on losing stuff

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

 

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

 

 

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 

I lose stuff all the time…clothing, keys, cell phone, I-Pod, all that stuff, to my family’s dismay. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. It is no disaster because all of that material can be replaced. Forgetting names, places….can be disgruntling but is no disaster.  You miss these things (a city) but “it wasn’t a disaster”. BUT losing someone, the little things (a gesture etc.) is disaster.

 

Poetry about….Poetry

Who is a Poet
by Tadeusz Rosewicz
translated from the Polish by Magnus Krynski and Robert Maguire

a poet is one who writes verses
and one who does not write verses

a poet is one who throws off fetters
and one who puts fetters on himself

a poet is one who believes
and one who cannot bring himself to believe

a poet is one who has told lies
and one who has been told lies

one who has been inclined to fall
and one who raises himself

a poet is one who tries to leave
and one who cannot leave

 

What I  got:

Firstly, I can’t put it better than the poet (or the translators) but here goes. A poet is a creator-yet the reader is the creation. The poem cannot exist without the reader. A poet is everything and nothing at the same time. The most confounding stanza, I thought, was

“a poet is one who believes
and one who cannot bring himself to believe “.

It reminds me of my dad…I’ve really turned him on to the Obama movement and he wants to believe but he has this social fetter about politics that Obama will just disappoint us all in the end. He wants to believe, but he can’t let optimism overtake his stuck-on belief.

 

Frank Bidart

If  See No End In Is

By Frank Bidart

 

What none knows is when, not if.

Now that your life nears its end

when you turn back what you see

is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No,

it is a vast resonating chamber in

which each thing you say or do is

 

new, but the same. What none knows is

how to change. Each plateau you reach, if

single, limited, only itself, in-

cludes traces of  all the others, so that in the end

limitation frees you, there is no

end, if   you once see what is there to see.

 

You cannot see what is there to see —

not when she whose love you failed is

standing next to you. Then, as if refusing the know-

ledge that life unseparated from her is death, as if

again scorning your refusals, she turns away. The end

achieved by the unappeased is burial within.

 

Familiar spirit, within whose care I grew, within

whose disappointment I twist, may we at last see

by what necessity the double-bind is in the end

the  figure  for human life, why what we love is

precluded always by something else we love, as if

each no we speak is yes, each yes no.

 

The prospect is mixed but elsewhere the forecast is no

better. The eyrie where you perch in

exhaustion has food and is out of  the wind, if

cold. You feel old, young, old, young: you scan the sea

for movement, though the promise of  sex or food is

the prospect that bewildered  you to this end.

 

Something in you believes that it is not the end.

When you wake, sixth grade will start. The finite you know

you fear is infinite: even at eleven, what you love is

what you should not love, which endless bullies in-

tuit unerringly. The future will be different: you cannot see

the end. What none knows is when, not if.

 Well, this poem is both comforting and depressing. In a world where we so often look ahead, try and get ahead, we forget our own mortality. This is the kind of thing that makes uncomfortable. Death is scary and we’d much prefer to glaze over it and “live In the moment”. “What none knows is when, not if”. We know we will die; we’re human. It’s just a matter of when…you know, it’s kind of scary to think about..but we are powerless. The gods live free of sorrows because they are immortal.

Why was everyone so shocked by the announcement of Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor diagosis? He’s 76. My own father insisted that it was the ‘Kennedy Curse’ and that Ted just has another unlucky fate like the rest of his family. I too was saddened to hear of this news…but it really isn’t shocking. We all WILL die, it is just a question of when.

Anyway, back to the poem…interesting words of Bidart here:

that in the end /limitation frees you, there is no /end, if   you once see what is there to see.

So our own limitation (we are limited by our mortality) is what makes us free, what makes us human.

The prospect is mixed but elsewhere the forecast is no better.

 

Ugh, how depressing…I can see why we don’t like talking about death.

 

 

Prospective Immigrants by Adrienne Rich

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

 

Either you will

go through this door

or you will not go through.

 

If you go through

there is always the risk

of remembering your name.

 

Things look at you doubly

and you must look back

and let them happen.

 

If you do not go through

it is possible

to live worthily

 

to maintain your attitudes

to hold your position

to die bravely

 

but much will blind you,

much will evade you,

at what cost who knows?

 

The door itself

makes no promises.

It is only a door.

 

 

This poem resonates with America today…we have been called a “melting pot” for some time now. It seems ironic that this land has been called the land of opportunity because it has been a while since I’ve heard of the “self-made man” in America. It seems like the ability to rise up through the ranks is diminishing more and more everyday, with big corporate business and that top 5% controlling the wealth of our country. Rich’s disclaimer to immigrants is saying that opportunity (or a door) “makes no promises”.

We’re left with a decision, fight or flight.

1.Go through the door into that unknown and risk of blindness and evasion. Immigrants are often pegged as annoyances stealing jobs from regular Americans.

2. Stay where you are–live worthily….

 

Would you go through the door?

 

Inaction

I haven’t written in a while; my life is busy. Poetry analysis to come!

Looking at women in advertising

Sneaker Or Sex? Object or Subject?

What do we have here? This advertisement ran in every teen magazine from Cosmogirl to Seventeen. There are two images of Christina Aguilera, pop princess of the nineties, one of her as a nurse and the other as an injured patient. Looking at this ad, we can start with the literal. Christina number one is standing, left hand on hip, and is grasping an enormous vaccine in her right hand. Her double, Christina number two, is sitting upright on the hospital bed, supporting one knee with one hand and is holding an ice pack to her temple with the other.

 

Christina number one is standing in a strong position and is holding an instrument of force, yet her dominance is compromised by the skimpy naughty nurse outfit. You can even see her garter hanging out of her barely-there jumper. The little scarf around Christina number one’s neck is choking her, into confining to a standard set by men to be sexy. Christina number one is holding some sort of metal object in her hand that appears to be a vaccine. The vaccine itself is an oddity. It is giant, probably 5 times the size of a flu shot. The phallic symbolism is obvious.
Christina number two is in a submissive pose and looks disturbed by Christina in the nurse outfit. She is holding an ice-pack to her head, so what kind of injury constitutes a vaccinating? Why does she appear so annoyed by the silvery metal oblong object? Is she really submitting? She’s compromised, yes, and in a sense must submit to the nurse…but that bugs her.

We begin to lose sight of what the ad is actually advertising for: sneakers. Sure, they’re in the foreground of the image, but the first thing our eye goes to is Christina number one, the naughty nurse. You can’t even see her shoes. Is this really an ad for sneakers? What are we supposed to take away? How does this ad motivate people to even buy the product? It may fulfill some sexual fantasies of men, but how can it speak to women and teenagers?
Is this what we should be for our men? This ad seems to be delivering a behavioral tutorial for women and men. Chrisitina number two seems bothered by the outfit of the naughty nurse. She plays the part of the man being pleased by the woman. The woman (Christina number one) is clearly in charge, even in her pleasing outfit.
We should do as they want us to do and we should act like Christina? We should dress in a sexy way and appear helpless. We get the sense that Christina number one is going to punish Christina number two and physically harm her. At the same time, she’s (ignore the pun) giving her a taste of her own medicine. This is what our society wants us to be: hardworking to the point of exhaustion (to appear attractive) and sexed up. There is no man in this ad, yet Christina number two on the bed is in a man’s position. Is that look of distain really for the men that feel they are confined to society’s views that women are sex objects?
If we look at this ad in the context of Christina’s life and comeback as an artist, we can find new meaning in this advertisement. Christina number two has an open mouth and an utter look of distain for her counterpart. It can be said that the real Christina Aguilera was much more innocent and wholesome in her days on the Mickey Mouse Club and as a young diva. We all watched her become “Dirrty” with cut off chaps and saw her transform into a sex kitten. She became this glamorous and sexy woman. As Bordo notes, practices such as cosmetic surgery, obsessive dieting and physical training represent, how cultural “representations homogenize” and how “these homogenized images normalize” (Bordo). Christina number two has obviously injured herself from working out, to achieve the perfect bod she’s known for.In this ad, she is looking at herself dressed up as an object for men’s pleasure. We can tell by her look that she disapproves of dressing up for men or that men are expected to like women behaving like skanks. There is no man in this ad, yet Christina number two on the bed is in a man’s position. Is that look of distain really for the men that feel they are confined to society’s views that women are sex objects? Not all men see women in that naughty way(let’s hope). However, she’s still wearing short shorts. She’s more covered up, but still is not giving up her image as sexy. there’s something (in the public sentiment) so cool about Christina that no matter what she does-even no matter how ‘skanky’ she gets-we think she’s attractive and cool. Chrisitna number one is large and in charge and is controlling Christina number two (the man figure).
She’s simply recognizing that being a sex object isn’t very desirable, but in her industry it is necessary. She’s not really an object, she is a strong subject of femininity and strength. All advertising “proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer - even though we will be poorer by having spent our money”(Berger).

If we buy Sketchers, we too can transform into glamorous vixens that are INDEED in control. She looks great! She’s the one we all want to be: singer, designer, wife, mother! But is she? Naa…she’s just where the men want her.

 

   

Going to the movies….

Ave Maria

by Frank O’Hara

 Mothers of America let your kids go to the movies! get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to it’s true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images and when you grow old as grow old you must they won’t hate you they won’t criticize you they won’t know they’ll be in some glamorous country they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey  they may even be grateful to you for their first sexual experience which only cost you a quarter and didn’t upset the peaceful home they will know where candy bars come from and gratuitous bags of popcorn as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg near the Williamsburg Bridge oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy and they’ll have been truly entertained either way instead of hanging around the yard or up in their room hating you prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet except keeping them from the darker joys it’s unforgivable the latter so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice and the family breaks up and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set seeing movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young

                                                                                           

This poem is whimsically written, but behind the rhetoric, there is some meaning. You can’t keep your kids young forever. Sometimes we have to venture into the wilderness to grow up and find ourselves. This place is the movies. (as it was in the 20’s) in the dark, we are fascinated by the glamour of it all: the moving picture, the salty popcorn, the hidden handhold (or maybe a little more). I remember my first movie date. Our parents dropped us off, but it still felt so grown up to be left alone, to be “on our own”. Sure, mom and dad were just a phone call or a restaurant away, but we felt that “fresh air” O’Hara is talking about. It’s scary to think that by keeping kids home, you risk “the family break[ing] up and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set seeing movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young”. Going to the movies is necessary. Leaving the nest…it happens. For me, I’m about to “go to the movies” in a big way -college.

I’m confounded by the line: “get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to”…what could mothers of America be up to?

                                                                                              

                                                                                   ADAM AND EVE :LOSS OF INNOCENCE

Life sucks and then you die…Or is there a better outlook?

SONGS OF INNOCENCE by William Blake

PIPING down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of peasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he, laughing, said to me:  

 ‘Pipe a song about a lamb!’

So I piped with merry cheer.

 ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’

So I piped: he wept to hear.  

‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

Sing thy songs of happy cheer!’

So I sang the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.  

 ‘Piper, sit thee down and write

 In a book, that all may read.’

So he vanished from my sight;

And I plucked a hollow reed,  

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain’d the water clear,

 And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

At first glance, this poem had nursery rhyme resonance for me. It just seemed so happy and joyful that I knew there had to be more meaning behind the words. This piper choses to live life in a way that makes him happy: spread song and joy to all he meets. The special child from a cloud tells the piper to record these songs for every child and in doing so, the piper stains the water clear.We are all sinners. We are all in a sense, stained. We try and cleanse ourselves. The piper says to make ourselves clean by spreading joy and creating. He is creating, with each note, and each letter formed by his pen. This written language units us all as humans. We are all creators, especially in poetry. So life doesn’t suck…that outlook simply taints us more. We create our lives. Sure, we can’t control everything, but we create our world based on our reactions to mishaps. The piper says to reject the belief that everything is out of our hands. We have to power to think, write, create. We make our lives.

Idealistic Change and Cervantes

Idealistic Change 

“Emplumada” by Lorna Dee Cervantes

When summer ended the leaves of snapdragons withered taking their shrill-colored mouths with them. They were still, so quiet. They were violet where umber now is. She hated and she hated to see them go. Flowers  born when the weather was good - this she thinks of, watching the branch of peaches daring their ways above the fence, and further, two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other, arcing their bodies in grim determination to find what is good, what is given them to find.

These are warriors  distancing themselves from history. They find peace in the way they contain the wind and are gone. 

“Emplumada” from Emplumada, by Lorna Dee Cervantes, © 1982.

All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
Source: Emplumada (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982).                                                                                                                 

Literally this poem seems to move from winter and death of snapdragons into a reminiscing on life. Although the observer is saddened to see the snapdragons die, she has faith that the curled and shriveled flowers will have rebirth in the spring.  She likes to remember the flowers as they were rather than how they are. The snapdragons were in their environment, with hummingbirds buzzing in harmony and unison. This reminded me of memorial services and funerals in a way, since people often like to remember the departed as they were in life: full of abundance. When someone dies after a chronic illness, no one wants to hear about how weak he/she looked lying in the Hospice bed. I was randomly reading obituaries and found it odd that older people had these pictures next to their names that obviously weren’t picture of their eighty-year-old selves; rather these photos captured the departed in youth and health.

The hummingbirds kind of remind me of what the Tufts interviewer called me: “an idealistic teenager”. I am like the hummingbird, reaching out to “find what is good” in this world. I do distance myself from history-I want newness and change. I’m not sure about the last line though: “They find peace in the way they contain the wind and are gone”. I hope not to ever find peace.

Finding peace can mean being content. I’m Intent on never being satisfied with the way things are.

I’d like to think I’m not completely an idealist “Who goes with the flow and “contains the wind” because that label often conveys naivety. I don’t want to change the world, I am changing the world.  

Plight of Darfur=Yusef Komunyakaa Poetry?

A Poem by Yusef Komunyakaa, a professor at NYU

You and I are Disappearing

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreakshe burns like a piece of paper. She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice. She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker’s cigar,
silent as quicksilver. A tiger under a rainbow
    at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
    to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

Not only did this poem scream “THIS IS DARFUR!” at me, it pulled at my heartstrings. The many images of this burning girl seep into my soul as they did into Yusef’s. Whether it be as a “burning bush,” as “rising dragonsmoke,” or as “a cattail torch dipped in gasoline,” the girl’s image is a part of the poet’s psyche. She is like an eternal flame of memory, and he can’t forget neither her nor the experience. 

The most hurtful line I found seemed to be “We stand with our hands hanging at our sides,
while she burns/ like a sack of dry ice” because the crowd is watching instead of taking action. Too many of us sit idly while a government (Sudan) systematically destroys an entire race of people. Many watch, few act. Upon reading this poem, I instantly thought of holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and my favorite quotation:

The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference.

 Elie Wiesel

We must act. Visit www.savedarfur.org for ideas on ways to help. BE VOCAL.

The Existence of God

God’s Grandeur 

THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Using “charged” invokes a feeling of light and creations, such as when God said “let there be light”. The next few lies speak of suffering generations, probably ones in which people have lost faith in God. I think that the image of the earth being soiled by men’s smudge is especially interesting because it brings on the whole idea that our world has been tainted since Eve and that darn apple! We put ourselves here, on this soiled planet. “Nature is never spent”. Is our HUMAN nature spent? The Bible says  no, “[f]or God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him” (Wisd. 2.23). God hasn’t given up on us yet, and as for now, the human race will continue on. The light will nonetheless continue to shine without interruption.

I wonder sometimes. I have faith in God’s existence, but like many, I wonder why we have such atrocities in our world if God exists. I still have hope for some reason though….maybe it has to do with Barack Obama!

These images combine to assure the reader that although the world may look bleak, man may yet hope, because God, through the sacrifice of Christ and the descent of His Holy Spirit, has overcome mortality.

Would you like to be my husband?

The Applicant

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit -

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they’ll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

After reading “The Applicant” by Sylvia Plath, I can’t help but laugh at her cynical views of marriage. In today’s society, it can seem like finding a spouse is like hiring someone for a job. With online dating websites like match.com and others, you can program a profile of the perfect one for you, click enter, and zing! instant matches of THE ONE at your fingertips. Why find love when you can create it?

Of course, Plath’s view seems to be more dismal. As a feminist, she definitely picks up on certain female sterotypes like cooking ‘to bring teacups’ and being a nurse for a husband and ‘roll away headaches’. Would you marry a robot? it will do ‘whatever you tell it’. it’s clear that Plath rejects the typical life of a housewife and sees a housewife as weak and unaffected. She presents this poem as a sales pitch, satisfaction guaranteed.

Is this all that women mean to men? Are we living dolls that can ’sew, [...] cook [...] and talk, talk, talk’?

Check out this creepy video of The Applicant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDlJXgoHcXE

Walt Whitman- As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

	As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
	(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
	Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
	Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
5	Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
	Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
	Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
	The announcements of recognized things, science,
	The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.
10	I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
	The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
	And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.
	But I too announce solid things,
	Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
15	Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving, and grander
	heaving in sight,
	They stand for realities — all is as it should be.
	Then my realities;
	What else is so real as mine?
20	Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth,
	The rapt promises and luminè of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs,
	And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.

I myself had an illuminating weekend. I connected with others at a Model United Nations conference and felt my visions be illuminated like the “lumine of seers”. I enjoyed political discourse with my fellows from all over: Manhattan, Memphis, China. Most importantly, I was treated with respect and felt like I had a sense of duty there. Meeting Aniket Shah, a junior at Yale who is on the Board of Directors for Amnesty International was truly incredible. To witness the amazing 20 year old as a representative working for human rights blew my mind. It was like I was walking the “broad majestic days of peace”. This idealism dazzled me; I could hear the “éclat of the world [and] politics” like never before. I could see the “ships” (the understanding and hope in our youthful eyes) but I still knew that this would “last  a few” years.

 

Something my Yale Model United Nations chair said to me resonated. Although we gain speaking skills, a little international affairs lingo, and background knowledge of events, MUN is only a simulation. I now realize I am here on this earth to give time to real things. I am done modeling. I am now ready to act and be an activist. Human rights, Darfur, these issues are “realities” and “are not nothing”. I make my own realities. Now I can understand the urgency of Whitman- that “freedom to every slave on the face of the Earth” is necessary.

 

In the end of the poem, my visions are truly solid. They are not just dreams or ideas. They are realities, just like poems are the most solid realities we have.

Caroline Kennedy Endorses Obama

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/27/caroline-kennedy-endorses-obama/

I am very proud to call myself an Obama supporter! Congratulations on S.C., Senator!

Fired up, ready to go.

What does it mean to be human?

What does it mean to be human? 

Everyday we are exposed to scandal. Britney, Heath Ledger, the assassination of Bhutto. What does it all mean? What does it mean to be human? This has formally been a poetry blog, but today it’s a human blog. What did the United States experience right after 9/11? Besides a surge of nationalism, people reached out to one another and showed their compassion for humanity.

                                         

Compassion has been written about for centuries. In Babylonian Gilgamesh, compassion changes the solipsistic ruler into one who actually cares about advancing the human race. In the beginning of the text, as an un-popular king feared by his subjects, Gilgamesh raped new brides, half-hazardly repaired the walls of Uruk, and was very self-centered. After the death of a near brother, Gilgamesh learns that being human means having compassion for an other. The gods live without fear. Yet without fear, one lacks desire, lacks action, and lacks life. By naming death, Gilgamesh finds meaning in life. This text teaches us to accept death, battle loneliness, and to establish connections and love for one another…so that our story, the human story, might continue on.          

                                   

       

In Homer’s Iliad, Priam shows compassion for an other when the circumstances seem ridiculous. Priam has endured what no one on earth has ever done before; he put to his lips the hand of the man who killed his son. Shockingly, Achilles takes the old man’s hand and brings him to his level, so that both weep at a common ground. Societal customs are thrown out the window at this point. We are left with two human beings with compassion for each other. They are on level ground, equal in their empathy.

These poems still resonate with us today. As I mentioned above, people come together in times of tragedy. But we should come together all the time! We should talk about issues, reach out to people like the fallen pop princess, Heath Ledger, and supporters and dissenters of Bhutto. What makes us human? We have the capacity for an other. Although at times it may seem inconvenient or pointless to help out someone, through these poems we’re showed not only how we should reach out, but why. We make the meaning in our lives, but poetry can transport us to another world, show us who we are, and where we can go. We are human. We are making poetry.