Student – Parent Blog
April is National Poetry Month and the English Department is in the process of developing a student-parent blog to get kids and parents looking at, talking and writing about poetry. We will be sending out the details and link to this project in the very near future to gear up for sharing our love of the word.
Pulitzer Prizes announced:
Poetry Book Winner:
W.S. Merwin, The Shadow of Sirius
Almost a thousand years later
I am asking the same questions
you did the ones you kept finding
yourself returning to as though
nothing had changed except the tone
of their echo growing deeper
and what you knew of the coming
of age before you had grown old
I do not know any more now
than you did then about what you
were asking as I sit at night
above the hushed valley thinking
of you on your river that one
bright sheet of moonlight in the dream
of the waterbirds and I hear
the silence after your questions
how old are the questions tonight
April 30th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
My reaction to this poem is Sadness. This poem explains how there is nothing left, and how nothing to this author is very important. He also talks about his relationship with his father. How it was not a strong relationship for him growing up. “I almost talked to him, until i came close enough to see the shovel, leaning where i had left it, in the flickering, deep green shade.”
May 1st, 2009 at 9:23 pm
In “A Letter to Su Tung-p’o” by W.S. Merwin, is about a man and his lover who had obviously spent years apart. It is a very melancholy poem because it talks about how they were seperated and Merwin’s lover had never answered his question, presumably about marriage, and he never answered back either. They came back looking for each other, but didn’t find what they were looking for and realize this as they sit in silence reminiscing about the past.
I like how the author starts with “Almost a thousand years later” because it is obviously an exageration, but the reader can tell from that phrase that the poem will be sad or at least somewhat melancholy. It makes the poem interesting and I could tell from that single line that the poem would be a poem about looking back- even if I didn’t know what it was looking back on. Overall, I liked the poem because of its mysteriousness, but I would like to know more about the characters rather than being left in the dark about the scene taking place.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I feel like the tone of this poem in sad and reminiscent. The author seems that when he reflects on he and his father’s relationship, he is reminded of sad, depressing thoughts.In the passage that reads “I do not know any more now
than you did then about what you
were asking as I sit at night
above the hushed valley thinking
of you on your river that one
bright sheet of moonlight in the dream”, it seems like the author had a distant and somewhat strange relationship with his father. It seems like he did not know his father very well, and wanted to be closer with him and know him better.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
This poem struck a cord deep inside me. The text reveals a strong, deep relationship, or perhaps just feelings for someone, and it is painfully evident. I feel for the one talking, I want his sorrows to dissipate and find his love. This poem really reaches out to the reader and grabs their emotions with a choke hold. What I didn’t like is the mystery behind whats going on, a few names and maybe even a setting might do wonders for the imagery.
Overall, I give it an eight out of ten. The wording is beautiful, the serenity of the entire thing is enticing, and the sense of loss and love that is given to the reader is lifelike.