Song for Last Year's Wife by Brian Patten

Alice, this is my first winter
of waking without you, of knowing
that you, dressed in familiar clothes
are elsewhere, perhaps not even
conscious of our anniversary. Have
you noticed? The earth's still as hard,
the same empty gardens exist; it is
as if nothing special had changed,
I wake with another mouth feeding
from me, yet still feel as if
Love had not the right
to walk out of me. A year now. So
what? you say. I send out my spies
to discover what you are doing. They smile,
return, tell me your body's as firm,
you are as alive, as warm and inviting
as when they knew you first... Perhaps it is
the winter, its isolation from other seasons,
that sends me your ghost to witness
when I wake. Somebody came here today, asked
how you were keeping, what
you were doing. I imagine you,
waking in another city, touched
by this same hour. So ordinary
a thing as loss comes now and touches me.

Message: This poem is about the poet wondering what his ex wife is doing and marvelling at the feeling of emptiness and loss, as well as showing his attempt to overcome the end of his marriage with 'Alice'.

The poem doesn't have a particular form. It is written in one complete stanza and has a lot of enjambment. Enjambment shows that the poem is having endless thoughts about 'Alice', suggesting that even though he is supposed to get over his wife just as his marriage has ended, his mind is still full of thoughts about 'Alice' and what she is doing- he is obsessed with her even though they aren't together anymore. This is reinforced by the word that Patten chooses to put into his poem: 'spies', which have connotations to war as spies are sent out to retrieve information so that a country can have the upper hand of the situation and gain more control. He also writes that he still feels 'as if/ Love had not the right/ to walk out of me' showing that he feels that it is unfair for him to be left alone now. All of this show that although he is supposed to be leaving his marriage and ex-wife all in the past, he isn't really doing so as he still seems to want to see her and know all about what she is like now.

The reader particularly feels the poet's affection and longing for Alice as he starts the poem with 'Alice', directly addressing his former wife to show that he was truly thinking about her a lot when he was writing the poem. Also, the poet uses the first person to write the poem and directly addresses the reader by using personal pronouns ('you'), and 'you' is repeated for many times in the poem, showing that again the poet is obsessed with 'Alice' and that he can't stop thinking about her, emphasising how much he longs for her.

A lot of winter imagery is used in the poem ('The earth's still as hard', 'empty gardens'). This is used so that the reader can visualise these scenes and connect them to the status of the poet's relationship with 'Alice': There's no warmth, no passion, their relationship is dead and non existent just like how the gardens are 'empty' and how all the plants and flowers die in winter. This emphasises the feeling of loss and emptiness. There are a few opposites in the poem, for example 'winter' and 'warmth' (which is used when describing 'Alice') as well as 'inviting' and 'isolation' (again 'inviting' was used when describing 'Alice'). The words 'warmth' and 'inviting' are deeply tempting and the reader is attracted to these words, as compared to the words 'isolation' and 'winter. This lets the reader experience how much the poet longs to be with 'Alice' again and his attraction towards her.

Where I Come From by Elizabeth Brewster

People are made of places. They carry with them
hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace
or the cool eyes of sea-gazers. Atmosphere of cities
how different drops from them, like the smell of smog
or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,

nature tidily plotted in little squares
with a fountain in the centre; museum smell,
art also tidily plotted with a guidebook;
or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,
chromium-plated offices; smell of subways

crowded at rush hours.

                                          Where I come from,

people carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;
blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;
wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint,

with yards where hens and chickens circle about,
clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhouses
behind which violets grow. Spring and winter
are the mind’s chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.
A door in the mind blows open, and there blows

a frosty wind from fields of snow.

 

This poem is about different people that the poem has met in the past and compares where she comes from to the city. She says that the 'Atmosphere of cities' is very different from the more rural places like the 'jungles or mountains' and the beaches 'sea- gazers'.

 

The poet at the start gives a general feeling of how people are different as they are shaped by the places that they grew up in, so they have unique identities, pasts and memories. She then goes on using the third person (eg. 'They carry with them') to describe the smells and scenes of the city. Here the word 'smell' is repeated very often. Smell is one of our senses and it can often trigger strong memories inside us as do sight and sound, which is what the writer may be trying to get us to experience so that we can personally connect with the poem more strongly. Imagery is also used in order for us to more easily imagine the scenes that the writer is describing. Simple language, for example, 'smell of work' is used in order for the reader to be able to easily imagine the scenes. Enjambment is used to emphasise how strong these memories are and how deeply people are tied to the places they come from.

Then the poem changes from the urban to the rural, from third person to first person as she finally personally relates the poem to herself by writing 'Where I come from'. She becomes very engaged with her memories of her birthplace and she gets lost in it, by giving us a list of her memories non-stop (enjambment) which emphasises the strength of her personal bond to the place that she is describing.

 

The adverbs 'tidily' are repeated in the second stanza. Although the poet seems to write in a neutral tone, by repeating 'tidily' and putting it along with words such as 'nature' and 'art', it appears as if the poet is criticising the urban areas/ cities. The poet writes:

'nature tidily plotted' and 'art also tidily plotted'

However, nature and art are things that do not seem to have boundaries and are often presented as free and in a way, disorganised and messy. The fact that they are 'tidily plotted' seem to suggest that the poet dislikes how the urban areas are so restricted in the sense that people in the urban areas/ cities seem to be more interested in 'factories', 'chromium plated offices' and 'guidebook(s)' leaving no space for nature and art. She also emphasises the idea that urban areas lack space in the stanza by using words that give off connotations related to space, such as 'plotted' and 'crowded'.

 

In the third stanza, she compares her birthplace with the cities, showing that there is a lot of freedom in the sense that there is a lot of space, as she says 'acres of woods'. The poet writes here, 'people carry woods in their minds, acres of woods', and in this way she seems to be criticising that people in urban areas have more restricted minds than people in the rural areas. This is supported by the contrasting words you find in the third and second stanza, for example 'aimlessly' and 'in the centre', as one does not suggest any direction but the other does.

 

Another reason that the poet seems to be negative about the cities is because she says that the 'Atmospheres of cities/ how different drops from them (the rural parts)'. The verb 'drops' brings negative connotations as we think of a drop in status or in rank.

 

In contrast the poet seems much more positive and loving about the rural areas, as well as nostalgic since she grew up there. This is emphasised by the presence of words that remind us of colour in the third stanza, but there are hardly any colours in the second stanza mentioned (or dull colours are mentioned). For example, the words 'violets', 'paint' and 'blueberry patches' remind us of vibrant and bright colours, whereas in the second stanza words like 'chromium', 'factories' and 'subways' remind us of dull metallic colours (like grey and black) which do not appeal to us.

 

Anyway, I did spend quite a lot of time thinking about the poem (because poetry is hard, for me, at least). But I'm glad I'm finished with this one! :)

The Partial Explanation by Charles Simic

Seems like a long time
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside.

Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door
Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street.

A glass of ice-water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself
Upon entering.

And a longing,
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks.       

I really don't know if my interpretation of this is what the poet really wanted it to be like, because all I can understand here is that the poet has been waiting for a long time for his food to come. Is there any deeper meaning? Because I can't really think of any haha.

So this restaurant the poet is in seems a bit run down and the service seems bad.
'Grimy little luncheonette'
'Grimy' makes me think of dirt and darkness- Probably what the restaurant was like, dark.
'A glass of ice- water/ Keeps me company'
Who serves ice cold water during winter (the writer says snow is falling outside)?
Apparently the cooks are talking ('the conversation/ Of cooks') and the poet has an 'Incredible longing/ To eavesdrop' on it. Probably he wants to know what they are doing taking so long to get his food done.
There is quite a lot of repetition in the poem: 'Seems', 'Since', 'longing'. The first line on stanza starts with a conjunction ('And'). I guess they all just kind of make it seem like the poet has been waiting for so long.

This poem is really different from some of the other poems that I've read before. It's more narrative, factual and straightforward and not many poetic/ literary techniques are used.

And I really can't think of anything more to say about the poem right now. Maybe I'll come up with something later and I'll update the post.

Trying

Currently trying to understand 'The Partial Explanation' by Charles Simic.
I guess it'll take a while though (no surprise- me and poetry don't mix) so might be updating later.
It's funny how I wanted to analyse a poem a day, but now it's more like a poem a month.
Oh well.

The Poet by Tom Wayman

Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook
May speak much but makes little sense
Cannot give clear verbal instructions
Does not understand what he reads
Does not understand what he hears
Cannot handle “yes-no” questions

Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs
Has difficulty recalling what he ate for breakfast, etc.
Cannot tell a story from a picture
Cannot recognize visual absurdities

Has difficulty classifying and categorizing objects
Has difficulty retaining such things as
addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables
May recognize a word one day and not the next

OK, so this poem is basically about what poets are like, I think. To be honest, I don't know, haha. This poem is kind of hard for me to understand, even though the content seems to be relatively straightforward...

OK, so the title 'The Poet' suggests that the poem is about what a typical poet is like.
There is no rhyme in the poem, maybe trying to show how spontaneous and random a poet is?
Quite a lot of repetition in the poem- 2 lines start with 'Does' in the first stanza, for instance, but it's not regular throughout the poem: Perhaps wanting to show how spontaneous poets can be again?
Because, throughout the whole poem, the poet seems to be saying that a typical poet just can't settle down, they kind of 'jump around' a lot (if you get what I mean) and they are quite into abstract things? As in, poets are kind of more abstract- minded? So they aren't really into concrete facts and things like that. I'm confusing myself actually haha.

So after a few days thinking about this poem (okay, maybe not a few, more like a week), I guess this poem is also about the feelings of the typical poet as well. 'May speak much but makes little sense'->maybe that's why the poet is into poetry? This poem may be about why poets write in the way they too ('Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs'- some poems use proverbs weirdly). The words 'difficulty' and 'cannot' which have negative connotations to them are repeated quite a lot, so perhaps the poem is explaining to us about the difficulties and challenges that poets encounter which make them write the way they do (eg. many poems are very long, but the message they are trying to convey may just be very short).

To be honest all of these difficulties that the poet in this poem experiences are not difficulties to normal people at all (eg. 'Cannot handle 'yes-no' questions'), so maybe the poet (Wayman) is poking fun and in a way mocking other poets in the fact that they can't really convey the message clearly to the reader and the reader ends up having to think a lot in order to understand the message (or maybe ending up not even knowing what the poem is talking about). Perhaps this poem is ironic in the way that it criticizes other poems for not having their messages conveyed clearly, when this poem itself does not exactly convey its message clearly (to me at least. I don't know about you, but I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what this poem is talking about. Maybe it's just me.)

But then again, in a way this poem is relatively straightforward, as in it doesn't use many literary techniques, because some poems use a bunch of literary techniques and some people like me end up never understanding what they are trying to say. Oh well.

The Cockroach by Kevin Halligan

I watched a giant cockroach start to pace,
Skirting a ball of dust that road the floor.
At first he seemed quite satisfied to trace
A path between the wainscot and the door,
But soon he turned to jog in crooked rings,
Circling the rusty table leg and back,
And flipping right over to scratch his wings-
As if the victim of a mild attack
Of restlessness that worsened over time.
After a while, he climbed an open shelf
And stopped. He looked uncertain where to go.
Was this due payment for some vicious crime
A former life had led to? I don’t know
Except I thought I recognised myself.


This poem was okay...
So when I first looked at it, it seemed like the whole poem was just about the poet watching a cockroach move around, which is weird. The last sentence is really shocking (I can't really think of a better word other than this) compared to the rest of the poem, as the poet seems to be downgrading himself to a cockroach, which is often seen as a disgusting, ugly and annoying pest.

At first the cockroach knows where its going, then it gets 'nervous' and seems lost. The poet suggests reasons for this 'Was this due payment for some vicious crime/ A former life had led to?' and then lastly says that he sees himself in the cockroach- so he's comparing his life to how the cockroach is acting? So, it's an extended metaphor as the cockroach's actions are a metaphor for the poet's life?


To be honest I do not know what this poem is exactly talking about. In my view, I think the poet is comparing his life to the cockroach's actions- So when he was a child, he had his parents: They would care for him, teach him and guide him in life, the poet was happy with life, as it was simple?

'At first he seemed quite satisfied to trace/  A path between the wainscot and the door'
This gave me that idea, because compared to the later paths/ actions the cockroach does, tracing 'a path' seems relatively simple and straightforward, and the cockroach was 'quite satisfied' with it.

Then, the poet grows up and enters adulthood, where everything is so much more complicated and difficult- Nothing is straightforward about it.
'jog in crooked rings,/ Circling'
These are more complicated actions compared to the 'path' that the cockroach took earlier.

Another way that I got this idea is because of the rhyme scheme. When the poem was talking about how the cockroach was following its simple 'path' with a 'quite satisfied' feeling, the rhyme scheme is regular. When the poem starts talking about the cockroach getting more 'nervous' and 'lost', there is no rhyme scheme anymore. Does this mean that when the poet was a child, everything was laid in front of him, things were easy and straightforward? When he grows up, he sees that life is actually very complicated.


'Of restlessness that worsened over time'
The 'worsened over time' part convinced me to think that this poem is talking about the poet's life. This 'restlessness'- Does it mean the poet's uncertainty and nervousness towards life? Maybe.


'And stopped. He looked uncertain where to go.'
Here, I think it shows that the poet is kind of lost in life. He has been through so much, just as the cockroach has been to so many places (eg. the door, table leg, shelf) and has done so many different actions ('trace', 'jog', 'circling'). Maybe he has seen so much, experienced so much that he does not know what to think anymore and is a bit lost?

To be honest, that's all I can write about this poem right now, and I don't even know if my interpretation of it is ok. Poetry can really be hard sometimes, but I guess I'll keep trying...
 

Today

Going to do 2 poems today to make up for yesterday.

'The Planners' by Boey Kim Cheng- Elson

They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,
filled with permutations of possibilities.
The buildings are in alignment with the roads
which meet at desired points
linked by bridges all hang
in the grace of mathematics.
They build and will not stop.
Even the sea draws back and the skies surrender.

They erase the flaws,
the blemishes of the past, knock off
useless blocks with dental dexterity.
All gaps are plugged
with gleaming gold.
The country wears perfect rows
of shining teeth.
Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis.
They all have the means.
They have it all so it will not hurt,
so history is new again.
The piling will not stop.
The drilling goes right through
the fossils of last century.
But my heart would not bleed
poetry. Not a single drop to stain the blueprint
of our past's tomorrow.


      I found this poem okay (which is good). I think it is about development and modernisation, how boring it can be because the buildings and structures are so ordered and organised in such a repetitive fashion ('in the grace of mathematics', 'perfect rows/ of shining teeth'), personally I feel that the poet is, by not giving the poem a definite structure, challenging the dull perfection of how everything is put together so neatly.

      However, the poet probably doesn't think that development is completely boring and bad, because he uses a lot of positive adjectives to describe the buildings ('with gleaming gold'- alliteration, maybe to really emphasise how neat and ordered the buildings are?)

       Personification is used ('Even the sea draws back and the skies surrender') to show how rapidly the city/area is developing and that this development is against nature, it seems to suggest that even nature is afraid of this rapid non-stop development.

        I don't really understand the last bit, but whatever. I think it's comparing art ('poetry') which is really free and expressive, to the buildings which are kind of the opposite of art, as they are all very perfectly organised in a way that it is boring and not very expressive? A blueprint is a design plan, so by saying that his heart 'would not bleed/ poetry. Not a single drop to stain the blueprint' of the future, I'm guessing he's saying that 1) art will not really have a place in the future? 2) he, who is a poet- an artist, will not do anything to stop this non-stop boring development? I don't really know :)
      
       By the way, 'past's tomorrow' is an oxymoron, I think.