; the nature of the world always around. This child always living in harmony with their parents farm or garden of some sort exploring around and being in complete awe of the world around them. In the last line it states "And a grandchild to talk with while we pick." I realized that the poem was not about a child at all but about an elderly person who is probably retired. This elderly person always tending to their garden waiting for the days their grandchildren are out of school and are ready to come spend the summer in their beautiful garden.
               The elderly are waiting and making memories for years to come of all the great times their grandchildren and themselves spent outside. When I think of this it reminds me of how technology and media are destroying the traditions of the past and making a new. Things like computers, gameboys, xbox, and facebook are preventing children from experiencing the world and appreciating nature. New ages prevent beautiful things like this poem coming true...

A Chinese Bowl

In this poem I did not really understand the significance of it I do not think because I am not related to the idea of junk being special or small tokens of things. I do not think junk is very special because I do not have many compilments of those types of things in my life so it was hard to relate to this poem. It was interesting though how the author used the different things to explain different importances in his life. For example, when the character asks a question to the reader that says, "what could I drink from you...that would renew my fallen life?" This quote really got to me and showed me how so many small instances in your life and small impressions other people put off affect you and other people. It proves the point that small insignifacant things in your life actually do make a huge impact.
Maybe I should try keeping small tokens...