Poem Analysis: Christopher Kennedy's Ghost in the Land of Skeletons

Ghost in the Land of Skeletons

Christopher Kennedy
If not for flesh's pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That's why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It's the fact they don't know they're dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you're a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.

In Christopher Kennedy’s poem, “Ghost in the Land of Skeletons”, the poet describes his fear of death, and how he envies ghosts who still exist on the earthly plane. He states his fear in the line, “Teeth remind me that we die. That’s why I never smile…” It’s an extreme—the fact that he won’t even let himself be happy because it reminds him of the end is something incredibly sad and traumatic. The only time he says he smiles is when he’s looking a spirit captured in a photograph, since it gives him hope of the ones who refuse to go away. I think everyone can relate to this—the concept of hope for something in the afterlife, rather than the end being something terrifying.

Poem Analysis: Robert Kelly's Love Songs

Love Song 1

Robert Kelly

The grunion
are coming

it is complex
& predictable

they arrive
connected with the moon

men
who have lived longer
run to capture it

this subtle sort of thing that
doesnt happen every night. I'm

not interested. Everything I care for
happens all the time.

Love Song 2

It's the way you walk
& if you dont like
that it's the way you
talk. Or any other

ordinary thing that
rimes with the ordinary sun.
This is my best deal:
yourself exactly as you are

or anything at all the way it is.

Robert Kelly’s poems, “Love Song I” and “Love Song II”, are both beautiful poems that are also short and sweet. The first poem, describing how Kelly appreciates everything in life rather than the men who only want the one thing (alluding to sex), is straightforward and clear. I also likes how he states how they are connected to the moon—to me, it brings up the image of the werewolf, or some sort of night creature looking for a meal. In the second poem, Kelly describes to a woman how everything that about her is beautiful—if its not the way she talks, then it’s the way she walks. It’s something I think every couple can relate to, since some partners in relationships take on the ugly girl persona (grateful to be in a relationship), but end up clouding the persona of their real selves (truly beautiful).

Poem Analysis: Ted Hughes' A Childish Prank

A Childish Prank

Man’s and woman’s bodies lay without souls,

Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert

God pondered.

The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.

Crow laughed.

He bit the Worm, God’s only son,

Into two writhing halves.

He stuffed into man the tail half

With the wounded end hanging out.

He stuffed the head headfirst into woman

And it crept in deeper and up

To peer out through her eyes

Calling its tail-half to join up quickly, quickly

Because O it was painful.

Man awoke being dragged across the grass.

Woman awoke to see him coming,

Neither knew what had happened.

God went on sleeping.

Crow went on laughing.

Ted Hughes’ poem, “A Childish Prank”, is a great story about the origin of man and woman’s genitalia. It’s told in the form of a fable—as the Creator falls asleep out of boredom between the dull couple, Crow gets an idea to take a worm and place it on the man and woman. Using the worm as a way to symbolize fertility, Hughes describes the man’s penis, “…stuffed into man the [worm’s] tail half/ with the wounded end hanging out.” For the woman, Hughes describes how the head was stuffed into the woman, and how it called out for the tail end of the worm (thus symbolizing the need for sex). My favorite part is the last lines, how, “God went on sleeping. / Crow went on laughing.”

Poem Analysis: Wallace Stevens' The Disllusionment of Ten' O' Clock

Disillusionment of Ten o' Clock

Wallace Stevens

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers In red weather.

In Wallace Stevens’, “The Disillusionment of Ten’O’Clock”, I found the simple of the image of the night-gowns in the haunted houses beautiful yet lacking.  I do like the idea of comparing ghosts as night-gowns, and the tigers with stripes seen by drunken sailors as their interpretations of these strange spirits. But, when I look at the poem, the repetition in the middle, of how the gowns are not wearing purple gowns, green gowns, and yellow gowns begins to make the poem sound like a list. It also just breaks the flow of the poem—if anything, I wish the poem could have said how there were ghosts haunting these houses, and then the way the sailors interpreted them, rather than doing the boring list of what they weren’t. Then again, there must be some sort of underlying symbolism behind it—but for now, I don’t know what it is.

Poem Analysis: William Carlos William's The Parable of the Blind

The Parable of the Blind

William Carlos Williams
This horrible but superb painting
the parable of the blind
without a red
in the composition shows a group
of beggars leading
each other diagonally downward
across the canvas
from one side
to stumble finally into a bog
where the picture
and the composition ends back
of which no seeing man
is represented the unshaven
features of the des-
titute with their few
pitiful possessions a basin
to wash in a peasant
cottage is seen and a church spire
the faces are raised
as toward the light
there is no detail extraneous
to the composition one
follows the others stick in
hand triumphant to disaster

In William Carlos Willam’s poem, “The Parable of the Blind” (based on the painting by the same name), I found his description of what is happening in the painting to be too straightforward. While I understand that some poems can be this way, I found this one to be not as entertaining as others I’ve read. Usually, when I read a poem based on a painting, there is a sense of story that the poet will create based on the imagery they see—they won’t simply tell what they see in the painting. But, then again, the ending of the poem where he states, “where the picture of the composition ends which no man seeing…” was my favorite line, since it broke the fourth wall. It described the men walking to the corner of the frame, rather than them plunging into the bog.