Engulfing Maternal Love

Barricaded in a window
glass shaded blue,
engulfs you
into the bleach white headscarf

Souls of Argentinean males
float above the outstretched hand
of maternal love.

Beneath the lone, bright, headscarf
a dull shadow of flags, flames
and once loving dames,
suddenly turns to Hades rage

No, reincarnation to the same
body is not possible.
Many lives have been lost,
Maternal love will not disappear
until … JUSTICE is near

Louis Jenkins preparation

Louis Jenkins's poems look like prose, on his website he even admits that his poems are prose. He doesn't capitalize the beginning of each line. Jenkins's poems aren't all about nature and transcendentalism like many poets, instead he talks more about football, CDs,cars, and fish. These manly objects of everyday life allow Jenkins to engage his thoughts to many people. I also noticed in some of the audio recordings of his poems, that he is quite funny, and it seems like he thinks of some of these lines in his poems like he's a stand-up comedian. I really liked the poems "Football" and "Fish Out of water" because they're pretty funny, and because they change topics like Jenkins' is telling us a story. I really liked how Jenkins' mainly talks about common manly topics, fishing, cars and football, and dress shoes. These poems are about everyday things that every man can connect to easily. In the poem "Football" I espescially liked the lines "I take the snap from the center, fake to the right, fade back.../I've got protection. I've got a receiver open downfield.../What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a shoe,/ a man's brown leather oxford." I enjoyed this line because i used to play quarterback and it reminded me of my football days, and it also reminded me of my dad. I can definitely see my dad saying "What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a shoe, a man's / brown leather oxford." Overall this poem jumps around from topic to topic, from eating pancakes, playing football, dress shoes, corn syrup vs maple syrup etc. I also noticed that in many of his poems, he has a real life experience, or moral in each one of his stories and this line conveys that statment perfectly "One has certain responsibilities, / one has to make choices. This isn't right and I'm not / going to throw it." In the poem "Fish Out of water" my interpretation was it's hard to recognize a good thing before it's gone. I feel as if the fish wasn't really the focus of the story... maybe some sort of a prop representing the moral of the story. This poem seems to be about regret. Having swam so far upstream only to be pulled back downstream. It tells a story of distractions from what's really the most important. How a large thing (a problem, for example) can get in the way of the things which should be paid more attention to like his wife, his children and how he screwed up his relationship with them but he never disrupted his relationship with the fish.

We are Kin Poetry Journal

Kin Poetry Journal is a very modern site where many types of poetry are shown, with many different ways of viewing the poetry. Audio, articles and videos are shown on this site, as well as social media options. After clicked on many of the New Poem options i noticed that all of the poets who submitted a poem had their own personal style, rhythm and tone. I also noticed the poet's lifelong work in poetry is given beneath the poem which is a nice touch to an already modernized website

The two poems I especially liked were No Shield of Achilles, and Gently Still Finding You were poems that i just generally liked, as well as having interesting structures and great details throughout the poems.

   

"No Shield of Achilles" by Rimas Uzgiris (great name by the way) begins describing a moment where the power is out, and darkness is seeping into the once blue sky. The line "The stories are gone. There is no consolation." explains a line later in the poem "the half-blind, old, decrepit, the half-ghost husk

of our civilization. Absence encroaches" these lines portray the meaning of the absence of stories and that the stories are beginning to narrow because of the modern way of telling stories. But the title is contradicting to the poem, as it doesn't say anything about Achilles, but it does convey darkness as in the way Achilles died.

Siham Karami's poem "Gently Still Finding You" has the greatest descriptions i think i've ever seen, Karami helps you visualize the situations occurring  that he describes. The most vivid descriptions are in the lines "like sepals undernoticed, or a potted/cactus near the window no one looks through" and "hidden ventricles,/auricles collapsed and yet alive,/imaginary origami hearts" The origami hearts line is very distinct because of how he explains the ventricles and auricles as if he were looking inside the person he's writing about's heart.

Anyways, i thought this was a great website with great poetry and great styles and rhythms that i hope to obtain throughout this semester

Response to Joyce Sutphen

9/17/13

Response to Joyce Sutphen’s Poems

In response to the Joyce Sutphen’s poems I read, she writes many of  her poems about how living on the farm shaped her. In the poem “Breakfast” her father taught her how to eat breakfast “My father taught me how to eat breakfast those mornings when it was my turn to milk the  cows…Didn’t  talk much… that’s how we started up the day” (The Writer's Almanac: Joyce Sutphen). I’d like to think that because she grew up on a farm that she writes about the memories of her father not saying much besides how good the strawberries were. She continues to write about the farm in her poem “Apple Season”: “The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples… My mother and my grandmother are running the apple brigade” (The Writer's Almanac: Joyce Sutphen).  I like how she talks about the smell of apples in the air when her mother and her grandmother are making pies, apple crisps, and etc… I really like the way she writes about her mom and her grandmother running the apple brigade as if they’re on a mission to create the best apple pies ever. The poem’s Joyce writes are easy to relate to because almost everyone has experienced the smell of apples filling the room. Joyce Sutphen really re-iterates the feeling of happiness in her poem “Happiness”: “Pure happiness, simple as strawberries and cream in a saucer” (The Writer's Almanac: Joyce Sutphen). She comes back to her childhood happiness at the farm where she had a strawberry farm. To conclude Joyce Sutphen must have a broad audience range because her poems welcome everyone.

In God's son we trust

In god’s son we trust

Thank you for preserving a life today.

A woman speeds through a red light…Texting

Her life could've been over in a millisecond

What was she thinking?

How long are you willing to wait for the light to turn green?

How much is it worth, your whole life?

Are you willing to wait, wait and don’t mind waiting?

How much is it worth, for you to go through the red light?

In any other situation she could have been one of those victims on those AT+T commercials.

MEA college Visiting: List poem

College Visiting

Fall Tommie days:

I’m just visiting for the afternoon.

I live pretty close to here.

Look around at all these Victorian homes

Do you live in one of those Victorian homes?

Oh you’re from Milwaukee?

This is a very safe neighborhood.

The food is great here, they have ice cream and candy and all sorts of great stuff

The Burger bar on Thursdays is where it’s at

Would you like to give the tour from here on out? I didn’t think so.

Focus on the tour, not the lovely tour guide.

I’m not that wealthy.

You’re doing a wonderful job, oh thank you!

Concordia St. Paul:

Any more questions?

Awesome.

Everything is card activated here,

No outside people can get into campus except for you guys of course…

We have a bunch of little café’s located all around campus.

Descending from the treetops

Red, orange, yellow, and green;

Leaves on a crisp fall afternoon float to the soil floor.

Descending from maple trees, seed pods are a common autumn feature.

The zephyr propels the pods to spin like helicopter blades,

hauling the little copter’s farther and farther away with each gust of wind.

Small children grasp the seeds in their little hands and with a heave ho!

The pods leave, without saying goodbye.

 But the children know that the seeds are off to another adventure to find

the next rest stop from leaflet maps from a pod navigating system.

That is until they are blown away to brighten up someone else’s day.

Chris Martin Blog Post thing

Chris Martin has his own unique style, the only poet that is somewhat similar to him is e.e. Cummings because of the way Martin formats his poems. In "The Science Fiction of Color" and "Recommence Everything" both include the image of the sun multiple times in the vast number of stanza's. In "Recommence Everything "Above our heads, today’s weather...Report calls for abundant...Sunshine as a man with a limp" and "Recommence everything just...Moments after it’s begun, the sun...Shines abundantly down". And "The Science Fiction of Color" says "The conductor howls, the dreaded Man sings Ain’t no Sunshine as the sunshine". I find this as some sort of metaphor for the sun bringing him joy even though it doesn't stay  out for too long, it still shows that it brightens up his day when it seems as if he should start everything over.  I also spy the common theme of time  is of the essence in the  Poem "Time" and  the poem "The Bubble" where Martin states the the sun is in one space, not moving, maybe as if time has stopped or time is not important to the person in the poem. I can't wait to see how he reads his own poems so that we can see what he thinks about why he writes stuff like this.

Poem Of The Day 10/9/13

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

I chose this as the poem of the day because it's what my day always says to me, stay humble, stay proud, have ambitions, use your common sense, never give up, don't let other's opinions of you affect who you are. I also like it because it has it has a style as if it were being said during an inspirational speech.