School is like....

Casually walking down the sidewalk, you here this faint sound of music. You fallow the music, like you would the smell of freshly baked bread, wondering from one place to another waiting to see if the sound gets louder. You see the place that the music could be coming from; the outside looks just like you’d imagined, brilliant white with rails leading strait to doors. You walk to the doors proud of your ability to find this sweet Mecca of music.

You walk in and the doors slam shut behind you, doors looked. You walk across the lobby and a woman who looks like Mosses’ ex wife stares up at you from the ticket booth saying one arm, one leg please; in a voice that was just short of 400 year old smoker. At first you refuse, outraged, how could this woman demand so much of you for something your not even sure you want. But after trying to unlock the doors several times you take the saw from her desk and gladly give her what she wants.

She points you in the direction of the music. You start to crawl and pass a sigh that says Main stage, now you know that you’re in the right place. As you walk in you stair at the countless people surrounding the stage. You gasp in amazement on how they were all able to get where they were with the loss of so many limbs. You see that the people around you are like you, crawling and not able to get to the stage. You see two people use each other to help stand up. You find someone, point to the example, and start to mimic their action.

You two hop toward the front can now focus on how the music sounds; the pure elegance of the artists creation makes you want to cry and laugh at the same time. You want to see the composers of this joyous invention; but the crowd in front of you is blocking the way. You and your partner begin to force your way through the crowd. At first its simply asking some people to move, but then you have to shove people out of the way, then you have to ram anyone in front of you. Soon your hit with a bombardment of elbows, firsts, knees, all making you want to head back but you push forward and finally reach the front.

You reach the rails lining the stage; glance up at the band that is only a few feet away, and you notice that they are missing limbs as well. Your confusion sits in on how someone like that could create something so masterful as the music crashing in your ears. Then you realize they were just like you, forced into something then had the drive to work their way to the top.

Things that go bump in the night-Like lit students

Berry Bush
The winter they abandoned Long Point Village—
A dozen two-room houses of pine frames clad
With cedar faded to silver and, not much whiter
Or larger, the one-room church—they hauled it all
Down to the docks on sledges, and at high tide
Boats towed the houses as hulks across the harbor
And set them on the streets of Provincetown.
Today they’re identified by blue tile plaques.
Forgotten the fruitless village, in broken wholes
Transported by a mad Yankee frugality
Sweating resolve that pickled the sea-black timbers.

The loathsome part of American Zen for me
Is in the Parable of the Raft: a traveller
Hacks it from driftwood tugged from the very current
That wedged it into the mud, and lashes it
With bitter roots he strips between his teeth.
And after the raft has carried him across
The torrent in his path, the teacher says,
The traveller doesn’t lift the raft on his back
And lug it with him on his journey: oh no,
He leaves it there behind him, doesn’t he?
There must be something spoiled in the translation,

Surely those old original warriors
And ruling-class officials and Shinto saints
Knew a forgetting heavier than that:
The timbers plunged in oblivion, hardened by salt;
Black, obdurate throne-shaped clump of ancient cane-spikes
At the raspberry thicket’s heart; the immigrant
Vow not to carry humiliations of the old
Country to the new, still infusing the segmented
Sweet berry, illegible ingested seed, scribble
Of red allegiances raked along your wrist;
Under all, the dead thorns sharper than the green.

—Robert Pinsky

UHHHHHH...Well this is the poem that Addie and I are doing for the class, and with my understanding of this poem, we'll epic-ly fail.

I've read this thing twice and thus far I've got nothing for the theme or meaning. So in absence of my deep incite to this poem, I will substitute what imagery I find and what phrases strike my interest.
In the poem there seems to be there separate stanzas with different situations; my analysis will break apart the stanzas rather than "reading" the poem as a whole.

Stanza 1:
I imagine a small 1930's eastern seaboard town, with gulls in the air and this house like thing being troughed through the streets. Moving a house from one dying town to a different one is all I get from this stanza.

Stanza 2:
I think of the book "Into the Wild" when picturing this stanza. The guy spends all this time and effort to make this boat thing then once he success' he ditches the boat. I'm interested in the connection between the boat and house. What’s up with the translation comment?

Stanza 3:
I picture Christ’s crucifixion. Warriors and ruling officials are those near the very top in the caste system in India, and Shintoism is a religion out of classical Japan (my trivial knowledge.) I feel the berry or seed that it refers to would make the poem make a whole lot more sense if I knew what it was; wonder if there’s a connection between it and the boat/house. Also what’s up with the dead v. alive conflict in the last line?

Well all together I've basically restated the poem without and incite than my mental imagery and fun facts,

Sorry for wasting your time but thank you all the same,

Dusty Trem-mc-mc-bath'n

HURRY

To Myself, by W.S. Merwin

Even when I forget you
I go on looking for you
I believe I would know you
I keep remembering you
sometimes long ago but then
other times I am sure you
were here for a moment before
and the air is still alive
around where you were and I
think then I can recognize
you who are always the same
who pretend to be time but
you are not time and who speak
in the words but you are not
what they say you who are not
lost when I do not find you

Ok so what I get from this poem is that the narrator is doing some self-searching, hence the name "to myself," and the rest are observations that the narrator makes when looking. The narrator tells how he thinks he would recognize him self, like saying he thinks he knows who he is; then he says he remembers himself from long ago, and just a moment ago; I'm actually really confused about the air thing; and then he says he pretends to be time, because time is eternal, so like his memories are eternal, but his memories aren't eternal, but he is not lost just because his memories are last.

Thanks for reading,

Dustin Trembath

Poetry Response 2 (pretend its not late)

Like the great philosopher Three Days Grace once said, "Its not too late, its never too late."

Moving on to this weeks poem I've decided to read "Blackberries for Amelia."

So just giving my first impression of the poem: while reading it I picture scenes from The Sound of Music -although I think they pick blueberries, also what I immediately notice is the chronologic pattern in the story going from spring ("June"ish) to fall ("August"ish.)

Reading it over more, in the first stanza I picture the scene from Fantasia 2000 where mother earth simply touches barren ground and it bursts out with plants and trees.

I'm confused with the relevance of the third stanza. It seems to be talking about the expansion of the universe and how all the stars are moving away from us; but I don't see its relevance in the seasons, or flowers, or grandchildren.

I like the time vs. change comparison between autumn and the author.

Also I don't understand the relationship between picking ripe berries and the need for (a) grandchild(ren.)

Sorry for the brevity of the post and its lateness,

But thank you for reading,

Dustin Trembath