"I Thank You God" Poetry Blog.

I thank you god
i thank YOU God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-- lifted from the no
of all nothing-- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
-E.E. Cummings

     Like all of E.E. Cummings' poems, this one has a very unusual style and many grammatical errors like Cormac McCarthy uses in "The Road." This poem thanks God for everything natural and infinite and positive- or, as he says it, "yes." He asks how humans who interact with everything that is "no" can doubt the existence of God. He is thankful for believing and having his ears and eyes awake and open.
     The antecedant scenario may have been a renewal of his faith in his god.
     Using parenthesis, colons, semi-colons, and commas (or lack thereof) gives accentuation to certain words and phrases. He brings attention to "YOU" by putting it in all capital letters to show that his thankfulness is large and directed at his god. He does not not capitalize "i" or any other letters except for "God" and "You." This makes God seem to be more significant than the narrator or E.E. Cummings himself.
     This poem is pretty easy to understand, but I'm not exactly sure that I understand the second stanza completely.

"The Snow Man" Poetry Blog.

The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold along time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-Wallace Stevens

     "The Snow Man" is a poem that describes winter. It tells us that only people who have truly experienced winter and "had a mind of winter" can see the beauty of it. Many people see the snow and cold and wind and see it as an ugly day. Only people that know can see the beauty of these things. The "snow man" is a part of winter, yet he isn't really anything; because of this, he beholds everything that exists before him and at the same time doesn't because he isn't really alive. To understand winter, we have to be like the snow man, or, at least, this is how I interpreted the poem. I found it a little confusing.
     For the antecedant scenario, Wallace Stevens may have been thinking about winter, or perhaps looking outside and taking into mind the different perceptions of winter: a beautiful, sparkling wonderland or a freezing, disgusting outsider.

"A Work of Artifice" Poetry Blog.

A Work of Artifice
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.
-Marge Piercy

     On the surface, this is a poem about those small, nicely pruned bonsai trees. The trees could grow to be very tall, but a gardener carefully spends his time to dwarf it and shape it into what he wants it to be. Looking deeper, this poem could be seen as a commentary on the treatment of asian women. These lines: "the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers the hands you love to touch" definitely imply physical aspects of asian women. By binding their feet, crippling their brains, and making their hair pretty the men of their society dwarf and prune them like bonsai trees to make them the perfect little women that they desire.
     The style of this poem is simple with short sentences; it is not overly flowery. This style helps the meaning of the poem because it reinforces the themes of smallness and control.
     The antecedant scenario may have been Marge Piercy thinking of a comparison to the atrocious treatment of women in China and other asian countires. She might have been thinking about these women and decided she wanted to write a poem that brought attention to the issue in an interesting way.

"I'm a Bad Vegetarian" Pie Day Poetry Blog.

Gobble, gobble! Mr. Turkey!
Mr. Turkey doesn't want to die.
He trots away into the murky
distance and lets out a sigh.

Oh no! Here come the rifles
and fat, hungry men.
Mr. Turkey- a breath he stifles
and he knows this is when

He will die
and be served on a table
beside stuffing and pie
like the Thanksgiving fable.

And so ends the life
of Mr. Turkey with barely a fuss.
Now he's under a knife
and in my esophagus.