I chose "Fog" by Robert Hillyer. I immediately chose it because the title could pretty much sum up the way a lot of us are feeling right now. The poem is not about our current situation but so many lines felt like they nailed what this experience feels like. It feels like I'm floating on nothing and I can't see anything around me. Nothing ever happens and I begin to question reality. Sometimes things break through the haze but they're never anything but "wet, grey monotone." The last two ominous lines convey kind of how on-edge I feel even though there's nothing REALLY to be on-edge about.. but is there?
https://poets.org/poem/fog-2
I know it's a pretty dark poem, but I don't' feel like I could possibly choose a happy poem to convey my current situation. I will say that there are definitely more positive things about right now for me than maybe that poem makes you think. I wish there was a stanza about the people the narrator is with and their impact because my family is the only reason I keep going, they're awesome. So I picked a poem about family too.
https://poets.org/poem/sonnets-are-full-love-and-my-tome
Christina Rossetti's sonnet about her mother and how her mother helped her become the person she is today exemplifies the powerful impact a family can have. The impact my family is having on me right now.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Unfamiliar Love Poetry
Most of us are very familiar with the traditional love poem. I would say most people in history with access to poetry have been very familiar with the traditional love poem. Because this palatable, poetic representation of love has been shoved down our throats for as long as we've been able to read or listen to music, it's probably the most universal type of poetry. When your average person thinks of poetry, the first thing that pops in their head will probably be something along the lines of "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..."
We're used to this idealistic version of pure love as it has permeated every aspect of our culture. I'm not here to make a statement on that kind of love, but it's not always that simple. The simple, pure, infatuated love is the familiar, but while the "it's complicated" kind of love may be familiar in real life, it is very unfamiliar in poetry. Thus, I tried to find a poem that was about love but not your typical perfect love story.
I present to you, "Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You're Falling in Love?" by Ailish Hopper. Reading this poem gave me kind of a shock because it was almost satirically dealing with a really toxic kind of relationship but then labeled it as love. I wasn't used to people in poetry representing this kind of unhealthy love.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58636/did-it-ever-occur-to-you-that-maybe-youre-falling-in-love
Hopper's poem is clearly dealing with some kind of abusive relationship that is clearly presented as a problem. But what about poems that represent love as a bit more complicated than the traditional love poem but call that a good thing? Poems that criticize idealism and embrace the idiosyncrasies of individuals falling in love? I looked for one of these poems, and no doubt they exist, but I didn't find any. Do you know of any poems like this?
We're used to this idealistic version of pure love as it has permeated every aspect of our culture. I'm not here to make a statement on that kind of love, but it's not always that simple. The simple, pure, infatuated love is the familiar, but while the "it's complicated" kind of love may be familiar in real life, it is very unfamiliar in poetry. Thus, I tried to find a poem that was about love but not your typical perfect love story.
I present to you, "Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You're Falling in Love?" by Ailish Hopper. Reading this poem gave me kind of a shock because it was almost satirically dealing with a really toxic kind of relationship but then labeled it as love. I wasn't used to people in poetry representing this kind of unhealthy love.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58636/did-it-ever-occur-to-you-that-maybe-youre-falling-in-love
Hopper's poem is clearly dealing with some kind of abusive relationship that is clearly presented as a problem. But what about poems that represent love as a bit more complicated than the traditional love poem but call that a good thing? Poems that criticize idealism and embrace the idiosyncrasies of individuals falling in love? I looked for one of these poems, and no doubt they exist, but I didn't find any. Do you know of any poems like this?
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