Love as Muse

I really, really love poems about love. It's just so many emotions, and it's so easy to relate. Like, if there is a poem about place, it's hard to relate if you haven't actually been there. And poems about politics, if you haven't lived in that era, it seems just like a tale, not reality. However, love is eternal. Everyone experiences it, we all have opinions and stories, and love poems just trigger emotions more than any other kind. Many poets used women and the love (or maybe the hatred triggered by disappointment) they feel for them as their muse.

Poetry and Politics

We read some political poems in class, and they are supposed to form an opinion about war, or the government, or some political question. It would have probably affected me more, but in Hungary, there are thousands and thousands of them. We had wars, occupation, corruption, concentration camp, everything. Actually, there was one poet (Miklos Radnoty), who was a very popular poem until he was taken to concentration camp, where he died. But while he was there, he was writing poems about the experiences he had. Now that I think of it, this is more like a poem of place though... Though, he did form opinion the government we had at that time, who allowed all t he terrible things to happen. The poets back in Hungary couldn't have done this. For one, the government didn't let them publish, if it didn't support them. Also, poets were afraid. Especially when we had Russian government, anyone who even whispered a bad word, went to prison.

Limericks

I like limericks. They are short, they rhyme, they are easy to understand and they are funny. We were reading Edward Lear's limericks, who made limericks popular in the first place. They usually start like "there was a... someone", and then the other lines are about what happened to that someone. It doesn't always make sense, but it's entertaining. Not a lot of hidden meaning can be found in limericks, it's basically just playing with words.

Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman uses nature as a muse. In her poem, Some would marry winter, she talks about how much she likes spring, even though a lot of people are all for winter. Many adjectives are used in the poem to describe exactly winter, or not even winter, but how winter makes her feel. For her, winter is not just cold in temperature, but the whole season just has this depressing, cold vibe affecting people. On the other hand, spring and summer are much more joyful.

Slam poetry

Personally, I just don't get it. We were watching these YouTube videos about people doing slam poetry, and I'm just not feeling it. It's like, people shouting on a stage something which is absolutely not a poem, but prose. I might be too conservative, but I need the rhymes, I need the poem to "sound good", the meaning is not enough. If it doesn't look like a poem, or sound like a poem, then it's just not a poem. I don't see much difference between stand-up comedy and slam poetry on stage... I don't say it's not good, it's enjoyable, but it's nothing compared to the classic ones.

Jeanne Marie Beaumont : Afraid so

It was really cool having her in the class. I think it's important to listen to a poet reading his/her own poem, it really helps to get the message across. Especially with that poem, Afraid so. If I was reading that poem, I probably wouldn't have got it, or I just wouldn't have been affected. But listening to her, and then the video, it was really effective. The whole anxious, scary vibe of the poem really came across.

Poetry in music

We were listening to popular songs in this class, trying to find poetry in them. It turns out, almost every song is basically a poem, if you listen to the lyrics closely. Rhymes, imagery, everything that can be found in a regular poem is found in a song, too. Especially rap songs, which are like modern versions of poems. Lot of people say that they are bored by poetry, even though they like listening to rap, which is poetry with beat and some music. The videos really helped understanding the hidden meaning of these songs, but it also made it hard to interpret the songs in our on way.

Sylvia Plath

We read the poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath. The poem itself didn't really affect me, but I found Sylvia Plath's life quite interesting. Being in the shadow of her famous husband, always left behind, as some kind of trophy wife despite of being very talented must have been very hard. It seems like that the world wasn't quite ready for her, so she couldn't find what should have been her role in the world, in life. Her suicide seems like the result of being misunderstood.

Robert Frost : Design

The topic of the poem is basically the creation. Frost thinks that every event happening in life is so specific, that it can't be just the coincidence. Like, what are the odds of finding a white spider, a heal-all and a moth at the same time. It's a little bit dark, almost suggesting that the design itself is not good, but vicious. For me, the poem suggests that we have absolutely no control on our life, because it's all governed by design, so the best thing is just to hope that this "design" has good intentions.

Mary Oliver : The Kingfisher

This is one of the first poems we read in the class. It's very descriptive, Mary Oliver describes how the kingfisher eats in detail. She is trying to show how every simple act in life is beautiful. Also, one's survival is one's death. The kingfisher survives by eating the fish, and in the process the fish has to die, because this is the circle of life. I didn't really like this poem, I was missing the emotion.