Introduction to Poetry

I definitely recognize this poem from first semester. This poem starts out with a 3 line stanza and then a single and then a double, but these stanzas pop up in different variations, so there is no stanza structure. There also seems to be no clear rhyme scheme in this poem. I think Billy Collins mainly used this structure for the use of conveyance and comprehension of the reader. The way the stanzas are broken up make the poem easier to read and break apart into pieces, in my opinion, so the reader doesn't try to beat Collins' poem with a hose. The main argument used by Collins here seems mainly to be to highlight the fact that poetry is for enjoyment of the audience and the poet, very similar to a sport like football, soccer, or maybe even waterskiing. At times these sports can be taken a little too seriously by the people in and surrounding it, which strangles the fun out of it--like in a poem when one tries to take it much too seriously to the point where a hemorrhage is being conceived. When the activity is taken for the pleasure that it is worth to the user, then the activity is serving its true purpose, just as is applicable in the world of poetry. As choppy as that whole explanation was, the point of the matter is to take things for what they're worth and what makes them the most enjoyable; don't force anything. I liked this poem because it did convey this strong message by using such simplicity within metaphors that we find more easily transitional into everyday life.

Desert Places

So I'm gonna start out by saying that I really like Robert Frost. Now that is out of the way. The rhyme scheme going into this poem seems to be AABA CCDC and so on. This is actually a fascinating rhyme scheme and I'm wondering why he did use this. Is there a certain significance to the words he didn't rhyme? Ironically, two of those happen to be "snow" and the title is "Desert Places." I just found that interesting.

After giving the poem another read-through, I definitely think Frost is trying to connect a snow to being blankness. It is white, a clean slate, covering everything that was previously there. I think, ironically, these snowy places are his hideaway to be alone, to get away and find a silkscreen to hide from reality. I get the feeling when it snows that it is really peaceful out and when it snows, it closes you in to worry about the world in a twenty foot parameter rather than a several mile one. It gives a cozy feeling, where nothing else matters, and it's like an uplifting clean slate--to nature and to mind. That what I think Frost is trying to describe through his poem here.

Cottonmouth Country

This poem in it's entirety is one stanza with eight lines. The lines are written in Iambic Pentameter, I believe, because each line has five stressed syllables...or at least lines 1,3, and 5. The rhyme scheme goes: ABABCDCD, but if seen as slant rhyming could be:ABABACAC. In either case, I think this breaks the poem into two four-line stanzas without actually doing so in the structure. I think Gluck did this so the poem wouldn't have a normal, structured look, but then was well-thought an organized once it was analyzed. I looked up "Hatteras" and it is a city in North Carolina, and is apparently famous for their yachts, but I don't think that really makes a difference. But it is a coastal town, hence the fish bones. I think the fish bones represent death by water and the Cottonmouth Snake, by land. The poem says that they "Woo" us towards death, but it is actually birth that is the burden. Maye this poem is trying to say that life is the actual punishment and death is either tempting or divine in some way. So the last line is confirming that the narrator (the snake) knows of rebirth because it has been born into a new skin by shedding its old one. This is the real burden. I think Gluck definitely takes a unique tand on life and death if I'm analyzing this correctly.