Poetry Response #8, "If See No End In Is"

Bidart brings words to the repeating reel in my mind, personifying my thoughts, my cares, my worries. “If See No End In is” is the splatter paint design of poems. Everything is separate, but when put together, the colors form a rainbow, a connection to the viewers and each person draws an image on the canvas of what the artist was trying to evoke. Each stanza in Frank Bidart’s sestina strokes my memories, calling them back. The way that smell enhances recollection, Bidart’s words stand out, pinpointing a memory of my own. What I love about his poem is the stumbling he does, first taking one side of an argument, then supporting the other. He warns of us looking back on life and our experiences, implying that each is not new, but just an extension of one before it, and the one before that, just like that one time in the sixth grade, which seemed an awful lot like that incident in kindergarten. Since it happened three times before, luckily you knew the best way to respond the last time, the final time you ever set yourself in that trap. But the knowledge you handled the situation with was limited to only your experience of it and the resolutions you heard from your friends and coworkers and nagging, aging mother. Everyone has their own way of confronting problems and mistakes, and soon you ignore one friend’s advice because it doesn’t mesh with what your heart is telling you, so you go to another. She is your more like-minded friend who will tell what you want to hear. Soon, she becomes your confidant and the other friend forgotten, only reached out when you need a shopping buddy, but never one to lay out your heart to. Bidart uses “plateau” to include all general memories; a fitting visual since most plateaus look alike in every desert, every rocky national park. The same shape, but varying heights, only characterized by their locations and who joined us on that vacation.
He predicts our ignorance. Oh, you may have fallen in love before and then broken up, mending your heart with Choco Chunk ice cream and sappy romance movies from the 80’s; or you may run to the edge of town and back, following the same old loop you take every time a girl breaks your heart. But without this one, you will emotionally perish. This girl is the one who showed you the light; this guy was the only to make you feel like a queen; you’ll never find anyone better! His tone is decidedly pessimistic, lending the readers the idea that nothing in life will last and memories don’t matter—that Vacation of a Lifetime at Disney World will flit away as soon as your teenage daughter discovers the atmosphere of long nights and shirtless boys in Destin; those RV trips across the country only make your kid cringe at the sight of motorhome through his twenties. Everything is fleeting so don’t invest too much. But love… love is where is your heart soars: the highest of highs and lowest of lows! It is better to have love and lost than to have never loved at all! Love makes the world go round! And then, you break up. He dies. She finds someone better. You’re alone again, and may never find anyone else.
But then, hope: “Something in you believes that it is not the end.” You can’t see where your future is headed, but it’s filled with tests and college and dates and jobs and babies and houses with white picket fences. But you don’t know when it will come, and the agony of waiting and wondering is brutal. It kills me—patience is not my virtue. And Bidart realizes this downfall in humanity, who wants quick cures and immediate answers: “What none knows is when, not if.”

Poetry Response #7, "Chatty Cathy"

In eighth grade, my English teacher called me Chatty Cathy. I told her I didn’t know what that was, that it must have been before my time, and she was heavily offended, telling the other classes that one of her students called her old. Granted, she had the facial wrinkles of a seventy year old but the body of someone half that, so how was I to know her real age? I asked my mom about the doll that afternoon and she resurrected hers out of the basement and gently wiped off the thick layer of dust coating it. “Well, this one was actually your Aunt Leslie’s because she was about 8 when they came out, so she had more use for it. Then Aunt Kelly got one but Karen and I never got new ones, so we were handed down these when the girls got older. Leslie’s is in great shape, see,” she thrust one blond, blue-eyed, creepily smiling doll at me. “She gave it to Karen because she thought her more responsible. They rarely pulled the string, so it still talks, unlike mine. Oh my little Cathy talked to death.” She chuckled, gazing wistfully at the holder of many childhood afternoons: days in Grandma’s garden, matching haircuts and dresses, hot summer days in the pool. I held Aunt Leslie’s (Aunt Karen’s) Chatty Cathy and daintily pulled the string in her back; “I’m Chatty Cathy. Who are you?” Um...creepy. I pulled it again: “Tee-hee, tee-hee, tee-hee. You’re silly!” It was just like the talking Barbie stowed away under my bed, or the demonic Furby sitting in my sister’s closet. Why do girls like talking toys so much?
I brought my Mom’s Cathy to English the next day to show my class (no one knew what a Chatty Cathy was, either, so take THAT Mrs. Hawkins). I pulled the string and choruses of, “When you grow up, what do you want to do?”, “It’s fun to learn your ABC’s!”, and “Let’s make believe you’re Mommy,” filled the room. Even thought the girls were on the cusp on teenager-dome, something magnetic pulled each one to the doll. What is it with talking dolls?
“Yeah, my mom said they had matching clothes, kind of like American Girl Dolls,” I told them.
“Wow, that thing is creepy,” the boys said. “Like a girl Chucky.”
The poem, written by a man, evokes that same aura. How did this play thing wrap so many girls in rapture, while the boys saw it for what it really was: an eerie doll that repeated the same recordings over and over, shaking the house with it’s chipper voice and repetitive giggles. David Trinidad must have had a sister who was enamored with her Chatty Cathy, and it’s voice echoed down the corridor when he tried to sleep. No matter how many times his dad threatened to take that doll away, his sister stayed up late with it, way beyond her bedtime, reading it stories and pulling her string. Poor David, venting his hatred for this doll in a villanelle—but what a perfect outlet, choosing the one poetic structure where he can mock the doll and warn any future parents against purchasing it. I mean, just look at the annoying redundancy of the poem; who wants THAT in their house?

Poetry Response #6: "An Ode to Himself"

Ben Jonson exposes the downfall of every man in his “An Ode to Himself.” In his first stanza, he lays out all of his weaknesses in front of him, asking himself, “Where dost thou careless lie, buried in ease and sloth?” He alludes that he rarely works uses his head, letting his intelligence slip away, hiding information from him so that when he reaches for it he’ll have to crawl around the depths of his mind to retrieve it. He chides comfort in laziness and security, calling it “the common moth” that absorbs wits and arts.
His stanzas seem to run off on tangents, barely connecting to the one preceding it and ending without setting a specific direction for the next to follow. The rhyme pattern isn’t consistent, yet each stanza holds some sort of scheme. While some connect, others are random and forced; the general layout of the poem was not carefully constructed centuries before, and Jonson is clearly making out his pattern as he writes.
The poet moves from accusing himself of slacking to blaming the influence society has lain upon him by shifting from recognizing his flaws, to reaching back to the historical prominence (and relatability) of Greek mythology, to the general degenerate state of humanity. He briefly commends the few great minds, but then points out that they pride themselves on their good fortune, possibly referring to one or two know-it-alls he’s encountered, solely dangling their intelligence in front of others, putting it to no considerable use. He then scorns them, assuming they know not the work put into writing poetry and take for granted the way the words flow, the image they sculpt and the message they convey. He tries to explain that all genius is wasted, artificial, until it is put to work. His poetry appeals to the highly educated, because it flaunts their knowledge of the ancient classics, but is a satire at the same time, appealing to the less educated in the way that it jabs the higher ups for putting their smarts to no use while the common man has street smarts. Essentially, his writing appeals to all different classes, the same way Shakespeare’s plays were loved, and understood, by all.

Poetry Response #5 "A World of Light"

This sonnet strays from a lyrical form when the author, John Reibetanz, begins to react to the children’s free time by the pond. His tone and diction suggest that these kids are close to him, possibly his nieces and nephews, godchildren, or even his own. He remembers them in a familiar place, a setting of greenery—trees, soft grass—near a pond; maybe they were at their farm, a place they visit only in the summer, where iced tea is always fresh and the kids run with horses until sundown. Maybe they tried to jump into the pond on uncharacteristically hot days but the author, their father/uncle/supervisor dissuaded them against it, instead pointing out the bumpy frog just inches from the banks of the pond. They probably kept a net handy next to the pond for fishing or de-mucking the waters (occasionally), and the author handed it to the oldest boy, silently granting him authority over the other curious youngsters. The sonnet is purposefully vague, offering room for embellishment in the reader’s mind, but it rarely goes off on tangents. The author writes with wistful remembrance of a time when his kids we occupied for hours with the little frog, creating traps and snares to catch more to make a family. Each stanza is an entire poetic sentence, laced with imagery and emotion leaking from his core. His diction is colloquial, relatable to every father who wants his little girl to stay by his side with her dolls and his little boy to keep playing in mudpits, never growing up, never losing their innocent curiosity about the world around them. But in the last stanza, the tone shifts with the change in scenery: the grass dying, winter coming, his children growing another year older, putting another year between summer memories on the farm. Eventually, they will be his age, worn down by life experience, lacking energy to waste in the open country fields. His children wither with their summer home—as it weakens, so do their spirits; as it crumbles, so does their unconditional trust in others; as the grass hardens, so do their hearts to the outside world. This sonnet shifts from an autobiography to a flower poem to a final elegy of his precious childrens’ virtue.