Not an end, but a new beginning.

Oh No

Robert Creeley

If you wander far enough

you will come to it

and when you get there

they will give you a place to sit

for yourself only, in a nice chair,

and all your friends will be there

with smiles on their faces

and they will likewise all have places.

I felt that it would be extremely appropriate for my last blog to be about a poem explaining more so a journey. When we read this poem in class many people thought of this as being Heaven, but as I looked further into it I realized that I saw it as a poem explaining purgatory, or further, a waiting period.
Upon these next coming months I will be in the transition of moving from high school to college, but this poem is welcoming in the fact that there's no need to be afraid of transitions. It's really approriate to have endings because that just means that beginning is coming right after.
"and all your friends will be there with smiles on their faces..." A smile is a universal sign of happiness and can be seen without any language barrier at all, and so the simple sign of a smile is the comfort that everything will be OK, and that even if fear comes that is only appropriate because change is coming as well.
In the beginning he talks about "if you wander far enough- you will come to it," we wander to find a place where we belong and right now I am in the "wandering" stage just waiting for my life to fully begin. I haven't made my mark on the world but I am ready to do that in full force as I exit one door- only to be led to another. 
To finish of my poetry blog I would like to thank you Mrs.White for giving me the opportunity to speak my mind on here, many times it's hard to allow ourselves to fully show our true colors in school because we're afraid of the oppositions that it may cause, but I have thoroughly enjoyed writing every weekend and will continue to write as I journey through my college life.
Thank you very much. :)

Words within a picture.

this is a photograph of me

Margaret Atwood

It was taken some time ago.

At first it seems to be

a smeared

print: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;

then, as you scan

it, you see in the left-hand corner

a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree

(basalm or spruce) emerging

and, to the right, halfway up

what ought to be a gentle

slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,

and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken

the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center

of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where

precisely, or to say

how large or small I am:

the effect of water

on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,

eventually

you will be able to see me.)


Upon reading this poem and going over it in class I had awhile to think about it and figure out what I was going to say when I wrote about it in my blog.
Sometimes we have situations that arise that we seem to step outside of ourselves and can see the destruction we have cause for others, and mostly for ourselves. As the speaker is gazing into the picture and notices that she is "in" it, she could be speaking from a memory or again- she's stepping out of herself and noticing the death that she has brought upon herself.
"the effect if water on light is distortion..." This line made me think of at times the reflection that we may see in the mirror, or water, and how it seems to distort anything beautiful and turn it into a pure disgrace.
Through the fog the audience is able to understand that this is a picture worth "a million words..." but rather something that the speaker is highly regretting.
The authors purpose for placing the "deceased" in the middle of the lake also is for a purpose, because as normal human beings ( not superheros) we would be unable to see the body in the middle of the lake but as we persist to look we may be find exactly what we were trying to find- and that could be our own destruction. We have to look in the center in order to find the problem as to further bring the hope of fixing it at some point.

This is a reflective poem of the destruction that we may cause ourselves....

drowning in the sea of hopeless-ness.

Not Waving but Drowning

Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

On, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.


I really really like this poem! We went over this last semester and I was wanting to write about it, but didn't know exactly what to say- I now have an idea of what I want to say.

Every single one of us have been in times of pure darkness and distress. This poem, I believe, is not about the literal sense of ACTUALLY drowning. In the final couplet of the poem it states, " I was much too far out all my life and not waving but drowing." The person in the poem may not be in a literal death situation but rather a more mental one, because many times we find oursleves etched within a habitual lifestyle that leads to the feeling of "drowning", meaning; this is a CAUTIONARY poem warning that we must not conform to what is comfortable but rely on what is not comfortable. I relate this poem much to the lives of the saints I have read, they released themselves from the "drowning" to which the world has adjusted to but yet- they are sitting amongst the shore relying on the holiest of lives.

The point of view shifts in the poem and is taken from the shore, and then from the water. Those two shifts give the reader a way of looking at the drowning and the serious-ness of the subject as- well. The view taken from the shore looking out to the person drowning is seemingly ironic, because while the person  is safe on the shore looking out, they're thinking that the person is just "waving" to them. Many of us look to those who are seemingly in trouble and seem to just pass it right by, unable to think that we could do anything to help.. the problem of that? We can always do something to help the drowning.