Unveiling

     I picked this poem to read and blog on, not because we studied it this past week in class, but because I am currently in Wisconsin for the funeral of my grandmother as I write this. I found this poem ironically haunting to be studying in class the day following my grandmother's passing, so I thought it suited my blogging this poem this week.
     As I was walking through the cemetery yesterday afternoon at the burial proceeding, I saw the head stone where my preceding grandfather's head lay, and I walked the line of the headstones--my my great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, all following in line of the same sort of deceased meeting ground among the branches of the tree that continues to stretch further as my family continues growing (quite wordy, I know). As I walked this line, I was eerily reminded of this haunting poem that I had previously read in AP Literature. As my grandma was the last sort of grandparent to die on my father's side, it seemed that the great-greats, great, and normal grandparents were commencing, once again, in their rituals as the poem dictates, as sitting around the dinner table, enjoying the newfound company of my grandmother which they had missed. But the rest of us were stuck here, that is, until we are received in the same earthen graves, looked down on by our lively children and grandchildren. But they are mortal. They, too, will become part of the family dinner table. But for now they must sit at the kids' table and wait patiently as their way comes 'round.
     It was not my full intention to write my own story about my own recollections, but I feel like that was what was necessary to greet the full meaning of this poem--to feel it, and then to retell it as your own legend, as I did see it.

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

This poem was only four lines long, but it had a message that is a lifetime long--that is, that I believe it is talking about the span of a person's life. The poem starts out with the first line being: "though leaves are many, the root is one." By this I believe the poet is trying to say that we has several perspectives in our life that change through the seasons and phases, but we always remain rooted to the ground as the same person with the same soul and conscience. In the last three lines, Yeats is pretty much reinforcing the first line: that in the days of his youth, he was the same tree, but had different leaves, but as he as a person matures, the leaves are changing to a new perspective more clear. I love this poem because it is short and sweet, but it tells a story all the same. I think it is a very different structure that creates a lot of draw and interest.

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class At South High

Well writing this a second time kind of ticks me off. Apparently I  was never connected to the internet, so I didn't have backup. So anyway, I'm not so happy about blogging this again. I loved this poem when I read it. I think it is talking about a high school teacher who is trying to fill his ideas and thoughts from his poems into the heads of stagnant high school kids. He uses frozen fish to capture the initial mood and  temperament of the adolescent mind. And then he starts reading his poem and he intoxicates the room with interesting thoughts and conjectures, jumping from head to head, and the fills with water, coming to life. But as soon as the teacher has his grasp on the students' imaginations and minds, the bell rings and the door lets out all of the water and life from the classroom. I think the poem is making an analogy to the water being the thoughts and creativity and conjectures that are brewing in minds and it is all starting to flow from the poem being recited to the students, bringing them to life. But by the end of the day, the teacher has gone home in his own world as a fish, and ironically, is woken up by his pet cat Queen Elizabeth by a lick to the hand. The reason I love this poem is, it reminds me of Mr. Moore from last year, when he was almost some form of mad or crazy, as he always had some sly "plan" to keep us thinking and keep his students around his finger, thinking about the thoughts he projected to us. To me, I feel Mr. Moore's personality through this poem and I really enjoyed it.

Lost Brother

     This poem seems to be written almost as an obituary would be in my mind. Throughout the poem it is very documentary of  the life of the deceased tree. What made me think of this was when the narrator (another tree) started describing his temperaments and what he sheltered, being his accomplishments, and everything that surrounded him when he was living so stationary (no pun intended).
     I thought that this poem could've very well been a personification of trees into a sensitive human situation, such as the death of a loved one, in order to create an argument for the importance of every living thing, even trees. This poem to me is an environmental argument that essentially tries to personify human emotion to create attention to the fact that trees are being cut down every day and animals are being killed every day and even the smallest organisms are tossed aside to be made out to be unimportant, but this poem is confronting that idea and saying that it is a sad thing when a tree is cut down or that an animal is slaughtered. I just love how Moss slips under the reader and personifies this tree and gives it human emotion before the reader can detect it and make a biased notion or judgement about their beliefs on the subject. The more and more I read into this poem, I start to love it more and more. This could all possibly be absolutely none of the poet's intentions, but I don't care. I find that my perception of what the poet wrote makes me happier and happier the more I think about it because of my interest in the environment. If I beat it with a hose, then so be it.

In Blackwater Woods

     At first, I had a pretty tough time with this poem and understanding it, mainly because of the ambiguity of some of Mary Oliver's lines in the poem. Some of the lines that were confusing were lines such as:

"...and every pond,
    no matter what its
    name is, is

    nameless now."

     Mainly the line break throws me off. Why didn't the poet just move the other "is" down to the next stanza? What is she trying to communicate by using this technique, and secondly, what is she even saying? Why is the pond nameless now? Is she talking about the mortality of life, and once it dies, it loses its name? That is what I extracted from those stanzas.
     I think Mary Oliver is trying to write about death and mortality in this poe and how you have to enjoy what  life is today and hold on to it, because it won't always stick around. Like she specifically says to do: to love what is mortal, and then hold on to it as if your life depends on it, and then be able to let it go when the time comes. So like in anything in life, nothing lasts forever, but you have to take it for everything it's worth while it;s still around and before you have to let it go.