I found the poems very interesting and somewhat of a struggle to comprehend what the purpose of the poems was. I attempted reading them with an open mind, so that way I could better understand what was occurring. I then established that most of the poems are similar to short stories that have a lot of meaning behind an incident(s) that occurred. Several of them where extremely graphic in their writing, while others used potent wording to give a better sense of the situation. Out of all the poems read, the two that grabbed my attention the most were Charlie Howard’s Descent by Mark Doty, and The Woman Hanging from The Thirteenth Floor Window by Joy Harjo. I chose these poems for several reasons, some of them being, the incredible word choices, the hidden meaning, and my curiosity of why the authors would go and write about such impacting stories.
The poem Charlie Howard’s Descent is one with a lot of meaning behind it. At first I was confused on what the author was trying to portray with the child standing on top of a bridge. Then I continued reading and found that the child was committing suicide due to a harsh lifestyle of many insults and feeling of unwanted. The dead child could obviously not be the author, otherwise he would not have written the poem, but my guess is that the author is most likely writing about an experience he might have had in where a close friend of his committed suicide because of bullying. The reason he would write such an emotional poem could be to teach readers a lesson about life and respecting others because one does not know bad he/she can be hurting the other person, until something adverse actually happens.
The other poem I chose was The Women Hanging from The Thirteenth Floor Window, this was a bit tricky, I could not figure out whether or not the lady was trying to kill herself or if she was already dead. From this poem, I enjoyed the ending better than the rest of the poem because I realized that she wasn’t trying to kill herself, but rather keep her beauty forever since she felt she was aging and her outer beauty was fading away as well. Joy Harjo states this in her last stanza, “The woman hangs from the 13th floor window crying for the lost beauty of her own life” (Harjo). The speaker of the poem can be a tough one to identify, but I would suggest that the speaker be a close relative or friend that has noticed all the changes and actions that have been taking place. The reason why I suggest that is because the author continues to repeat “The women of the thirteenth floor window,” so in consequence it led me to assume that it must have been somebody close enough to watch her every action. The purpose of writing such a poem could be for several reasons, but the reason that appealed to me the most was that it was written to inform people that when one ages, a lot of things become difficult, and therefor one should take it easy on older folks.
Works Cited
Harjo, Joy. “The Woman Hanging From the Thirteenth Floor Window.” She Had Some Horses (1951): n.p. Poetry Foundation. Web. 21 Jun 2011.
Link For Picture
Here is a link to a website of many famous poems.
Jaime,
ReplyDeleteGood analysis on both poems. Your thoughts on both the Charlie Howard’s Descent poem and The Women Hanging from The Thirteenth Floor Window are different from mine but after considered your point of view I can understand why you thought the way you did. I thought the first poem was about a gay man of twenty three that was thrown off the bridge. I thought this because of the part that said "out of the river into the arms/of the three teenage boys/who hurled him from the edge" (Doty lines 43-45)But either way you did a good job on analyzing what the two authors where trying to convey to the reader. Keep up the good work.
Denise
Hello :)
ReplyDeleteI too had some struggle reading the poems but after reading them a couple times, images began to come to by head. I like the way you thought of these poems as short stories. Reading your analysis of the poems was easy to understand and you get right to the point :) I too think of reading poetry as finding a hidden meaning that the author wrote in the passage, but then everyone has their own interpretation.
thanks for sharing!
Sierra
Jaime,
ReplyDeleteI had some trouble too in understanding some of the poems. After, reading them a couple of time the one that grab my attention as well was The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor” by Joy Harjo. Your analysis on this poem is really good. Now I see the poem in a different way. For some people it’s difficult to accept aging.
Susana