I HAVE HAD TO LEARN TO LIVE WITH MY FACE by Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski's poem " I Have Had To Learn To Live With My Face" is full of overwhelming rage. I was drawn to it because it made an emotional impression on me. There is so much anger, bitterness, pain, envy and betrayal by others and herself. The word "betrayal" appears several times:
"My face has betrayed me again" is such a powerful sad statement and it's later on enhanced:

"My face
that my friends tell me is so full of character;
my face
I have hated for so many years;"

I guess the poem made such an impact because of its relevance for a lot of women especially nowadays in a society that emphasizes the physical aspect and a certain type of beauty overlooking the essential values.

"my face that I wish you could bruise and batter
and destroy, napalm it, throw acid in it,
so that I might have another
or be rid of it at last."
This statement constitutes the pinnacle of self-hate and self-anger. It's strident and of overwhelming intensity.

SHE HAD SOME HORSES by Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is a Native American poet and musician and we can find plenty of mythical elements, symbols and values of her culture in the poem "She Had Some Horses". The repetition gives a ritualistic musicality to the poem almost becoming an incantation. The speaker emphasizes the power of ritual. I wonder if it can represent a healing emotional process? The poem explores the woman's emotional life from despair to awakening and power. The speaker is trying to find herself as a woman and appease her inner contradictions searching for oneness.

As a Native American symbol the horse is considered wild and an emblem of freedom combining the grounded power of the earth with the whispers of wisdom found in the spirit winds. I think the horses represent the fragments of spiritual condition of a woman. There are different horses and "she had some horses she liked" and "she had some horses she hated" but ultimately "these were the same horses" so as fractured as her inner being is she will achieve wholeness.

Also the poem reflets Harjo's struggle as a woman and a Native American in hostile society. Same elements we previously encountered in the poetry of Langston Hughes and Jayne Cortez.

THE LIE by Anne Waldman

I was very compelled by this poem maybe because of my artistic background. It seems to me it is an artistic manifesto, the speaker trying to suggest the incipient moment of creation is nothing but a lie which will ultimately doubt the validity of an artistic work if its foundation is outside the realm of reality. It's based on the buddist belief that everything is an illusion and it appears to be something different than it actually is. We can find the same Buddhist elements in Make Up On An Empty Space.

The poem's theme also transcends not being limited to the art as an entity but using the art as an intrinsic part of the world, of the human existence which is also illusory.

"You fluctuate in an artful body

You try to imitate the world’s glory

Art begins with a lie

That’s the story, sharp speck in the eye."
The fluctuation, the artful body, the imitation - they are all elements sustaining the idea of illusion, of what appears is not what the essence truly is. The ending of the poem is very relevant, the sharp speck in the eye implying not only the hindered view but also the pain that comes with this realization.

HARLEM by Langston Hughes

The poem is entitles "Harlem" but it has an universal value. It spoke to me especially as an immigrant in New York having so many dreams, which some came true and some got "deferred". I don't think you have to be from Harlem or an immigrant to relate to this short and inspirational poem. It's about a dream that was put on hold. The poem starts with a question that seems so simple and mundane but in fact it has such depth. In the attempt to answer it, a series of rhetorical questions follow. The images although simple are very powerful. Hughes uses similes "like a raisin in the sun", "like a sore", "like rotten meat", "like a syrupy sweet" and puts them in contrast. Hughes uses open form; the lengths of the lines differ and some rhymes can be found (sun-run; meat-sweet). The poem has a certain rhythm, almost jazzy. The last stanza isn't made up from a simile but a metaphor "Or does it explode?". The readers are urged to find answers or start questioning what happened to their dreams. It got me thinking...

BLACKBERRY EATING by Galway Kinnell

I was attracted to this poem from the moment I read it. The eating of the blackberries just like writing poetry is a fascinating image. The descriptions are so rich and meaningful. The dark, cold blackberries are being consumed for breakfast in the late September. The richness of language is shown through the richness of eating blackberries.

"The ripest berries / fall almost unbidden to my tongue" - This particular image makes me think about the process of writing poetry, looking for the right words and expressions and suddenly the best words come to mind ("the ripest berries") and perfectly express the poetic emotion.

Kinnell uses the tangible objects to express the abstract. His process of squeezing, squinching open and splurging the blackberries is just like searching for the right word sounds, for the perfect combination of vowels and consonants in order to obtain a fuller tasting of the poetic experience. He nourishes the body with "eating blackberries" and he nourishes the art with writing the poetics.

IN GOLDEN GATE PARK THAT DAY ... By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

At first impression the poem seemed to be an illustration of an idyllic scene, a tranquil day spent together by "the man and his wife". However the unexpected ending changed the reader's previous perspective. I had to read the poem again with a different viewpoint and I realized how the images dramatically changed their meaning. The impact was a woeful one. It's a sad ending displaying a dark revelation. There are several patters throughout the poem. Some lines are repeating: "which was the meadow of the world" appears twice and through the usage of that line the speaker changes the common place to a universal one. The line "without looking at each other" appears several times and suggests an emotional gap between the man and his wife, which is emphasized by the line "without saying anything". When the wife finally looks at her husband she had "a certain awful look of terrible depression". The last line of the poem leaves the reader inconsolable. At some level it seems to me that the poem represents the reality of most marriages. At first glance, most marriages seem submerged into normalcy but subtle details (such as the repetition of some suggestive lines) are present to disclosed that they are in fact sinking.

AMERICA by Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg is one of the most complex poets I encountered so far. America is an intricate poem filled with political and cultural references. The stanzas are irregular and the lines have different lenghts sometimes lacking punctuation. It's characteristic to Ginsberg's style which I find difficult but compelling. Ginsberg starts his poem with incriminating statements and accusatory questions addressing America directly as if preaching to it, vehemently criticizing it. I was suprised by the ending of the second stanza:
"It occurs to me that I am America
I am talking to myself again"
I enjoyed the speaker's identification with America and changing from accusations and lamentations to an acceptance of his condition of being part of America.

The poem can be fully understood only if getting familiar with the political and economical history of America during the 50's. There are many references to the military, political, economical, cultural and religious issues in America at that time. Ginsberg creatively uses humor such as in the last line of the poem : "America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel."

A TIME PAST by Denise Levertov

A Time Past is a beautiful, nostalgic poem about a lost love in which the speaker chooses to reminisce about the beautiful moments of the ended relationship. The first stanza starts with the memory of a fall morning that the speaker shared with her husband that she loved very much. The "old wooden steps" are symbolic, representing the memories that she is so fond of. The wooden steps have been replaced by granite ones and they remained to live only in her mind. The memories of her great love would live in her mind although other newer and even beautiful things happened in her life. I would like to speculate on the fact that in this second stanza the "wooden steps" could represent her husband that she separated from and is now "gone". Maybe the "handsome" stairs that replaced the old ones represent a new lover in the speaker's life. The granite is a stone somewhat cold which could represent a new relationship that lacks the passion and ardor although "handsome".

The image "my hands still feel their splinters" is one of my favorite. Even though the speaker chooses to remember the great times she is still feeling the painful moments that come with every broken relationship. Memories bring more memories of other tender moments the speaker spent with close friends. The steps are meaningful for the speaker and could represent also a space of personal time, of meditative thoughts and definitely a space filled with memories of love ("And sitting there 'in my life', often, alone or with my husband).

Levertov's steps remind me of Frost's ladder.

SEX WITHOUT LOVE by Sharon Olds

"How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love?"

Sharon Olds starts her poem with a very mundane question and proceeds to answer it in the next 23 lines not using symbols but inspired irony. She writes poetry about something that lost its poetry. In our society sex and love became almost independent of each other. "How do they do it...." Not that I dare give an answer to this question but I see how in our modern society we are more disconnected from our own emotional selves, the vicious circles continuing from generation to generation. Romance became over-rated. Sex became just another activity. Olds using interesting similes associating sex with endurance sports such as running. I love her play with contrasts. The emotional is cold as ice and the physical is hot and sweaty.

         "Beautiful as dancers,
         gliding over each other like ice-skaters
         over the ice, fingers hooked
         inside each other's bodies, faces
         red as steak, wine, wet as the
         children at birth whose mothers are going to
         give them away." 

Olds uses a beautiful simile at the beginning of this stanza, the lovers looking like dancers, gracious and beautiful. However she ends on a different note comparing their faces with those ones of the unwanted babies resulted from the loveless union. "Beautiful as dancers" is indeed a sarcastic remark.

The ending of the poem is a sad conclusion. They are alone. They are missing on an important emotional and spiritual connection furthering away from the truth, from the essence.

      "they know they are alone
      (...)just factors, like the partner
      in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
      single body alone in the universe
      against its own best time."

AFTER APPLE-PICKING by Robert Frost

If we look at this poem from a simple narrative level, we will identify a simple story of a farmer tired after picking apples, working hard and being taking over by sleep and the dreams that are about to come. But this poem is very intense. It's dominated by the sensation of sleep; but what does this sleep mean? "This sleep of mine / Whatever sleep it is" . The sleep and winter could mean the latest stage of the speaker's life. Maybe this sleep, "just some human sleep" is associated with death.

The apples are also symbolic, representing the fruits of the hard work in the speaker's life. He still had one more barrel to fill and a few apples to pick but he is done.

For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the greatest harvest I myself desired.

I could almost relate to this feeling of working hard for all the much wanted achievements which at a certain point become draining.

The images in this poem are so powerful. The ladder pointing to the heaven might even have biblical connotations. The smell of the apples that make the speaker drowsy reminds me of the winter nights at my grandma's house filled with the smell of baked apples on the wood stove.

THE FISH by Elizabeth Bishop

"I caught a tremendous fish" is the first line in Bishop's poem The Fish, and I wondered where this statement was going to take me. It felt like I stand at the entrance of a labyrinth that later unveiled elements of beauty and ugly. In contrast to the beginning, the poem ends with the conclusion "And I let the fish go" which represents a strong decision; and if you only read those two lines you understand that so much had happened in between. What kind of struggle and what revelatory moments the speaker had in order to come to that conclusion?

The beginning and the ending verses are very simplistic statements yet powerful; but the whole poem is very detailed and complex spattered with strong symbols where colors accentuates the abundant imagery (e.g."the dramatic reds and blacks" ; "rags of green weed" ; "pink swim-bladder"). I like how the poet used the "aesthetic of the ugly", two antonym terms which show the beautiful side of something disgusting, ugly. (e.g. "he was speckled with barnacles/fine rosettes of lime"). But isn't it true that we can find beauty in ugly things, we can find positive in terrible experiences, and we can find good in bad people?

The fish was sacred to the Greco-Roman mythology having the symbolic meaning of change and transformation. In Buddhism, it symbolizes happiness and freedom. We can find these symbolic meanings in the poem. The speaker releases the fish in the end, the gesture representing freedom. And we can see the transformation from the beginning of the poem where the speaker was heavy, dark and burdened to the end where "everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow".