Nothing Gold Can Stay

The title of this poem really caught my eye; it made me think of the cliché "all good things must come to an end." This poem is talking about nature and how fast the beauty of springtime comes and goes.
The first line in this poem "Nature's first green is gold," is talking about how the first leaves on the trees are a yellowish green color, almost golden.
The second line "Her hardest hue to hold," means the beautiful young yellow leaves don't stay young for very long, and soon they become the darker green color. I thought about it as meaning to people that you're only young once.
The third line: "Her early leaf's a flower," is referring to the idea of the budding of plants, which are often flowers.
The fourth line, "But only so an hour," talks about how fast a flower can wilt. The budding, blossoming and then wilting of a flower can occur in a matter of days, depending on the flower. Metaphorically, I think the poem is referring to how life happens quickly, and if you're too busy to stop and enjoy the ride, you'll miss all the beauty it has to offer.
The fifth line "Then leaf subsides to leaf," talks about how "special" the flower is once it's gone. When it's no longer in bloom, it doesn't matter, the gold has faded away.
The next couple of lines give examples about how "nothing gold can stay." The sixth line, "So Eden sank to grief," has a biblical reference. The Garden of Eden was so beautiful and lovely until Eve ate the apple. The next line "So dawn goes down to day," talks about how beautiful the colors of the sunrise are, purples, oranges, pinks, and yellows, but once the sun has risen, it's just another day. There is nothing so special in an ordinary day.
The poem then ends with the title: "Nothing gold can stay." It solidifies the idea that Frost is trying to convey: that all good things come to an end.
I really liked the poem, but I wish the "moral" wasn't so widely accepted. We can make "gold" stay it just takes that much more effort.

This Is Just To Say

I decided to read this poem because the title reminded me of the song "Say What You Need to Say" by John Mayer which I really like.
Because I was in the mood of the John Mayer song before starting this poem, I was surprised by the mischievousness of the poem.
Reading the poem a second time, I wondered if the plums stood for something, if the poem had a deep philosophical meaning behind it.
The plums, even though they are only mentioned once, are the central topic of this poem. The speaker was hungry and ate some delicious, sweet and cold plums but now the person who was saving them no longer gets to enjoy one of the plums he was saving. How sad..
The short, choppy lines, (I googled and found out when an author interrupts a thought with a line break its called an enjambment. Authors do this to show the importance of the ideas trying to be shared.) show how bad the speaker feels. He feels guilty for eating all the plums, and is possibly at a loss for words in how to apologize.
The lack of punctuation show that the speaker was in a hurry. Maybe he didn't have enough time to make himself breakfast and so he grabbed the plums because they were quick and easy.

Sindhi Woman

This poem caught my attention by the title. I've always been interested in other cultures and a Sindhi Woman seemed to be the epitome of just that.
As I started reading the poem I thought it was really beautiful. In the first stanza, Jon Stallworthy was talking about the woman, graceful as can be, someone people should look up to. I envisioned the woman in my head reading the poem. She was head strong, tall, confident, hard working, tenacious, caring; the list goes on. The thought of her being in poverty didn't even cross my mind until the second stanza when garbage and excrement were mentioned.
I thought Stallworthy's ability to take something most people would automatically pity right away and turn her into an icon, a treasure, a jewel was remarkable. Even after he shared how she lived in poverty, I still admired her, I almost wanted to be her.
In the poem, Stallworthy uses the excrement, stones, and glass to refer to the difficulty of the woman's life. But the woman still stands tall, carrying the traditions and expectations and ancestry with her. And she continues to do this without complaints; just grace and beauty.
I really liked the meaning of this poem, and the way Stallworthy changed the view of a Sindhi Woman, if even just for a moment.

Oh No

This poem was very interesting. My first take on it was as if it was a consoling poem, saying that everything will be okay, "you" will get a nice chair to sit and relax in after death. Yet the simplicity of my take on the poem was unsettling, and I felt there was much more that I was missing.
As I read it a couple more times I started to think there was a dark, possibly evil, tempting tone. Like the poem was trying to get me or whoever to do something we weren't supposed to.
I began to research about other people's views on the poem... I came across multiple different perspectives, but the two most common were death and heaven.
While both thought similarly about "wandering" through life, the chair and the friends with their smiles were completely different. The darker version took the chairs as the "home" of the rich and wealthy - they forced their way to wealth and "bought" the chairs to sit and relax on their pedestals. The friends smiled, welcoming the newcomer, but they weren't really friends; there was no sincerity about them, and they were just engrossed in themselves as the newcomer supposedly is.
On the other hand, the view about heaven thought it was more of the relaxing part after death. Everyone got chairs because man was created equally; the friends and family were the friends of the newcomer who were already deceased.
I reread the poem multiple times trying to figure out which "take" I thought more suited my interpretation of the poem.
Whether the chair symbolized the wealth and money of the selfish and wealthy, or the nice relaxing seat of the old and tired.
I decided the poem was a combination of the two. That it took a positive outlook on life; positive in how people were selfish in the way they tried to saw themselves before others: survival of the fittest.
Towards the end of the poem I decided I was unsure about whether I liked it. The poem definitely got me to think about life.
I thought about my life.. How it's possible that the chair could be both the selfish's home but also the place where old friends connect... I almost found the poem to be a lesson on perspectives. But maybe it wasn't the poem that "taught," but the research to discover what the poem was about.

A Poison Tree

I really enjoyed this poem - and connected to it on a personal level (which I think most people can in some way or another.)
The poem begins by sharing two personal stories of "wrath." One was with a friend, the other with a foe. When the speaker was angry with his friend, he communicated his feelings to his friend and his "wrath did end." On the other hand, when he was mad at his foe, he didn't say anything and in his silence, his "wrath did grow." We begin to see what the poison Blake was talking about.
The second stanza Blake discusses fears. Fear and anger go hand in hand, and fear can make people do crazy things they otherwise wouldn't do. He then talks about smiles, implying the idea he is happy about this growing wrath inside of him... He ends the stanza with the word "wiles." I didn't know what it meant, so naturally I looked it up. It means a trick or way to deceive someone. Is the narrator going to play a trick on the foe?
The third stanza the speaker talks about his wrath growing and growing. It had now become that dangerous poison. The speaker then says it "bore an apple bright" - I naturally thought of a tree, because apples grow on trees. The metaphor has been completed. The poison tree was the wrath growing inside the narrator. The foe sees the apple and desires it - obviously because it looks so tasteful. He knows it's the narrator's too..
The fourth stanza the foe steals the apple when he thinks no one is looking, unaware of the poison it contains. The narrator awakes to see the "foe outstretched beneath the tree." He won. The narrator conquered his foe.. But in the end, did he really win?
I think Blake wrote this poem because he has seen what wrath can do to a person - it can drive them mad. My take on this was to be a warning to anyone and everyone to communicate; let others know when you feel angry with them instead of letting your feeling slowly fester until one day they burst. Don't let wrath be the poison tree that cuts you down.

Beginning Again

This poem intrigues me from the very beginning. As people grow older, we learn and become more experienced; I know personally looking back on my past I would have done some things differently if I had known what I know now.

The first line of the poem "If I could stop talking, completely cease talking for a year, I might begin to get well." I immediately thought this was going to be a poem all about why a person should heal themselves through not talking. But he goes on to compare not talking with brain surgery - I'm assuming he was using brain surgery as a metaphor; not talking for 365 days would enable him to "renew" himself and therefore "begin again."

The second and third stanza he brings the big question to surface. "Why," should we begin again. I began to think about why a person would want to begin again. I know I've learned lessons through the mistakes I have made, and through that I have become the person I am today; I wouldn't want to start all that over, but I haven't had as tough a time as others.
Maybe he means beginning again by starting over, coming clean and refusing to let the judgmental voices inside our head (sometimes formulated only because we have heard good or bad things - not because we've had that experience ourself.)

The fourth, and last, stanza in the poem brings forth a name, instead of the vague "he's" mentioned throughout the poem: Li Po. Of course I didn't know the name, so I had to research it. Li Po was a famous poet who many, now consider, to be one of the top Tang poets if all time. He lived secluded on a mountain a couple times throughout his life; Li Po was also banned from different cities because people found a way to claim his poems were vulgar or malicious.
Maybe Wright wanted Li Po to get the recognition he deserved instead of being banished, and by beginning again he would be able to?

Overall, the poem made me think really hard about starting over. I've thought that to begin again is the coward way to deal with difficult situations, but I think it all depends on the perspective and the situation.
Which brings me to the question, would you ever want to begin again? And why? What encourages the idea of starting over?

Lost Brother

I really liked the poem Lost Brother by Stanley Moss. Even though on the surface it's talking about two trees, the deeper hidden meaning is very real, raw and something many people struggle with daily.
I thought of the author as a younger brother tree who had been separated from his brother long ago, and was now remembering his older brother's life: "when I heard he was cut down.."
When the tree talks about his mother, I thought of Mother Nature. Every living organism has a purpose on Earth, whatever it may be, and if it tries to be something it's not, it's ruining itself. Life is short to be upset about the small things!
The poem talks about how the tree survived "impossible locations, at elevations over ten thousand feet in extreme weather." It persevered - everyone has their ups and downs, it's part of life. He had friends, and little "creatures old and young he sheltered" needed him to protect them against the brittle cold.
Towards the end I think Moss is trying to make a statement about how precious our environment is. If we keep tearing down animal habitats sooner or later there will be no more animals left.
My interpretation of the poem is to remind people how important they are to society - even when they feel there is nothing left, someone or something still needs them, like the "black-tailed jackrabbits and horned lizards." It's also hinting at how we judge ourselves against everyone we know. How can we be the best we're supposed to be if we are constantly trying to be someone else? People, animals, plants, and microorganisms were put on the face of the earth for a reason. To disrupt the animals kingdom by destroying habitats, food, and our source of oxygen will turn around and hurt us in the long run. We as a society, need to preserve the beautiful earth for as long as we possibly can, for what would we do if it all just disappeared?