week 7

My comments on

The Secretary Chant By Marge Piercy

When I read “The Secretary Chant” I was a little confused near the ending. At first I was getting the picture that it was a woman, who was stuck at a desk helping people all day and she felt it was dragging her down. But then it said, “I am about to be delivered- of a baby” so, then I started thinking maybe it is a woman that is pregnant that works in an office and it does not make her happy. She feels used just like the equipment she uses. She no longer feels like a human. She feels like the office is taking over her body, mind, and soul. She thinks there is nothing left of herself. All she knows or can at least think about is being in her office. She has given up and compares herself to what she knows. What she has became.


Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden

This poem is about someone who was once a child, talking about their father. During the winters their father would go out in the cold, to warm up other people, and they never thanked him for what he did. He would come home and bring his frustration with him. The child did not realize he would cherish love and loneliness more than he ever would have thought about. The child hated waking up in the mornings, knowing what the day would be about. They feared it until they got older and looked back on their life and realized they learned a lot and it motivated them to be a better person in their own eyes.


Mountain Graveyard by Robert Morgan

When I saw this poem I was like what in the world. Then I started breaking it down into simpler form and this is what I got out of it. I think Robert is talking about the grave site itself. He said, “Stone, notes” as in the gravestone. The “Slate, tales” is the plate that they stick on the grave but at the end, “Sacred, cedars” I thought about the coffin. When he says “Heart, earth” I thought about the ground, the ground is the heart of the earth. He said, “Asleep, please” I think he is saying leave them alone. Leave them in peace. He also said, “Hated, death” I understood from that, he was saying maybe they were not ready to go or maybe that the family was not ready for them to go.


Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collin

This poem is about people who look at poetry and want the meaning to jump out at them. They do not want to look for the deeper meaning. They do not want to look for the story it tells. They do not want to look into its irony. Not every poem you read is going to come right out and tell you what you want to hear. In fact, not many will do that. It is all on your interpretation of it. It is all on what you want it to mean. Not everyone will see a poem the same way as you but that is what makes poetry so amazing. “Stop beating it with a hose”, as Mr. Collin says and look at poetry like you would the sun rising. It has a meaning but does not have to be right in front of your face to know why.





Theology by Gerald Barrax

When I read this poem at first I thought I understood it until it got to the second stanza, then as I reread it I began to understand it. The poet, he mentioned all must talk about something that was once there and has gone away, but is it really gone or is it just our imagination? Is it just what we want to believe is there? If this little girl can make it that simple why can’t we? What do they all have in common? What makes them different but so alike? They all see it in the simple form of a child.

poetry assignment

I read all of these poems and I must say I am at a loss. I did not understand any of them. Here is what I understood them to say.

Preacher Don’t Send Me I thought was about someone who is dying and is telling the preacher she is not ready to go. But, after rereading the line so what I need from you on Sunday has me rethinking maybe it is about a person going to church and telling the preacher I do not want your promises of a good life in heaven. I do not want a promise of milk and gold. I have lived a hard life and none of those matters. What matters to me, what I think is heaven is a family that loves no matter what, people who care even if they do not know you, and a peace that comes from within.

                Wide Open, These Gates is about a young person growing up, remembering what a wonderful life he/she has had. He/she spent the summers with his/her grandparents, and thought fondly of them. Now he/she is almost fully grown and it will not be long before he/she will embark on the world, never to spend another summer with his/her grandparents.

                Country Lover just says it all in six little lines. To me, this is about a woman who dated a man that was all about a good time. The line “Funk blues makes me think they are in a bar and “keen toes shoes, high water pant, saddy night dance, and red soda water” makes me think they are enjoying dancing. The line “and anybody’s daughter” makes me think this man only wants to have a good time.

                Diamonds, what a beautiful love story, this man is poor and wants to give his wife the world but has no money to do so. They live on top of a mountain and life is hard. He thinks of her as a princess and teases her by calling her “Queen of the Meadow.” She in return shows her love for him and the life they have together by licking the diamonds off the leaf.

                My Mother Shoots the Breeze is another love story about a school teacher who falls in love with another teacher. The story goes about telling how their romance gets it start. I did like the fact that she shot the kite. He sent the kite up about every two weeks. Maybe that was his way of flirting with her. She, in shooting the kite, told him enough is enough and it sparked a romance that ended in marriage.

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway

For me this story was hard to understand at first. I do not know if the author intended it to be that way or not. I was lost trying to figure out what the story was about until I realized they were hunting animals. I thought the story was going to be about the types of animals they were hunting and a woman being on an animal hunt. After I finished reading it, I realized the story is about their marriage. This is not the first time Margaret t has cheated on her husband. She knows he will never leave her and that is why she does it. She tries to push her husband to become a man that is not a pushover. Francis Macomber was a man that was easy going. He let his money tell him what he should do, or at least as far as his marriage was concerned. He would not leave his wife because he was not strong enough to marry a woman as pretty as Margaret and she would not leave him because she had lost some of her looks and was afraid she would  not find a man as rich as he was. Their marriage had been in trouble many times before but they managed to work it out. I wonder if that was the times when she had slept with other men. Macomber was hurt when he found out Margaret had slept with Wilson. She had promised it would not happen again. When Macomber killed the buffalo it changed something inside him, made him a man on the inside. Margaret knew it had changed him, she knew it gave him the strength he needed to leave her. Wilson seems to be convinced that she aimed to kill him.   I am still not sure if she shot to kill him or to save him.

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe

Wow, what a story I did not see the end coming. I knew he was planning on killing him but I thought he might shoot him or hit him over the head. I never dreamed he would bury him alive inside a wall. The story was hard to follow mostly because of the language, I think it was Italian.  I did not understand all the bones. Were these men in the mob? Obviously, these men had been friends at some point, or at least on the same team. Fortunato seems to trust him; why else would he go down into the tunnel. Even at the end when he only had one brick to place, Fortunato thought it was some kind of joke.  I think Fortunato may have gotten the last laugh. This man was waiting for Fortunato to beg for his life so he could get some comfort in killing him. He enjoys listen to him struggle with the chains, he even stops his work to listen. He looks over the wall a couple of times to see if he can see the disbelief on Fortunato face. I do not know if this is what Edgar Allan Poe wanted the reader to take away from this story, but what I took away is this man was upset with Fortunato for insulting him and nothing was going to stop him from getting revenge on Fortunato.  Nothing was going to stop him from making Fortunato die a slow and painful death.