S.+DeLoach

 The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel, which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
 * //__Forgetfulness__// __by Billy Collins__** [[image:billy-collins.jpg width="342" height="486" align="right"]]

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye, and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. Billy Collins speaks with a very familiar tone. His descriptions are so vivid and so easy to relate to, it is almost like the reader’s thoughts are being conveyed as he or she reads. His expressions and humor make his poems very personable and enjoyable. In “Forgetfulness,” Collins describes memories that are not quite as compelling and not as easy to recollect as they once were. He describes how easily it is to forget the name of the author of a famous work, and then eventually the title, the plot, and entire novel altogether. He personifies memories as if they are retired businessman moving from the North to relax in a quieter, smaller suburb when he claims, “the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones” (1578). The little fishing village symbolizes a human state of mind where there are no worries, obligations or responsibilities. He humorously portrays memories as things that people simply discard over time such as when people, “kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye” (1578). He appeals to the frequent dilemma that people face when they are struggling to remember something that has slipped their minds. During such a predicament, many people exclaim that the “name begins with an //L// as far as [they] can recall” (1579). Therefore, Collins does a great job appealing to the present-day American colloquial. No part of the poem is necessarily ambiguous. Collins is very straight-forward in the way he illustrates that humans have a tendency to forget things that may or may not be important to them anymore. In my opinion, the poem is a kind of prose poetry and there is an innate rhythm in the lines. It is very easy to follow and makes the reader look internally to measure how successful he or she has been in the past at recollecting important dates, novels, names, etc. Also, the use of metaphor is perpetual throughout the poem, which gives the poem a more interesting perspective because human’s memory loss is compared to everyday experiences.

The old South Boston Aquarium stands in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded. The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales. The airy tanks are dry.
 * //__For the Union Dead__// __by Robert Lowell__ **

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass; my hand tingled to burst the bubbles drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom of the fish and reptile. One morning last March, I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage, yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting as they cropped up tons of mush and grass to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic sandpiles in the heart of Boston. A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief, propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston, half the regiment was dead; at the dedication, William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat. Its Colonel is as lean as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance, a greyhound's gently tautness; he seems to wince at pleasure, and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely, peculiar power to choose life and die-- when he leads his black soldiers to death, he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens, the old white churches hold their air of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier grow slimmer and younger each year-- wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets and muse through their sideburns. ..

Shaw's father wanted no monument except the ditch, where his son's body was thrown and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer. There are no statues for the last war here; on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages" that survived the blast. Space is nearer. When I crouch to my television set, the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.  Colonel Shaw is riding on his bubble, he waits for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish; a savage servility slides by on grease. __ http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/uniondead.htm __ Robert Lowell loved to write about history because history helped formalize his life into formal patterns. It also offered plot and repetition, which he thought to be vital to express his love of stray events. “For the Union Dead” is an example of the use of history in his writing. The poem is a reflective, political piece written in 1960 about a Civil War hero named Robert Shaw. The poem is set in Boston and uses many of the city’s landmarks as imagery to characterize the scene. It begins by describing the once-thriving South Boston Aquarium standing “in a Sahara of snow now,” signifying its desertedness (1359). Noting that the Sahara is a vast desert of sterility and lifelessness in Africa, the description vividly describes the condition in Boston. Lowell describes his times spent there as a child by using the simile: “Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass” (1359). Colonel Shaw and the 54th Infantry become the focal point of this poem as the author transitions from the sight of the run-down aquarium to the statue of Shaw standing on the State House grounds. Lowell uses another simile to describe how the “monument sticks like a fishbone in the city’s throat” (1360). It is noteworthy to include that the 54th Infantry was an infantry of black soldiers, and when Lowell states, “When I crouch to my television set, the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons,” it signifies that Lowell is confessing to his participating in the degradation and long-lasting segregation that once victimized Negro children in the white Protestant South. At the conclusion of the poem Lowell proclaims,

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish; a savage servility slides on by grease

signifying that the fish have reappeared in an angry state having suffered metamorphosis into dynamic, mechanical monsters. Perhaps the fish represent the ever-present, always evolving survivorship of segregation. The ambiguous part of the poem is that the author leaves the final stanza open to interpretation by his audience. Other critics have suggested that the fish represent the static type of survivor, such as the statues, except in the sense that they suffer physical erosion and a parallel erosion of their dignity. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this poem. The underlying meanings and the ultimate premise are extremely interesting.

//I am your son, white man! //
 * //__Mulatto__// __by Langston Hughes[[image:langstonhughes.jpg align="right"]]__ **

Georgia dusk And the turpentine woods. One of the pillars of the temple fell.

//You are my son! Like Hell!//

The moon over the turpentine woods. The Southern night Full of stars, Great big yellow stars. What's a body but a toy? Juicy bodies Of nigger wenches Blue black Against black fences. O, you little bastard boy, What's a body but a toy?

The scent of pine wood stings the soft night air. //What's the body of your mother?// Silver moonlight everywhere.

//What's the body of your mother?// Sharp pine scent in the evening air.

A nigger night, A nigger joy, A little yellow Bastard boy. //Naw, you ain't my brother. Niggers ain't my brother. Not ever. Niggers ain't my brother.// The Southern night is full of stars, Great big yellow stars. O, sweet as earth, Dusk dark bodies Give sweet birth To little yellow bastard boys.

//Git on back there in the night, You ain't white//

The bright stars scatter everywhere. Pine wood scent in the evening air. A nigger night, A nigger joy. //I am your son, white man! //

A little yellow Bastard boy.

Langston Hughes was an extremely popular writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. His intent was to “capture the dominant oral and improvisatory traditions of black culture in written form” (1087). In 1927, he wrote “Mulatto.” The title is significant because it describes a person with one white parent and one black parent or a person who has both black and white ancestry. As the poem begins, a voice is exclaiming, “I am your son, white man!” (1091). He pleads for recognition from his white father as he asserts his mulatto identity. Hughes’s poem seems to separate into three voices at this point (the son, the father, and a subtle third voice perhaps a narrator). As the narrator describes the setting, he uses the terms “dusk and turpentine,” which suggests a mixture of night and day and naturalizes the frowned-upon nature of racial mixing (1091). As the poem continues, it deconstructs itself. It is hard to pinpoint the voices of the father and the son; therefore an ambiguous aspect to the poem is the difficulty with which the audience has differentiating between the two voices. Describing the body as a toy suggests perhaps that the birth of the mulatto son was the result of a rape and, “the scent of pine wood stings the soft night air,” could trigger the memory of the night it occurred. This is further reinforced by the narrator’s description of

A nigger night, A nigger joy, A little yellow, Bastard boy.

The poem never truly reaches a consensus of whether the father accepts his son or not. I find this poem very unfortunate and hard to stomach at certain parts. I grieve for the son who only wants his father’s approval and acceptance, and I am angered by the realization that the son is the product of a rape. The father’s reference to his son as a bastard child is both degrading and pathetic, especially since the father is fully aware of his actions that Georgia night when pine wood filled the evening air. I believe Hughes accurately depicted the struggle between two characters in this situation, and respect him for leaving plenty of interpretation open to his readers.

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
 * //__One Art__// __by Elizabeth Bishop__ [[image:keys--one_art.jpg width="349" height="413" align="right"]] **

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three beloved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (//Write// it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop writes with an overwhelming sense of loss. Her poem “One Art” is an overwhelming indicator of this. The poem describes the inevitability of losing things, and suggests that it is not hard to be good at losing things. The narrator loses things that seem like they were meant to be lost, and she does not feel like this is a disaster. She loses things everyday and she simply accepts this. Eventually, she starts losing more things and more quickly such as her watch and three loved houses. However, all of the things she loses still are not detrimental to her. Bishop then loses things of much more value such as cities or rivers, but these still supposedly do not bring her disaster. In the end of the poem, she says that she has lost someone she loved, such as her lover; however, this seems to be more detrimental of a loss than any other material possession she has ever misplaced because she almost has to force herself to “(Write it!)” (1231). This signifies that she in fact is heartbroken for losing the one she loved. The entire poem before the final stanza had the audience convinced that the narrator was content with losing things, but in reality losing things is hard for her to master, “it’s disaster” (1231). The rhyme scheme in this poem is noteworthy. For example, stanza five states, “I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster…I miss them, but it wasn’t disaster” (1231). Another literary device used is repetition. Bishop repeats at the end of nearly every stanza, “It wasn’t disaster” to make a stronger appeal to her audience that she was content with loss (1231). I believe that many women can relate to the attitude that Bishop conveys in this poem. Many women externally want to portray a very independent, self-sufficient conduct in order to convince others that they are strong enough to withstand adversity. Internally, on the other hand, women may need to force themselves to continue to act a certain way even after they have been devastated.

The glass has been falling all the afternoon, And knowing better than the instrument What winds are walking overhead, what zone Of grey unrest is moving across the land, I leave the book upon a pillowed chair And walk from window to closed window, watching Boughs strain against the sky And think again, as often when the air Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting, How with a single purpose time has traveled By secret currents of the undiscerned Into this polar realm. Weather abroad And weather in the heart alike come on Regardless of prediction. Between foreseeing and averting change Lies all the mastery of elements Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter. Time in the hand is not control of time, Nor shattered fragments of an instrument A proof against the wind; the wind will rise, We can only close the shutters. I draw the curtains as the sky goes black And set a match to candles sheathed in glass Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine Of weather through the unsealed aperture. This is our sole defense against the season; These are the things we have learned to do Who live in troubled regions.
 * //__Storm Warnings__// __by Adrienne Rich__ **

Adrienne Rich is a renowned confessional poet. She uses unique structural style to illustrate literal and metaphorical meanings. For example, in “Storm Warnings” she parallels the external storm occurring outside with the internal conflict held within the narrator. The narrator is first forewarned about the storm when she notices the “glass has been falling all afternoon” (1445). Because the storm threatens to be powerful, she takes cover to protect herself and allows the storm to pass. The internal and metaphorical storm, which represents the speaker's inner conflict, takes a similar path; the speaker recognizes the approaching conflict, finds a place of sanction and comfort, and finally learns to advance with the storm instead of trying to fight it. She suggests, “Weather abroad and weather in the heart alike come on regardless of prediction” (1446). This reinforces that she will be using the same technique to battle both storms. The author wants to express to the audience that sometimes it is better to “close the shutters” instead of try to prevent the wind (1446). In the poem, Rich personifies the wind by stating the “winds are walking overhead” (1445). Regardless of what may be troubling the narrator internally, her conflict resolution may be applied to many situations. Rich is ambiguously leaving the audience to interpret what the girl’s actual internal strife may entail. The real lesson is that internal and external storms sometimes cannot be foreseen early enough in advance to completely extinguish the issue or to completely prepare an individual for what is to come. Storms can sometimes be so powerful that the only human response is to “…move inward toward a silent core of waiting” (1445). The same may be true regarding relationship, business, or other problems. Sometimes it might be best to sit back and let things take their course. I enjoyed reading Rich’s poem. She uses descriptions that provide fantastic imagery, which makes reading her poems much more pleasurable. “Storm Warnings” offers a very practical theme, especially to college students who sometimes may be so enthralled in something that it ultimately seems there is no clear guiding force. Her advice to ride out the storm and to let things take their course is advice that could help people significantly lower their stress levels.