Joy Harjo “The Path to the Milky Way Leads through Los Angeles”

                Some older traditions held that when our souls departed this world, they travel to a star. Just as one takes a train from point a to point b, our souls take death from earth to a star. I believe that is what this poem is saying, however it is odd that the path to one of those stars, or to the milky way leads through Los Angeles. Harjo mentions that it is a city named after the angels, but is probably more well known as a city of sin. I think that Harjo is not being specific to Los Angeles however. She is being analogous to all cities where we are crowded in with other people. I think that she is trying to communicate some kind of truth behind the reality of looking for good in a place where there is so much bad. I have to ask myself why she uses the Crow to say “wait, wait and see” (line 25) Is it because it is a joke, or a trick rather to try to find something good. I believe this poem could also communicate some sort of secular version of one having must passed a life of sin in order to reach the afterlife. Maybe if I wait and see, then I will find out.

Gwendolyn Brooks “A Song in the Front Yard”

                Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry is dark, sad, and realistic sounding. You immediately get pictures of non-ideal lives, and the hidden face of America in these poems. It’s no wonder her biography talks of Blues tradition, because that’s what her poems are. “A song in the Front Yard” at first sounds like a middle class American poem of a young girl, but the last stanza reveals to us that it is probably a very poor neighborhood, where prostitutes walk, and a mother is trying to keep her child from being like them. I feel like this poem is slightly activist-like in the way that it illustrates how a young girl cant have the ideal childhood with friends. She is jailed to her front yard, in order to protect her from being subjected to the bad influences of the area, however it seems that the mother is unsuccessful as she has already seen and strives to be like the girls, “And I’d like to be a bad woman, too” (line 18). but only because she hasn’t seen the consequences.

Ted Hughes “An Otter”

                I chose to really try and analyze this poem for the shallow reason of my favorite animal being an otter. In reading, I would believe that the otter is purely symbolic of some other idea like a person, or an exile, “Like a king in hiding.” (line 17). As with most poems, I have learned to look at the last stanza for a meaning to the poem. In the big picture, we have this wandering creature that once belonged to the land of everyone else. Now he is seeking some sort of home he cannot find, but in the end, he is hunted by the land creatures and his pelt is tanned and strewn over a chair. I could say this poem is about being a wanderer as an identity of a person, that once that person finds the land he has been looking for, he loses himself and becomes “this long pelt over the back of a chair.” (line 40), or that there is some sort of injustice in an otter’s life, or that once exiled, this “king” can rule a new world, which is that of fish. Another notable feature about this poem is its structure. Frequently the first few words of a sentence is begun on a previous stanza, while the rest of the thought continues not only to the next line, but the next stanza. I am curious as to why Hughes chose this odd structural format.

Philip Larkin “Church Going”

                Larkin must be somewhat of a comic writer, because the title of this poem is a pun in itself. We think it will be about going to church (or at least I did), however it is really about the church “going” away. Distracted by my reverence for this poem as a sci-fi poem set in the future, because I don’t believe the church will ever go away. That being said, the poem gives light into how many atheist people must feel about the church, as merely a place for marriage, baptism, and funerals. “Only in separation—marriage, and birth, / And death and thoughts of these—for which was built” (lines 50-52). It seems surprising that this poem was written in 1954 when I thought that religious conservatism was at a stable point. If that is the case, then this is a very revolutionary or avante garde kind of work.

Robert Lowell “Memories of West Street and Lepke”

                The poetic nature of this poem lies in the way in which its stanzas are presented in a possible chronological order. The stanzas have seemingly little connection with each other, however they could be a timeline of memories throughout a person’s life just as the title suggests. Clearly the poem could be recounted as a summary of one’s life, but what is most exceptional about this poem is that it seems to recount a list of bad or darker things in life. the poem is also written in a romantic meter, however the topics are very dark; involving jail drugs and death by electric chair. This poem tries to communicate to me a sort of antiromantic picture of life. Clearly the third stanza seems to be the changing point of this story. It seems to describe the moment in the narrators life when everything went bad, and how it did. Given that no major story was made, its doubtful that he went to jail for something terrible, rather he may have gone against some sort of government regulation which landed him in jail.

Dylan Thomas “Fern Hill”

                After first reading this, it was a relief to find that some poets upheld the values of something thought out purposeful and metered. Even if there was no justified rhyme scheme at the end that pre-modernists sought to maintain, the poem is still not so  haphazard and careless sounding as those of the Beat poets. This poem has themes of the innocence of youth and the injustices of growing older. I Feel like the whole poem is a set up painting an impressionistic like picture of what a joyous life a young child can have on a farm, so that the last stanza can seemingly reverse our lighthearted mood that Thomas has created.  The last two lines of the last stanza are specifically paradoxical to what we hear at the beginning of the poem. “Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea.” (lines 53-54). Thomas also seems to use describing words in very unconventional ways. In this way he is not like the old poets. He likes to use adjectives that normally describe other things for unexpected nouns and verbs.

Shell Silverstein “The Perfect High”

It seems that another consequence of modern culture that affected some of the beat poets was the experimentation of drugs. While I cannot relate to the literal reading of this poem, I would say that there could be a wide interpretation. Just using the themes of drugs in the background of the poem is what illustrates the culture that this poem arose from. One could have certainly replaced the drugs with almost anything else, foods, experiences or perhaps even women, however the message can come across the same

"Well, dog my cats!" says Baba Fats. "here’s one more burnt–out soul,
Who’s looking for some alchemist to turn his trip to gold.
But you won’t find it in no dealer’s stash, or on no druggist’s shelf.
Son, if you would seek the perfect high –– find it in yourself."

These lines are met with some resistance from Gimmesome Roy who finds it unacceptable that he has worked so hard to find something that seems simple when in reality it is not. This theme is especially motivating for those willing to listen to Baba Fats. as it is a predominant cultural belief that things can be achieved by material means without the use of intrinsic thought. This poems message is to find that happiness is not something obtained but achieved.