Two contrasting poems

Finished reading some Lit & Language 11 essays. We read two poems with contrasting views of love. Then I had them write about which one they thing best relates to their experiences with love so far.

The essays were quite interesting. And they did well picking up on the themes in the poem and the figurative meanings as well as the imagery and style.

Here are the poems --

I came across this as an undergrad in Lit Criticism at BSU. It has remained one of my favorite poems since we read it.

"Laboratory Poem"

Charles used to watch Naomi taking heart
And a steel saw, open up turtles, live.
While she swore they felt nothing, he would gag
At blood, at the blind twitching, even after
The murky dawn of entrails cleared, revealing
Contours he knew, egg-yellows like lamps
paling.

Well then. She carried off the beating heart
To the kymograph and rigged it there, a rag
In fitful wind, now made to strain, now stopped
By her solutions tonic or malign
Alternately in which it would be steeped.
What the heart bore, she noted on a chart.

For work did not stop only with the heart.
He thought of certain human hearts, their climb
Through violence into exquisite disciplines,
Of which, as it now appeared, they all expired.
Soon she would fetch another and start over.
Easy in the presence of her lover.

James Merril

Charles, the poor bastard. Those final two lines hit the reader over the head like a ball-peen hammer.

Now, on to something TOTALLY different -

I came across this one last year. I've loved this poet, ee cummings, ever since I read his work in high school. But I have to take him in small doses. On one of my latest doses, I came across this one.

"since feeling is first"


since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

ee cummings

Now is that the definition of a romantic or what?

"who pays any attention / to the syntax of things / will never wholly kiss you"

or

"kisses are a better fate / than wisdom"

or

"The best gesture of my brain is less than / your eyelids flutter which says / we are for each other" Isn't that perfect?

And, of course, life is not a paragraph!

Carpe Diem!