I felt Brook’s anger, guilt and regret when reading her poem. She apparently made a decision without realizing the depth of the consequences she would feel afterward. Most of what is written relays a message of the inner dialogue of depressive anger that she may have with herself as a one time mother. This poem reminds me of my pet rooster, named Perdue, that I had growing up in Queens. I gambled his life away one day on a meaningless bet. I too discounted the being of another and did not realize the seriousness I would feel. I was very upset and so was the rest of the block.
Angelou’s subject is quite different and kind of reminds me of a person desperate to create value of themselves to others. She hooked me in the beginning using a formula that I guess takes the subject and asks what it should have and then goes ahead to give it the opposite or nothing. It produced to me an unexpected quality of thought for things otherwise commonly assumed and associated with these subjects used. I thought a lot of the poem was directed to the upper class and that she stressed an idea of interdependence. I personally believe she wanted not to be forgotten and actually meant reliance on her. Though, I could be way off I have known people to be of this nature.
Castellano is yet another poet who concentrates on the negative with yet another depressing outlook. Or maybe reading too many of these back to back has affected me. My friend Jeremy who died last week was killed by what he loved. The passing of his mother, father and x-girlfriend hurt no one else as much as him. He killed what he loved most once and that was his life.
Poetry
The Mother
by Gwendolyn Brooks
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
From A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks, published by Harper & Brothers. © 1945 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Used with permission. All rights reserved
Alone
by Maya Angelou
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Destiny
by Rosario Castellanos
Destiny
We kill what we love. What’s left
Was never alive.
No one else is close. What is forgotten,
What else is absent or less, hurts no one else.
We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a choked breath
Through someone else’s lung!
There is not air enough for both of us. And the earth will not hold
Both our bodies
And our ration of hope is small
And pain cannot be shared.
Man is an animal of solitudes,
A deer that bleeds as it flees
With an arrow in its side.
Ah, but hatred with its insomniac
Glass eyes; its attitude
Of menace and repose.
The deer goes to drink and a tiger
Is reflected in the water.
The deer drinks the water and the image. And becomes
-before he is devoured – (accomplice, fascinated)
his enemy.
We give life only to what we hate.
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6 comments:
Hi Nabin,
I just wanted to say that I agree with you. After reading these poems, I began to exam life (maybe a little too deep). They did get to me, but I guess that is what is great about poetry; it stimulates the mind. I've hear Alone many times before, that is actually one of my fav's.
Hello Nabin,
I can't imagine how it was like for you to live after you gambled his life away, but I definetely see the point you make. We value what we have only when its gone, and take it for granted while it is with us. Its in human nature to do so, thus we can only learn from our mistakes and mistakes of others.
Hi,
I understand what you mean when you say that these poems are depressing and full of guilt. But I think that it is a way for the poets to release their true feelings, maybe they don't have any other release.
I can empathize with your story and that of Ms. Brooks. Those acts done in ignorance seem to be one of the hallmarks of our human imperfection since so many of us have similar tales to tell. The upside is that we learn enough to avoid making the same mistake twice, and possibly can share and help someone else avoid certain pitfalls.
Nabin,
Peace and Blessings, first of all. I'm sorry for your loss. The poems do show a bit of the negative feelings and battles that go on inside of us all. The hope from these poems, and just life in general, is that those feelings don't overtake you and make succumbed to them. I think the point of these poems are to show that nobody is to good, or big, or rich, or whatever to feel these fellings. Hopefully they just don't overtake you.
Hi,
I concur that these poems are full of guilt. However, sometimes we need to be reminded that life is not just a fairy tale. There is more to it than we think. Most of the times, we are carried away by lust of this world that we forget the purpose of our living. It goes a long way to tell us that, there are those out there who need assistance, irrespective of their mistakes. It is a good reminder at times.
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