#10 Assigned 9/14

“A poem should not mean
But be.”

“Ars Poetica,” Archibald MacLeish

Defining poetry is very hard for me to accomplish alone. However it's made easier with the help of Hurst's identification notes:

We can say what it is not.
We can examine its elements.
We can contrast it with fiction and drama.
But poetry is hard to define in isolation.

Billy Collins' poetry is very entertaining. I especially enjoy "Sonnet."

Sonnet - Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

I agree with the conclusion we came to in class; what makes this poem enjoyable is the playful language, the insightful puns. Collin's is describing what a sonnet is within his sonnet. This would be similar to me to poke fun at the haiku with a haiku:

"Haiku" By John Evans

Five syllables for
the outside of three lines to
make one sweet haiku.

"On Turning Ten" is a poem by Billy Collins that resonates deep within. The first stanza makes a reader think the author is much older. "Reading in bad light" and words like measles and psyche reveal an older narrator. However, as the poem moves along, one realizes the narrator is really only ten years old and is depressed about reaching another mark of life. The third stanza breaks into me the most:

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

All in all, I relate to the feelings paired with this stunning view of the past. Our narrator has come to realize life changes at a fast pace, and looking back he feels the weight of mortality for the first time. So deep is the mind of our ten year-old.

This makes me wonder if I ever thought about this change so early on. At some point, we all deal with the sting of death, and probably when we're all forced to read Donne's "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

Carpe the Diem.