Showing 371 - 380 of 484 annotations in the genre "Poem"

Sonogram

Kirchwey, Karl

Last Updated: Jan-29-1997
Annotated by:
Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Like Paul Muldoon's Sonogram (see this bibliography), this poem was occasioned by the poet's wife's ultrasound of their first child, Tobias. (See pgs. 258-259 of the anthology for a description of the poet and his comments on this poem.) "Sonogram" is alternately lyrical and bright ("through succulences of conducting gel") and dark (" . . . or sinuses of thought / like Siracusa's limestone quarries, where / an army of seven thousand starved to death.") The language is highly poetic (and successfully so) in conjoining the worlds of medical technology and poetry ("or alveolus in a narthex rose") and playful ("God's image lies couched safe in blood and matter" punning on "vouchsafed").

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Leaving Town after the Funeral

Jones, Richard

Last Updated: Jan-29-1997
Annotated by:
Stanford, Ann Folwell

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker's nephew has drowned at a young age. After the funeral, the speaker visits the grave to say a final goodbye. The speaker puts his "hand on the earth / above [the child's] dead heart," and observes that "it will be night / for a long, long time." Finally the speaker gets up to go and acknowledges a truth that he and the dead child share: "the cold child in the casket / is not the one I loved."

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The Lesbian Body

Wittig, Monique

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The Lesbian Body has been called a lesbian Song of Songs. It is a sensual, image-rich picture of one (or, perhaps, many) lesbian affairs. The images are rich in anatomical detail, even employing medical language to describe the lover's body.

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When

Williams, C. K. (Charles Kenneth)

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Donley, Carol
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A wonderful poem about an old, dying man recognizing he is dying before any one else in the family will admit it. He wants them to help him die--a kind of family consensus on euthanasia, which he seems to control. After much family discussion, they agree to help him by giving him enough pills to "put him to sleep." He jokes with his family as they assist his dying: "On the day it would happen, the old man would be funny again: wolfing down handfuls of pills, 'I know this'll upset my stomach,' he'd say."

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Fallback

Booth, Philip

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This is a lovely poem about an elderly married couple who share a room at a nursing home. The woman is confined to bed because her backbone is "so thin / the doctor jokes that X-rays can't find it." Her husband's mind is gone. The woman reflects on the morning activities, especially those of the "night girl" who brings the breakfast trays and, later, bends down to take her husband's tray, "the perfume / still lingering from whatever went on / before last night's shift." The woman asks herself: How would this young girl of 20 know that the two elderly people she is caring for once "made love / in the sweetfern high on an island."

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St. Peregrinus' Cancer

Hall, Judith

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A highly referential poem, "St. Peregrinus' Cancer" (eight stanzas of four couplets each) "may be most indebted to the arcane [book] Watercolours of Cancer Patients' Dreams (Phoebe Lord, M.D., London, 1964)" according to the poet. (See pg. 254 of the anthology for a description of the poet and her comments on this poem.) The poem starts with an image of St. Peregrinus (Laziosi, the 14th century Italian patron saint of cancer patients who was himself miraculously cured of a cancerous foot after a night of prayer) crossing a field and quickly moves internally to the poet's family and private world, describing her and her mother's cancers. A dense poem, it relies heavily on imagery and punning (the word "crab" appears twice in case the reader didn't get the reference the first time).

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Now Where

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Jan-22-1997
Annotated by:
Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The poem is a description of the experience of severe depression. The speaker describes how she goes about her day while "it"--the depression, unnamed in the poem--is with her always, keeping her from experiencing any pleasure in life.

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That Moment

Olds, Sharon

Last Updated: Dec-31-1996
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The narrator describes the profound impact of motherhood on her life, so profound that she can barely remember a life without children. There has been a conversion to total commitment, " . . . that / instant when I gave my life to them," but when and how did it happen?

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The Waiting

Olds, Sharon

Last Updated: Dec-31-1996
Annotated by:
Taylor, Nancy

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A daughter sits with her dying father during the day, thinking about their relationship, keeping him company as he tries to swallow a little coffee, holding the cup for him to spit into. At night he sleeps with his wife; the next morning he sits again in his chair and looks out at the dawn and seems to be waiting for his daughter once again.

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Noel: A Christmas Poem

Stone, John

Last Updated: Dec-19-1996
Annotated by:
Nixon, Lois LaCivita

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Stone presents a poem that celebrates love and life with poignancy and irreverence. At Christmas time, when it is cold and dark, a father peers past the "tops of pines" still trying to reach for stars and moves from the holiness of the moment to the sons asleep in the house, unaware in their dreams of boyhood things, "how fast we are all dying." Remembering another holy moment, when a child was born in a stable midst "cattle urine rising like steam," the father expresses his overwhelming feelings for life in a joyfully unexpected way: "I pee for joy."

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