First Meeting

I had my first meeting with my professor to go over my poetry last Friday, and it was pretty helpful. She liked most of my poetry (or at least didn't hate it) and gave me a check plus on my descriptive sketch of the television (check pluses are rare). She said I have a gift for humor that many of the girls in our class don't posess, and said that the type of poetry I should develop my skills in is haiku.

I like haiku, but I'm still not sure about this poetry stint. I have a hard time talking to people about my poems, and even instilling my true thoughts into them. I always write in regards to how other people see, and how they would see me.

Poetry Exercise #4: Metaphor Poem REWRITE

Pectopah in Saint Petersburg

The Russians like to trick
unsuspecting tourists;
it’s mostly the Americans
who confuse the alphabet.

The letter ‘д’ a hat,
Lincoln’s lofty stovepipe.
‘И,’ to the glancing eye,
surely a backwards ‘N.’

‘Ё’ with two dots above,
Uncle Sam watching you.
‘Ч’ – is that a number?
And ‘Я,’ echoing ‘R.’

‘C,’ a ruse – the sound not
an English ‘c’ at all.
‘П’ is a skyscraper
and ‘Ц’ could be a state.

When tourists stop, asking the way,
most on the street are tourists too.
But the Russians shake their heads
in mock confusion and walk away.

The Russians all speak English,
but only to each other.

Journal #4: On “Near Halloween”

“Near Halloween” confuses the reader – at least it confused me, at first – because Boruch never explicitly explains what is hanging “by the neck” (3) on a “star-eyed gable” (8). It relies on the reader’s power of implication to figure out what the poem is about by using textual clues. Because it is entitled “Near Halloween,” I thought it was referring to a scarecrow with “stuffed jeans / and flannel shirt” and a “pillowcase head” (3-4). There are several details in the poem that make the question of “is it a scarecrow?” worth asking, though. “Like a bad thought, someone else’s / bad thought, it hangs / by the neck” (1-3) makes me think of someone thinking about committing suicide by hanging. The poet also writes that “It could be / anyone up there” (16-17). The thing that really confuses me about this poem is the last two lines: “Not that anything’s eternal / or exactly like any other thing.” Is she saying that life is not eternal, and that the proof is in this dead corpse? Or that this scarecrow is not eternal because it only lives around Halloween?

Line nine – “all misery–ha!–to you and you and damn you!” – could be translated two ways. If the thing hanging is indeed a scarecrow, the “jubilant drunk” (7) may have put it up to unintentionally mock those in misery with its sinister, grinning pillowcase head. If it is a person who committed suicide, then perhaps they are yelling “damn you!” to misery and depression with their act.

Poetry Exercise #3: Bad Love Poem

W is for the way your mismatched legs make you waddle cutely as we walk down the street together...
I is for your endearing, but icily sweaty grip you have as we hold hands walking down the street together...
L is for your nickname, Lovey Dovey ducky wucky, my little Willardkins…
L is for the Little Mermaid nightlight you keep in the corner of the bedroom…
A is for your favorite movie, A Walk to Remember…
R is for making me wait outside the theater in the rain with you for 3 days before the movie premiere…
D is for that thing you do with your lips when we kiss, kind of like a duck recklessly diving into a lake for insects…