Category Archives: Poetry

Art and Science in “The Second Person” by C. Dale Young

April 18, 2013 by aaron
C. Dale Young Divided into 4 parts, The Second Person by C. Dale Young examines first the physical body with its emotions and sensations, then moves into the scientific where death and sciences attempts to heal become a major focus before moving into a 27 poem series of triptychs that merge the two. Finally, the book shifts focus and expands its view to examine the world. Young’s poems comfortably flow between the inner and external world as is common in other current poets, but they also shift between scientific and emotional views of the world: one poem for example, shifts between the idea of the mathematical notation of summation that the symbol represents and a less literal view that moves the purely scientific term into the emotional world of the patient who is saved by the summation of the Doctor’s education.
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Carl Phillip’s “Speak Low” and Confession

April 27, 2012 by aaron
Easily missed, the epigraph by Danial Defoe to Carl Phillips’s book “Speak Low” seems to sum up the experience of reading Phillips: “and I could feel my self carried with a mighty Force and Swiftness towards the shore a very great Way.” Phillips’s poetry is all about the duality of existence as one seeks to find their own place and their own power. The feeling of being pulled by water in the epigraph endures, but one sees that the poems do not force a single definition and the inherent internal struggle within them allows one to see this pulling force of water as both helpful and harmful: the water is just as likely to pull one to shore as out to sea.
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Byron’s “The Corsair.”

April 18, 2008 by aaron
Byron, intentionally or unintentionally, weaves himself into his poetry stamping it with his entire persona. His characters are part of himself; the poems are pieces of his mind; the events are based on experience. Byron’s poetry is an amalgamation of all aspects of Byron. This is truer in some poems than others: some are nearly biographical and others skillfully manipulate other’s perceptions of Byron. His poetry reveals the inner workings of his mind .
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Responding to “This Compost” by Walt Whitman

April 10, 2008 by aaron
Yes, the Earth is “work’d over and over with sour dead”, but the earth is the symbol of renewal, so why should they poison it? The earth and its environs are incorruptible. Like a body, the Earth can renew itself, but unlike a body, it can heal from any injury or poison. When “normal” plants first evolved, they took over the earth and corrupted its atmosphere with their toxic breaths. The Earth embraced this change and it and all its life adapted to these changes giving rise to our everyday world.
Read More ⟶

“There Was a Child Went Forth” by Walt Whitman

April 3, 2008 by aaron
“There Was a Child Went Forth” by Walt Whitman illustrates his position as part of the new American Tradition and his desire to fulfill the call for a poet who “sings the materials of America” by Emerson. The poem is earthy and real: the emotion, events and perceptions are that of the average person. The lofty ideas presented within are approachable because they are part of the every-man’s perception and life.
Read More ⟶

Wordsworth and Keats: For the birds.

April 27, 2008 by aaron
Wordsworth and Keats both wrote poems about birds, and both imbue their birds with a mystical nature, but where Keats sees the bird as a representation of a better life, Wordsworth sees it as a mysterious presence that represents the disembodied spirit of nature. In Wordsworth’s “To the Cuckoo” he never sees his cuckoo and had long since stopped looking for it, so the bird had become a spirit that represents the rest of nature, and like the daffodils it transcends itself.
Read More ⟶

Art and Science in “The Second Person” by C. Dale Young

April 18, 2013 by aaron
C. Dale Young Divided into 4 parts, The Second Person by C. Dale Young examines first the physical body with its emotions and sensations, then moves into the scientific where death and sciences attempts to heal become a major focus before moving into a 27 poem series of triptychs that merge the two. Finally, the book shifts focus and expands its view to examine the world. Young’s poems comfortably flow between the inner and external world as is common in other current poets, but they also shift between scientific and emotional views of the world: one poem for example, shifts between the idea of the mathematical notation of summation that the symbol represents and a less literal view that moves the purely scientific term into the emotional world of the patient who is saved by the summation of the Doctor’s education.
Read More ⟶

Carl Phillip’s “Speak Low” and Confession

April 27, 2012 by aaron
Easily missed, the epigraph by Danial Defoe to Carl Phillips’s book “Speak Low” seems to sum up the experience of reading Phillips: “and I could feel my self carried with a mighty Force and Swiftness towards the shore a very great Way.” Phillips’s poetry is all about the duality of existence as one seeks to find their own place and their own power. The feeling of being pulled by water in the epigraph endures, but one sees that the poems do not force a single definition and the inherent internal struggle within them allows one to see this pulling force of water as both helpful and harmful: the water is just as likely to pull one to shore as out to sea.
Read More ⟶

Byron’s “The Corsair.”

April 18, 2008 by aaron
Byron, intentionally or unintentionally, weaves himself into his poetry stamping it with his entire persona. His characters are part of himself; the poems are pieces of his mind; the events are based on experience. Byron’s poetry is an amalgamation of all aspects of Byron. This is truer in some poems than others: some are nearly biographical and others skillfully manipulate other’s perceptions of Byron. His poetry reveals the inner workings of his mind .
Read More ⟶

Responding to “This Compost” by Walt Whitman

April 10, 2008 by aaron
Yes, the Earth is “work’d over and over with sour dead”, but the earth is the symbol of renewal, so why should they poison it? The earth and its environs are incorruptible. Like a body, the Earth can renew itself, but unlike a body, it can heal from any injury or poison. When “normal” plants first evolved, they took over the earth and corrupted its atmosphere with their toxic breaths. The Earth embraced this change and it and all its life adapted to these changes giving rise to our everyday world.
Read More ⟶

“There Was a Child Went Forth” by Walt Whitman

April 3, 2008 by aaron
“There Was a Child Went Forth” by Walt Whitman illustrates his position as part of the new American Tradition and his desire to fulfill the call for a poet who “sings the materials of America” by Emerson. The poem is earthy and real: the emotion, events and perceptions are that of the average person. The lofty ideas presented within are approachable because they are part of the every-man’s perception and life.
Read More ⟶

Wordsworth and Keats: For the birds.

April 27, 2008 by aaron
Wordsworth and Keats both wrote poems about birds, and both imbue their birds with a mystical nature, but where Keats sees the bird as a representation of a better life, Wordsworth sees it as a mysterious presence that represents the disembodied spirit of nature. In Wordsworth’s “To the Cuckoo” he never sees his cuckoo and had long since stopped looking for it, so the bird had become a spirit that represents the rest of nature, and like the daffodils it transcends itself.
Read More ⟶