I thank you god by e e cummings

This poem makes me feel like we don’t remember to thank God enough – like we only talk to Him when we need His help, and never just to say thank you. In I thank you god, E. e. Cummings says, “i thank YOU God for this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky.” The capitalization of only “You” and “God” is very significant. Notice how “i” is not capitalized. E. e. Cummings did not want to capitalize himself, but he wanted to capitalize God. This shows that he puts God before himself, and thinks God deserves to be respected instead of him. I am confused about the capitalization of the title though. Cummings only capitalizes “I” and not “God”. I don’t know why he would do this when he does it differently in the passage itself.

I think this is a reminder to thank God for the simplest things which are not truly that simple. The fact that we can live today is because of Him, and we should remember to thank Him for it.

Unveiling by Linda Pastan

This poem really surprised me. The third word, “cemetery,” gave me the impression that the theme was going to be depressing and a sad death story. In fact, the antecedent scenario is the burial of Pastan’s family. Instead, the poem gives death a new meaning. She says, “I don’t feel sad for them, just left out a bit.” Pastan feels left behind because her family is buried in the same location together, leaving her living here on Earth. She feels the way a little kid feels at Thanksgiving dinner sitting away from all the grown-ups, at the “kid’s table.” Through their graves, they’re telling secrets, as they would during Thanksgiving dinner.

“Something I’m not quite ready yet to learn.” This sentence has such a strong meaning – even though her family is dead, her family is still keeping things from her, things that they know she shouldn’t know or isn’t ready to know. It’s a very powerful way to look at death.

The Pigeons and the Girls by Chistopher Middleton

This poem was one of the most random things I’ve ever read; that was entirely the point. The theme of the essay is not just about pigeons or girls. It is about describing what is seen in a curious way – to ask questions about the world.

I would expect this poem to be written in the Realism literary time period because it is just describing what is going on around the poet. It is interesting that he noticed the pigeons sitting on a twig. Pigeons don’t seem as though they stand out in a crowd to make you wonder about them. The girls are a little more understandable:  questions about why one girl is helping the other, why one girl is limping, where are they going, and so on could be asked about the girls. Pigeons are just pigeons. They don’t seem that interesting. It’s all a personal perspective.

Circles

The mind goes in circles;

The world moves in circles;

Our earth orbits in circles.

Ferris wheels rotate in circles;

Transportation begins with circles;

History Is a circle.

I run in circles.

I sauntered up to the door of his Intended, and it reminded me if the trees along the river. The fog closing in, suffocating me and my thoughts of the Intended. The horror.
Three knocks, an eternity to wait for a crack in the door that would never come. I rumaged through my pockets for my pen and pad. She had wanted to know to know about Kurtz in his final days, his final breath, and his final words.
Upon that piece of paper the lingering words:
The horror, the horror.

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

In this poem, Oliver spends the first five stanzas describing the beauty of a forest: “Giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders.” She then goes on to talk about fires which leads me to believe the antecedent scenario was a forest fire that destroyed the woods. She makes the point that humans will never know the true meaning of salvation because we can’t save everything from harm, including forests. 

In stanzas eight and nine, Oliver describes what humans can do to make up for not knowing salvation. “You must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” The last task she states humans must be able to do to live in this world has a strong impact over the entirety of the poem. Throughout it, you feel the sense as though she loved the forest very much, but when it was destroyed, it was a terrible loss. In order to recover from the loss, you need “to let it go.”

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle by John Updike

Even without a picture in front of you, John Updike’s vivid descriptions of Saint-Chapelle display the beautiful image of a Catholic chapel – the stained glass windows with brilliant colors and the images upon the windows that make the chapel so unique. The descriptions used to depict the concert pull together the chapel’s beauty mixed with the music. The music seems to match the fantastic colors and style of the windows and the beauty of the church as a whole: “That held the holy glowing fantasy together.”

When we were presented the picture in class, it was actually climactic of a sight than what Updike’s words had put into my head. To me, the picture didn’t do the poem’s illustration justice. Maybe I was just in a bad spot to see, but the way Updike put together his words in a specific way and used alliteration made the image of the chapel so real and fantastic – “Then violins vaunting Vivaldi’s strident strength, then Brahms, seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness, bit by bit, the vigor from the red, the blazing blue…”. Saint-Chapelle sounds so beautiful.