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.  

"Wallflowers" by Donna Vorreyer

Wallflowers

I heard a word today I’d never heard before—

I wondered where it had been all my life.

I welcomed it, wooed it with my pen,

let it know it was loved.

They say if you use a word three times, it’s yours.

What happens to ones that no one speaks?

Do they wait bitterly,

hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms,

longing for someone to say,

“yes, you…you’re the one”?

Or do they wait patiently, shy shadows

at the high school dance,

knowing that, given the slightest chance,

someday they’ll bloom?

I want to make room for all of them,

to be the Ellis Island of diction—

give me your tired, your poor,

your gegenshein, your zoanthropy—

all those words without a home,

come out and play—live in my poem.

                                   

—Donna Vorreyer

 

            When I first read the title of the poem, “wallflowers,” I thought of sunflowers because it was the first thing that popped into my mind and the word wallflower seems bright and cheery to me, which is something that a sunflower can represent. Then there’s the word wallflower as a description of someone that stands off to the side and can blend in with the wall. I think the poem will be about celebrating the wallflower and overcoming that identity.

            This poem wasn’t quite what I thought it would be; it was about words, more specifically, about new words being used in a vocabulary. The author wonders if words wait desperately to be chosen or if words feel unused or unloved; however, at the end, the author also wants to take in all the words and make them feel wanted and loved.

            I looked up the vocabulary words that I was unfamiliar with and came up with the following definitions:  gegenshein—a faint light about 20° across the celestial sphere opposite the sum probably caused by the backscatter of sunlight by solar-system dust; zoanthropy—a kind of monomania in which the patient believes himself transformed into one of the lower animals.

            I really liked how the author personified words by comparing them to orphans that want more than anything to be picked and cared for by someone else, or that words are like the shy kids at a dance, waiting their turn to have a dance with someone. This analogy really helped me see that the author is trying to get the audience to use new words and expand their vocabulary by welcoming them in because the author makes the audience pity the words and have the words be the puppy dog eyes you just can’t resist saying no to.