First Packet.

What a lovely start to the term, poetry has always been a favorite of mine. The sheer complexity that can be found in a simple stanza is actually rather astounding. The affinity for the metaphorical and figurative language, this causes a small jump in an interpretive difficulty curve but once such abstract concepts are understood and utilized well, the whole scope of meaning broadens to horizons. One, as an individual, is bound to interpret in slightly different ways and some could even spend an hour working on only a small portion in attempts to understand what the author wanted to say.

In fact my small group on Tuesday spent the majority of allotted time just discussing the first stanza of Geology of Water. We first explored the authors use of vocabulary in a singular form; i.e. "what does striated mean? Why did he chose that word over others?", "What could he mean by saying indigo, a color, is blind?", etc. We then looked at the vocabulary as it worked in the whole of the stanza, finding the author used a lot of colors to describe an object, one we deduced to be an ocean, blind indigo being the deep bottom where there is little to no light, or sea that met the requirement in line 7 of the first stanza: "to nudge the continents apart."

Another piece I enjoyed was Hinako Abe: The Scent of Verbena. I rarely see poems that try to alter their word placement, margins, and spacing to generate a larger ascetic picture. Unfortunately the, as I perceived it, hourglass shape did make it a strain on my eyes to read. It talked of a journey a person was making, climbing a mountain with another making their way to "the man made lake at the mountain summit." This is most likely a metaphor, that much is certain, it is a better question to ask of what it is a metaphor of. from my perspective i see the mountain as the innate and natural obstacle that is life itself, immovable, and the lake is man's self made idea of success and happiness.

But alas it's naught but my own interpretation, not the right one or the only one. poetry has always been fascinating, doing so much with/in so little. I really do look forward to to the other works in this class. I will also take this time to say that from now on at the end of each post I will put a quote, idiom, or wise words of such as I feel is fitting for the subjects I find in the week's literature.

"Words only have as much power as you give them." - Anon.