Wright, Carver, Collins, Lee

            I would like to begin by saying that my favorite poet of all these men was Billy Collins.  I thought his writing was easy to relate to and it was also easy to connect with.  My favorite poem was Forgetfulness because it rings so true for myself.  His observation about forgetting the quadratic equation was humorous because I can remember studying and memorizing it.  Today, I am not sure I could come up with any parts of it.  Or the part about forgetting capitals, order of the planets, or authors of books was also quite humorous.  It seems these were so important to memorize growing up but now we cannot even remember them.  I like his word play with “oblivion” because it seems that a lot of this information will escape from our minds and will not be there—but then he ends the poem with the character rising at night to look up this random information that he had forgotten.  Another one of his poems about the Three Blind Mice was also very humorous.  Even the title of this poem uttered a chuckle from me at least.  I can just imagine him chopping up parsley and he hears this song and begins to micoranalyze where these mice came from and how they became blind.  The one explanation I liked most was “a searing explosion, a firework”.

            I thought James Wright’s poems reminded me a little of William Blake’s style.  They both observed nature and explore their relationship in accordance to nature.  Wright’s poems are definitely based on the Midwest, writing about football games and the prairie.  One thing I noticed about Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio was the oxymoron in line 9 “suicidally beautiful”.  I thought this was a strange play on words and I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on it?  In his poem To the Evening Star I loved his imagery of a star being a light that comes on in the sky like a lamp in the prairie.  His last poem of the last line in A Blessing was a very “Blake” line about how he would step out of his body and break into blossom.  Any thoughts?

            Li-Young Lee Persimmons was strange because I felt like it was written in a stream of consciousness.  It seemed to jump around, but I did like that he included bits about himself and his background culture in it.  I thought it was interesting that in many of his poems he included his father as an important part—unlike Sylvia Plath it was a much more positive note.  He writes about missing him and recalling him and his love which I think is beautiful, especially since it is a son and father relationship.