Poetry resposnses

“We Real Cool”

Gwendolyn Brooks

In “We Real Cool,” Gwendolyn Brooks utilizes a series of internal rhymes in her fairly short and simple poem. The rhyming structure consists of: AA BB CC DD, however, she decides to end each line with “We” rather than the rhymes’ end words. This breaks up the flow of the poem and places more emphasis on each “We” as the line break causes a run-on pause. Instead of “We real cool./ We left school./” the writer fragments the natural flow of each phrase by writing the lines as “We real cool. We/ Left school.” I assume by setting up the poem’s structure in this way, the writer intended to isolate each “We,” allowing the pronoun to resonate a little longer in the reader’s mind or speech.

When read aloud, the poem’s three word lines and rhyming patterns make the piece sound almost like a chant. The creed-like nature of the poem reflects on the subject, which is presumably a gang or group of young men. With that said, the subject is viewed as exclusive and united. The varied stanza structure that increases the emphasis allocated to each “We” creates an even stronger sense of unity between the group members. Inferring on the motives of the writing, it seems as if she wants to shed her subject in a cultish light.

As the poem progresses the consistent line structure builds up a repetitive flow. The pattern is abruptly abandoned on the last line …We/ Die soon.” This ending leaves the last line bare as the rolling chant comes to a halt. Similar to how the pauses after each “We” created a resonating pause, the same can be said of the poem’s end. The writer leaves the reader with a harsh and startling attribute of the subject, which allows the sad line to echo in the reader’s mind. When read aloud, the last line sounds as if it is a premature ending to the poem, which mimics the premature ending to the lives of the young men in the gang.

When reading through an anthology of poems, it sometimes is hard to distinguish one from another. Brooks’s unconventional structure and rhyming sequence, however, allowed this poem to stick out in my mind while I reading the assigned pages for class.

“Home Burial” Robert Frost

The Narrative of “Home Burial” by Robert Frost separates the poem from many of the others in the anthology. Frost’s poem spans almost five pages, describing the struggles of a couple in dealing with the death of their young child. Aside from the line breaks and stanzas, the piece reads as if it is prose, which appeals to me, as it seems to mesh short fiction and poetry. For example, the narrative is basically a dialogue. This adds dimension to the poem as there are two speakers, both representatives of their own emotions and behaviors. This aspect of the poem is unique compared to the others in the anthology as it challenges the reader to analyze both characters, rather than just one narrator.

The tone of the narrative is also unique. I found the piece to be a gut-wrenching read. Frost is so effective in how he conveys the character’s vulnerable emotions that it seemed to seep off the page and fill the atmosphere around me as I read. As the two characters communicate their grievances to one another, it is hard not to become immersed in their suffering. “You can't because you don't know how to speak./
If you had any feelings, you that dug/
With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave.” The tone is raw and tedious. Frost draws out the character’s emotions at the expense of the reader’s comfort. For these reasons, I found the poem to have a more profound impact on me than the other poems in the anthology. Writing this response during our fiction unit, I almost think of this as a short fiction piece because the narrative resembles that of short fiction.

It seems to depict the communicational problems that we encounter, even in the closest of our relationships. “‘There’s something I should like to ask you, dear’/’you don’t know how to ask it.’ Help me, then’ her fingers moved the latch for all reply./ My words are nearly always an offense…’” When reading this poem, I empathized much with the characters. They obviously have suffered greatly with the death of their child, but are not able to comfort each other’s suffering. The fact that the poem’s narrative resembled a short story increased my empathy because my relationship with the characters was stronger than most poetry.

“Palm Tree King”

John Agard

“Palm Tree King” is written in the Creole dialect of Guyana and the tone is condescending. There seems to be an unfavorable attitude of the narrator towards outsiders or tourists. He talks of assuming a stereotypical role of being an expert on palm trees as a native of Guyana in order to satisfy the wishes of the tourist industry. “Because I come from the West Indies/ certain people in England seem to think/ I is a expert on palm trees.” Agard’s narrator seems to be playing tricks on the tourists, which reflects on the relationship between the natives and their former British colonists. At one point, Agard refers to the tourists as “culture vultures,” which enhances the mocking attitude of the “Palm Tree King”. Compared to the other poems in the Seagull Reader, the voice of the narrator is unique and plays a larger role in the poem’s narrative. The narrative is strongly subjective to the narrator’s point-of-view, which differs from other poems, where the voice is not as prominent. “But before you say anything/ let I palm tree king/ give you dis warning/ Ah want de answer in metric/ it kind of rhyme with tropic/ besides it sound more exotic.” The direction of the narrative seems to be up to the discretion of the narrator’s rambling thoughts, which I enjoyed as a change in pace in comparison to the poems whose voice was more objective.

As for my own poetry, after reading Agard’s piece, I want to try and write from an interesting cultural or social perspective in order to shape the voice of the poem’s narrative. It is hard not to deny the authenticity of the “Palm Tree King” when the narrator’s words are written with a Creole accent. While Agard’s narrator has a similar background in the sense that Agard is a descendent of the black slaves brought to Guyana to work by the British, I want to try and write from the unique cultural perspective of someone who may not share the same experiences as me. The important aspect of Agard’s poem is that he emphasizes the narrator’s voice to the point where it influences the direction of the narrative.

Fiction Reading Responses

“Where are you Going? Where Have you Been?

Joyce Carol Oates

Unlike the other stories that I have read in the Seagull Reader, I forgot to read the introduction/background paragraph that precedes each story before reading Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” As a result, I missed the fact that the story was inspired by the Life magazine article on the serial killer, the “Pied Piper of Tuscon.” As the story developed, the creepiness of Arnold Friend who is after Connie certainly caught me off guard. At certain points in the story, I had to stop and put down the book, in order to have a momentary break from the eerie suspense.

The most critical element of the short story is the dialogue. The interactions between Connie and Arnold Friend seemed so natural that they created a vivid imagination in my mind of the dialogue going back and forth. “’What’re you thinking about? Huh?’ Arnold Friend demanded. ‘Not worried about your hair blowing around in the car, are you?’/’No’/’Think I maybe can’t drive good?’” The dialogue between the two characters dictates all the action and suspense in the story. The persistence and irratibility of Arnold Friend can be sense in his voice as the conversation continues on. As his patience begins to wither, and his tone becomes more demanding, the suspense begins to climax. From my experiences as a reader, I cannot say that I have experienced a more terrifying dialogue than the conversation between Connie and Arnold Friend.

“Yes. I’m your lover. You don’t know what that is but you will…I’m always nice at first, the first time. I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me and you’ll love me—‘/’Shut up! You’re crazy!’ Connie said.

The fact that the suspense is tied to the direction of the conversation creates this intense scene where each subsequent line from Arnold Friend leads to a larger, looming sense of hopelessness and fear. It drives the pace of the story to a gritting halt. The observations that are interspersed throughout the dialogue enhance the dialogue as they foreshadow the eeriness surrounding Friend. “He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light.” These details as well as the overall digression of the dialogue into Arnold Friend attacking Connie creates a frightful read.

Reading Response #2

A&P by John Updike

My fascination with A&P is derived from the point of view in which the story is told. While the actual explicit events that take place in the story are limited to just the half-naked girls shopping at the A&P and Sammy’s dispute with his boss and his subsequent decision to quit, the story implicitly discusses the clash of Middle-class, conservative American values. Sammy seems to be stuck in a limbo of sort, between his parent’s expectations and the social norms of his small town and his own ambitions or rather, boredom. The small-town setting of the story, which Sammy watches from his cashier’s counter is described well by Updike.

“…We’re right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices…It’s not as if we are on the Cape; we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town haven’t seen the ocean for twenty years.”

Updike’s setting seems to represent small town, conservative America, which ends up being a point of conflict with the narrator. Sammy who is a young adult, works at A&P to possibly satisfy the wishes of his parents. This is conveyed through Sammy’s boredom with his routine job of ringing up customer’s purchases and when his boss tells him after quitting, “you don’t want to do this you Mom and Dad.” Sammy is probably a member of the baby-boomer era, that is experiencing confusion and frustration over the generational gap between him and his parents, as well as the town itself. While he sides with his parent’s encouragement in working at the grocery store, the bathing-suit clad females that browse the store’s items inspire his momentary, youthful pride. “She lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute.” Sammy is in awe over the girl’s presence for much of the story. Updike creates a certain juxtaposition between the “promiscuous” girls and the A&P grocery store.

“You know it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A&P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over our checker-board green-and-cream rubber-tile floor. “

From Sammy’s perspective, this leads to a tug-of-war in his head over his allegiance to his youthfulness and his loyalty towards his parents. Ultimately, it is the seductiveness of the young girls, or rather, the seductiveness of his generation to quit his job and disobey others’ expectations of him. The brilliance of the story is evident in how, through Sammy’s point-of-view as the narrator, Updike is able to comment on a serious social conflict experienced by the youth in Middle class America in just a short sequence of events at the grocery store.

The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien

First off, I had read the short story in addition to the entire semi-fictional novel, The Things They Carried, in a high school English class. Reading the short story alone was interesting because certain aspects or characteristics that are emphasized in the first chapter, are less obvious when reading the novel in its entirety. I enjoyed the short story because I thought that O’ Brien was able to avoid the clichés of war stories with his focus on the actual objects that the soldiers carried. This central theme in the short story is important as it depicts the soldiers’ experiences without merely telling the reader their experiences. I have always been told by English teachers to show not tell when writing about event and O’ Brien does this with his characters and the things they carried. “Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed twenty-three pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded.” Instead of simply saying that the troop was always ready for conflict with their guns cocked and loaded, he shows the ready this characteristic through the weight of their loaded guns.

The short story is devoid of any political grievances on the part of the soldiers. To me this seems realistic in the sense that the number one thing that soldiers are concerned with is the gear that they have to carry, not the president or the reason they were over there in the first place. For a war that was remembered for being so controversial, this characteristic of the story allows it to avoid the clichés that might be present in other Vietnam war stories and film. The second paragraph is simply a list of many of the objects that they carried around. “P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent…” This sets the thematic tone right away, which is focused on the burdens placed on the soldiers via all the things that they carry around with them. “They were called legs or grunts. To carry something was to “hump” it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, “to hump” meant “to walk,” or “to march,” but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.” I really like this line because it depicts the weight that they are forced to carry in a sub-human way. The fact that they refer to themselves as grunts who hump loads of equipment everywhere is an anti-war statement as it presents the daily life, or the routine of the soldiers in an inhumane light.

In addition, O’ Brien seamlessly transitions from intangible to tangible object when describing the weight that the soldiers hump around. “Henry Dobbins carried hi girlfriend’s pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a comforter. They all carried ghosts…” “The carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried common secret of cowardice barely restrained…” This was an important aspect of the story because it depicts the emotional struggles of war. I liked how he characterizes these intangibles as having their own weight as it shows the amount of pressure and stress that the soldiers were under.

Kevin Brockmeier fiction reading

I attended the Kevin Brockmeier reading at the Helmut Auditorium in the Museum of Art. He read a 45 minute excerpt of one of his stories.

The first aspect of the reading that appealed to me was his reading style. He read deliberately and he carefully allocated emphasis to each word and sentence. Unlike the experience of simply reading an author’s work, hearing Brockmeier read his story allowed me to imagine the actual writing process that the author had to go through. For example, the fact that he never misread a word reflected a great sense of familiarity with the words. This intrigued me as I imagined him carefully crafting and revising out each line of the story. The pace with which he read was much slower than the pace at which I would have read the story on my own. The pace ended up shaping my perception of the story and made it sound more poetic as the descriptions and events seemed to linger for a longer time.

I found the story to be quite relevant to my life right now. It is about the high school aged experiences of a boy and girl, which are based on that of the author’s life. They two characters grow to become good friends during their years in high school. They are experience periods of boredom and passion, they complain about their tedious classes and stress over college applications. The chronological timeline of the story dedicates much time to the high school years, but abruptly cuts to a conversation between the two characteristics as they catch up over coffee many years later. This severity of this transition struck an emotional cord in me as I listened to the reading because I am at the age where I am slowly losing touch with my high school friends. As Brockmeier described the awkwardness of their reunion years later, I panicked by envisioning myself down the line catching up with old friends that I have not seen in years.

There were certain aspects of the story that stood out in particular. For example, the girl character involves herself in many after school activities such as Odyssey of the Mind and student government. As a result, she is required to spend much time at school after hours. Brockmeier described her as enjoying the school late in the afternoon when all the students had left as if the building was hibernating. For me, the metaphor me makes reminded me so vividly of staying late after class at my own high school. There is certainly an eerie feeling that presents itself after all the bustling students have cleared out and Brockmeier certainly captured that slumbering feeling.

“She felt the gravity of her entire body shifting. She refused to let him sink into the bottomless world of her memories.” That quote stuck out to me during the reading. Based on Brockmeier’s description, I envisioned her emotions shifting like tectonic plates inside of her.

At the end of the reading, Brockmeier discussed how he goes about writing stories through a series of questions from the audience. He recited a favorite quote of his in that writing is to “give away something that is precious.” Its served as an inspirational thought for his story, which I found inspiring as well in relating it to my own writing.

Poetry Reading

Over thanksgiving break, I attended a Poetry Slam, put on by my former high school English teacher for his current students. He opened the event with a poem of his own. I have always liked his poetry because he incorporates much free verse rhyming, which he uses to emulate a hip-hop style of poetry. His piece is about an elevated level of consciousness that he has been experience over his life’s frustrations as a middle-aged adult and as a teacher. It turns political for a moment, when he begins cursing the California budget crisis and the cuts that are being made to educational establishments.

After he finished, the competition began. It consisted of a playoff-style tournament, with succeeding rounds, of eight or ten high school students. I was surprised at the quality of the student’s poetry. Most of it was free verse, and focused on the burden of being a teenage high school student. Struggles that included being subjected rigorous expectations of their classes, pending college admissions and social acceptance amongst their peers. When I read poetry for analysis, as I did in the Seagull Reader, I usually find it hard to garner a substantive understanding of the piece without reading it twice. When hearing poetry aloud, I find it difficult to understand the poetry when only hearing it once. As a result, especially in the poetry slam context, I focus more on the performance itself of the poems, rather than delving to deep into the actual poetic conventions. Most of the students were member of the drama department at school. Since the slam was taking place on the same stage that the students rehearsed on everyday for their class’s plays, they seemed to be more than comfortable under the lights on stage. Their performances were animated, and they paced about the stage yelling their numerous grievances out into the crowd.

The overall experience was quite enjoyable and I think that I will look for more poetry slams to attend on campus at Michigan. The performance aspect of poetry slams differentiates it from regular poetry appreciation because the emotion can be conveyed through the delivery as well as the words.