Thursday, February 27, 2014

By Elizabeth Bishop

The Fish
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels-until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

The Fish Commentary

In this poem the fisherman meets a fish that reflects his life. The fish had gone through many things in his life that the fisherman can relate to. The older people are the more experienced they are in life. When people get old we can see aging in our skin and hair. For a fish the signs of aging are in their lips. The lips of the fish in the poem have "hung five old pieces of fish-line." In the poem the author say the fish had a “five –haired beard of wisdom” this compares the fishes’ five hooks to a beard that a man with wisdom would have. These two have the hardships of life in common. 

Verb Commentary

I think the poem speaks about the loss of action, the loss of the strength of words. A verb is an action; it represents the fact that something is being done. The speaker wants words to come out as intense as they are thought. With time, people have become more silent in some ways, stopped saying things the way they think them--dressing them up for others to feel better, people feel afraid to act; to oppose what they feel is unfair. I think the speaker wants these instincts to be free again. I think the author feels like people don’t work as hard as they used. He wants the blood, sweat , and tears of the word verb to come back. This message is sent by this line, “the blood of   those  who  have  spoken  and  those  who  have not spoken.” 

By Pablo Neruda

Morning

Naked you are simple as one of your hands;
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round.
You've moon-lines, apple pathways
Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba;
You've vines and stars in your hair.
Naked you are spacious and yellow
As summer in a golden church.

Naked you are tiny as one of your nails;
Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born
And you withdraw to the underground world.

As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores;
Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.

By Pablo Neruda

Verb

I’m going to wrinkle this word, 
I’m going to twist it,
yes,
it is much too flat
it is as if a great dog or great river
had passed its tongue or water over it
during many years.
I want that in the word
the roughness is seen
the iron salt
The de-fanged strength
of the land,
the blood
of those who have spoken and those who have not spoken.
I want to see the thirst
Inside the syllables
I want to touch the fire
in the sound:
I want to feel the darkness
of the cry. I want
words as rough
as virgin rocks.

Sonnet 27, Morning by Pablo Neruda read by Robert Ricardo Reese [Poetry ...

First Death in Nova Scotia Commentary

This poem was included in Bishop’s third collection of poetry - Questions of Travel – in 1965. Bishop was in her fifties, and trying to come to terms with events in her early childhood. ‘First Death in Nova Scotia’ is an elegy for her young cousin Arthur (his real name was Frank) who died when Bishop was four.  The poem begins in a simple way. We visualize Cousin Arthur's wake through a child's eyes. It is winter in Nova Scotia, the parlor is cold. Elizabeth had a hard time figuring out how death really works we can see this because she calls the loon a “he” instead of it. I liked this poem because Elizabeth actually remembers the death of her cousin from when she was a four year old girl. I also like that she writes from the perspective of the little girl. This puts you in her shows and shows what she could have been possibly thinking  as a little girl seeing a dead body for the first time at such a young age. 

By Elizabeth BIshop

First Death in Nova Scotia

In the cold, cold parlor
my mother laid out Arthur
beneath the chromographs:
Edward, Prince of Wales,
with Princess Alexandra,
and King George with Queen Mary.
Below them on the table
stood a stuffed loon
shot and stuffed by Uncle
Arthur, Arthur's father.

Since Uncle Arthur fired
a bullet into him,
he hadn't said a word.
He kept his own counsel
on his white, frozen lake,
the marble-topped table.
His breast was deep and white,
cold and caressable;
his eyes were red glass,
much to be desired.

"Come," said my mother,
"Come and say good-bye
to your little cousin Arthur."
I was lifted up and given
one lily of the valley
to put in Arthur's hand.
Arthur's coffin was
a little frosted cake,
and the red-eyed loon eyed it
from his white, frozen lake.

Arthur was very small.
He was all white, like a doll
that hadn't been painted yet.
Jack Frost had started to paint him
the way he always painted
the Maple Leaf (Forever).
He had just begun on his hair,
a few red strokes, and then
Jack Frost had dropped the brush
and left him white, forever.

The gracious royal couples
were warm in red and ermine;
their feet were well wrapped up
in the ladies' ermine trains.
They invited Arthur to be
the smallest page at court.
But how could Arthur go,
clutching his tiny lily,
with his eyes shut up so tight
and the roads deep in snow? 

Daught of the Sea

By Pablo Neruda

You Are the Daughter of the Sea

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.

Filling Station Commentary

The beginning of the poem is very judgmental. She seems to be above the filth at the filling station. She uses exclamation marks and this gives the impression that she is shocked by the dirt, and the repetition of the word “dirty” just helps bring home the message.   Then she looks more closely and notices little homely and comforting touches at this filling station. She realizes she and the workers at this station are not all that different. Even in this grease and dirt there is someone displaying a touch of love for this home. The poet then realizes that this is a home to someone even if it isn’t to her liking. I like this about the poem because she took the time to look at people with less than her and see past the fact that they have less than her or are less classy than her. She also notices that they have things in their house that she can identify with and show that they aren’t that different each other. Imagery is present throughout the entire poem. She pays attention to everything the station, and paints a vivid picture for the reader. There are a lot of short sentences, which increases the pace of the poem. These short sentences give of a fast-paced and cheerful tone.  My favorite line of the poem is “someone loves us all.” That line sticks out because it brings out a message that everyone should hear. No matter who you are someone loves us all, and everyone should feel that love.

By Elizabeth Bishop

Filling Station 

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

"SADDEST POEM" By Pablo Neruda: Video By ReigniteLove

The saddest poem is about a man who has lost the woman he loves. He has to say goodbye tonight and this is why he can “ write the saddest poem of all tonight.” He loves her a lot but he has to let her go. An example of simile in this poem is “and this poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.” This line also shows and example of imagery. There was also personification when the poet says, “the night wind whirls to the sky and sings.” The author repeats the line “I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.” The stanzas are very small the longest stanza is only two lines long. The poem shifts three times. He starts off talking about how he misses her, then it says what he is going to do without her and lastly it says that she changed he just has to move on. The tone of the poem was very sad, but I really loved this poem. That says a lot because I don’t read poems at all. I think the sadness of the poem makes it the most beautiful, and the fact that he loved her enough to write a poem about his love for her  and how much he’s going to miss her. Also I like how he says “I can write the saddest poem of all tonight” because it’s like he couldn’t write this poem before she left him and now he’s broken without her. The man hears someone singing “in the distance” and repeats in the distance. This reinforces the fact that he feels alone. Now that she’s gone.  Nobody is singing to him, and this leads him to say “my soul is not satisfied.” My favorite part is when he says, “I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.” 

By Pablo Neruda

Saddest Poem

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. 

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." 

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. 

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. 

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. 

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. 

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me. 

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her. 

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me. 

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer. 

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. 

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes. 

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long. 

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her. 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
A Prodigal Commentary

This poem can be a representation of Elizabeth Bishop's on life. In the analysis I posted it says that Bishop had a problem with addiction just as the man in the poem. The man in the poem feels alone and like he doesn't belong so maybe Bishop feels the same way. The poem shows that he is ashamed of his addiction because it say “he hid two pints behind a two by four.” He is like a representation of Elizabeth. He is a poor man and was poorly kept because of his alcohol addiction. When he is sober he doesn't like having to live with pigs and he feels down about how the pigs accept him. But when he wakes up in the morning he is okay because he is drunk. The alcohol makes him feel that his life isn't all that bad and he might able to live like this forever. The poem goes in depth about how much the farmer feels isolated and then makes a metaphor about him having a “staggering life” and is moving without a purpose. After the man takes an inventory of his life he decides to get back on track. A theme of this poem is the beauty in unattractive places. This poem is a double sonnet with an irregular rhyme scheme. Bishop uses very detailed imagery to bring the scene to life. The word “But” in the beginning of the second section signals a change of mood. Before he was content with living with pigs for another year but once you get to the second section he begins to think that that is no way to live or to deal with his problems. The star coming to guide the prodigal home is an allusion to the bible and the story of Jesus’ birth when the north star guided the three wise men to the manger where Jesus was born. 
A Prodigal Analysis
http://elizabethbishopnotes.wordpress.com/the-prodigal/

by Elizabeth Bishop

A Prodigal

The brown enormous odor he lived by
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare--
even to the sow that always ate her young--
till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts
(he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours),
the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red
the burning puddles seemed to reassure.
And then he thought he almost might endure
his exile yet another year or more.

But evenings the first star came to warn.
The farmer whom he worked for came at dark
to shut the cows and horses in the barn
beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,
with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,
safe and companionable as in the Ark.
The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.
The lantern--like the sun, going away--
laid on the mud a pacing aureole.
Carrying a bucket along a slimy board,
he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight,
his shuddering insights, beyond his control,
touching him. But it took him a long time
finally to make up his mind to go home.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014


file://localhost/Users/1100195570/Desktop/9781847771605img01lge-1.jpg

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Or,

BY THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS
Or Oreo, or
worse. Or ordinary.
Or your choice   
of category

            or   
            Color

or any color   
other than Colored
or Colored Only.
Or “Of Color”
         
            or   
            Other

or theory or discourse
or oral territory.
Oregon or Georgia
or Florida Zora

            or
            Opportunity

or born poor   
or Corporate. Or Moor.
Or a Noir Orpheus
or Senghor

            or   
            Diaspora

or a horrendous   
and tore-up journey.
Or performance. Or allegory’s armor
of ignorant comfort

            or
            Worship

or reform or a sore chorus.
Or Electoral Corruption
or important ports
of Yoruba or worry

            or
            Neighbor

or fear of . . .
of terror or border.
Or all organized
minorities.

Commentary 
I really liked this poem because its kind of silly. And it has its own beat that it makes when you read it aloud or in your head. The use of the word "or" so many times makes me think that there is always another option. You can do this or you can do that. I feel like the poem is saying that everything is up to you. You can chose your own path and go your own way. 

Casabianca

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite `The boy stood on
the burning deck.' Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy. 

All Their Stanzas Look Alike

BY THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS
All their fences
     All their prisons
All their exercises
     All their agendas
All their stanzas look alike
     All their metaphors
All their bookstores
     All their plantations
All their assassinations
     All their stanzas look alike
All their rejection letters
     All their letters to the editor
All their arts and letters
     All their letters of recommendation
All their stanzas look alike
     All their sexy coverage
All their literary journals
     All their car commercials
All their bribe-spiked blurbs
     All their stanzas look alike
All their favorite writers
     All their writing programs
All their visiting writers
     All their writers-in-residence
All their stanzas look alike
     All their third worlds
All their world series
     All their serial killers
All their killing fields
     All their stanzas look alike
All their state grants
     All their tenure tracks
All their artist colonies
     All their core faculties
All their stanzas look alike
     All their Selected Collecteds
All their Oxford Nortons
     All their Academy Societies
All their Oprah Vendlers
     All their stanzas look alike
All their haloed holocausts
     All their coy hetero couplets
All their hollow haloed causes
      All their tone-deaf tercets
All their stanzas look alike
      All their tables of contents
All their Poet Laureates
      All their Ku Klux classics
All their Supreme Court justices
      Except one, except one
Exceptional one. Exceptional or not,
      One is not enough.
All their stanzas look alike.
      Even this, after publication,
Might look alike. Disproves
      My stereo types.

Commentary 
This poem is something that I like because it is simple and complex all at the same time. He says the things he doesn't like about poetry as well as other aspects of life. I think the fact that is one long sentence shows how tired he is of hearing the same old thing from everybody. Just like you would get tired of hearing him repeat the word "all" 49 times. In the video I posted he reads the poem in a boring manner which I believe shows how bored he is with everybody doing the same thing. 

Thomas Sayers Ellis - All Their Stanzas Look Alike

I am in Need of Music - Elizabeth Bishop

I Am in Need of Music

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. 

Sticks

BY THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS
My father was an enormous man
Who believed kindness and lack of size
Were nothing more than sissified
Signs of weakness. Narrow-minded,

His eyes were the worst kind
Of jury—deliberate, distant, hard.
No one could outshout him
Or make bigger fists. The few

Who tried got taken for bad,
Beat down, their bodies slammed.
I wanted to be just like him:
Big man, man of the house, king.

A plagiarist, hitting the things he hit,
I learned to use my hands watching him
Use his, pretending to slap mother
When he slapped mother.

He was sick. A diabetic slept
Like a silent vowel inside his well-built,
Muscular, dark body. Hard as all that
With similar weaknesses

—I discovered writing,
How words are parts of speech
With beats and breaths of their own.
Interjections like flams. Wham! Bam!

An heir to the rhythm
And tension beneath the beatings,
My first attempts were filled with noise,
Wild solos, violent uncontrollable blows.

The page tightened like a drum
Resisting the clockwise twisting
Of a handheld chrome key,
The noisy banging and tuning of growth.

Commentary 
This poem is Amazing!! I love it because he talks about when he was younger he admired his father because he was tough and a force to be reckoned with. But as he grew older and saw who his father really was and what kind of man he really was he became his own man and decided that poetry was what made him the person he was and that is when he became a manunlike his father.   
A Miracle For Breakfast
At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.

He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun.

Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb,
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.

I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
--I saw it with one eye close to the crumb--

and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.




Commentary 
I chose this poem because I thought it was interesting that she chose to write a poem about crumbs and coffee. In the poem I believe she went somewhere on a ferry and arrived at a mansion. When she got there she was met by her host on the balcony. A servant brought the food that she was expecting but not in the amount that she was expecting. He brought one cup of coffee and one roll for everyone. I believe the miracle was that she was there in the moment even though she didn't have a feast she was still in mansion in a beautiful place enjoying life.