Showing 2881 - 2890 of 2975 Literature annotations

Darwin's Ark

Appleman, Philip

Last Updated: Oct-09-1996
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This long poem tells a story within a story. The framing story is Charles Darwin falling asleep and thinking, "as he always does, of animals . . . . " His dream turns into the story of the Deluge and Noah and his ark. Poor Noah is a bumbling 600 year old man, who much against his own inclinations, is told by God to build the ark and, later, to stuff it with a pair of every kind of animal. Well, Noah's sons think this whole project is stupid, but they eventually go along with it.

The most difficult part was finding and capturing the animals, two of every species, including in the end, "sixteen thousand hungry birds / lusting for the eighteen hundred thousand insects, / and the twelve thousand snakes and lizards / nipping at the seven thousand mammals, / and everyone slipping and sliding around / on the sixty-four thousand worms / and the one hundred thousand spiders--." When the deluge began and the waters rose, the ark floated past all the desperate, dying people, until the last woman "holding her baby over her head" went under "and God was well pleased."

View full annotation

Miss Gee

Auden, W.

Last Updated: Sep-26-1996
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Miss Gee wants to be a good girl and keep "her clothes buttoned up to her neck." Time goes by. Finally, she gets on her bicycle and goes to the doctor about "a pain inside me." The doctor diagnoses cancer. Later, over dinner, he comments to his wife that "cancer's a funny thing" that attacks "childless women" and "men when they retire."

View full annotation

Poison

Coulehan, Jack

Last Updated: Aug-21-1996
Annotated by:
Donley, Carol

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The narrator of this poem is the father who is dying. He takes all kinds of pills in different colors which he identifies, perhaps correctly, as poisons. He knows he is dying and so does his son, who brings him his medicine and "sees poison in my eyes." The last few lines are especially touching: "He wants to take my hand, but he's / afraid. That's two of us. / For heart I take a white one once."

View full annotation

Playing God

LaCombe, Michael

Last Updated: Aug-13-1996
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A woman named Kitty calls the doctor and reports that her husband has died. "Can you come over?" she asks. At the house he finds that the husband has been shot in the head. It is evident that the wife has killed him. The doctor reflects that Kitty "held the record for most abused woman in Taylor County." He remembers how many times he has seen her badly beaten by her husband. In the end he decides to "play God." He calls the police chief and reports the death as a "clear" suicide.

View full annotation

To the Heart of Lazar Riverius, Galenist Physician

Coulehan, Jack

Last Updated: Aug-13-1996
Annotated by:
Donley, Carol

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This remarkable poem notes the contrast between the mechanical, technologically manipulated heart today (without faith or spirit) and the mysterious, spirit-creating heart of Riverius. In the days of Riverius, the heart created spirit which "descended like dew" into the body and "ascended like steam" into the head--"how souls and bodies blended!" But now all mystery and spirit are gone. Cadaver-cutting scientists made an ox of the heart which pumps "the blood in dispirited circles" (note the wonderful use of "dispirited").

View full annotation

Coats

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Aug-13-1996
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This short (10 line) poem presents a simple scene. A man leaves the hospital, carrying a woman's coat. "Clearly she would not need it." The weather is mild for December, but the man has zipped his coat, "preparing / for irremediable cold."

View full annotation

The Waiting Room

Jones, Richard

Last Updated: Aug-13-1996
Annotated by:
Stanford, Ann Folwell

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker evokes the isolation and boredom of the sick as they sit in a waiting room, "pretending to read." The poem comments on the mystery of life and death and the patient's need for the physician to bring healing, hope. As people sit in the waiting room, the speaker thinks about their isolation and wonders what they might be thinking (a man who is "wondering what disease / is buried in his body/ like a treasure"). The darkness of the afternoon is dispelled by a nurse turning on a lamp, "but the examining room is dark / as the doctor's eyes, hidden / behind the strongly focused beam / shooting out from the silver circle, / . . . coming / out the center of his head."

View full annotation

Love for the Bottle

Jones, Richard

Last Updated: Aug-13-1996
Annotated by:
Stanford, Ann Folwell

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker of this poem has only ten days ago quit drinking and grieves the loss of alcohol from his life in terms similar to grieving a lost love.

View full annotation

night sound

Clifton, Lucille

Last Updated: Aug-13-1996
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A woman who has already lived out more than half of her life lies next to her man, listening to the night sounds of their own breathing, and has intimations of mortality. She thinks of her own mother, who was already dead at this age, and feels she must conserve her very breath. The sexual energy and "soft expensive murmurings" she spends on her lover may cost her--and yet he is oblivious, sleeping "as if there could be even now / no question of tomorrow."

View full annotation

The Surgeon at 2 A.M.

Plath, Sylvia

Last Updated: Jul-13-1996
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This poem is in the surgeon's voice. He surveys his country's terrain, "a garden I have to do with--tubers and fruits / Oozing their jammy substances . . . . " He delves into the patient's organs, "I worm and hack in a purple wilderness." He admires the sunset-colored blood and the "blue piping" that conducts it through the body's intricate maze. When he removes a part of the body, it is sent to the lab ("a pathological salami") and "entombed in an icebox." The surgeon walks through the ward, casting his eyes on the sleeping patients: "I am the sun," he says, " . . . Grey faces, shuttered by drugs, follow me like flowers."

View full annotation