Mary Oliver
Alligator Poem


I knelt down
at the edge of the water,
and if the white birds standing
in the tops of the trees whistled any warning
I didn’t understand,
I drank up to the very moment it came
crashing toward me,
its tail flailing
like a bundle of swords,
slashing the grass,
and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth
gaping,
and rimmed with teeth—
and that’s how I almost died
of foolishness
in beautiful Florida.
But I didn’t.
I leaped aside, and fell,
and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path
as it swept down to the water
and threw itself in,
and, in the end,
this isn’t a poem about foolishness
but about how I rose from the ground
and saw the world as if for the second time,
the way it really is.
The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper
and lay back
with the back-lit light of polished steel,
and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees,
shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away,
while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself,
I reached out,
I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me—
blue stars
and blood-red trumpets
on long green stems—
for hours in my trembling hands they glittered
like fire.


When reading this I was really intrigued about how informal it actually seems, yet it still works. It is almost as if the poem is a short story just in poem form. It is a major turning point when she writes "this isn't a poem about foolishness". At that point the reader realizes that this poem is about a second chance, and then can make the biblical connection to resurection. This poem is really about having a second chance, and realization about how good things actually are until you think they are gone.

In this poem Mary Oliver writes about having a second chance and the importance of realizing what you have. She uses the power and beauty of nature to get this point across. At first the destructive power that nature withholds is portrayed by the alligator. This gator nearly takes the life of the narrator but doesn't. This shows how there is also room for second chances. The beauty of nature is portrayed. After nearly losing her life she see the beauty within her life. Everything seems so different to her, which shows how now through her close experience she has changed so much. This is a useful technique to use: the power held within nature.

After Basho

Carolyn Kizer


After Basho

Tentatively, you
slip onstage this evening,
pallid famous moon.


The tittle of this poem makes me believe that after an event or person called Basho that somebody was able to come and take the stage now. I quickly looked it up to find that Basho was a haiku poet and was very respected and skilled at what he did. Carolyn Kizer is showing her respect for him and realizes he was the big name in the haiku area of the time. She is saying now that he is gone others can finally slip onto the stage and take their place and try to shine like he did.

Kizer's use of metaphor in this poem is a very useful tool that makes this poem meaningful. She compares "you", an unknown writer, to the pale moon. It's as if saying that you haven't had time to shine bright yet because this other guy has been so marvelous and bright that everyone has been absorbed with him. Now however, since he is gone, other poets can "slip onstage" and become brighter in the eyes of readers and writers because this once bright sun is now gone these people that are compared to the moon can step in and try to fulfill his place.

Richard Brautigan


Window's Lament

It's not quite cold enough
to go borrow some firewood
from the neighbors.


This poem is very interesting because it isn't your traditional haiku about nature. Brautigan took the structure of a haiku but used a different theme than what haiku's usually are. The poem however still sticks to the concentrated point, which is hard to vary from with only 17 syllables to use. I liked this poem though because it is about his life or peoples' lives and not about nature. It is more psychological than it is natural. Overall I think the idea that he went with in this haiku is effective because it is unique.

The idea that Brautigan uses in this poem that I would like to use is using haiku for daily life in psychological ways, not necessarily in a natural sense. Also just using haiku poems; I want to start writing more haiku style poems than free-style. I'm glad I was able to come across Brautigan's haiku because it has inspired me and solidified the fact that I want to write haiku. The idea of using the structure of a haiku but describing a situation other than what occurs in nature is a unique way to go about writing a haiku and I would like to try it.