The first poem that I chose to read was the Rite of Passage. What a interesting and dark interpretation of the lives of little boy’s, but even more disturbing was how accurate it was. The poem made me think back to when I was a child running around the yard, with my cousin, playing army. We would shoot things at each other and blowing stuff up, we were always at war. The conversations of little boys are filled with fighting, destruction, death and violence and has been like this since the beginning of time. It is almost like from the first day of birth a young man is set on a mission to find his place amongst his peers.
The boys eyeball around the room sizing each other up and falling into a natural chain of command. Those who do not subside to the given position, will fight for a new one. The arguments never seem to cease about whom is more powerful, and if all else fails there is always “my dad can beat up your dad”.
Finally, like a commander preparing his troops for battle, something powerful must be said soon, “we could easily kill a two year old”(Olds). I can imagine all of the boy’s raising one hand in the air cheering in approval for these profound words, the king has spoken.
The second poem that I chose to read was The Colonel. I had to read this poem quite a few time just to start to pick up on things. It seems like one of the people in the poem is writing it and this is there testimony of what happened that night.
I see two people pleading to the Colonel for the right of there people, perhaps in South America. I get the feeling that this Colonel is involved in some type of underworld element or maybe the leader of a cartel. It seems that the Colonel lives in fear or maybe he receives threats of some kind due to the way his home is set up, with grates on the windows and broken glass embedded in the walls. It is clear that he has all the power in this situation. He has a bag of ears, maybe one from each person that crosses his path. The poem leaves me guessing of what might happen next, kind of spooky.
There is nothing that I can relate to personally in this poem, I just found it interesting. Both of the poems that I chose both stuck me as being out of the norm for what I would expect from poetry. I found it to be refreshing and also gave me some ideas for the future. I would have never expected poetry to be written this way with these topics.
olds, sharon. Poetry Foundation n. pag. Web. 16 Jun 2010.archive/poem.html?id=176440>.
No comments:
Post a Comment