“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.