My favorite poem of all of these is On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I’ve been working a lot with my friend on her senior thesis which is on Vietnamese war poetry by queer authors, and of course, one of the focal points being Ocean Vuong. It’s all about temporality and space through the lens of intergenerational trauma; about how “love in the face of war signifies a mode of queer survival that transcends the conditions of the present.” As I was rereading this poem for class, I kept coming back to that notion, of how Vuong impresses beauty (especially its temporary nature) onto us in a way that feels so simultaneously full of grief and awe. The way Vuong uses vignettes to bring these fragmented and fleeting moments to our attention, as he recounts different experiences with different men in his life (his father, a hookup, a childhood friend), allows him to convey a complicated inner relationship with love, men, and sex, but also bring us into the beauty of those moments.
alternate names for black boys – Danez Smith
This poem is about experiences that I will never be able to relate to. Yet, while reading it, I felt as though the emotion of the list going down of “names” corresponding so heavily to history were things that I was still able to pinpoint the reason of why a particular name was chosen. I wouldn’t necessarily chalk it up to my amazing public school history education, but rather the unfortunately ubiquitous nature of some of the racism and prejudice that exists today. I found the 12th reason the most sobering.
A note on the body
I don’t know what it was I fully liked about this poem. I enjoyed that the first three lines showed you something and then the rest continued to grow off that image. I’m intrigued by the formatting because what does it mean and why are the spaces here or there and what is the purpose of that? I think it gives me food for thought on what needs to be shown and how things change with spacing and stanzas.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
I really enjoyed this poem; I like how he combines his struggles with sexuality and his relationship with his mother. I can feel how his mother’s past experiences with war has impacted his life and bleeds into his romantic relationships. Also, the formatting of this poem is special because depending on how I read it, it changes my interpretation and feelings toward the poem. When I slow down and stop where it tells me, then I can feel more and see what ocean is trying to portray. Overall, this is a beautiful poem that gives you insight into his life.
In “Who Is There To Eulogize The Tree” by Keith Wilson, the form is essentially the content. He effectively summarizes the mason-dixon line, the line between the cultural north and south, separating both sides of the page, footnote 3 from footnote 4, bisecting “you” and footnote 2. Something about footnotes is so effective in this poem, you read it, and you can sense where he’s going with the poem, but the footnotes (which are also the poem) elucidate meanings, so there is the abridged version, the shortened form, and the version including the footnotes as you read, which also changes the order and expands the work as you read it.
A note on the body- Danez Smith
I found it interesting how the use of body parts was metaphorically used to express how much damage simple actions can cause. I especially enjoyed the use of the mouth and gun as synonymous things– one that can hurt others by simply speaking and how that can lead to a person’s demise. Smith continues using this form of metaphor in his poetry and I enjoyed the imagery that comes with it to express if not, dramatize its actual significance.
Bees- RAE ARMANTROUT
The formatting of this poem was particularly unique. There is an element of personalization that the author offers by including the word something in parenthesis in the first line of this poem. I am intrigued by the word choice for the singular lines scattered throughout, although I am still unsure why they word “corona” was used here. This poem does a great job of employing simplicity, while still creating a dramatic story through word choice and form.
I really enjoyed reading “Batter Bread, Mulatto Style” from this week’s readings. I found Wilson’s experimentation with form awe-inspiring and effective in delivering the emotion of the piece. I also thoroughly enjoyed how its current version, “Batter Bread, Mulatto Style could be read in multiple different ways. For example, for my first reading, I read the recipe first and the annotations later. For my second reading of the poem, I immediately read the recipe and its matching annotation. In both interpretations, I never felt the poem’s emotion was compromised or different from one interpretation. I interpreted the recipe of the bread as the building up of emotions like grief and anger and the depiction of the nature of humans to bottle these emotions, only for them to explode, which is depicted in the annotations. Overall, the experimentation of form by Wilson here allows him to tell a full story, albeit in a compressed form, but in a very effective manner.
Batter Bread – Keith Wilson
I find it interesting how Wilson utilized form in his poem Batter Bread. It seems like he associates himself as the bread that’s being baked, using lines at certain words to branch off and reveal some backstory. It adds a lot of dimension to this piece because there are three separate “storylines” running simultaneously, and the reader has to mesh them together to understand the full picture. I really thought the use of lines was creative because it’s an artistic way of directing readers back to certain parts of the text, allowing them to reread under a different context.
My favorite poem of all of these is On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I’ve been working a lot with my friend on her senior thesis which is on Vietnamese war poetry by queer authors, and of course, one of the focal points being Ocean Vuong. It’s all about temporality and space through the lens of intergenerational trauma; about how “love in the face of war signifies a mode of queer survival that transcends the conditions of the present.” As I was rereading this poem for class, I kept coming back to that notion, of how Vuong impresses beauty (especially its temporary nature) onto us in a way that feels so simultaneously full of grief and awe. The way Vuong uses vignettes to bring these fragmented and fleeting moments to our attention, as he recounts different experiences with different men in his life (his father, a hookup, a childhood friend), allows him to convey a complicated inner relationship with love, men, and sex, but also bring us into the beauty of those moments.
alternate names for black boys – Danez Smith
This poem is about experiences that I will never be able to relate to. Yet, while reading it, I felt as though the emotion of the list going down of “names” corresponding so heavily to history were things that I was still able to pinpoint the reason of why a particular name was chosen. I wouldn’t necessarily chalk it up to my amazing public school history education, but rather the unfortunately ubiquitous nature of some of the racism and prejudice that exists today. I found the 12th reason the most sobering.
A note on the body
I don’t know what it was I fully liked about this poem. I enjoyed that the first three lines showed you something and then the rest continued to grow off that image. I’m intrigued by the formatting because what does it mean and why are the spaces here or there and what is the purpose of that? I think it gives me food for thought on what needs to be shown and how things change with spacing and stanzas.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
I really enjoyed this poem; I like how he combines his struggles with sexuality and his relationship with his mother. I can feel how his mother’s past experiences with war has impacted his life and bleeds into his romantic relationships. Also, the formatting of this poem is special because depending on how I read it, it changes my interpretation and feelings toward the poem. When I slow down and stop where it tells me, then I can feel more and see what ocean is trying to portray. Overall, this is a beautiful poem that gives you insight into his life.
In “Who Is There To Eulogize The Tree” by Keith Wilson, the form is essentially the content. He effectively summarizes the mason-dixon line, the line between the cultural north and south, separating both sides of the page, footnote 3 from footnote 4, bisecting “you” and footnote 2. Something about footnotes is so effective in this poem, you read it, and you can sense where he’s going with the poem, but the footnotes (which are also the poem) elucidate meanings, so there is the abridged version, the shortened form, and the version including the footnotes as you read, which also changes the order and expands the work as you read it.
A note on the body- Danez Smith
I found it interesting how the use of body parts was metaphorically used to express how much damage simple actions can cause. I especially enjoyed the use of the mouth and gun as synonymous things– one that can hurt others by simply speaking and how that can lead to a person’s demise. Smith continues using this form of metaphor in his poetry and I enjoyed the imagery that comes with it to express if not, dramatize its actual significance.
Bees- RAE ARMANTROUT
The formatting of this poem was particularly unique. There is an element of personalization that the author offers by including the word something in parenthesis in the first line of this poem. I am intrigued by the word choice for the singular lines scattered throughout, although I am still unsure why they word “corona” was used here. This poem does a great job of employing simplicity, while still creating a dramatic story through word choice and form.
I really enjoyed reading “Batter Bread, Mulatto Style” from this week’s readings. I found Wilson’s experimentation with form awe-inspiring and effective in delivering the emotion of the piece. I also thoroughly enjoyed how its current version, “Batter Bread, Mulatto Style could be read in multiple different ways. For example, for my first reading, I read the recipe first and the annotations later. For my second reading of the poem, I immediately read the recipe and its matching annotation. In both interpretations, I never felt the poem’s emotion was compromised or different from one interpretation. I interpreted the recipe of the bread as the building up of emotions like grief and anger and the depiction of the nature of humans to bottle these emotions, only for them to explode, which is depicted in the annotations. Overall, the experimentation of form by Wilson here allows him to tell a full story, albeit in a compressed form, but in a very effective manner.
Batter Bread – Keith Wilson
I find it interesting how Wilson utilized form in his poem Batter Bread. It seems like he associates himself as the bread that’s being baked, using lines at certain words to branch off and reveal some backstory. It adds a lot of dimension to this piece because there are three separate “storylines” running simultaneously, and the reader has to mesh them together to understand the full picture. I really thought the use of lines was creative because it’s an artistic way of directing readers back to certain parts of the text, allowing them to reread under a different context.