"My Life" & "How Light Is Spent"

Poetry is not something I have ever been good with. I find myself uncomfortable writing poetry and even just reading it most of the time. I think this is because I have a hard time relating or understanding most poetry. Though I may not understand a poem completely, there are usually lines or parts in poems that catch my eye and get me thinking. There were very few poems in the packet that I could relate to or comprehend but there were two that really caught my attention; "My Life" and "How The Light Is Spent".

"My Life" by Lyn Hejnian was a very interesting poem to me. I don't think I really understood it completely but I really liked the use of language throughout the poem. The poem uses many different metaphors and comparisons as examples to narrate some sort of story line and scenery. For example, "The waves rolled over our stomachs, like spring rain over an orchard slope." There is an association of color with different objects, places, and moments in time that sets a unique mood or tone. For example, "A moment yellow, just as four years later, when my father returned home from the was, the moment of greeting him, as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, younger, thinner then when he had left, was purple-". The color yellow paired with the topic or war lead to a very powerful picture in my mind. The choice of words throughout the poem is also something I find very unique, she uses a lot of colors and nouns and sort of pairs them together in categories throughout the poem. Again, I feel like I didn't really understand the poem much but so much about it caught my attention that I would love to analyze it more in depth.

"How Light is Spent" by Bin Ramke was one of the poems I liked the best in this packet. The visual aspect of the poem is a little odd to me; indentations in the paragraphs don't make much sense and I don't understand why they are there. The way I took this poem was more of a connections between light and dark and vision and knowledge. For example, "Half my uncles' days no darker than any child's sleep but the sounds that came, their one talent listening, through thin walls were death to hide." This was near the beginning, and the poem was ended with "The history of the dark is the music of sleep." The poem contrasts the dark with sounds (sounds beings "light" in this sense) and shows when there is a strong reliance on a different sense, such-as hearing over sight, there is still similar knowledge, experience, and emotions. Also, the title of the poem "How Light Is Spent" opens up this story well for me because it brings to mind the idea or question of how one chooses to spend their life. Again, this is a poem I don't fully understand and can only look at pieces of so it would be nice to talk about and expand on.

Well, that was my first attempt at analyzing something I don't not understand or know anything about haha but you have to start somewhere right?

Hey Everyone!

My name is Shelby Griffith and this is my first year here at Eastern.

I am currently studying Psychology and English, Literature, and Writing with a focus on Creative Writing while looking into the possibility of adding studies in Education. My goal is to work within Psychology/Counseling and Education.

This is my first creative writing class and I am looking forward to all the things we are going to do! :)