Peace of the Wild Things

Peace of the Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

Before reading the poem, Peace of the Wild Things, I figured it would be about being with or in nature.  I thought it might even be about the peacefulness of nature, nature’s characteristics.  After reading the poem, I generally felt the same as I did before reading it.  I think the speaker of the poem is the one becoming peaceful and one with nature, and is describing that sensation in this poem.

Since the poem is in first person, I am assuming that the speaker is the also the author of the poem, Wendell Berry.  I know, from his writing in this poem, that Berry has kids and a family (because he says so in line two).  I know that his life can be stressed at times, especially when he describes waking up at night from fear, and explains how the wild things in nature “do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.”  I believe Berry is talking to those who are/were stressed or grieving or bogged down from the despair of life like he was.  It’s almost like Berry is using this poem to describe a remedy for depression and anxiety.  Sort of.

In the poem, Berry basically compares the life of animals and things in nature to his own life.  He explains that when, “despair for the world grows in me [him]”, he can simply sit in nature and, “come into the peace of wild things… rest in the grace of the world.”

And Wendell Berry seems to love nature.   I mean, compared to the world he describes (which sounds so sorrowful), Berry finds nature both endearing and calming.  I can tell that berry really loves nature because of the way he describes each little thing in it: from the “day-blind stars” to the heron and wood drake.  When talking about his life, Berry just uses negative and depressing words.  It can also be explained from the poem that Berry doesn’t have anything to fear about when he is one with nature; he doesn’t have to fear what will happen to his life or his family’s lives.  Nature is like a type of meditation for him. 

This poem follows an organic form.  I think this poem is both a type of free verse and lyric.  It’s definitely part lyric because the speaker expresses his personal feelings about nature and life.  But it’s also free verse because there isn’t a particular lyrical rhythm to it – it’s a lot like a paragraph that had its sentences split in half.  Lines four and eight contain anaphora when Berry says, “I come…” in each.  I’m not positive, but I feel like this poem is an extended metaphor, comparing Berry’s life to nature. 

The tone of the poem is reverent.  Although Berry reflects on his own life and world in a negative way for a part of the poem, a positive vibe about nature is still the most prevalent feeling the reader gets from the poem (or, at least me).  I can understand that Berry is honoring nature in some sort of way.  He has a very high respect for it and the peace it can bring to him. 

Cartoon Physics, Part 1

Cartoon Physics, Part 1

By Nick Flynn

            In this poem, the speaker compares the real world of physics and science to the cartoon animation world that children see.   The speaker uses his opinion as the augmenting fact that children should be focused more on the fun, cartoon way of life than what’s actually going on in the real world.  I think the speaker’s tone in this poem is a mix of things, from whimsical and contemplative to possible hints of sarcasm and satire.  You can tell that the speaker knows the carefree imagination of cartoons; however, the speaker also brings the reader to think more about his point.

But what is his point?

For the first twelve stanzas of this poem, I thought the speaker was being sarcastic.  He pointed out that children shouldn’t have to burden themselves with the fact that the world is out all alone in a black space.  But then he goes on to list all of the things children should be focused on in cartoons: things that are “earthbound disasters” and influence the heroic effect on children.  I fell like the speaker is trying to satirize the way society raises their kids, saying that society hides the bad things in life, yet portrays violence through ‘harmless’ cartoons.

But then I reread the poem, and a different point of view came into my perspective.  Maybe, I thought, the author is trying to show how children are not influenced by the dark things in life, like the “galaxies swallowed by galaxies, whole solar systems collapsing”.  Rather, the speaker is demonstrating the way kids think, the way ten year-olds can feel special and great about themselves, and the way they can become confident heroes because of their imaginative outlook on life.

And as I was writing those first two theories of the speaker’s point, I came up with a third.  What if the speaker wrote this poem to compare the differences between the way a child will deal with a problem and an adult will deal with a problem?  In other words, maybe the speaker is showing the real life problems of a conscious adult’s world, while also showing the way children deal with those same circumstances.  Take the stanzas six to ten, for example:

“Ten-year-olds

 should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,  

ships going down—earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run

back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come

with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved.”

It characterizes the same things adults deal with every day, but it uses different (more imaginative?) actions to solve the problems.

So does that mean the speaker’s point is to encourage children?   To encourage society to look from a child’s point of view at what the world is?

I’m still not sure.  Honestly, the mixed tones I got from the poem continue to throw me off as to what the speaker is exactly trying to say.  My opinion leans more toward the fact that the speaker is comparing the two worlds. I think he wants others to see the relatability both of the worlds have.  Like the poems’ title, maybe the speaker is trying to connect a child’s cartoon world to the real life world, combining them into some new form.  

I Am Offering This Poem

Jimmy Santiago Baca's poem "I Am Offering This Poem" demonstrates the truly difficult life he had.  The poem is full of similes and metaphors, most of which are related to staying warm when you have nothing else. 

In the first stanza, Baca is saying how he has nothing to give the one he loves except his words, his poem.  He uses a metaphor to compare his poem to a warm coat or thick socks.  I think he is trying to get across the point that love can make you feel warm.

  The third stanza, again, reiterates the fact the he has nothing else to give his love except the poems he writes.  Baca's metaphors and similes in this stanza are also related to warm things, this time just corn and a scarf.   I think the constant relations to warmth are from the coldness of the world that Baca suffered at such a young age.  From being abandoned, to being an orphan, to living on the streets, Baca probably always felt unloved or unwanted.  Not to mention the isolation he suffered in jail for three years, and the scars left on his soul from being on death row for a time.  I feel like Baca was never given love from the world (from anyone, really), and describes that in his poem.   He describes his love as warmth because he never had either of those (love or warmth). 

If you want to take the poem literally, maybe Baca’s homelessness caused him to understand the need for warmth just as one needs love.  I think that the words literally express Baca’s experiences of being on his own.  For example, he mention uses the metaphor “a pot full of yellow corn to warm your belly in the winter,” which was probably an experience he had as a man living on the streets (maybe in a soup kitchen or something?). 

I don't really understand the fifth stanza.  It seems as if Baca is trying to say that he'll help others in need because he knows what it is like to not be helped.  Or maybe he is referring to the way he got his big break in poetry: the woman that helped him publish his first book. The seventh stanza uses his repetition (anaphora?) again: "I have nothing else to give".  In this stanza, he is saying that if you at least know that one person loves you, you’ll have all the strength you need to feel good about yourself in your heart no matter how other people feel about you. 

In all, I see this poem as a way of Baca to offer others (or his love) everything that no one gave him.  He wants to give warmth and love and safety so that others don't have to go through his pain I believe that Baca’s attitude toward poetry is very grateful.  It helped him get out of a slump that was his life. He probably looks towards poetry as his way to escape from the harsh world and experience a world that has love. .  That's just my interpretation, though, after reading his life story.

Poetry isn't dead. That should be a fact.

           http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2003/05/05/poetry-is-dead-does-anybody-really-care.html
 Bruce Wexler has such a contradicting view on poetry.  In the beginning if his article, he seems to almost complain how no one cares about poetry anymore, how poetry is dead and forgotten.  But then, Wexler goes on to say how he was part of the reason it is now ‘dead’.   His “interest waned” when it came to the subject, he claims.  Wexler even goes as far as to make an excuse for the reason society ‘killed’ poetry, saying that the “intensely prosaic” 70s and 80s caused interest in it to decline.  He blames Reagan, senators, and the new generation as destroyers of poetry.  “People don't possess the patience to read a poem 20 times before the sound and sense of it takes hold,” he says.  Is this Wexler’s way of saying that society isn’t intelligent anymore?  That we’ve become dumb?  This is where its gets ironic.  Wexler is claiming that the decreased interest in poetic literature is due to the laziness of America; but then he also blames himself for the poetry’s ‘death’.  I’m getting a vibe that maybe Wexler is calling himself lazy and stupid.

 Personally, I don’t think poetry is dead - and there are plenty of live poets that are famous today (Billy Collins!).   I agree with Wexler that poetry isn’t America’s top priority.  However, I don’t think he should use such a drastic term as ‘dead’ to describe this decrease in poetic interests.  And he shouldn’t use the fact that other people in society are lazy as his excuse for not liking or wanting to read it himself.