In this essay, Parvin Ghasemi discusses Sylvia Plath’s poetry in regard to the violence, rage, and self-hurt seen throughout. He progresses through “The Colossus,” “Daddy,” “Medusa,” and “Ariel,” which I have linked in between paragraphs. As I read this essay, I felt as though having a reading of the poems helped understand his critical analysis […]
“Daddy” deserves to be dead, and I don’t blame Sylvia Plath one bit
TW: Abuse. Suicide ideation/attempt. I keep saying that I’m not a poet, and that I struggle with understanding poetry, then we get to Sylvia Plath and I remember the things that I’ve always enjoyed about poetry. It’s not that “Daddy” is any easier to understand than many of the other poems we’ve read. Still, somehow […]
“Permanently” A Fan of Kenneth Koch
I enjoyed reading the poems of the New York School this week, particularly the handful we were assigned by Kenneth Koch. Initially I was intrigued because of the setting – I am from New York and found it funny to read the bios about the poets who were writing/living/visiting the places I grew up in […]
Looking at “The One Thing That Can Save America”
The title of John Asberry’s poem seems to pose both a question and a statement. The reader is caught by the idea that there is only one thing that can be done or the question of what that one thing is. When we are stuck in emergency situations, we often question the one thing that […]
“The Problem of Anxiety” is its timlessness
The Problem of anxiety, as posed and described by John Ashbery in his thus-titled poem is not that anxiety does not stop you from living rather, it colors your life in ways that make living harder, bleaker, duller, hungrier even. There is an accurate sense of timelessness to anxiety that Ashbery captures within the […]
Alphabet Soup
I was particularly impressed with the style of Frank O’Hara of the New York School of poetry this week. Reading through his poetry, I noticed his repetitive use of enjambment and what Reed would describe as gleeful babble. The New York School frequently wrote about urban life and finding bliss in the then and now. […]
My Own Personal Poem in Response to Frank O’Hara
And the message also seems to be that this can be whatever it needs to be and maybe that is part conversation part explanation part extrapolation As long as the conversation keeps moving forward maybe only goes in the opposite direction once or twice if that’s really the direction it needs to go […]
Lateness and Liminality
This week’s reading of the New York School’s poetry reminded me of when Ben Hutchinson quoted the Icelandic poet, Jóhann Jónsson’s 1925 proclamation, We have been epigones since the age of the sagas. Epigones of our forefathers to one half, epigones of foreign artists to the other half. … Thus, we have with time become like […]
Creative response to O’Hara’s “A Step Away from Them”
I was quickly interested in Frank O’Hara’s structure of “A Step Away from Them” While I am not a poet, and do not actually read much poetry, this was fun to try to imitate and I enjoyed the experience. A STEP AWAY FROM REAL It’s my one free hour, so I go for […]
I Wish I Could Give John Ashbery a Hug
John Ashbery’s “The Problem of Anxiety” is an emotional poem that intertwines themes of depression and aging. The poem is short and seemingly straightforward. However, there are many contradictions within Ashbery’s poem that allude to the narrator’s uneasy and distorted state of mind. I want to start by analyzing the poem’s tone. Throughout the entire […]