In both poems, time is represented as having total control over the persona.
In “Time
Eating,” time is portrayed as omnipotent using bodily imagery that magnifies time in comparison to the persona.… Time is personified as an animal. The diction in this poem suggests that time does not discriminate against anyone; all will be raised and felled by time. “Catholic” in particular highlights the fact that time is a universal and that it is a force of nature that neither reasons nor distinguishes. It is like an animal that doesn’t choose what it eats or why—it eats because there is an instinctual and universal imperative to eat.
Similarly, in “Love in Time’s Despite” the poet compares time to a “conqueror” to portray time as a force that is more powerful than the lover.
The diction, however, has overtones that suggest sexual conquest in particular (“conqueror,” “lover,” “embrace,” and “tender”). Indeed, “lover” is repeated twice, highlighting the intimacy of the violent relationship time has with those things it ravages. While both poems suggest that time is more powerful, the conquest of time in B is more horrible because it is more intimate, while in poem A Time is merely doing what is natural —like an animal, it must devour.
The diction indicates a different relationship between time and the speaker. In “Love in Time’s Despite” time is a “perfect, careful lover.” “Perfect” and “careful” suggest mastery and calculation on the part of time. The crime time commits against the lovers is again made more horrible because time seems to take a particular interest in ruining these peoples’ lives. He doesn’t ruin everything universally in this poem, he targets and the lovers’ “treasuries” in particular. He doesn’t trample everything—he only tramples that which they hold dear (“tender”). It seems as though time has a personal vendetta against these lovers. He’s out to get them over everyone else.

Theme:
“Inconstant Mistress”/“The Apparition”: The lover spurned. One deals with vengeance while the other deals with salvation
Attitude of the persona toward the subject:
“On the backs of Lorries”/“Construction”: both are sympathetic toward the workers, but one angrily polarizes the socioeconomic disparities while the other focuses more positively on shared humanity.
Point of View:
“Wedding” poems: one is written entirely from the perspective of an unmarried man who ultimately questions the reasons for his lack of a partner, the other is written from the point of view of an omniscient speaker, who is able to show us the self-deception of the lonely woman, as well as to comment on that deception.

Tone:
“One Art”/“Long Distance”: The tone of one is flippant and deliberately elusive, while the tone of the other is restrained, contemplative and sad.
Conclusion:
“Mouthless Dead”/“Doomed Youth”: both deal with the question of mourning when death occurs on such a large scale as in war. In the first, the speaker denies the possibility of mourning (thus frustrating a basic human instinct) while in the second the speaker suggests that in light of the collective, noisy machinery of war, the only proper way to mourn is in silence and solitude.
Occasion:
“Rural Carrier”/“Interruption”: both poems are occasioned by road kill, but the first is a deliberate murder which implicates the speaker in the evil he sees in the world, while the second is accidental, forcing the speaker to meditate on death —a universal force that effects man and hare.

Subject:
“Owl”/“Nightfall”: While both poems seem to discuss nightfall as a return to nature, they take different views on the subject because nature is symbolic of different things in each poem. In the first, the speaker seeks a natural landscape in order to escape the stress of the so-called civilized world; for him, nature/nightfall represents freedom . In the second, the speaker denounces nature because it represents the loss of a civilized world; for him, nature/nightfall represents violence .
Portrayal:
“Time” Poems: In both Time is personified, but in one Time is an animal and in the other Time is a lover/person.

The speaker in “Time Eating” uses synecdoches of the body and suggestive diction to personify and describe his relationship to time. By likening time to a large digestive organ, the speaker suggests that time is at once alive and impersonal. Time is like an unthinking animal that doesn’t discriminate between what it eats; it only heeds the instinctual imperatives of the body. The diction suggests that time universally ravages everything in the same manner (“catholic,” “all”). Nothing, not even the uniqueness of the individual, can outlast it.
Similarly, in “Love in Time’s Despite” the poet personifies time in order to describe his relationship to it, but here the diction shows that time is particularly threatening because he is portrayed as a human that singles out the lovers as the object of his destruction. “Conqueror,” “lover,” “embrace,” and “tender” suggest that we’re dealing with a love crime. Indeed, “lover” is repeated twice, highlighting the intimacy of the violent relationship time has with those things it ravages. While both poems suggest that time is more powerful, the conquest of time in B is more horrible because it is more intimate, while in poem A Time is merely doing what is natural —like an animal, it must devour. Again, the diction indicates a different relationship between time and the speaker: in “Love in Time’s Despite” time is a “perfect, careful lover.” “Perfect” and “careful” suggest mastery and calculation on the part of time. The crime time commits against the lovers is again made more horrible because time seems to take a particular interest in ruining these peoples’ lives. He doesn’t ruin everything universally in this poem, he targets and the lovers’ “treasuries” in particular. He doesn’t trample everything—he only tramples that which they hold dear (“tender”). It seems as though time has a personal vendetta against these lovers. He’s out to get them over everyone else.

Be the self-conscious, sensitive teenager you are. Why do you think the poem is about
(content) what you think it’s about? Which clues does the author give you? Another way to understand how a poem works is to understand yourself and your own thinking : how do you arrive at your own conclusions? Which instruments does the writer use?
Instead of torturing yourself over how the writer brings you to conclusions, perhaps you should ask how you got there yourself . Nothing is self-evident when it comes to literature. Writers use tools to encourage you to think a certain way about what they’re saying. Because language is so associative, there are many, many tools at the writer’s disposal. From rhetorical tools
(argumentative tricks), to sound devices (which suggest certain things that might not be explicit in the poem), to images (which can connote a variety of different--even contradictory--things). Can you see how literature leaves a lot of room for interpretation and argument? If every device can be analyzed and interpreted, there are many different arguments that can be made about one literary text.
Does that mean that every argument is correct?
That literature can mean everything or nothing? Heck no. Most of the decision made in the world today have nothing to do with empirical results (a formula that will yield a correct answer). War, politics, religion, even science and economics —these are all about making strong arguments and minimizing the possibility of error
(risk). The same goes for literature: the strongest argument wins. If your interpretation is more convincing than the next student’s, then you win.

This is the inverse of the previous problem: what to do if you only see what the poem means vs. what to don’t see what the poem means.
You probably won’t completely understand a poem upon the first reading; You probably won’t completely understand the poem after looking at it for an hour. If that were possible, why would people still be talking about these poems? We tend to be passive readers and we get frustrated when the meaning doesn’t give
Writing about poetry forces us to be active readers. As in the sciences, we know poetry only through what we can observe in it. Poetry is empirical! Who’d’ve thunk it!? The best way to become an active reader is to:
1. Annotate the poem as you read & re-read it. Circle words that seem out of place, images that jump out at you, repetitions of sound, etc.
2. Read once for content. Read twice for devices. Read a third time for sonic devices (try whispering the poem and counting the syllables).
3. Make an outline —list literary devices and points of comparison.
It’s likely that you will have a much better idea about what’s going on in the poems after you’ve written a few pages about them. As you begin writing, leave room to adjust your argument after you’ve written the essay. Leave some space to change your introductory paragraph and topic sentences. Is your conclusion stronger than your intro paragraph? That happens all the time. Try rewording/borrowing from your conclusion to strengthen your intro. Re-write it beautifully.

Ask the poem questions if you don’t understand what the poem is “about.”
Try with the Five W’s: Who, What, Where, When, Why?
WHO: Who is the speaker? Who is he talking to? Why?
WHAT: What is he talking about? Why? What is his motive? What does he want?
What is his attitude? What is the action? What happens? What is the occasion?
What is the event? What is the subject? What do you think of the characters?
What does he want you to see? What is his position? What is the poet’s argument? Does it change? Is there a realization or epiphany? What is the subtext?
WHERE: Where does the action take place?
WHEN: When was this written? When does the action take place?
WHY: Why was the poem written? Why is the speaker talking? Why does he describe things the way he describes things?
OTHER QUESTIONS: Do you believe this character? Why? Is he honest?
Then you deal with the How . How a poem means is literary analysis; What a poem means is narrative. When you deal with how , you deal with literary devices.

Compare poems in the same paragraph. But if the paragraph gets too long, consider, dividing it into two paragraphs. Make sure there is a sentence summarizing the similarity/difference between the two poems if you must divide it into two paragraphs.
Alternate paragraphs of comparison. But if you only have one point, or if the paragraph is short, think about bringing in the comparison of the next poem in the same paragraph.
Dedicate half the essay to poem A and the other half to poem B. The reader and writer will have a hard time remembering what the points of comparison are half an essay later.

Thee/Thou: you (personal pronoun)
Thy/Thine: your (possessive pronoun)
Shall: will; should
-éd: an accent indicates that there is a syllable that should be enunciated, even though it’s not natural to do so. For instance untrimméd would have three syllables and be pronounced “un-trimmed.” This is metrical cheating. If a poet is writing in iambic pentameter and he only has 9 syllables in his line, he might opt to pronounce the “ed” as a syllable to bump up his total to ten.
-’n: an apostrophe indicates elision —the syllable is dropped. For instanced, heav’n would have one syllable and be pronounced “heavn” instead of two syllables as is usually the case “hea-ven.”
Untrimm’d would have two syllables and be pronounced “un-trimd.” This is also metrical cheating.
If a poet is writing in iambic pentameter and he has 11 syllables in his line, he might opt to change heaven to heav’n to save him an extra syllable and keep the line to ten syllables total.
--st: this is a hold over from a conjugation we no longer use. Just drop the –st. Shouldst becomes should ; owest becomes owe .
Untie the syntax-switch around subjects and objects so the poem doesn’t sound like Yoda.
Remember: Early modern poets were formal to a fault. They would twist sentences to preserve rhymes and metrical schemes. That’s why you get the kind of tortured syntax that makes early modern poetry hard on our fragile contemporary ears

Old English* nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard metudæs maecti end his modgidanc uerc uuldurfadur swe he uundra gihwaes eci dryctin or astelidæ he aerist scop aelda barnu m heben til hrofe haleg scepen. tha middungeard moncynnæs uard eci dryctin
æfter tiadæ firum fold u frea allmectig
EarlyModern English (Shax’s English):
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
*More specifically, West Saxon. English snobs that call Singlish (or, for that matter, American English, Ebonics or anything that is not the Queen’s English) a perversion of the English Language are deluding themselves into thinking that there has always been one single, official, original English. False. From the start there have been multiple Englishes. This poem, “Caedmon’s Hymn,” is probably the first English language poem. And yet we have manuscripts of it in two different dialects. What is the original English? There is none. Language is fluid and English is perhaps one of the most fluid languages because hundreds of different language streams feed into it. It is always growing.

Language began as an oral institution. Alphabets and scripts were sometimes centuries behind oral languages, and sometimes they never developed at all. Poetry began as an oral tradition as well* and as such, most of it is meant to be read aloud. It seems silly to ask students to close analyze a poem without being able to articulate it in the exam hall. We wouldn’t ask you to analyze a painting of a rainbow and only give you a black and white copy of it. We wouldn’t ask you to analyze a dialogue in a film and only give you the stills. Certainly you could still make some commentary in either situation, but you would be missing a large element that conveys meanings. The same is true of poetry. If you can’t read the poem slowly, loudly, then the best way to identify sonic devices (yes, they’re meant to be identified) is to whisper the poem to yourself slowly or sub-vocalize and pay close attention to the voice in your head.
*That’s why the question of authorship is so fascinating from Homer (Ancient: Who’s the author? The one who invented with the story or the one who heard it and wrote it down?) to Shakespeare (Early modern: What if the story the author wrote was lost? What if all we have are the fragments of lines that the actors and audiences happened to remember?) to
Raymond Carver (Contemporary: Who’s the genius behind a book lauded for its minimalism if the editor expunged more than half the author’s manuscript in the editing process?).

Sound of course isn’t everything. A poetry reading is a rare thing these days; the oral tradition isn’t as strong as it once was*. Sound is only one of the senses that poets can harness to convey meaning. Sometimes the poet will use sound to convey theme and meaning. Sometimes the poet will use sound just to make the poem “pretty.” Sometimes the poet won’t use any sonic devices.
Given the sheer volume of synonyms in the English language today (and it grows every day), poets can say the same thing (denotative meaning) in a bajillion different ways (connotative meaning).
ON WHY A ROCK IS NOT A STONE.
As I said in class, there is no denotative difference between rock and stone . They even have the same syllable-count and vowel. But one might sound rougher, one might sound smoother. I might want the bad guy to fall to his death on the rocks below, but save the stones for the young lovers to skip on a broad river at dusk. I might want the sibilance of stone in a poem about ghosts whispering in a cemetery, or I might want the reader’s mouth to be open at the end of the word as if she has swallowed a rock. Then again, maybe I just want a word that rhymes with alone. Imagine yourself a poet. Heck —don’t imagine— be a poet! Interpretation is creative; try to understand creative choices.
*In the dominant culture of America. I’d argue that Anglo-American (white) culture is particularly deficient in oral culture. We tend to privilege texts and literacy over oral traditions. African-American (black) culture is light-years ahead of white culture when it comes to orality. Hip-hop, freestyle, battles, rap, and slam are all excellent examples of oral poetry today that is thriving today.

Lying In a Hammock at William
Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly ,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon .
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
-- James Wright
Some very heavy alliteration ( consonance ) with the plosive B. But does it suggest anything? Is it significant? I can’t make an intelligent argument for it at the moment. I’m sure a better scholar has come up with something brilliant for this, but I’m drawing a blank. As far as I can tell, this is just stylistic alliteration; it’s just pretty and prettiness— that vague quality —is something we expect in a poem. I wouldn’t mention this on the Alevel unless I had a significance for it. Do you think it’s significant? If so, tell me! I want it to be significant, but so far I got nuthin’.
Please say these lines out loud. The O your mouth makes gets smaller and smaller, right? Like the sound of the bells getting smaller and smaller as they disappear into the distance. The assonance suggests the sound of the bells receding. The tolling of bells is a rather hackneyed reminder of time receding as well. The last line of the poem makes explicit what the sounds of the poem have been saying all along: Time is disappearing; a life is wasting.

Oysters
Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight :
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.
Alive and violated,
They lay on their beds of ice :
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean.
Millions of them ripped & shucked & scattered.
We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.
Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome :
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege
And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
-- Seamus Heaney

Onomatopoeic: the sound the shells make on the plat sounds like “clack”—is it significant or merely stylistic? Is translating sense into language important to this poem? Let’s see…
Oysters
Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight :
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.
These internal rhymes and the “ng” consonant combination (there is a specific name for this, but you don’t have to know it--just describe it as best you can) push the tongue against the soft palate. Feel your soft palate (the back of the roof of your mouth) with your tongue (seriously, do it). The texture is like oysters. This poem has an aural as well as a tactile/sensual element to it: you textually experience oysters (to say nothing of which particular organ the imagery suggests…“ frondlipped ” oysters with ” split bulbs ”…clean it up Seamus.)
Alive and violated ,
They lay on their beds of ice :
Of course, the entire poem is about the sensual (almost sexual) experience of trying to enjoy oysters without the moment being ruined by the awareness of privilege and the guilt that inevitably conjures, and finally the call to action that correcting that guilt demands.
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean.
Millions of them ripped & shucked & scattered.
We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery .
Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome :
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The
Glut frond-lipped of privilege
, brinestung
And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
The only end rhyme in the poem should grab our attention. Rhyme makes
Deliberately, that its tang things fun to say, but since the whole poem is not rhymed I bet this one is particularly significant —I bet it’s doing more (while being pretty funny).
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
Rhyme suggests denotative similarities between the rhyming words by highlighting the sonic similarities or —in the event that the words are different —it highlights that difference. The human mind loves patterns.
-- Seamus Heaney
When we hear a rhyme, we want the rhyming words to be similar. When they’re not, it stands out to us. These words are denotatively different. But the rhyme suggests that there is a similarity: the perfection of this memory is a crock of $hit. To rhyme off it, the rhyme makes a mockery of his “perfect memory” because only the ignorant and privileged can enjoy oysters in a world that contains colonialism, violence, poverty, etc.

Oysters
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits ; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moonblanched land,
Listen ! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-- Matthew Arnold

What
How

Similarly in “Love in Time’s Despite,” time is personified as a “cold conqueror, unfeeling lover.” It “robs your deep heart’s treasuries as in play, / Trampling your tender harvests over and over.” This highlights the lack of mercy and remorse of time, as it takes what is dearest for the fun of it and completely destroys everything.
Problem: This is close, but personification works many ways. Mickey Mouse is a different personification than Time in this poem. What specifically about the personification highlights the lack of mercy and remorse of time? What is Time personified as? What does it suggest? What specifically does this use of personification suggest? What is it personified as ?
Similarly in “Love in Time’s Despite,” time is personified as a “cold conqueror, unfeeling lover.” By describing time as an intimate partner, time’s destruction is made more horrible. In the first poem, we cannot be threatened by time because it is only acting according to nature —it must feed itself like an animal. But in the second poem, time is a personal threat rather than a natural threat.

The use of diction such as “Can I help you?” and “I am engaged at the moment” shows us how the playwright establishes character.
Problem: Diction is a single, specific word choice, or several examples of single, specific word choices; not an entire phrase. This is narration cleverly disguised as close analysis.
The student tells us what the passage means and makes it look like analysis by mentioning diction. The student incorrectly identifies the device. He fails to describe the effect of the device and the significance is vague. What specifically establishes character? Which literary devices are used? How do the devices establish character?
Which character? What is the character like?
Marlene is portrayed as a professional and as such her tone is professional, pleasant and polite, but on the whole impersonal. She uses elevated diction like “engaged” to dismiss Mrs. Kidd while at the same time employing niceties like “Can I help you?” to appear as if she is willing to help her. She could just as easily say “I’m busy,” but of course that would not be professional. In contrast to Mrs. Kidd, Marlene embodies not the woman confidant, but the cool, clear-headed career woman.

Refrain 1 (A1)
Line 2 (b)
Refrain 2 (A2)
Line 4 (a)
Line 5 (b)
Refrain 1 (A1)
Line 7 (a)
Line 8 (b)
Refrain 2 (A2)
Line 10 (a)
Line 11 (b)
Refrain 1 (A1)
Line 13 (a)
Line 14 (b)
Refrain 2 (A2)
Line 16 (a)
Line 17 (b)
Refrain 1 (A1)
Refrain 2 (A2)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learned, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

B
D
F
E
C
A
B E
D C
F A
E
C
B
F
A
D
D
E
A
C
F
B
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A
E
B
D
C
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F
D
A
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A
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C
D
E
F envoi
She claimed widowhood, but never for all six husbands; for courtesy’s sake we focus on the final one, that blearyeyed farmer friends called “Booze” (but chapter five didn’t make the cut, of course). She wasn’t the goody two shoes James would have you think; sure, she was good for threshing and an occasional glean in the old leaves by the Three
If and when I did look up, the sky over the Moy was the very same gray-blue as the slow lift of steam-smoke over the seam of manure on a mid-winter morning. I noticed the splash of red lead on my left boot as again and again I would bend my knee and bury my head in the rich
Hours crowd; good for seed three generations later; good for a miraculous bull’s eye and six measures of barley (as noted in our book). With the grieved forgotten and kinship revised, she curled like a scythe at the foot of a one nighter for only an ephah. Truth be told, Ruth was a little too quick to come to the threshing-floor, but by five black earth the way an ostrich was rumored to bury its head. My hands were blue with cold. Again and again I would bend to my left and lift by one handle a creel of potatoes - King Edwards, gray as lead mined from what would surely seem she went vague in the grey dawn. Her five days’ blood abstained and by the third week in Omer she knew she needed a slingshot wedding to keep her line untangled. Booze, a six pack man by today’s standard, wined one night with the old boys, who sipped his boast and before morning sobered, he’d acquired the four parcels, an easy hand, and a cold sandal-bare foot. Five droughts sent him dust and only one son worth mentioning. The unhappy three nursed their demons: Booze whetting his thirst six nights a week, Obed at his mother’s breast, and Ruth two to any nine- or ten-year-old an inexhaustible seam.
My father wore a bag-apron that read, in capital letters, 'RICH'.
My own capital idea, meanwhile, had sunk like a lead balloon. 'Blow all you like,' my father turned on me. 'Talk till you're blue in the face. I won't let you take a lift from the Monk. Blow all you like. I won't bend.‘
The Monk had spent twenty-odd years as a priest in South Bend, his face priest-smooth except for a deep seam in his left cheek. Fred Grew said something strange about how he liked to 'lift his shirt-tail'. Jack Grimley chipped in with how he was 'ostrichsized' because he once lent Joe Corr a book called Little Boy Blue.
When Fred Grew remarked on his having 'no lead timing her brute with a man named Judas who was twice her age (but not that Judas —it was a popular name for quite some time). She knew which Commandment she broke (the sixth), but those stone tablets impressed her less than two cinquains, rhymed and inane as a nursery moral fit for her three year old. Their custom was a hard one, in his pencil', I heard myself say, cool as cool, 'I think you've all been misled.'
At which the RICHARDSON'S TWO-SWARD suddenly began to unbend in that distinctive pale blue lettering as the seam of his bag-apron unstitched itself and my father turned on me again: 'That's rich, all right. If you think, after that, I'd let the Monk give you a lift especially concerning redeeming and exchanging a hard-won wife. So Ruth left Boaz, as the Bible remembered him (to preserve the line’s dignity of course), and Ruth moved three miles south to an unincorporated jerkwater town for some other Judas (not that Judas, either). But there’s no chapter five; in our book and most forget her by 1 Samuel 16.
into the moy to see Montgomery bloody Clift you've another think coming. I'll give him two barrels full of twelve-gauge lead if he comes anywhere near you. Bloody popinjay. Peacock. Ostrich.'
All I could think of was how the Monk was now no more likely to show me how to bend that note on the guitar - 'like opening a seam straight into your heart'when he played Bessie Smith's 'Cold in Hand Blues‘
There were four or five more sick sons by two other women, but no one remembers the three-sheet man they called Booze.
than an ostrich to bend its lead-plumed wings and, with its two-toed foot, rip out the horizon-seam and lift off, somehow, into the blue.

5
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Pantoum of the Great Depression
Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember all the particulars.
We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don't remember all the particulars.
Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows
Thank god no one said anything in verse.
The neighbors were our only chorus,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
At no time did anyone say anything in verse.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
No audience would ever know our story.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
What audience would ever know our story?
Beyond our windows shone the actual world.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
Somewhere beyond our windows shone the world.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
We did not ourselves know what the end was.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues.
But we did not ourselves know what the end was.
People like us simply go on.
We have our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues,
But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy.
Whale Watching in Monterey
It’s really more about waiting.
You wait because, well, you have to.
I don’t really know much about the particulars.
I was only seven years old.
You wait because, well, you have to
See a whale, or it’s not whale watching.
I was only seven years old.
I was pretty sure I knew the difference:
See a whale, or it’s not whale watching.
I don’t know what the others called it, but
I was pretty sure I knew the difference between whale watching and whale waiting.
I don’t know what the others called it, but
I don’t really know much about the particulars.
Between whale watching and whale waiting,
It’s really more about waiting.