Reflections: Five Poems

I’m not going to be very insightful about this.  I’ve never made this clear, but I just can’t stand poetry in general.  It seems as though every poem I come across has too many metaphors and not enough story or material worth thinking about.  I’m a very literal person and I don’t like it when anyone or anything I come across starts dancing around a main subject and gives too many metaphors and euphemisms, and poetry seems to do that more often than getting to the main point.  However, there were some poems in this assignment that interested me, and they were a majority.

Pablo Neruda’s “Bird” shows how the narrator reflects when watching birds flying about.  His details grab my attention.  Maybe there are people who don’t like these sorts of descriptions, but I grew up with these abundantly detailed works.  I’d like to argue that “Bird” is similar in at least one way to Mary Oliver’s “Bone,” in which the narrator picks up the small bone of an immense sea creature and then reflects upon the mysteries of the soul (and, quite possibly by extension, those of the world and the universe) and the human race’s quest to solve such mysteries.  Both appear to think of bigger things after looking at smaller, possibly everyday things, anyway.  “Bored” by Margaret Atwood was also intriguing, since the narrator reflects upon her past, gives the readers many gritty details, and then finishes the poem by saying that she feels nostalgic and misses those times.  There seems to be something in her new life, far away from this old lifestyle, that she doesn’t like.  However, we never see her new life, so I don’t know how it really compares.  However, as I expected, there were some poems that just left me confused or that I just didn’t like as much.

“Black Stone Lying on a White Stone” by César Vallejo wasn’t a poem I can see myself reading over and over.  I like that this narrator knows what will happen to him much later on in life; I just don’t like that it has to be such a depressing subject as death by beatings (in Paris, no less, which will always be in my mind as some romantic getaway).  I can’t really talk about this poem without ranting, so I’ll just say this: It reminds me of high school since we had to read this at least two years in a row.  It was depressing then, and it’s depressing now.  The final poem, “New Road Station” by Tracy K. Smith, still confuses me as any other poem would.  However, this is a poem I want to like.  I think I understand some of the metaphors, such as history being like a rushed bus driver in a still world.  However, the final line completely threw me off the first time I read the poem.  The only thing I can safely say I hate about this poem is the first thing that comes to my mind – yes, I’m saying I hate myself, not the poem – when I read that line.  Is the narrator really talking about atomic bombs, such as those used in WWII, or is that just my limited knowledge rushing in to fill in the blanks all over again?

This assignment showed me two reasons why I dislike poetry in general.  The first is one I’ve talked about before: simply put, so much metaphor and my inability to understand.  The second reason deals more with my own approaches to poetry: rushing to find answers, fill in the blanks, or just get a message.  I’m afraid I don’t understand the real ideas that poets try to get across because I prefer to get to any point as quickly as possible.  So, I’m often left confused at certain ideas like those in “New Road Station;” or I think I have the answers when the author perhaps tried to say something different, as in “Bird,” “Bored,” and “Bone.”  In the end, I can only say this.

What do I know about poetry?

Idida Z. Casado