Art and Poems

As a bit of an extension from my last post.  We've been looking at poems that we can create through art. I've found a few great ones, and wrote a quick blurb of what I think the mean underneath.  Let me know what you think of them!

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev by Adrienne Rich

 
The cold felt cold until our blood
grew colder then the wind
died down and we slept

If in this sleep I speak
it's with a voice no longer personal
(I want to say with voices)
When the wind tore our breath from us at last
we had no need of words
For months for years each one of us
had felt her own yes growing in her
slowly forming as she stood at windows waited
for trains mended her rucksack combed her hair
What we were to learn was simply what we had
up here as out of all words that yes gathered
its forces fused itself and only just in time
to meet a No of no degrees
the black hole sucking the world in

I feel you climbing toward me
your cleated bootsoles leaving their geometric bite
colossally embossed on microscopic crystals
as when I trailed you in the Caucasus
Now I am further
ahead than either of us dreamed anyone would be
I have become
the white snow packed like asphalt by the wind
the women I love lightly flung against the mountain
that blue sky
our frozen eyes unribboned through the storm
we could have stitched that blueness together like a quilt

You come (I know this) with your love your loss
strapped to your body with your tape-recorder camera
ice-pick against advisement
to give us burial in the snow and in your mind
While my body lies out here
flashing like a prism into your eyes
how could you sleep You climbed here for yourself
we climbed for ourselves

When you have buried us told your story
Ours does not end we stream
into the unfinished the unbegun
the possible
Every cell's core of heat pulsed out of us
into the thin air of the universe
the armature of rock beneath these snows
this mountain which has taken the imprint of our minds
through changes elemental and minute
as those we underwent
to bring each other here
choosing ourselves each other and this life
whose every breath and grasp and further foothold
is somewhere still enacted and continuing

In the diary I wrote: Now we are ready
and each of us knows it I have never loved
like this I have never seen
my own forces so taken up and shared
and given back
After the long training the early sieges
we are moving almost effortlessly in our love

In the diary as the wind began to tear
at the tents over us I wrote:
We know now we have always been in danger
down in our separateness
and now up here together but till now
we had not touched our strength

In the diary torn from my fingers I had written:
What does love mean
what does it mean "to survive"
A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies
burning together in the snow We will not live
to settle for less We have dreamed of this
all of our lives

This poem is about a group of women who died while mountain climbing, this poem had a different style of first person narration, because it was told through the eyes of a dead woman. The poem started off with the women slowly dying, and then continued to say what she thought, and felt while laying dead on the cold mountain.  The poem was set on the Lenin Peak Mountain, where the tragedy took place. The purpose of this story is to show the strength, and determinations of these women.  They never gave up, and never turned back, even when they knew the odds of them making it to the top of the mountain were not in their favour.  The conflicts the woman faced in this poem were breaking gender stereotypes, showing that women are just as good as men, and the weather.  Although the weather was not the main conflict, it still played a part, because in the end, it was the weather that stopped these women from completing their goal. The audience that this poem appeals to is women of all ages, or more specifically, women who are determined and want to make a point, or who have been told that they cannot do something because of their gender.  The voice in this poem is accomplished and calm, not at all sad or frightened like it might have been thought to be.  The woman feels successful, because she knows that she will be talked about and admired a long time after her death.  She has come to terms with that fact that she is dead, and died peacefully doing what she loved to do.  This poem was really well organized, and demonstrated to the reader what the women’s thoughts were, without going into too much detail. 

Next Day by Randall Jarrell

 

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,

I take a box

And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical

Food-gathering flocks

Are selves I overlook.  Wisdom, said William James,

 

Is learning what to overlook.  And I am wise

If that is wisdom.

Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves

And the boy takes it to my station wagon,

What I’ve become

Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

 

When I was young and miserable and pretty

And poor, I’d wish

What all girls wish: to have a husband,

A house and children.  Now that I’m old, my wish

Is womanish:

That the boy putting groceries in my car

 

See me.  It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.

For so many years

I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me

And its mouth watered.  How often they have undressed me,

The eyes of strangers!

And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

 

Imaginings within my imagining,

I too have taken

The chance of life.  Now the boy pats my dog

And we start home.  Now I am good.

The last mistaken,

Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

 

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm

Some soap and water--

It was so long ago, back in some Gay

Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss

My lovely daughter

Away at school, my sons away at school,

 

My husband away at work--I wish for them.

The dog, the maid,

And I go through the sure unvarying days

At home in them.  As I look at my life,

I am afraid

Only that it will change, as I am changing:

 

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.

It looks at me

From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

The smile I hate.  Its plain, lined look

Of gray discovery

Repeats to me: “You’re old.”  That’s all, I’m old.

 

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral

I went to yesterday.

My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,

Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body

Were my face and body.

As I think of her I hear her telling me

 

How young I seem; I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

No one has anything, I’m anybody,

I stand beside my grave

Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary

 

This poem is written and interpreted through the eyes of an older women.  The purpose of this poem is to communicate the struggle of one coming to terms with their own mortality, and how strong of a desire one feels to be youthful again.  This poem is intended to make the readers feel connected, it is not very specific so it allows for everyone to relate their own lives to this situation.  Although I feel everyone can relate to this situation in one way or another, the intended audience would have to be people who are over the age of 50, or people who are struggling with the change of their physical appearance because of aging.  The voice of the women telling the story is very sad.  I think that she is trying to make the best of her situation, but is having difficulties coping with her old age.  I think that she regrets being so set on finding the perfect husband, and house, and having children in her youth.  I think that she wishes to go back and just enjoy life instead of worrying who she would marry.  The voice in this poem tells me that although the women is struggling, she keeps her problems to herself.  I think that she does not want to burden anyone with the issues she faces.  This poem in well organized, it is a little choppy and jumps subjects a bit, but it is easy to follow and keeps the reader intrigued.  This poem is set in a grocery store, where the old women thinks back to being young and reminiscences over her youthful body.  She thinks about how she is seen now compared to how the world used to see her.  The main conflict in this poem is self against self, she is fighting a battle she cannot win against her youthful self. It is very sad, but really allows for the reader to empathize, or sympathize with the women.

 

Gretel in Darkness by Louise Gluck

This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas . . .

Now, far from women's arms
and memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln--

Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest

This poem is about either a girl, or women.  She has done something terrible for someone, and is trying to deal with it by herself.  The purpose of this poem is to sum up some of the events in this woman’s life, and demonstrate the way she feels about them.  The audience that this poem appeals to could either be someone who loves somebody that doesn’t love them back, or someone who has done something for somebody, only to have that person walk away from them.  The age group that this poem would relate to most would be anywhere between 20-40, because between these years, people face many heartbreaks, divorces, fights, and kids growing up and leaving them, after all they’ve done for them. This poem would relate mostly to women, but men could relate to it as well.  The voice of this poem tells me that the narrator is scared, angry, and lonely.  She is used to having people watching over her, and she does not like being left without anyone.  All she wants is to love and to be loved in return.  This poem is well organized, it demonstrates the important events in this woman’s life, and it becomes progressively harsher and darker to read as the poem unfolds.  This poem seems to be set in the woman’s mind, she could be anywhere, but she feels like she is in a dark forest, all alone, with nowhere to go.  The woman faces a conflict with her own actions over the course of this poem, she is not proud of what she has done, and she now must live with the consequences of it with no support from the ones she loves.  She thinks back to the days when she was loved, and she longs for those days to come once again.