"In the Middle of the Road" by Elizabeth Bishop

So it's 12:08am on a lovely Friday night Saturday morning and I realized I had a blog due yesterday. Wonderful. I completely forgot... this week has totally screwed with my mind. And I'm at my sisters house, deprived of all my school materials, so I'll have to just flow with this one.

Last class we read a poem called In the Middle of the Road by Elizabeth Bishop. It was kind of boring and repetitive, considering it talked about a stone in the middle of the road for 2/3rd's of the poem. I have to admit, I was pretty confused considering there wasn't much to go on.

I realized by the second time we listened to it that the stone in the middle of the road had to mean something, but I wasn't exactly sure what. Turns out it was about overcoming obstacles in life. Which makes perfect sense, considering that life is sometimes reffered to as a road.

However, the author was very somber about it. She says that she will never forget that obstacle she had to overcome, instead of forgetting it once she overcame it, she is almost letting it haunt her, which is something a lot of people tend to do- not letting go of the past. By not I mean not totally forgetting about it because that would defeat the purpose, you wouldn't grow as a person if you forgot about what you went through and how you got through it just fine. I mean that we should forgive but not forget. Don't let something haunt you down, remember it for what you have become because of it.

"At the Un-national Monument along the Canadian Border" by William Stafford

When I first read this poem, I have to admit, I was really confused. The author seemed to be talking about a field that people have forgotten about. The author compares it to a field people have fought a war on and those that people have died on and how, although it still looks the same, if not better, it is not remembered for anything special.

When we talked about this in class, the idea about memorials came up. It seems as though people remember certain places where battles were fought, when the real issue is to remember why the battles were fought and what came of them.

We also spoke about how the purpose of poetry is to commemorate the little things. This sort of reminds me of speaking for those who cannot speak up, for those who are oppressed and go un-noticed everyday. There are a lot of people that need to be stood up for and spoken for, and this poem was just a small example of that.

Grammar Exercises:
The field, that went unnoticed, was really something that shoudl be rememebered.
Reading this poem, I felt inspired to speak for those who cannot.
I think it is important to remember who fought for your rights.

"After Dinner" by Phillip Levine

This poem is about a woman who, after eating dinner, sits down and decides to read a book. As she's reading she nods off a few times but then is startled when she hears a noise from her backyard. She opens her door and steps on her porch, staring at her shadow, then later follows it as if it were a real person. When she goes to follow her shadow, she finds herself along, wringing her hands because of the cold.

She feels a presence with her when she is outside. Some say what she's feeling is fear, others say loneliness or simply that she's just sleep walking.

For me, I think that she has maybe lost someone recently and when she hears the noise coming from outside, she secretly hopes it's whoever she has lost. I think at some point we all feel that sense of loneliness. We wish that the person you miss would magically appear infront of you and make everything better. I think this woman's motivation for even going outside was from a sense of loneliness. Because if she were scared, why would be go outside where she would be vulnerable to it? It seeems like she went outside looking for someone, then realized when she was out there that the person she wanted to see really wasn't there and she was alone.