What I have read and done

The entire Emily Dickinson section and all of her poems in other sections.

I have read 35-40 contemporary poems (last 50 years) and at least a dozen older poems...If I named them all this list would be tedious at best (see posted comments), also the sections on songs, haiku, forms, myth & narrative, and imagery.

I read all and wrote/posted several Haiku's

I wrote and posted a short, valentine, simile/riddle, M. Atwood, epigram, and limerick poems.

My group memorized, and made a video of "the soul selects her company."

I have read: No ones a mystery, Beauty, Sure thing, I stand here ironing, The ones that walk away from Omelas, Metamorphosis, The jilting of granny Weatheral, Miss bliss, and a few more I have read on my own...The life of Pi, and a couple of Dean Koontz novels.

Miscellaneous poetry

Margaret Atwood type poems
Your voice is like
a spring wind
A rusty spring
a cold wind

You fill me up
with special feelings
special child
feeling lost

Epigrams
The wiser you claim to be
The less that I think you can see

It is hard to find flaws in others
unless we've heard them from our mothers



Limericks
I heard a young student complain
that his teacher was causing him pain
the instructor was hard
for he so loved the bard
and thought his students should all feel the same

My son made a passionate wish
that he'd catch him a really big fish
but his line was to light
when the lunker did bite
it broke off and was gone with a swish

Curses
May you walk through life in shoes that hurt you feet.

May you have a dozen children, who drop out of school and never leave home.

May the promotion you deserve, always go the knuckle drag'n, mouth breath'n, nose pick'r married to you boss's niece.

Okay, I'm usually pretty good at deciphering what a poem is about...Post-card From an Alien was harder to follow. I think the author was describing books, clocks, cars, telephones, and I hope I am wrong, bowel movements? and then sleep.

My stab at a metaphor poem, (or is it a simile?)


Everything a super-model wants to be...

slender, smokin', and sexy.

Caught alone she won't last long,

but she always has at least one admirer.

When she is with her crowd,

they can take your breath away, but

they are un-moved by their surrounding's.

Let her get into your head, and

you will never forget the message,

I know, I used to love that tune she hums.

Can you Haiku?

Hepworth casts his line
Hungry student rises to bite
some just swim away


Hook, thread, and feather
flash toward shaded riffle
fat cut meets his fate


Black cat in repose
wakes at the sound of movement
royalty disturbed

Reading poetry

I have read about thirty odd poems in the lit. text and I can say, that for me, most the poems written before 1920 need to come with a translation to modern speech. I like the haiku's, I guess they fit my attention span. I liked Cinderella by Anne Sexton, more of a narrative than a poem, it tells a familiar story with a fresh twist that appealed to my twisted sense of humor. I liked Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, she is writing about birthdays that move her into a new decade of age; tens, twenties, thirties...these are B-days of note and I get the sentiment. She might be putting to much importance on the change in age from twenty-something to thirty-something... but maybe that's her point, we all put a lot of who we are into age and the decades of our lives.

Beauty by Jane Martin and Sure Thing by David Ives are one act, two character comedic plays. Beauty reminds me of several variations I have seen on this theme (two people unhappy with their lot in life, swap bodies/lives with some magical help). With the exception that Beauty ends where most of the other books, plays, movies where just getting started; and has a simple, clearly stated moral...We all wish we had someone else's problems. I can't wait to see our class performance of this play.

Sure Thing is like a song that gain a line with each repetition of the original verse. The play soon breaks this pattern and gets fun, in a "what approach will work to get this person to be interested in me; enough to overcome their natural suspicion of strangers and leave with me" kind of flirting. The kind I have witnessed countless times in bars and taverns across the northwest, in my misspent youth. I must say the lack of alcohol in Sure Thing adds a degree of difficulty to this timeless scenario. There are some funny and unexpected turns towards the end and I thought it was A fun play, and an easy read.