Poetry Project

My poem:

Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and you bald cry

Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother

Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:

A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try

Your handful of notes;

The clear vowels rise like balloons.

 

Disillusionment of 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.

 

Writing Response:

 

Disillusionment of Twelve O’Clock

 

The crowd is mesmerized

By contortionists, trapeze artists and magicians.

All with crazy talents,

Costumes,

Makeup,

And names.

None are simple.

When they perform

They are swift, graceful and get their applause.

But the illusionist wears a simple gown,

No makeup,

And is merely called just “the Illusionist”.

She needs nothing exquisite

Because nature does it all for her.

She does not gain an applause at the end,

But instead takes everyone’s breath away.

As the sun and the moon

Chase each other around the clock

She lingers in the dawn of moonlight.

 

 

Poem #1:

Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand

 

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

 

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

 

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

 

Writing Idea: Write about a time when you have struggled with your identity, like the speaker of this poem.

 

My response:

 

Being ignored and unnoticed are some of the worst feeling’s in the world. My sister has always had good grades, great friends, and incredible qualities. I sometimes find myself trying to fall in her footsteps, not only because I look up to her, but also because I want my mom to treat me like she treats her. After Liz recently graduating high school last year and starting college, I’ve felt useless and invisible at some points. I can’t imagine how the speaker of this poem deals with this feeling all the time.

 

Poem #2:

Meeting at Night by Robert Browning

 

The grey sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

 

Then a mile of sea-scented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each.

 

Writing Idea: Would you go through anything it takes to get to the person you love?

 

My response:

Yes, If I was truly in love with them. I would want to make them happy, and if I did love them I would want to be with them so I could be happy as well. But in the poem he walks quite a lot to get to his lover-- I might would drive...