Poetry Blog 6

I really loved "Desert Places" by Robert Frost. It took reading it a few times and jotting down some notes for me to fully understand it's meaning, but once I grasped the concept, I completely related to it. I think by titling the poem "Desert Places," Frost is referring more to places that are deserted, rather than a desert--what he describes is not at all a place with cacti and lizards--and the poem is all about loneliness. I have always felt that winter is a really lonely season, maybe because I tend to stay inside a lot, usually working on homework alone; maybe because animals migrate or hibernate and all the plants die. But I definitely understood what Frost meant when he described everything as becoming lonely. I loved the two middle stanzas after I read them a few times: "The woods around it have it--it is theirs./ All animals are smothered in their lairs./ I am too absent spirited to count;/ The loneliness included me unawares." This stanza, it took me a bit to realize, is talking about loneliness. The field has it, the woods have it because all the animals are beneath the snow in hibernation, and even the narrator has it: I took "too absent-minded to count" as meaning too mentally absent to count as being there, and by the last line he means the loneliness sort of absorbed him without his knowing. The next stanza I figured "ere" to mean "before" and it made sense that he would say, "And lonely as it is that loneliness/ Will be more lonely ere it will be less--," because things always get worse (including winter) before they get better. I also liked how he concluded by talking about how sometimes places on earth can seem just as lonely and isolated as outer space. And i thought it rhymes were very creative and pleasing to read, specifically when he rhymes "race is" with "places." This poem was unexpectedly good.

Poetry Blog 5

I think the poem "Song of the Powers" by David Mason is a lot deeper than it originally appears to be. Upon reading it the first time it is obvious that the poem is talking about Rock-Paper-Scissors. But, I think the game symbolizes how many people live their lives. I think Mason means that everyone chooses what their "power" will be. And they are all indeed powerful and can conquer another power. However, as one can be the conqueror, it can also be the conquered. All powers are equal, but different. This relates to two things for me: economics and politics. I suppose the line between the two is often blurred, but I see it relating specificall in economics to forms of running an economy that have pros and cons. For instance, capitalism could be a "power" because it gives the freedom for individuals to be infinitely successful. It can crush others because it sometimes brings more success. However, socialism is also a power, that can crush capitalism with it's overall success, rather than the success of the individual. It also relates to political parties: there are strengths and weaknesses of both the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as those pros and cons that come along with choosing to be an independent. All of this really came full circle when I read the end of the poem where Mason talks about how when one power dominates the others, it will be alone. I feel like this is speaking of the importance of diversity in our world. Had we not people and societies different from ours, the world economy would not function and political compromise would not take place.