9 thoughts on “Week 10 Reading Response (Lyric Poems)”
My absolute favorite of this selection is “Someday I’ll love Ocean Vuong.” The way Vuong so beautifully explores his queerness, his relationship with his father, and his search for (self) love—it has always been a favorite of mine. I especially love that line, “Don’t worry. Your father is only your father / until one of you forgets.” I think that’s what inspired me to choose this one as the poem I did for the exercise, although I regret it a little bit now because this poem is just so phenomenal, it was sort of hard to see my own work next to it, with a direct line by line comparison. Still, I am glad I did it.
I really enjoyed reading “How to Triumph Like a Girl” by Ada Limón because it avoided being cliché while still being charming and sweet. I’ve read this poem before, and it has stayed with me and I have loved it for the same reason: what woman (or child who was raised as a girl, at least) hasn’t seen men being idolized for their capacity to play sports, to be powerful, to move quickly, and who doesn’t want to be admired for the same? I love the capacity that fits in this poem, the same capacity for these horses to be “ladies” and for them to be “giant with power, heavy with blood,” and most importantly admired for both reasons. I also love the way Limón talks to the horses and to the audience, as though we are one entity, these “girls” who are and want to be powerful.
In Robert Gay’s, “Love I’m Done With You, I really enjoyed how his repetition is complimented by the descriptive words. He uses beautiful language to bring alive an experience. I am very impressed with his ability to create emotion without directly saying.
From the poems that we had to read, I liked San Franciso the most because I like how the author describes their scary experience that could have been life threatening. I didn’t feel the danger nor the scariness but instead I like how they made the experience funny by blaming their dad for driving badly. Overall, I found this poem to be fun and simple which I liked.
Staying Quiet – Hieu Minh Nguyen
I love how Nguyen changed the word “beautiful” from having positive connotations to negative. She very gracefully steers the reader’s definition of it through the examples she attaches to the word. You can tell the narrator bases her sense of self-worth off the amount of beauty she ‘contains’, how she seeks validation from the man and desires for him to call her beautiful. At first it’s her biggest wish to be seen as beautiful, but by the end of the poem it’s apparent that she loathes that her beauty is the only thing accompanying her. That there is no other substance to herself because beauty is the only trait that men notice about her.
One of my favorite poems this week was Self Portraits as Exit Wounds, by Ocean Vuong. I felt the emotion of the poem on my first read and could piece together what it was generally getting at, but reading the “About this Poem” blurb on the website gave me some missed context that made the poem hit much, much harder. I think knowing that this poem is written from the perspective of the bullet is required to be able to fully appreciate and understand each detail. The poem’s imagery captures scenes of humanity, depravity, sadness and love and hopelessness in a blunt and straightforward way that is harrowing and sobering, but still leaves me with the knowledge that amidst suffering, there is life and vibrancy and will. The last two lines of the poem describe the prayer that “nothing will move,” and I think this is the most loaded part of Vuong’s piece. After describing multiple scenes of human life, of movement and chaotic death, there are two ways I interpreted the end. The first was the implication of the bullet wishing to inflict maximum death with sick and amoral lust for destruction; the other is the bullet’s wish that these people that stand in between it and the “real” target would stay still as to avoid the bullet’s path. In the context of the indiscriminate death of the Vietnam War, I’m more inclined to believe the former, but perhaps a soldier’s sentiment of fighting an unjust, useless battle against an amorphous and arguably non-existent target would lead to him blindly picking and praying that the enemy is the right one this time. There’s more I’ve been toying with regarding the meaning of this poem, but I don’t think any of my thoughts lead to a coherent thread, so I will leave it at that.
I really liked both Darling by Alex Dimitrov and A Blessing by James Wright. It took me multiple reads to figure out whether I liked them and what I gained from them. I found that what I really liked was the imagery and storytelling that occurred in such different ways. Both of them brought images to my mind and often weren’t literal which I actually liked. I’m still getting used to poetry, reading and accepting whatever the poet is saying and how to truly enjoy them for what they are.
The stylistic choice of spacing between the time frames in “Promise” by Franz Wright allows the reader to infer what the author implies with their ambiguity. Franz Wright uses this space to allow the reader to play a role—the reader inserts their experiences and thoughts in the piece rather than being directly told what happens. I liked the ambiguity of the second stanza: “When morning comes, and pain—” There is a time-lapse perhaps, but it is left to my own interpretation of the situation. It adds to the confused feelings of this piece, how they long for something, despite being the lenient person. I like the use of interrupted sentences and how they still make coherent sense.
One of my favorite poems from the ones we read this week is “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”. In the poem, Vuong captures and acknowledges extremely deep issues with a great amount of clarity and simplicity. His language in the poem isn’t overtly fancy, rather, the words he uses in the poem are simple and used commonly in the English Language, making the message of the poem abundantly clear. What truly impressed me about this particular poem was the usage of simple language in a poem with a rather deep and important message. This juxtaposition, in my opinion, helps with deepening the impact of the poem on the reader. I was also intrigued by the subtlety of the metaphors used by Vuong throughout the poem, whether it be the comparison to the horizon or the lifeboat. These metaphors helped me, as a reader, visualize Vuong’s thoughts and feelings with a great amount of clarity, and impress on me the message of the poem with a much greater depth.
My absolute favorite of this selection is “Someday I’ll love Ocean Vuong.” The way Vuong so beautifully explores his queerness, his relationship with his father, and his search for (self) love—it has always been a favorite of mine. I especially love that line, “Don’t worry. Your father is only your father / until one of you forgets.” I think that’s what inspired me to choose this one as the poem I did for the exercise, although I regret it a little bit now because this poem is just so phenomenal, it was sort of hard to see my own work next to it, with a direct line by line comparison. Still, I am glad I did it.
I really enjoyed reading “How to Triumph Like a Girl” by Ada Limón because it avoided being cliché while still being charming and sweet. I’ve read this poem before, and it has stayed with me and I have loved it for the same reason: what woman (or child who was raised as a girl, at least) hasn’t seen men being idolized for their capacity to play sports, to be powerful, to move quickly, and who doesn’t want to be admired for the same? I love the capacity that fits in this poem, the same capacity for these horses to be “ladies” and for them to be “giant with power, heavy with blood,” and most importantly admired for both reasons. I also love the way Limón talks to the horses and to the audience, as though we are one entity, these “girls” who are and want to be powerful.
In Robert Gay’s, “Love I’m Done With You, I really enjoyed how his repetition is complimented by the descriptive words. He uses beautiful language to bring alive an experience. I am very impressed with his ability to create emotion without directly saying.
From the poems that we had to read, I liked San Franciso the most because I like how the author describes their scary experience that could have been life threatening. I didn’t feel the danger nor the scariness but instead I like how they made the experience funny by blaming their dad for driving badly. Overall, I found this poem to be fun and simple which I liked.
Staying Quiet – Hieu Minh Nguyen
I love how Nguyen changed the word “beautiful” from having positive connotations to negative. She very gracefully steers the reader’s definition of it through the examples she attaches to the word. You can tell the narrator bases her sense of self-worth off the amount of beauty she ‘contains’, how she seeks validation from the man and desires for him to call her beautiful. At first it’s her biggest wish to be seen as beautiful, but by the end of the poem it’s apparent that she loathes that her beauty is the only thing accompanying her. That there is no other substance to herself because beauty is the only trait that men notice about her.
One of my favorite poems this week was Self Portraits as Exit Wounds, by Ocean Vuong. I felt the emotion of the poem on my first read and could piece together what it was generally getting at, but reading the “About this Poem” blurb on the website gave me some missed context that made the poem hit much, much harder. I think knowing that this poem is written from the perspective of the bullet is required to be able to fully appreciate and understand each detail. The poem’s imagery captures scenes of humanity, depravity, sadness and love and hopelessness in a blunt and straightforward way that is harrowing and sobering, but still leaves me with the knowledge that amidst suffering, there is life and vibrancy and will. The last two lines of the poem describe the prayer that “nothing will move,” and I think this is the most loaded part of Vuong’s piece. After describing multiple scenes of human life, of movement and chaotic death, there are two ways I interpreted the end. The first was the implication of the bullet wishing to inflict maximum death with sick and amoral lust for destruction; the other is the bullet’s wish that these people that stand in between it and the “real” target would stay still as to avoid the bullet’s path. In the context of the indiscriminate death of the Vietnam War, I’m more inclined to believe the former, but perhaps a soldier’s sentiment of fighting an unjust, useless battle against an amorphous and arguably non-existent target would lead to him blindly picking and praying that the enemy is the right one this time. There’s more I’ve been toying with regarding the meaning of this poem, but I don’t think any of my thoughts lead to a coherent thread, so I will leave it at that.
I really liked both Darling by Alex Dimitrov and A Blessing by James Wright. It took me multiple reads to figure out whether I liked them and what I gained from them. I found that what I really liked was the imagery and storytelling that occurred in such different ways. Both of them brought images to my mind and often weren’t literal which I actually liked. I’m still getting used to poetry, reading and accepting whatever the poet is saying and how to truly enjoy them for what they are.
The stylistic choice of spacing between the time frames in “Promise” by Franz Wright allows the reader to infer what the author implies with their ambiguity. Franz Wright uses this space to allow the reader to play a role—the reader inserts their experiences and thoughts in the piece rather than being directly told what happens. I liked the ambiguity of the second stanza: “When morning comes, and pain—” There is a time-lapse perhaps, but it is left to my own interpretation of the situation. It adds to the confused feelings of this piece, how they long for something, despite being the lenient person. I like the use of interrupted sentences and how they still make coherent sense.
One of my favorite poems from the ones we read this week is “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”. In the poem, Vuong captures and acknowledges extremely deep issues with a great amount of clarity and simplicity. His language in the poem isn’t overtly fancy, rather, the words he uses in the poem are simple and used commonly in the English Language, making the message of the poem abundantly clear. What truly impressed me about this particular poem was the usage of simple language in a poem with a rather deep and important message. This juxtaposition, in my opinion, helps with deepening the impact of the poem on the reader. I was also intrigued by the subtlety of the metaphors used by Vuong throughout the poem, whether it be the comparison to the horizon or the lifeboat. These metaphors helped me, as a reader, visualize Vuong’s thoughts and feelings with a great amount of clarity, and impress on me the message of the poem with a much greater depth.