love lost, Hope found

By: Tierney Bowden

---

ice beneath sharp blades,

yet never did it waver.

eyes meet suddenly.

---

first meeting, cold rain,

heated cheeks, burning passion-

lips do what hands do

---

chilling droplets

met their demise against

passionate activities

---

over time, the distance

grew.

weeks passed.

skies turned from grey

to a deep blue.

---

traded rain for perfect sun

yet hearts were never full enough-

lovelorn.

---

while meadows filled with rabid bloom,

angst became her.

nothing but hatred.

---

suddenly,

a dandelion grew!

budding blossoms

bid woes, adieu!

---

Review:

My poems are an anthology of haikus that reflect a past relationship of mine. I was highly inspired by the haikus from “There is Always Tomorrow: An Anthology of Wartime Haiku” that we read in class. Haikus typically have 17 syllables, mention some reference to a season, and are very concise in their wording. This forces poets who choose this style to be very picky with what they choose to write. Despite this, haikus still evoke powerful emotions.

The wartime haikus were written by Japanese American internment camp victims of the Central Valley. Being from the Central Valley, these haikus struck something inside of me. These poets created their own hope through the power of haiku. They reflected, ranted, and yearned all in a few short phrases. Although I cannot relate to their struggles, I can relate to the feeling of being a human trying to cope. This is where I got inspired.

I wanted my anthology to reflect the feeling of hopelessness that comes with a failed relationship. My haikus are meant to be read from top to bottom since it is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. I chose to keep with the 17-syllable and seasonal word rules because these are not meant to simply be poems, but haikus. Just like how the wartime haikus included a word to reflect the blazing Central Valley summers, mine travel between the seasons of winter and spring.

Along with the wartime haiku inspiration, I also was inspired by Julia Alvarez’s “Sometimes the Words Are So Close”. In her poem, she took lines from other poems to Frankenstein them into a new one. I did something similar in my second haiku. The line “lips do what hands do” comes directly from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This is one of my favorite scenes from the play because it is the perfect embodiment of young love. My anthology is about the first relationship I ever experienced and it was a rushed affair. The inclusion of this line was meant to reflect my naivety and youth when I began the relationship. It also is a foreshadowing of the tragic ending of the story. Just like Romeo and Juliet, I did not end up with this person.

I believe the haiku format and Alvarez’s poem-mashing created the perfect outlet for me to reflect on the relationship and the feelings I felt throughout the experience. In a way, this was a very therapeutic assignment and these poems mean a lot to me. I hope others can find themselves in this anthology, even if it is only one other person.

Alvarez’s Rough Draft

Julia Alvarez’s poem “Sometimes the Words are So Close”, lacks any punctuation for the first 6 lines. This creates a wordy, breathlessness for the reader. This creates a hurried tone, like if we don’t read fast the words may disappear off the page. In comparison to her original draft, Alvarez had quite a few commas in the first few lines. The creative choice to include zero punctuation until line 6, added to the title of the poem. The words feel close and almost jumble together when read aloud. This is a Petrachan sonnet, so there is a volta in line 9 which also is where the one question mark is used. Even from the original draft, Alvarez wanted to emphasize line 9 with a question mark. The question mark caused me to immediately stop reading and ponder with the speaker. The tone moved from something so hurried to something thoughtful. Alvarez mentioned how she wanted this poem to feel like a woman speaking and it really embodies what it feels like to ramble on. If Alvarez had included punctuation in the first 6 lines, there would not have been this natural thought pattern. We do not think in commas or periods. We think and move on to the next thought in a continuous pattern. Alvarez’s poem embodies how somebody may fall into a rabbit hole of their thoughts.

By: Tierney Bowden

“The Harlem Dancer” vs “Harlem Shadows”

“The Harlem Dancer” is told through an imperfect Shakespearean sonnet. I say imperfect because at line 11-12, there is the use of a unrhymed word,”the”, which is an enjambment that leads into the next line. These two lines stand out because they are the reason the sonnet is 15 lines instead 14. McKay wanted to bring emphasis to petrachan lady, the dancer, by emphasizing that both boys and girls were in awe at her beauty. The sonnet is set on a warm, sunny day. This is clear in line 4 by the phrase, “upon a picnic day,” (McKay). If it is nice enough to have a picnic, it is most likely sunny. This sonnet, although celebrating the dancer’s beauty, has a darker undertone. In the rhyming couplet, the speaker says the dancer has a, “falsey-smiling face,” (Mckay). Although her body and face may express joy about what she is doing, there is an eery feeling that the dancer does not enjoy what she does. She has to perform in “light gauze” that does not cover much of her body. She is on display to be ogled by anyone.

From the first glance at “Harlem Shadows”, it is much longer than “The Harlem Dancer”. The first two stanzas are told in a Shakespearean sonnet however, there is an extra stanza. However, similar to the first sonnet, there is a tone shift. Since this is an irregular sonnet, I believe the volta appears at the start of the third stanza. This is because the sonnet moves from describing the actions of the young prostitute to aching for the young prostitute.

Both sonnets focused on the women of Harlem who have had to take up jobs they don’t like to make money. The Dancer must entertain and show off her body, while the young prostitute has to sell her body for money. The dancer performs in the daylight, where anyone can see her face. Her family could walk by and see her. However, the young prostitute does her job at night where she can hide away from judgemental faces when needed. Both girls are still using their bodies in different ways to make money.

By: Tierney Bowden

Shut up, Child.

The poem that I found interesting by Javier Zamora is titled “How I Learned to Walk”.
The poem begins with the Spanish word “cállate” which means shut up or be quiet. This sets the tone and establishes that the poem will be provocative for the speaker. At first, I thought the poem might be from the perspective of a dog because of the line, “I piss in the corner,” (line 4). However, the speaker then says he would, “fling rocks / at bats hanging midway up almond trees,” (lines 6-7). So, the speaker must be a young child because hitting animals with rocks and doing impulsive things is something I associate with childhood, especially boyhood. With context, I know this poem’s speaker must be the child version of the poet. I believe there is a tone shift within the poem. It begins with a child remembering their father and the childhood they had. However, it transitions into an adult speaker wondering who their father was and what he was like. The speaker says, “When I clutch my pillows, I think of him. If he sleeps / facedown like I do,” (line 13). This line struck me because clutching something in your sleep means you are stressed, scared, or angry. It is not a positive action. Therefore, the speaker must feel distressed over the questions he has about his dad. He wants to know who he was and in a way, he wants to know more about himself. It must be frustrating for the speaker to have certain traits and wonder if they are his alone or something that was passed to him by his family.

My question: You use “cállate” twice within the poem, but the second usage seemed out of place. What was the intention behind using this word? Was it meant to be an internal thought of the speaker or a way to break the 4th-wall and reach the reader beyond the poem?

By: Tierney Bowden

The Demon Within

“My Brother at 3 A.M.” is a thrilling poem by Natalie Diaz. The situation follows her brother and his fear of being killed by the devil. However, there is an underlying metaphor at play here. The hallucination of the devil is acting as the embodiment of her brother’s anxiety. The repetition of the phrase “He wants to kill me” shows that the brother is being festered by an intrusive thought. This could be a literal fear, that the devil is really after him, or it could be referring to the anxiety he is feeling. By having the brother repeat this phrase, it is clear that circular thoughts are happening within his mind which could be associated with anxiety. Another line that stood out to me was line 22, “His lips flicked with sores,” (Diaz). When people have anxiety, they might fidget or pick at something to try and cope. For the brother, it seems that he might be biting or licking his lips, which creates the sores the speaker describes. The mom could not pick up on her son’s anxieties until she noticed the sores on his lips. Those sores indicated that he was feeling anxious and after seeing them she, “saw it, a hellish vision, [the] brother,” (Line 30).

I think this poem represents a return to the body because Diaz is using language and metaphor to represent the anxieties she has felt in her own life. While the brother sees the devil as his anxieties, the mom sees that the devil is her son; his anxieties are destroying him. The devil is a scary, fearful figure. Having the brother see the devil as his anxieties, it gives his anxiety an awful face and can explain why he is up so late with sores around his lips. The devil, or his anxiety, is eating him away. The mother does not see this devil hallucination, but she sees her own son as the devil since it is his anxiety that has caused him so much fear. The return to the body in this poem is literal because, until the last stanza, the reader is led to believe in this hallucination of the devil. We are looking outward for this devil before being forced to confront that the devil is actually within.

By: Tierney Bowden

A View from the Ground

The poem I chose is by Kyotaro (Shoichi) Komuro and the translation reads as follows:

Passed guard tower
without glancing up
before summer daybreak

This poem stood out to me because of the story that was created within these short lines. In line 1, the speaker sets the situation. From the context, I know this is an internment camp but even without context the words invoke the image of some sort of prison; prisons have guard towers. The second line sets the tone of the poem, which is fearful. The speaker does not even want to glance at the guard in the tower. The only reason this could be is fear of what the guard in the tower might do to lock eyes with the speaker. There is an unbalanced power dynamic that has been established both physically and symbolically. Towers are tall structures and the guard would be at the top of that structure. If the speaker passes this structure, they would be on the ground. This situation is confirmed by the phrase “glanced up” in line 2. So, we have the physicality of one person higher and one lower. This is also symbolic of the actual power dynamics within the internment camps. Japanese-Americans were at the mercy of the American government and any officers working at the internment camps. Those officers/guards held all the power. The poem’s final line sets the season that the poem was written in, summer. Knowing that the poem was written in the Stockton internment camp and how small the apartments were, it would’ve been an uncomfortably, hot summer. This line also lets the reader know that the speaker and all others in the internment camps were under watch 24 hours a day. Daybreak is another way to say sunrise, so the guard was on duty during the earliest hours of the morning.

Through this short poem, Komuro skillfully expresses the power dynamic held between the Japanese-Americans and the internment camp guards. Through imagery and symbolism, he captures a snapshot of the daily life enforced on the Japanese-American internees in the Central Valley.

By: Tierney Bowden

Challenging the Rose

H.D.’s poem, titled “Sea Rose”, is most effective in challenging the traditional symbol of the rose compared to Adrianna Puente’s poem, “The Rose and the Poppy”. In the first stanza, the speaker describes a singular rose through a negative tone. The tone has been set by a variety of negative diction used throughout the stanza. Line one begins, “Rose, harsh rose,” (H.D.). This is the speaker addressing the rose, but they immediately call it unappealing. They then continue by calling it “marred”, “stint”, “meagre”, and “thin”. All of these words create a negative image of the first rose being described in the poem. Already, this challenges the traditional notions of romance because not a single good thing is mentioned about the rose. It is not praised for its color or lovely smell. Instead, it is being called “sparse” and “marred”.

In Adrianna Puente’s poem, the first stanza describes exactly what a rose is normally symbolic of. The speaker is a personified poppy that wishes it could be as desired as the “ruby red” rose. It knows that it is not, “a symbol of romance / of new moments to be made, / of old memories to be cherished,” (Puente lines 6-8). These are all things roses are known to be symbolic of. Compared to H.D.’s poem, Puente’s speaker seems envious of the “beautiful rouge” rose that is always picked and loved for what it symbolizes.

By comparing H.D. and Adrianna Puente’s poems about roses, we see that one tries to challenge the romantic symbol of the rose, and the other challenges why that symbol can’t be given to another flower. Puente’s poem accepts and acknowledges the traditional symbolism, so she does a less effective job than H.D. to challenge the symbol.

By Tierney Bowden

Pretty Women and Wine

In Hafez’s poem, “Ode 44”, figurative language is used to depict the dangers of temptation to the religious man by utilizing a continuous metaphor to compare temptation, the tenor, to a drunken woman, the vehicle.

The poem’s first stanza describes a woman who is wearing very little,” With tilted glass, and verses on her lips,” (line 3). This line utilizes a metonymy to establish that the woman is drunk. The “tilted glass” connotes a glass of alcohol that has been drunk and the “verses on her lips” mean that she must be singing or maybe even mumbling. Drunk people are known to slur their words and speak incoherently. So, the narrator chooses these words to establish the fact that the woman is drunk. This line creates an image of a drunk woman, who we know is half-naked from the previous line, singing a song. Later in the stanza, the woman, “slips into [the narrator’s] bed,” (line 7). This hyperbole creates a comedic effect and further emphasizes the fact that the woman is drunk because drunk people often stumble around and lose their bearings.

In the second stanza, the narrator uses irony to express his rationalization for being tempted. In lines 20-21, he says, “Yea, by the special privilege of heaven/ Foredoomed to drink and foreordained forgiven,” (Hafez). The irony here is that heaven is supposed to be a perfect holy place, yet the narrator believes it is heaven’s fault that he is tempted. If the heavens didn’t create wine, he would not be so easily tempted. This is further emphasized in line 26 where the narrator says, “O knotted locks, filled like a flower with scent,” (Hafez). This line uses a metaphor to compare his penitence to a “knotted lock” and then uses a simile to compare his desire to a “flower with scent”. How can a man not be tempted to bend down and smell a delicious rose? This is his rationale for wanting to be with a woman, especially if she offers him wine.

I believe this poem, in its original language, would have reflected an acceptance of Islam. The narrator clearly wants to be a sinless man, but the temptation is just too hard to resist sometimes. However, when the poem gets translated, it is hard to realize it was written by a Muslim. I would still know that this was written by somebody who followed a religion, but I would have guessed Christianity because of words like “Puritan” and “penitent”.

By: Tierney Bowden

Adultery of Art

By: Tierney Bowden

Both Robert Herrick’s “Delight in Disorder” and Ben Jonson’s “Still to be neat, still to be dressed”, there is the use of iambic tetrameter. In Herrick’s poem, the iamb is used consistently while Jonson utilizes other patterns such as in line 10, “Such sweet neglect, more taketh me”. In this line, Jonson uses a trochaic tetrameter to break the poem’s flow. This break in the flow brings attention to the words in the line. Along with this break of iamb, the following line is out of line with the rest of the poem. I believe Jonson intended this because lines 10 and 11 are where the true meaning of his poem is found. The “sweet neglect” Jonson is referring to, is the neglect of an artist to put any soul into their work. They may create the most beautiful piece, but if it has no purpose, no message, it is worthless. This is why in line 11 he calls them, “adulteries of art,  (Jonson). By calling it adultery, he is making a metaphor that creating meaningless art for beauty’s sake is a cheating way to make art. 

Although both poems use similar metaphors for the nature of art, Jonson’s is more effective because of his break in the uniformity of his poem. Herrick sticks to the iamb and perfect rhyme that contrasts with the title of his poem. How can he talk of disorder without creating disorder within his own poem?