Vergissmeinnicht

Vergissminnicht
-Keith Douglas


Three weeks gone and the combatants gone,
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.


The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.


Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonored picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht
in a copybook gothic script.


We see him almost with content
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.


But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.


For here the lover and killer mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.




This poem intrigues me for many reasons. I first noticed the rhyming in the poem that switches between AABB, ABAB, and ABBA. I personally like using ABBA so that I can start singing Dancing Queen in my head. Anyways, what grips me about this poem is the imagery of the soldier lying there. It had been weeks since he was killed and yet his body still remains. I wonder if his fellow soldiers are also around him or if it is only the one soldier. 


Vergissmeinnicht loosely translates to forget me not. Of course we can see the connection between the soldier and the lover. The woman at home will not forget her dead lover. But what makes me curious is how vergissmeinnicht could be used to describe the narrator and the soldier. The narrator has returned again to the place the soldier rests and he says he sees the picture again. The narrator is not able to forget this scene and he describes how moving it is here in this poem. 


Since the picture has German words on it, I am assuming that the soldier was German and that this was during either the first or second World War. And if that is the case, the narrator is most likely American or English which would make the narrator see the soldier as his enemy. Especially because the narrator says, "as we came on that day, he hit my tank with one like the entry of a demon," and refers to the soldier as the "killer." So if this is the case, why does the soldiers body effect the narrator in such a way to reflect on the sight instead of just passing by? Is it that love conquers even the toughest tests? Or that the power of love is stronger than the love of power?

Even If You Weren't My Father

Even If You Weren't My Father
-Camillo Sbarbaro

Father, even if you weren't my father,
were you an utter stranger,
for your own self I'd love you.
Remembering ho you saw, one winter morning,
the first violet on the wall across the way,
and with what joy you shared the revelation;
then, hoising the ladder to your shoulder,
out you went and propped it to the wall.
We, your children, stood watching at the window.

And I remember how, another time,
you chased my little sister through the house
(pigheadedly, she'd done I know not what).
But when she, run to earth, shrieked out in fear,
your heart misgave you,
for you saw yourself hunt down your helpless child.
Relenting then, you took her in your arms
all in terror: caressing her, enclosed in your
embrace as in some shelter from the brute
who'd been, one moment since, yourself.

Father, even were you not my father,
were you some utter stranger,
for your innocence, your artless tender heart,
I would love above all other men
so love you.


Here I am on sitting at my computer on Sunday faced with an assignment. An assignment that seems so meaningless after a day like yesterday. This assignment made me remember what I have to look forward to. This assignment made me forget my heartache from yesterday and believe in now, believe in my father.

Is that what the author was trying to do here? Make the audience feel the love and warmth that our homes and families have to offer?

I read this poem and convinced myself that this is something my older brother would write ten years from now. Sbarbaro's words reminded me of my own childhood. A father walking around the house looking for the culprit of the broken vase, and then seeing his little girl and his heart melting. A surge of anger due to broken pieces but then a rush of love and compassion at the sight of little pigtails with a scared expression.

The narrator almost praises his father because of the way the father treated his daughter. Not all fathers can control their temper, and the narrator acknowledge's this fact in the poem. This simple task that the father does in the poem shows what kind of man he is, which makes the narrator love his father unconditionally. Everything that he describes about his father is just another simple truth that contributes to his feelings towards his father.

Sbarbaro takes a simple fact, such as loving your father for the man he is and not the blood shared, and makes readers relate and reminisce. He allows us to forget the hurt and loss and think of love and safety.

A Study of Reading Habits

A Study of Reading Habits
-Philip Larkin

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark
The woman I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
the hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.


This poem strikes me for several reasons. Philip Larkin's time period, 1919-1985, doesn't come to mind as the time when phrases like "crap" and "dude" were used. So I don't know if the meanings are somehow perceived differently back then compared to present day.

My favorite part of the poem is when he says "the dude who lets the girl down before the hero arrives." Larkin is generalizing so many works of literature here in this phrase and it makes me wonder if he is generalizing the rest of his examples as well. The transition between when the narrator used to read with awesome adventures and now when the stories are all starting to sound the same really took me as a surprise. However, I can relate to the narrator by saying that books used to be filled with stories and adventures, but then we grew up and so did our books.

"A Study of Reading Habits" kind of pulls the first part and second part together. As we age our reading habits change because the literature changes and so does our lives. The last line stumps me though. The narrator used to believe in books, but now he doesn't seem to care about them. Is he upset that literature is not the same for him anymore or does he think that all books are filled with pointless stories. Its hard for me to believe the latter because he used to have such adventures with books.

Acquainted with the Night

Acquainted with the Night

-Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain - and back in the rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchmen on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;

And further still at an unearthly height

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been acquainted with the night.

I love this poem for several reasons. The imagery used makes me feel like I'm out walking the streets at night with Robert Frost. Night is also my favorite time of the day, so that makes this poem enjoyable to read.

The style Frost uses to describe the night kept me guessing as to what he actually means. "I have walked out in rain - and back in rain." Is he saying that even when it is raining, he still enjoys the night or is he saying that it is always raining so he constantly walks in it? But after thinking about the poem as a whole, I was able to figure most of the poem. When he walks past a watchmen hiding his eyes, he means that he walked by a police officer of some sorts and did not care to explain why he was out at that time.

Frost was an American poet, but this poem makes me think of old London. The "luminary clock against the sky" makes me imagine Big Ben. It rests against the skyline as the source of time in the streets of London. Also, the reference to the watchmen reminds me of british soldiers. Maybe I am just confusing my revolutionary soldiers though. 

Night holds a beauty that only be discovered by going out and seeing it for yourself. It's more than just the lack of light; its the stars and moon, the night-crawlers and hidden details, and the mystery. Night is mysterious to us because we live during the day and sleep at night. However, I think Frost is saying that he lives at night, therefore he is acquainted with it.

A Chinese Bowl

A Chinese Bowl

-Katha Pollitt

Plucked from a junk shop

chipped celadon

shadow of a swallow's wing

or cast by venetian blinds

on tinted legal pads

one summer Saturday

in 1957.

Absorbed at his big desk

my father works on briefs.

The little Royal makes

its satisfying clocks

stamping an inky nimbus

around each thick black letter

with cutout moons for "O"s

curled up on the floor,

I'm writing, too: "Bean Soup

and Rice," a play about

a poor girl in Kyoto

and the treasure-finding rabbit

who saves her home. Fluorescent 

light spills cleanly down

on the Danish-modern couch

and metal cabinet

which hides no folder labelled

"blacklist" or "Party business"

or "drink" or "mother's death."

I think, This is happiness,

right here, right now, these

walls striped green and gray,

shadow and sun, dust motes

stirring the still air

and a feeling gathers, heavy

as rain about to fall,

part love, part connection,

part inner solitude

where is that room, those gray-

green thin-lined

scribbled papers

littering the floor?

How did

I move so far away,

just living day by day,

that now all rooms seem stange,

the years all error?

Bowl,

what could

I drink from you,

clear green tea

or iron-bitter water

that would renew

my fallen life?


This poem strikes me as something that I could imagine myself writing five years from now. Of course mine would not be exactly the same story line, but I can definitely relate to this poem. The narrator had grown comfortable in the home she grew up in with her father. She explains what her home was like before she left and then she says she wishes she could go back to then.
A part of the poem that sticks out to me is when the narrator explains what is not stored in the file cabinets. The expressions of "blacklist," "Party business," and "drink" could be anyone's educated guess as to what they mean. I would like to say that they refer to the father's occupation and personal life, but I cannot find any support from the rest of the text that agrees. However, the expression "mother's death" surly refers to the narrator's mother dying. What I find interesting about this is that it is referred to something that is not in the filing cabinet. Could that be saying that it is something that is out-of-sight-out-of-mind or is meant to be out in the open and not locked away in a filing cabinet. To me, these expressions seem like things that are kept in a box for a reason and act as they are forgotten.
A Chinese Bowl can obviously act as a bowl that the narrator picked up and has consistently used at home and away from home. I saw the Chinese bowl as something more than just an empty bowl, I saw it as an item that the narrator uses to connect back to home. She can take her bowl and use it as an escape from her new life and be transported to her life at home. She became so used to her life at home with her Chinese bowl, when she left, she had to rely on items that would remind her of home. 
Another thing I noticed throughout this poem was the repetition of the colors of green and gray. The author uses it to describe the walls of her home, the color of paper on the floor, and the type of liquid being held in the Chinese bowl. Are the colors being used as symbols for something else, or are they just being used repetitively? Either way, they definitely have some significance to the poem. Maybe they are the colors or the bowl.

Inoculation

Inoculation
-Susan Donnelly 

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.




I chose to reflect on this poem because I will be presenting it on Wednesday, and poems always make more sense to me when I blog about them. It took me multiple readings before I even began to understand this poem. The structure confused me along with the syntax. This was the only way I was able to make sense of Donnelly's poem-

Knowing that Cotton Mather was a puritanical minister in the mid 1600s and 1700s, the first sentence involving sin makes sense. "Thank Providence" was another line that got me. I figured it was somewhat like the expression, "Thank God." Boston was full of the pox, but Providence was not, hence Mather not getting the illness. I love the way the poet describes how Onesimus' answer was meant to be heard. But I am not sure who says the second stanza. It would make sense if it was Onesimus, but the poet does not say.

Mather's question does not have a clear answer; however, when we think about what Onesimus actually says, it begins to make sense. He was born in the "southern wild" and he grew up with different illnesses all around him compared to the upbringing of Mather. Mather most likely grew up in luxury with doctors with herbal remedies and sicknesses being scarce. Onesimus "[took] inside all manner of disease and still survive[d]." He was in contact with illnesses as a young child and grew immune to most of them. So Onesimus possibly could not get smallpox once with Mather because he had already been exposed to it.

Something that stands out to me in this poem is the attitudes of the men towards each other. Onesimus does not come right out and answer Mather's question. Wouldn't most slaves at the time be afraid of their masters and just say, "I cannot get smallpox?" Also, when Onesimus does not give Mather a clear answer at first, Mather does not get upset. He "graciously" just asks again. What does that say about the two men's characters? Does it say anything about the time period? Or am I just turning a drop of water into an ocean?

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle
John Updike

The celebrated windows flamed with light
directly pouring north across the Seine;
we rustled into place. Then Violins
vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms,
seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness,
bit by bit, the vigor from the red,
the blazing blue, so that the listening eye
saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes
of shield and cross and strut and brace, that help
the holy glowing fantasy together.
The music surged; the glow became a milk,
a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed
until our beating hearts, our violins
were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead.

This poem shows that music can be seen and felt, not just heard. "The vigor from the red, the blazing blue, so that the listening eye saw suddenly thick black lines." This line explains to the reader that the music was meant more than just to be heard. This reminds me of a part in the movie Ratatouille when the rat is explaining to his brother that food taste differently when paired with different foods. He has his brother imagine what the tastes look, move, and sound like. This poem has the same concept that something taken in with one sense can be taken in with other senses. When we hear a rhythm, we can feel the base moving up and down, our eyes want to flow to the beat, and our body wants to move to the melody. To me, that's what the author is describing in this poem. He is describing what he sees and feels when he hears the music at Saint-Chapelle. 

I had to do a little bit of Research to understand what Vivaldi and Brahms was. I already knew that the Seine River flows through Paris so I assumed that the church overlooks the river. Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian composer and priest born in 1678 who was very influential over Europe.  Johannes Brahms was another inspirational composer that was born in Germany in 1833. I’m pretty sure the narrator was playing the music because of the  line, “until our beating hearts, our violins were cased....” So if the narrator was playing the beautiful music, was he thinking of these two men while he was playing the songs? And were the songs actually Vivaldi’s and Brahms’ composed pieces?

The last line strikes me. I cannot tell if the solid sheets of lead are referring to something permanent, as if the music played was making history, or if it refers to the music being over and the violins being stored in a sturdy case. If it is the former, then that would seem more purposeful; however, if it is the latter, then it would make more sense. Maybe its neither and I’m just making the wrong assumptions.