Although I could smell old lime-covered
History, at ten I’d still hold out my hands
& berries fell into them. Eating from one
& filling a half gallon with the other,
I ate the mythology & dreamt
Of pies & cobbler, almost

Needful as forgiveness. My bird dog Spot
Eyed blue jays & thrashers. The mud frogs
In rich blackness, hid from daylight.
An hour later, beside City Limits Road
I balanced a gleaming can in each hand,
Limboed between worlds, repeating one dollar.

The big blue car made me sweat.
Wintertime crawled out of the windows.
When I leaned closer I saw the boy
& girl my age, in the wide back seat
Smirking, & it was then I remembered my fingers
Burning with thorns among berries too ripe to touch.

In the beginning of this poem the narrator enjoys the blackberries; they connect him to the “terrestrial sweetness” of the day.  He feels that they connect him to all the nature around him, the “blue jays and thrashers” and the “mud frogs.” The juice on his hands marks him as being part of the earth.

Later, trying to sell his berries, he becomes acutely aware of the seperation between him and the people of the higher classes he is trying to sell them to. On the road he is torn between the world of the berries and the world of of roads and cars. The children in the blue car are isolated from nature by the air conditioning (“wintertime”) that cuts them off from the heat of the summer that the narrator is experiencing.

When they smirk at him, he begins to feel that his berries, his connection to a more earthly class, are something to be ashamed of. Instead of the sweetness he now thinks of the thorns around the berries. The description of “thorns among berries too ripe to touch” makes me think of the idea of dreams that are too far off and that can only cause pain when reached for. The seperation and shame the narrator experiences seem to tell him that if he reaches too far, he’ll be stung as he was by the berries’ thorns.

In this poem Hopkins compares the sound of the sea and the skylark to that of a human civilization. The sounds of the bird and ocean are natural and pure; he describes them beautifully as “crisps of curl off wild winch whirl” and a “low lull-off or all roar.” On the other hand, he describes the sounds of the town as “sordid” and “turbid.”

I think what he is getting at is that the sounds of nature, of the sea and skylark, are simple and pure, while the sounds of people in the town are complicated and dirty. While we see ourselves as “life’s pride and cared-for crown,” we are not nearly as beautiful as the sea and skylark. While they have retained all the beauty of nature, we are moving away from it. We have “lost that cheer and charm of earth’s past prime” and are instead moving towards “man’s last dust” and “slime.”

By considering ourselves above earth and nature and becoming complicated instead of hanging on to simplicity, we have lost the beauty that can be found in the sea and the skylark.

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

In this poem the mirror claims to have no bias or opinions. It reflects back exactly what it sees. In fact, it seems to care more about the wall opposite it, which has almost become “a part of [its] heart,” than about the people looking into it. Although it recognizes that it is important to the woman, he sees people mostly as interruptions in his meditation on the wall. He does not attach the same importance to the wall but continues to fulfill his duty of reflecting.

It is the woman that attaches emotion to the mirror. She is looking for something more in her reflection, reaching for “what she really is,” but she doesn’t realize that the mirror will always be only an exact reflection.  It won’t distort or enhance her image, and it won’t show her any more than a visual picture.

The woman attaches more significance to her image, worrying about her appearance and the “old fish” rising towards her. Really though it is her own interpretation of her reflection that causes her to see that “old fish.” She is so worried about what she sees in the mirror that all she can see is the loss of her youth and beauty. She is looking for physical beauty, and she thinks that her beauty will show her what she is. However, her beauty is fading, and because she has at tached so much importance to it, she feels as if she were fading as well. 

Springs trickle down dark cliffs, and autumn
Dew fills ridgeline grasses. My hair seems
Whiter in lamplight. The flame flickers
Good fortune over and over — and for what?

I really love Tu Fu’s descriptions of nature. They’re beautiful and show the divinity that he sees all around him.

In this poem his reference to his white hair makes me look at the poem as a metaphor for his own”day’s end.” He is approaching the end of his life, but he is able to look on it with serenity and appreciation of the beauty it has held and still holds. For me his description of the springs tricking down the dark cliffs point to the idea that new life will continiously be coming from death, just like water flows from the rock.

I think the last line is the most interesting and ambigious. The flame is flickering a message of good fortune, but Tu Fu questions “for what?” I took this as him saying that he already has all the good fortune he needs. He has the mountains and the rivers and the moon and the dew. He has everything he could want at day’s end.

I think what this poem is talking about is the simple joys that can be found in life, especially through nature. Just as a rainbow would thrill a young child, it thrills the narrator of this poem.

He hopes that he can always keep this joy. If he can’t recognize the simple happiness, such as the happiness of seeing a rainbow, then his life is not full; he is not fully living.

When he says “The child is father of the Man,” I think what he means is that with age you learn to value again the things you did as a child. The father may be older, but he has learned to pay attention to what is important in life, a lesson the Man may not have learned yet.

Finally, the last lines say “I could wish my days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety.” The narrator wishes that he can continue to have reverance to nature every day. He will continue to value and enjoy the simple and beautiful things in life.

The first thing I notice about this poem is the form. Its shape goes back and forth, mimicking waves. The poem itself also contains a lot of moving in and out, opening and closing, and this also lends itself to the rythmic rocking feeling of the poem.

Because the poem never mentions a fish besides in the title, I take it to be from the perspective of the fish. I notice that the fish sees beauty in many things. The muscles, for example, are like jade, and the image of the “injured fan” is graceful despite its imperfection.

The sea, regardless of its oldness, or perhaps because of its oldness, is beautiful and continues to shape the cliff. On this “defiant edifice” the things that marr its beauty, “dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes,” are part of what make the cliff “alive.”

If it were solid and unchanging, there wouldn’t be any element of life in it. While it is no longer young or unscarred, the constant in-and-out exchange with the sea, its sheltering of the ocean, the shafts of sun, and the barnacles clinging to its side make it a part of life.

LVI
A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.

In reading this poem, I began by thinking about the difference between the two men. The first man, the one looking for the assasin, is a person looking for the worst in others. He is afraid that someone else will hurt him. He’s wary of the danger in other people.

The second man is more worried about hurting others. His fear is for the harm that his own flaws could inflict on people around him. He is looking inward and is cautious of his own weaknesses.

To me this poem is saying that the second man is wiser. We have to be aware of our own faults instead of only looking for the faults of others. It is also far easier to change ourselves than to change other people.

Then I realized that Crane never specifies which man is wiser. He says “one was more wise than the other” and leaves the reader to decide which one he means. I think the fact that I assumed he meant the second man tells more about me than it necessarily does about the poem. I think the way that we interpret this poem, and really all poems, tells us about our own values. Are we more similar to the first man or the second man?

In the end I think this poem serves as another reminder that our own values and ideas shape the way that we view the world and the meaning that we take from it.

 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 a long 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.

When I first read this poem I thought it was about perception. To the narrator the winter snow and wind seem miserable. He says that in order to percieve the winter differently, maybe the way that the snow man does, you would have to be “cold a long time” and have a “mind of winter.” Once immersed in the winter and used to the cold, it is possible to see it as more than miserable.

This reminds me of the way that we often view other cultures. When we think of a culture strikingly different from our own, we often see it negatively. We see the things we would miss: our televisions, our food, our homes. Someone who had grown up in that culture, though, would be able to appreciate and value its own unique customs.

Similarly, when we are looking at the winter from the outside, we see the things we would miss: warmth, sun, green trees. The snow man, however, would be able to see the good things of winter: the beauty of the snow on the ground and the ice in the trees, for example.

I feel like the last stanza might take the poem in another direction, though. The listener, who is “nothing himself, beholds / nothing that is not there and nothing that is.” I think that this can, at least to a certain extent, fit in with the idea of perceptions. The listener is projecting himself onto his surroundings. He is nothing, so he beholds nothing around him. We all see things through different lenses, and often what we say is a reflection of ourselves.

I’m not sure if there’s another idea there as well. To say that the listener is “nothing himself” might suggest that he is trying to remove himself from his own observations. He’s trying to see things seperated from his biases and preconceptions. However, when he does this, he sees “the nothing that is.”

To me this says that we are a necessary part of everything we see. Our perception may shape and sometimes distort what we are seeing, but without our perception we can see nothing. We often think that we as people are a reflection of the world around us. I think it’s equally true though that the world is a reflection of us. The way that we see the things around us is a way of creating the world we live in.