Oh No by Robert Creeley

Oh No

If you wander far enough

you will come to it

and when you get there

they will give you a place to sit

for yourself only, in a nice chair,

and all your friends will be there

with smiles on their faces

and they will likewise all have places.

                        —Robert Creeley

            The first time I read this poem, I thought it was about going to school and the doors being open to education. However, as I read the poem more, I realize that it’s not just about school; this poem is referring to finding your own place in this world because the poem says, “if you wander far enough” which signifies that wherever the speaker is referring to, is a journey away, just like finding your place in this world is a journey. Another interpretation I have is of the place being in heaven because the poem mentions having all your friends there with smiling faces; in heaven, you get joined with the people that mean a lot to you.

            An issue I came across was the title “Oh No” because I don’t really know how it relates to the poem. “Oh No” seems to conflict with the ideas in the last stanza about there being a nice chair and smiling friends because “oh no” is usually thought of as being negative and smiling is positive.

           

            I liked the imagery I got while reading this poem because I would imagine walking through the woods during the fall with the leaves covering the ground and then coming to a clearing with a bunch of chairs in a circle; I get a sense of peacefulness from this poem.

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave away,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

                        —Stevie Smith

            Stevie Smith was born in 1902 in Yorkshire, England. Her mother died when Smith was a teenager so Smith and her sister lived with an aunt; the aunt became an important figure in Smith’s life. Smith attended North London Collegiate School for Girls and went on to be a secretary. Smith started writing poetry in her twenties and has had eleven published poems; many of her poems have the evident topic of death. She drew some of the influence for her poems from fairytales and theology; he poems take a slightly nursery rhyme structure to them in their repetition and flow. Smith died in 1971 of a brain tumor.

            According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of “larking” has to deal with a person wandering or simply observing his or her surroundings. I looked up this word because now that I know its meaning, it’s easy to maybe see why the man has drowned because he liked to wander and it got him into danger.

            The first stanza is retrospective of the speaker watching his friend drowning and being unable to do anything about it. The second stanza, to me, feels as though it lacks sympathy because the speaker just claims that the friend is dead, with no emotion, almost like it never happened. The last stanza is introspective because it mentions “being too far out all my life” and this seems to me to be a reflection on the speaker’s lack of connection in his or her own life. This then led me to think that the speaker may not be just a person/friend watching someone drown, but in fact, watching him drown. The speaker seems to have lost touch with his life and can’t find a way to get reconnected and instead has given up hope and watched himself struggle. This poem reminds me that even though we all will feel like we are losing touch at one point or another in our lives, we have two options – drown or take the risk and save ourselves.

What the mirror said by Lucille Clifton

What the mirror said

listen,

you a wonder.

you a city

of a woman.

you got a geography

of your own.

listen,

somebody need a map

to understand you.

somebody need directions

to move around you.  

listen,

woman,

you not a noplace

anonymous

girl;

mister with his hands on you

he got his hands on

some

damn

body!

            —Lucille Clifton

            Lucille Clifton is an African-American woman born in New York in 1936; her ancestry line traces back to West African Kingdom of Dahomey, I thought the background and ethnicity of Lucille Clifton made a lot of sense when reading this poem because her diction is very much typical of African-Americans.

            I like this poem because it makes me imagine looking in a mirror and having my reflection telling me that I’m beautiful and boosting my self-confidence. The theme of this poem is about boosting self-confidence in girls and women and teaching us to love ourselves by having the mirror be telling the woman that she is complex and wonderful. There’s also the message that no one truly knows  who we are inside; we aren’t simple people as much as others may try to make us believe we are; there’s so much to each and every one of us to explore – both for ourselves and the rest of the world to discover about us.

            This poem, to me, has a sort of sassy tone to it at the end when it says “mister with his hands on you he got his hands on some damn body!” but the entire poem seems to have an introspective and positive tone to it. In the afterthoughts of this poem, the reader should realize that true beauty comes from within as well as the outside appearance.

             In an age of such mixed and strict expectations of what women should look like and act, this poem does a very good job of encouraging women to think better of themselves. This is a good poem for young girls to read and understand.

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying-

He had always taken funerals in stride-

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were “sorry for my trouble,”

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry, tearless sighs.

At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

-Seamus Heaney

            When I first read the title of this poem, “Mid-Term Break,” I thought that this poem was going to be funny or relatable to me because I can remember the times during winter break going sledding, drinking hot chocolate, and watching movies. However, this was very much not the case.

            This poem is very impactful because it was vastly different than my initial thoughts of this poem and it really struck a heartstring with me. This poem is about a four year old brother being hit and killed by a car while the older sister was away at college. What makes this poem so impactful and tear-jerking is that it is about the loss of innocence and youth vanquishing at such a promising time in the boy’s life.

            The structure of this poem helps the story of death to flow; from the harrowing journey home after finding out the news to finally seeing the body of her little brother. The tone is very somber and maybe a little distant but still captures the emotions needed to tackle the difficult and tragic subject of accidental childhood death. The poem also has a lot of imagery about the awkward and difficult moments of funerals and gatherings after a loved one dies.

            I liked this poem because it caught me off guard from what I had predicted the poem would be about; although it was sad, this poem really memorable to me.  

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

 into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this:  the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things: 

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let go,

to let go.

—Mary Oliver

            This poem brought on a lot of imagery for me while I was reading it. The first four stanza, on a funny note, reminded me of playing golf because some days, the trees seem to take on a life of their own and jump out of their spot in order of impede my next shot or make my ball ricochet back towards me. A more serious image I got while reading this poem was of walking through a forest in the fall, watching the sky be filled with falling leaves, crunching the fallen leaves on the ground, and hearing the calm and serenity of the nature around.

            However, the fifth through seventh stanzas had a change of imagery to one of blackened trees and desolate space. This shift brings to mind the fictional phoenix bird that will burst into flames, only to be reborn from the ashes. The forest will regrow and blossom into a beautiful serenity again with the changing and rebirth of the seasons; much like in life, things are always changing from good to bad and bad to good with the passing of time.

            In the last stanzas are my favorite lines of the poem: the three things we must be able to do to live in this world. “…to love what is mortal,” because nothing lasts forever and we must cherish what we have before it shall perish; “…to hold it against your bones knowing your life depends on it,” because YOLO and because when we know our lives depend on something, we understand and appreciate the true value of it; and lastly, “…when the time comes to let it go, to let it go,” when I first read this line, I thought “to let it go” was repeated for emphasis but as I reread that line, I discovered that it was phrased differently than I had originally thought and it was really impactful. It is not saying that when the time comes, to let it go, it’s saying that when the time comes to let something go, to let it go; this means to me that we let it go when we need to let it go because it is our own decision, not time’s or society’s decision. I’m not absolutely certain what the “it” is in this poem but I like to think that the “it” is death (life) and/or something we hold near and dear to our hearts.

            Overall, this poem had a tone of acceptance and serenity; the purpose would probably be to see the beauty in life and I think this poem executes that very well.

Mr Fear

Mr Fear

He follows us, he keeps track.

Each day his lists are longer.

Here, death, and here,

something like it.

Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams,

what do you have for me tonight?

And he looks through his sack,

his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds

the right one. Maybe he’s sorry.

Tell me, Mr. Fear,

what must I carry

away from your dream.

Make it small, please.

Let it fit in my pocket,

let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.

Fear, let me have

a small brown bat

and a purse full of crickets

like the ones I heard

singing last night

out there in the stubbly field

before I slept, and met you.

                       

            —Lawrence Raab

Upon reading the title of this poem, “Mr Fear,” I thought that it had the potential to be light and comical because sometimes, learning of what other people are afraid of, is funny and also humbling. When I think about that, I’m reminded of the scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in which Professor Lupin teaches the students about the “Riddikulus” spell that turns fears into funny things (see video clip). One of my fears is walking into a room, flipping on the light switch, and no lights turn on. This happened to me the other day when I went to turn on the light in a room and the bulb flashed and burnt out; my heart was racing as I ran downstairs to be in the light and company of my dad. I still am not sure why this is such a big fear of mine but I do remember having nightmares about it when I was younger, I guess I could maybe thank the horror films that I’ve been incessantly exposed to on commercials/trailers for most of my life.

Moreover, this poem isn’t comical; rather it’s a little somber with a hint of angst and despair. I think this poem refers to the human nature to fear death. The speaker in this poem seems to maybe have accepted his impending doom but is fearful of the burden it will put on others. In the end, I think the speaker dies because the line “…before I slept, and met you,” references that the person being spoken to is death himself.

I liked the line “maybe he smiles when he finds the right one…” because it gave me the image of a skeletal hand digging through a black sack, much like Santa would dig through his sack of presents on Christmas Eve, however, the reactions upon receiving the gifts are much different. The speaker in this poem is understanding of the gift he must receive but isn’t willing to let the token control his life, he’d rather it be small enough that he can live with it to the point that it could slip out of a hole in his pocket as if it were never there.

I did also notice that the author, Lawrence Raab, repeats a few words throughout the stanzas; for example, “Maybe he smiles when he finds the right one. Maybe he’s sorry”; “Here, death, and here, something like it”; “Let it fit in my pocket, let it fall through the hole in my pocket.” I like the repetition because it added more emphasis on those words and gave a little bit of a rhythm to the poem as well. Another thing I noticed was that the speaker calls the man Mr. Fear, until the end where he calls the man Fear. I think it was almost like a plea at the end for Mr. Fear to treat the speaker more like an equal and allow him a small glimmer of hope before his doom.

"Inoculation" by Susan Donnelly

                       Inoculation

Cotton Mather studied small pox for a while,

instead of sin.  Boston was rife with it.

Not being ill himself, thank Providence,

but one day asking his slave, Onesimus,

if he’d ever had the pox.  To which Onesimus replied,

“Yes and No.” Not insubordinate

or anything of the kind, but playful, or perhaps

musing, as one saying to another:

“Consider how a man

can take inside all manner of disease

and still survive.”

Then, graciously, when Mather asked again:

My mother bore me in the southern wild.

She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived

to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave.

                                    —Susan Donnelly

            I did some research on smallpox as it is no longer pertinent to my generation; I found that smallpox is caused by the virus variola and gives an infected person pus-filled blisters. Smallpox was highly contagious and spread through saliva by means of face-to-face contact, sneezing, coughing, etc. The virus was eradicated in 1979 after extreme measures to vaccinate people worldwide. I think it’s really cool that we as a human race have been able to make a disease that once killed millions of people, obsolete and saving millions of more lives as a result.

            I also researched Cotton Mather and found that he lived in the late 1600s to the early 1700s. He was involved in the Salem Witch Trials by convincing judges and juries to convict ordinary people of witchcraft by using spectral evidence. In the poem, “Inoculation” the sin that’s referred to, is Cotton Mather’s participation in the Salem Witch Trials and aid in conviction of innocent patrons. Cotton Mather studied smallpox and decided to give inoculations or vaccines to try to prevent the spread of the disease; patients were given small cuts and then the pus of active smallpox rubbed into the wounds which gave the patients a mild form of smallpox thus making them immune to getting it in the future. The first couple of patients that the inoculation was tested on were slaves.

            I like this poem because it made me do a little research into smallpox because all I had known of it previously was that it was eradicated before I was even born. This poem is very historical and almost biographical of Mather’s scientific participation into vaccinations and smallpox.

            My favorite line of this poem is the very last one where it says “…to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave,” because it’s really contrasting in the slave’s view of freedom. He accepts himself as being a slave but says he’s free of smallpox, which I find interesting because smallpox or any disease is imprisoning because it leaves one weak and incapable; Onesimus is helping Mather find a solution to the smallpox epidemic which by no means leaves him free of smallpox.

            The relationship between Mather and Onesimus was intriguing to me because they aren’t equals but there also doesn’t seem to be a clear cut division between the two. They seem to have mutual respect for each other, evident in the line of the first stanza, “Not insubordinate or anything of the kind, but playful, or perhaps musing….” To me the relationship and the conversation between the two is of not of a master and a slave but rather of colleagues, noting observations and bouncing ideas off one another in hopes to find a solution.