Thanksgiving Poem

There once was a pumpkin that sat
Ingraved with a siloutte cat
And after the day of dentists dismay
In a pie crust he sat

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

This is the poem that I am presenting to the class. I really enjoyed this poem but could not get that goodof a meaning out of it. At first I thought that the poem was just talking about the season of winter. When reading I could not help but totally agree of what the author says about winter. Where you have to get into a mindset of winter, can not think of the negatives, cold wind, to enjoy the aspect of winter. This is totally true, I am not a huge fan of winter I would much rather be in 90 degree weather, but to get through the winter I have to think of how pretty Colorado is when it is winter and not the aspect of the coldness. Where my confusion is presented is the last two stanzas of the poem, all the sudden it kind of feels that the author shifts from talking about winter but maybe about someone or someplace else. The way the author words the last stanza is hard to read but also hard to understand. This poem interests me, probably because I don't understand completely and very interested in what the class has to say.

Analogy- First Visit to the Zoo!!

The nervousness is gripping the boy, but the excitement is taking over the boy, who looks up at the famous sign that says zoo. This is his first experience of the zoo and does not know what to expect or do. What will he learn and take with his adventure thorugh the zoo. Walking through the entrance the first display we see are the innocent looking monkey, who are all cute and cuddly but turn out to be mischeivious little fellows who like to get in trouble. Your interested but all you should do is look from a far because if you get to close you may get sucked into one of their tricks. We continue on the first adventure where we see see the penguins the ones who are down to earth and don't feel like flying away. Snakes and reptiles the theifs and sneaky little creatures, gorillas who are the gentle giants of the group, who are big in size but would not hurt a fly. Hyenas are the ones to avoid they like to pick on smaller animals. The boy finally gets to the king of the animals, the lions where they rule the other animal, everybody looks up to them. They rule the zoo, but also welcome new friends and visitors as long as they remember one thing that LIONS RULE!!!

Vergissmeinnicht by Keith Douglas

Well the first thing I did with this poem would be that I looked up the translation for Vergissmeinnicht and foud out it meant Forget Me Not, which really helped me understand the poem more. I also found that it is a German word and from the words in the poem i can decipher that this is about World War II. I think that this was probably my favorite poem so far for this packet. Anything that has to do with Germany or WWII i am super interested in so I guess I can be a little biased. This poem is about a soldier who has died on the battlefield, and how another soldier the enemy soldier found him and just by looking at a picture of his girl learned a lot about him. He found out the soldier was not only a killer, but was a lover to that girl in the photo. This poem flowed so well, which made it a little easier to read and understand, but without that translation i don't think i could get what the poem is trying to tell me. In war we never get to know the enemy and don't think of them to relating to us, but when we do learn that we do have something in common it is usually to late. I really loved this poem and will probably always remember it.

For the Sleepwalkers by Edward Hirsch

From the beginning of the poem I was excited to read about sleepwalking because I have some good memories of people I know sleepwalking. I could not tell you if I ever slept walk. I really like how the author approaches the subject of sleepwalking, not by saying really the dangers of sleepwalking but looking at the positive influence it can have if we see what sleepwalking really means. The poem does take a positive kind of  approach, but I know that sleepwalking can be very dangerous. While at lake powell one time with family friends, Wes who was about 19 at the time decided to sleep on the top deck of the house boat which was a mistake. We find out the next morning that Wes went sleepwalking right off the side of the boat and jumped in the water. Where he jumped was shallow water and rocks, Wes got lucky with only a scrap on his back, but he could have died and it was a very scary thought, that sleepwalking was the reason for it.

I think that the poem brings out a really neat message about trusting ourselves completely with no doubt. That is very hard to do, but what I got from the poem was that with trusting our heart, maybe sleepwalking is the first step to doing that.