"Advent 1955" by John Betjaman

This poem was very suiting to the time of year we're currently in. But, the poem also speaks truths in how commercialized the Christmas/Holiday season has become.

Betjaman speaks about people missing the point in Christmas. While we are supposed to be celebrating the symbol of Jesus' birth, we instead get stressed out with shopping for our friends and family.He also mentions the idea of Christmas Cards, and how if you get one, you feel obligated to send one back just because they sent you one... even though you don't even speak to that person all that much.

Christmas has turned into such a commercialized holiday now. It ends up bringing more stress than it's supposed to, and ends up giving you a sour feeling in your stomach sometimes. It reminds me of something oiut of an AA meeting. I'm pretty sure one of the steps is to ask for forgiveness for all those who you hurt. It's almost like the idea of Christmas cards giving a message of "Hey, we don't talk anymore, we should really start that, Merry Christmas!" and you know the person doesn't mean to actually keep in touch, it's just something that is said. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a lot of people have intentions of actually keeping in touch, but some just say it in a card once a year and never make the effort, it's very fake.

Compound Sentence: He recieved a card in the mail, and he felt obligated to send one back.
Verb Agreement: Running around shopping for gifts has become a stressful activity.
Who/Which/That Clause: The meaning of Christmas, which is symbolic of the birth of Christ, has been forgotten.
Gerund Phrase: Looking back at Christmases past, he realized how much the season has changed,

"Bypass" by Susan Kelly-Dewitt

This poem is written in the point of view of a recently married woman who seems to have lost her husband during surgery. While she is waiting to hear any news about her husband, all these thoughts travel through her head. Most of the thoughts are about how they have only been married five weeks and how she hasn't even been able to have any special memories with him. "we'd been married only five weeks. I had not yet kissed into memory those places they raided to save your life." Waiting for him to wake up, she thinks of all the things that are trying to keep him alive.

I could not imagine how bad it feels losing someone that you love so quickly. Especially when you're watching them die. She is told that her husband is not dying, although he looks like it- "till unconscious, you did the death rattle on the gurney."His body is trying to warm itself up," they explained, to comfort me." It's almost like she knows he's dying no matter what anyone else says.

"After A Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes" by Emily Dickinson

Even though this poem was really somber, I liked it. I think Emily Dickinson is an amazing poet and definitally wrote some of the best works in American poetry. I really like the way she uses metaphors in her imagery. This poem was an ideal example of the way she uses imagery as a metaphor.

This poem was about the death and funeral of a person who died. In the title itself she starts the metaphors; the great pain resembles the death and the formal feeling is the funeral. This all makes sense because funerals are always very formal and proper.

She also goes on to describe the family as nerves, and how they are sitting "ceremonious like tombs," and also she uses the symbol of lead to describe how heavy the mutual feeling that everyone has. To end the poem she writes:
"As freezing persons recollect the snow--First chill, then stupor, then the letting go."
She related the feeling of losing someone to the feeling of clenching snow with your bare hands. First you're affected by the person loss, then you become numb to the feeling and eventually come to terms and let go of the person.

"Afraid So" by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

When reading this poem I was overcome with a sense of a depressing tone and mood. The poem is composed of questions, which "afraid so" can be the answers to them all. The questions remind me of questions everyone asks, and knows the answers to, but still asks them anyway, hoping for a different answer than what they already know.

In that sense, it's almost like setting yourself up for dissapointment when you find out the real answer you knew all along. But the feeling of hope drives you to ask for something better. I've found myself in this position a lot lately. Always asking the questions you already know the answers to and getting different answers, but knowing the truth. I guess I'm not making much sense here, so I'll stop rambling.

Even though the poem had a depressing undertone, I really liked it. I've never seen a poem written entirely in questions and it was interesting to see something new.

"Swear It" by Marge Piercy

This poem is about the power words have on people, specifically swearing. I have to admit that I sometimes talk very colorfully. It's what I grew up with, my mom's side of the family swore a lot more than my father's side, but they had their moments, too. My situation is similar to the poets, she said her mothers side of the family was much more verbal than her father's side.

It made me think of how different language is now compared to what it was before. Before, you would get death-stares if you said a swear on the street during conversation with a friend, now everyone just minds their own business and doesn't say anything about it because everyone does it. This even applies to certain topics, like sex. In the 50's sex was taught as more as an anatomy thing and the way they taught kids how to not get pregnant was just through abstinence. Now, they teach kids more about the dangers of sex, protected and unprotected.

There are still some topics and words that are taboo or have become more offensive than before. For example Fag, Spic and Nigger. I would never, ever use those words because I believe that they are extremely disrespectful. But it seems as though even though people say they wont use those words, they still think prejudicially. It brings up the topic of solving and stopping prejudice actions, and the solution is, even if you don't say the words, thinking prejudicially is just as bad as saying the word.

"Halley's Comet" by Stanley Kunitz

This poem sparked a lot of emotion in me, it reminded me of whenever my dad would wake me up in the middle of the night to see shooting/falling stars and meteor showers. He knew I was into astronomy (I never studied the constellations or anything, but I always wanted to go into space), so he knew i would like to see those things. Sometimes it was a failed attempt, because you couldn't see too well with the lights from the streets and downtown reflecting on the sky.

When reading this poem, I put myself into the boy's shoes and tired to see how his life was. Figuring the author saw this in 1910, the world was a very different place. But the poem seemed to connect two different worlds and time periods together. I could imagine sneaking up on my rooftop to look at the stars and sometimes, a comet, at night. it's a very relaxing thing to do.

Even though the poem stressed the boy thinking the world was going to end, and he was hearing people on the street corner, telling him to repent to God because if he doesn't he will die and never go to heaven. Thats a pretty scary thing for a 6-7 year old to go through, especially when they don't know a lot. But the young boy seemed to take this almost as a challenge, he went up to the roof, out of curiousness, excitement or anxiousness who knows, but just because he went up there to look up and watch the comet is almost like him saying "I'm not afraid."

“Driving up the Ohio River on Route 2 in Late Fall” by Larry Smith

This poem is really relatable just because of the time of year and season it is. Fall has a lot of meanings; it’s definitely my favorite season out of them all. Winter is too cold for my tastes, but it is really pretty. Spring is nice, everything is coming back to life but it’s also the season of lots of changes, growing up and moving on- for example, seniors graduating and becoming college kids. Summer is also great, freedom, and the one last burst of fun before you get into the routine of going back to school in the fall.

I love early the fall the most, the trees start changing colors and almost everyone seems to travel up north, especially New Hampshire to see the fall foliage in full “bloom” with all its beautiful colors rolling over the mountains. But then late fall rolls around and things start to get gloomier, the leaves are falling off the trees, making them look bare and dead and everything just looks old and deserted, like the abandoned factories and brown grass in the poem.

Overall, I thought this poem was about people changing like the seasons. The people/couple in the poem feel like they’re getting old and death is coming soon, and they reflect that in the changing of the seasons, describing the slate colors of the trees and sky and how dull and listless it all is. I think the people feel listless and aren’t ready to get old so quickly.

“Hard Rain” by Tony Hoagland

This poem made me think of how Americans have seemed to have lost a sense of imagination. Everything that happens in society is fabricated into a TV Show, Movie or Documentary. It seems as if we can’t leave things alone, and we have to somehow publicize every event. Even so called “reality” shows have become scripted. At some point we were all fooled to believe something was real when it was actually fake. For example, Laguna Beach...I have only seen the show once or twice, but it’s about these kids in “the real OC” and basically their lives and the drama in it. No one realizes that the show is scripted. Loosely, meaning they don’t have lines to memorize, but they have a plot line to cover.

This country has turned into media-crazed frenzy, all about how many people will buy the next lame product. People want you to buy things you don’t need and they try to mold you into a style of living, by categorizing people into labels or groups. Doing that makes it seem that the person you are labeling is not human. The minute you address them with something that isn’t their name (and I’m not talking about nicknames, I mean stereotype labels) you de-humanize them.

As children, we are taught to think that a smile can cure anything. Some people still have that belief and are blind to what really happens in the world. Or if they aren’t blind to it, they chose to not accept it or acknowledge it. Some things take a lot more than a smile to fix. Wars cannot be obliterated by a smile, it runs much deeper that that. People can’t automatically change who they are and conform to what someone else wants them to be. If they want to change, they have to do it themselves and not have someone else make them do it.

"Things Shouldn't Be So Hard" by Kay Ryan

When first listening to this poem I thought about an older woman who had been getting up and doing the same routine for years and years- never doing anything unexpected. I felt as though this woman was trapped in her day-to-day life, but even though she had a routine and she was comfortable in that routine, nothing ever came from it. Nothing was worn or rubbed down or even made to look like she had even lived there.

It seems as though the author is writing it from an autobiographical perspective. Maybe her mother, aunt, grandma, or someone close to her had passed away and when she went to see the house, maybe help clear out furniture, it all looked so un-touched and not bothered with. Nothing in the house even left an imprint to make you believe someone even lived there. It was as if she was erased from the earth before even dying.

This poem also had a great sense of imagery, I could clearly see an old woman going about her daily tasks in an old house with old fixtures and furniture and just walking around with a gloomy face because she just wanted to be recognized and leave in imprint on something. We all want to be remembered, no matter how miniscule it is.

"Aria" by George Bilgere

In the past year, I've been through an enormous amount of anxiety and overall trouble that was put on me by my family. I won’t go into detail, but to put it simply, there was a lot of resentment between my parents and it felt as if my family was falling apart at the seams. When listening and reading to this poem I also felt the same about this family. It seems as if the family had just gone through a huge loss and they’re trying to get their life back in order

When I was reading I was under the impression that the father was an opera singer, but he can’t sing anymore because he had to get a lung removed. Once he hears the song and pulls off the road, the children immediately go silent and stop fidgeting because they know how much opera still means to him. The wife just seems extremely frustrated with the whole situation and instead of staying there and listening, she gets out and smokes a cigarette wishing that he wouldn’t still lurk in the past and try to get over it.

There are a lot of things that ruin our moods and can really hurt or even ‘ruin’ our lives. I put ‘ruin’ in quotes when dealing with life because to me, no matter how bad things get, you have to look to the good, at least a little bit. If you don’t, things will just get worse and you probably won’t end up feeling happy for a long time. I’ve learned from first-hand experience how horrible things can get. But also, the fact that no matter how bad things get you have to open up to someone, tell them all your feelings or write your frustrations down, do something to get it out before it starts eating away at you. You just have to look up to something positive and try to enjoy yourself or else nothing will change.

"For the Falling Man" by Annie Farnsworth

When first listening to “For the Falling Man” I was overcome with such a sense of emotion, not just because it was September 11th; but because it’s one of those things that makes you think about what you have and how much we don’t appreciate the simple things in life. I feel a bit hypocritical writing this because it always takes something like that for me to realize what I have and how tomorrow is never promised to me, but after 5 minutes I forget about it and keep going about my day.

Regarding September 11th, everyone always says that you always remember where you were when you found out. I do remember where I was, but I remember having such a sense of confusion. I was 11, I had no idea what the World Trade Centers were or what terrorism was. I was so confused but I knew it had to have been a bad thing if the principal stopped into every class and told us what had happened. It wasn’t until I got home did I realize what was actually hit and how massive the damage was. Recently, I watched a video that was put out on September 11th of this year that had almost the whole destruction of both towers. The people who were filming were pretty far away, in a separate building, but when the buildings fell you could see all the smoke billowing out and finally coming in contact with the building where it was being filmed.

Manhattan was completely covered in a layer of dust and debris and soon the whole city slowly shut down. New York was put to a standstill for months; everyone was afraid to go outside and most feared for their lives. With all this tragedy, America, for the most part, came together as one. All of a sudden American flags and paraphernalia were seen all over the country. Not to make this subject more discouraging, but it irritates me how suddenly everyone is patriotic just because they have an American flag outside their house. Yes, everyone was somewhat affected about what happened on September 11th, but the hypocrisy surrounding this “patriotism” was astounding.

I’ve never been known to 100% positive about every decision out government has made, in fact, the percentage is no where near 100, but I do love my country. I love having freedom to do and say what I want without being persecuted. However, it is still extremely hypocritical (Yes, I know, I said it… again!) that we are supposed to be in this country that is so free and such a great place to live in, but still certain people are denied rights that others are automatically born with; that isn’t freedom, is it?

September 11th mostly reminds me of what a sad state our government is in right now. 5 years later, and what do we have to prove for it? A war on “terror” that has now turned into a war for oil and power, which is costing us millions each day, for something that could be used for much better resources. It agitates me how many bad decisions our government has made these past years and how they could have done a much better job.

I guess I’ll end this here since it’s turning more into a political opinion than a remembrance.



Ps: I know this is a bit longer than expected, but I wanted to add everything that this poem made me think about.

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