1. Today's devotional covers the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. In this story we learn of the first murder recorded in Biblical History. Cain's sacrifice was not pleasing to God, opposing to Abel. Therefore, jealousy struck in the eyes of Cain and he killed his brother Abel. God asks Cain what has happened to his brother and after all is said and done, Cain is cursed and banished from the land. The Bible teaches us that we should be slow to anger.
2.

3. Christian Arabs?

4."  Imagine our Opportunity" -David Platt

5. Columbus, Ohio

Sylvia Plath

One of Sylvia Path's poems that stuck out to me, "The Tulips", proved to be quite the read. Like the last poet discussed, Elizabeth Bishop, Path shows a more free verse feel in her writing with more modern tones.

The overall feel of this poem seems to be rather peaceful. The lady in this recovery room or bed seems to be content and at peace with everything. She really just wants to lay there and accept where she is in that point in life. The nurses would come in and out of the room to care for her and the feelings of her became more and more grateful.
Then she goes on to talk about the contentment of herself even more by telling the reader she has no interest in the tulips at all. They remind her too much of the pain of the outside world. She then says she feels that the tulips are taking up oxygen out of the room and disturbing her isolation of peacefulness. So she outs them in captivity.
The tulips in the poem remind the lady of the terrible past in a time where she wants to find rest. She wants to take advantage of this time in this hospital like room and treasure the moment. She finds herself to treasure the "snow" like walls and the careful treatment of her wound. The tulips, in her mind, impose on her "at ease" thoughts and bring up the pain of the wound and the outside world.

A poem that stood out to me this week was a poem written by Sarah Lang called "For Tamara". Like "The tulips" the use of first person is also used in this poem. Both poems are about a different situation being analyzed by two different women. This poem by Lang is similar in the context of person but the way "For Tamera" is written, has a little bit more of better thought flow to it. The structure sets up the writer to answer her own questions opposed to Plath's just one person story telling narration.

http://lemonhound.com/2014/04/26/sarah-lang-from-for-tamara/

The fish and the hawthorn

Wow...talk about tragic past for this woman. If this kind of stuff happened to any of my parents, I think I would become a poet to. I can only imagine, this lady simply had a lot to write about. Strangely, she didn't write about her personal anguish all that much. She chose to write more in selective styles that weren't exactly in the style of mourning.

The contents of her poem contain deeper meanings to the subjects she wrote. For example, her poem "The Fish" has a ridiculous amount of figurative language in it. Lines such as "He was speckled with barnacles, fine rossettes of lime, and infested with tiny-white sea lice" and "I thought of the course white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails" give the reader a deeper look into the life of the fish of how worn out the fish really was when he was caught. "He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung at a grunting weight" shows that the fish was completely through with his life. He had given up. The overall tone for the fisherman was sympathy. The fisherman somehow felt the pain for this fish and by the end of the poem, he lets the fish go on his merry way. I guess you could say the undertone of this poem could be a person that is completely worn out by the life. They have gone through it all. They have completely given up and then another trial comes and they just don't fight at all. They simply just let it go. Finally, life throws them a bone, so to speak and lets them go.

George Stanley wrote a poem on Lemonhound that caught my eye because it had similar structure to Bishop's poem "The Fish". The whole poem has a deeper meaning within it. The actual poem "The White Hawthorn" speaks of a flower and the attractions around it but has a deeper meaning of the life presented around it as it ages.
http://lemonhound.com/2014/04/21/george-stanley-two-poems/

William Carlos Williams

 Have you ever decided to sit down and watch a movie with a friend or family member and you get about 3/4 of the way through, only to find out something came up and the movie cannot be finished? Say this movie was a total cliffhanger and not seeing the end of the film would drive you crazy until the next time you decided to sit down and view it again. For most people this would be total travesty.
Ok, let's take it one step further. have you ever been so caught up in a movie or piece of literature that had the makings of a great ending but instead the piece just ends? It leaves the reader with so many questions and they are left in total confusion.

For some of the poems written by William Carlos Williams, they tend to give off this exact feeling for the reader. "The Red Wheelbarrow", for example, is a very short promising statement or poem. "So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow, glazed with rain beside the white chickens." Sure, this is a complete thought, but what is he writing about? What is he trying to do with just this one statement? What happens to the red wheelbarrow? Some people would go insane over lines like these because the poem doesn't give off any more information than it needs to. William's takes a step out from norm when he writes little statements like these and turns people's heads in the process.

This style of poetry is really popular in today's culture. In my opinion, poetry in this style urge a person to think rather than everything set out before them. Don't get me wrong, most poetry of any style gets me thinking in any which way. But I guess the fact that most of the thinking relies on the abrupt ending leaves me to question more about the purpose rather than what the figurative language expressed in other works. Jennica Harper writes a poem by the name of "Every Good Boy" that has a very modern tone to its alliteration. She expresses the subject of the title and then leaves the reader with an ending that leaves the reader wanting more. The poem is really a bunch of generalized statements but its the way the author ends the poem that wants the reader wanting more.
http://lemonhound.com/2014/04/23/jennica-harper-three-poems/

Muriel Rukeyser has been an interesting writer to read in the last week. First off, "The Book of the Dead" proved to be as intense as the hype I read behind it. It was extremely fascinating the way the story was set up within the poem. Starting with the first section of the road when it reads "Past your tall central city's influence, outside it's body: traffic, penumbral crowds, are centered removed and strong" and "These roads will take you into your own country. Select the mountains and follow rivers back, travel the passes." All though there is one of the shorter parts of the overall poem, it does a great job at setting up the background of everything. It's a very random way to start out a poem because it feels like a story within a story. Then finally it reaches the point where it reaches the actual story. So this intro of the direction of how to get to this so called town really hooks the reader into the story of what happened in this town in West Virginia. It then breaks down into a dialogue between reporter and locals. It gives a report of the accident that happens within the town. This strategy of the section "Statement: Philippa Allen" gives a closer look to the poem and gives the reader a realistic look of the events. The testimonies throughout show the raw emotion of these workers and what they went through.
It was super hard trying to find a poet that can be compared to this style, especially modern day. This poem is written in a very unique way and not many people have tried to imitate it to its point. I guess one of the connecting points would be the testimonies of the workers written throughout. One poem that caught my eye that was written very recently is by Karen Connelly and is called "The Children. It's basically written as a testimony of the unborn lives that scream out for life and how special life really is. I would say this is almost considered a testimony of her opinion. In comparison, both of these tell a story within a story. One may go a lot more in depth, but Connelly's work does portray a certain outcry that had similar use within Rukeyser's work.
http://lemonhound.com/2014/04/17/karen-connelly-the-children/

Studying these African American poets in class has definitely been interesting. In these few short weeks, I've learned how these poets used their opinion to control their writings. By this, you can feel almost feel the personal anguish and sorrow some of the poets had felt during this time period. Poetry simply does that to people. It's a scapegoat to putting all your deepest thoughts and feelings. I guess you could say that about blogging in todays generation even though some of it might not be as personal.
Langston Hughes was definitely an outspoken poet about what he believed. The themes he used within his poetry mirrored the direct emotions of the world he grew up in. The use of culture around this time period when he wrote his poetry or shortly there after was prevalent throughout his writings and he sent a huge message to his readers by doing so. He was so outspoken in his writing that people would maybe turn or shake their heads at it today.
A lot of the poems that were written showed not only the tragedy of the time period but also the personal heartache he had from society. But another thing I found very interesting was the depth of historical background that was written in his poetry. His poem "Negro" showed just that. Lines such as "Caesar told me to keep his door steps clean. I brushed the boots of Washington." and "All the way from Africa to Georgia I carried my sorrow songs. I made ragtime" showed how the times were changing for this group of people. It not only showed background but the intensive roots of where they came from.
I guess you could compare this kind of passion to Gertrude Stein's as she promoted feminism within her writings. This subject too was not easily the most accepted thing and the world and may have appeared controversial at times. You could almost take any modern era writer and see that they have some kind of passion that they feel needs to be expressed. Whether the reader agrees with it or not is not really their problem. If it causes some form of controversy then their works will be shown through publicity no matter what.

Mckay's tropical topical poetry

Claude Mckay. Wow...could this guy be any more topical? This guy seriously reminds me of the indie and hardcore artists that come out with one word song titles for their entire album. Relatively, this is exactly what Mckay has done. He picks a topic and rolls with it. He chooses to discuss, describe and expose the subject of choice in a way that captures the attention of his audience. I easily find his poetry a lot easier to read than say Eliot's. He gets right to the point of what he is trying to get across. As such in his poem "The Tropics in New York", he uses descriptive views of the surroundings to illuminate the bigger picture. For example, the lines "Set in the window, bringing memories of fruit trees laden by low singing rills" and "Bananas ripe and green, and ginger root" further emphasize the tropics of New York. But then he goes into a much deeper tone that focuses on the emotion of the moment.
I would say that the poetry Mckay writes has a more modern feel to it even though his works were written in the early part of the 1900's.
http://lemonhound.com/2014/02/28/george-murray-three-poems/
George Murray writes a few poems here and there for lemonhound.  I chose to pick out his poem "Indicator Click" because of his use of topical poetry. For instance, this poem is situational in it's use of topic and takes a look in depth to the specific subject as well as possibly a deeper meaning. This poem, of course, is about the little things that happen here and there while driving down the road. It spurs the emotion to think about the smaller things that happen in everyday life that way may not even notice because we are simply too busy. It kind of does reflect the other poem a bit with the use of this tactic of the simple things of everyday life that we may or may not notice.

The garden

One thing that struck me about H.D.'s poetry was how she slowly crept in to talks of being a recognized poet by simply going along with the flow of expressing herself through her vivid and distinct works. Her writings being recognized in that time period was unheard of. Of course, Pound had a huge part to do with getting her stuff out there but nonetheless, her material spoke for itself and wasn't totally over the top for her audience to read. Compared to Gertrude Stein, she wasn't as outspoken about feminism but was very subtle with her opinion. It almost seemed as if she was just content being where she was and never really pushed the boundaries. As said before, she wrote what she was passionate about and tried not to cause a stir within the poetry world. Although, there may have been a poem or two in her works that would question he audiences motives about supporting a male industry of writers. One poem in particular that stood out to me is the work "Garden". This is a tremendously and beautifully written poem. It gives just an amazing and vivid view of nature throughout. H.D. acts as the narrator making  requests to "mother nature" as we see it and asking certain things to happen within its domain. Lines such as "O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters." and "Cut the heat- plough through it, turning it on either side of your path" really harsh side of nature in a very tender way.
 http://lemonhound.com/2014/03/14/michael-casteels-two-poems-and-one-frog-pond-sudoku/
Another poet I found quite interesting, Michael Casteels, writes a sonnet that has a setting within nature in one of his works. Lines such as "The irises arrive, serene and swallowing
the orchard" and "A pheasant
integrates from treetop to treetop; the curtains
part and there she is" help set the mood of the overall poem. Surprisingly this poem is about an out of order type writer but the author does a great job captivating its surroundings within its setting.

The Waste land of Skin and Fish

Eliot's "Wasteland" or really any of his poetry, for that matter, was very hard to articulate and analyze to any degree. This is definitely a poem you can actually write a couple commentaries on because of the material presented with the poem. You can tell that his material is very well thought out and used in a very cultured and refined manner. After discussing it in the last class, reading it for the first time was very confusing because of the amount of information and different points of narration given throughout. The narration is very hard to follow and it confuses the reader because it switches off suddenly without any kind of notice.
I'm going to compare Jaime Forsythe's poem "Skin to Fish", a more modern work, to T.S. Eliot's Wasteland. For Eliot's poem, he uses an enormous amount of symbolism to represent the picture of the wasting away of society as we know it. Forsythe uses a similar tactic with this of giving a tremendous amount of imagery within the text keep the reader interested. Both of these authors use clever words or illustrations to further identify the point or story they are telling. From an outside perspective, "The Waste Land" is a rather large poem conditioned to go into every living detail that the chosen narrator dictates if you really sit down and look into it. But from a broader perspective or outside view, Eliot paints such a big picture of what is going on that it's almost hard to fathom the idea of what the actual point of the poem is. Fortunately for Forsythe's poem, his poetry could've gone to a deeper level of illustration and he could've gone for a couple more pages, but he chose not to. He puts in just enough to keep the reader interested. Of course, his poem was found on a blog site, so I guess He had no choice but to keep it to a certain length for attention deficit reasons with his audience. There is definitely a lot more I could say about both of these poems but these are few things that stood out right off the bat.
http://lemonhound.com/2014/03/07/jaime-forsythe-two-poems/

Ezra Pound's poetry is very significant in the way that a lot of his works feel like a narrative with a meaning behind it. In the poem "Portrait d'une Femme", Pound paints a very vivid picture for his reader and is anything but discreet when it comes to telling the story within his poem. "In a station of the Metro", Pound uses two lines to portray a picture of a Paris subway. But is it really? To the common reader this could mean a lot of different things. Well let's take a closer look. "The apparition of these faces in the crowd." The common consensus is that the poet is simply seeing different faces within the station. Well yes, this is true, but if the faces are blended together, wouldn't that mean that the station would in fact appear crowded? On to the next line, Pound recites "Petals on a wet, black bough." This line, in fact, takes us to back to the first line. It simply describes the faces of the people. I can't say I'm exactly sure what the author is getting at but it seems as though he's telling the audience of the gloominess of the subway station. After reading this, I turn to the next page to find that the poem has ended. This came as a disappointment personally because Pound did an amazing job drawing his audience in just two lines. You could actually dwell on these two lines for a while and still come up with different ideas of what they mean. So why isn't there more to the story? He definitely left me in the middle of the subway station without a ticket on this one.
George Murray recently submitted a few poems to lemonhound recently and one of them appeared as a simple narrative to the common reader. "Proper Punctuation" being the poem, it sets up a stage of something that's about to happen and is situational. Compared to Pound's two line poem, this one just isn't as formal and seems to be "dumbed down" to a sense where it doesn't make you think at all. Of course, the writer had his own style and his own message he was trying to give with his form but it's no where near the craftiness of Pound. http://lemonhound.com/2014/02/28/george-murray-three-poems/

UMMMM...WHAT?

Gertrude Stein....wow. I could actually stop right there for this blog and leave the rest to the imagination but I'm not. I have to say her poetry is unlike any other I've ever read in my entire lifeand let's just say that the form did not exactly catch my fancy while reading it. Just reading through one of her free verse works last week made me feel so many emotions at once. Obviously "frustrated" would be a big one to set in play, maybe even confusion. I have the utmost respect for people that can actually get through her poetry in one sitting. You can tell this woman was actually a genius and strived to be different. She seems to stress routine of everyday conversation as it is processed through our head. I really can't see myself thinking in this form or manner or at least talking like this at all. I guess you could say that reading this aloud can sound a lot like OCD from an outside perspective. But what do I know right? I've learned a long time ago that in the so called "fine arts", what doesn't sound or look great to me, may be a complete work of art for another. There's always a reason that someone writes or does something a particular way. It's not there by accident. Although this form of poetry makes me feel queasy to a point, it is poets like Stein that give the arts such diversity within the works. With that claim, I have a hard time dismissing her poetry altogether despite my opinion.

Julie Mclsaac writes a few poems on her blog that are worth referencing. The one I chose, "The Old Punk" may be a lot more formal than Stein's but has a free verse feel to it. You can definitely see that Stein with her "Patriarchal Poetry" paved the way for aspiring poets for many generations to come. Especially with feminism prevalent in her poetry, Mclsaac also uses the stance in her writing. As I said before, this woman's poetry is nowhere near as confusing as Stein's but you can definitely somewhat of an influence in her works. http://lemonhound.com/2013/09/27/julie-mcisaac-after-basho/

As I read through the works of Paul Laurence Dunbar this week, I found his poems both intriguing with his use of dialect and his use of puzzling metaphors. First used in "We wear the Mask", Dunbar uses the object of a mask to stress the idea of how a person hides his emotion through just putting on an everyday fake smile. I guess you could say this poem really spoke to me because everyone has those days where we struggle to keep on fighting. We do our absolute best to show our strength in the time of weakness and put on a front of having everything under control. But in reality, sometimes we can be broken inside and it's all we can do just to put on a that famous fake smile of ours and go about day to day life. This poem wasn't exactly the most puzzling thing in the world to figure out but him using this symbolism is pretty spot on.
"When Malindy Sings" was another poem that stood out with its unique dialogue. It is really amazing to me how he can use this type of accent in his writing and still know exactly what is going on. You could almost tell that Dunbar knew exactly how to use the accent in the appropriate way. The culture must've been prevalent in his past for him to imitate it that well.
As I was searching for current poems, the options were not very limitless as I expected but I came across a poet from Winnipeg named Jon Paul Fiorentino. His poem "In Perfect Winnipeg" shows his cultural attachment to his country as he lists the different activities performed in each providence. Not a lot of similarities between these poets at all, but as far as cultural, they both are true to their roots.
 http://lemonhound.com/2013/09/27/jon-paul-fiorentino-two-poems/

formalization overkill?

One poem that stuck out to me out of the works of Robert Frost is one of his shorter poems called "Design". The overall structure of the poem seems to be overly dominated by similes and metaphors. Examples include "I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, on a white heal-all, holding up a moth like a white piece of rigid satin cloth" and "like the ingredients of a witches broth". Frost uses the characters of a moth and a spider as a metaphor in his writing to further emphasize the point he is trying to get across. His overall form is very "by the book" when using these different types of comparisons and very difficult to understand. For the common person reading this, confusion can be prevalent because the type of language used in the poem is very formal like. At first glance, even for me, the poem's linguistics distracted me from trying to understand the meaning of the poem.

Another poet I found, Christine Shan Shan Hou, writes a poem with some similarities and glaring differences in her writing. Her poem, "Heavy Head Cubism" talks about the modernization of the world and how civilization has taken over some of the more peaceful things in life. First off, she uses different similes and comparisons in a couple places, for instance " I am cruelest
when bumbling and weeping like a paper lily hiding from rain." Opposed to Frost's poem, Hou uses more modern language in her writings. Obviously, Frost has his own time period working against him, but for me, Hou's poem was that much more easy to read and understand. Sometimes being too formal in your writing is overkill. Don't get me wrong, Frost's poem is great but sometimes you don't need the full display to get what something means. http://lemonhound.com/2013/12/22/christine-shan-shan-hou-three-poems/

A Glimpse of a Car Shop

Walt Whitman's "A Glimpse" really shifts its reader back to the time period of when the poet himself lived. Lines such as "Of a crowd and of workmen and drivers in a bar room around the stove late of a winter's night" and "amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest" really personify the surroundings for the time period. Whitman does a wonderful job at putting us in that small town bar where all the drivers and workers go to relax and take a load off. Although short, Whitman cuts  right to the point of his poem when he uses a small child as the object of attention. In the very last line "There we, two content, in happy being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word" draws the eye of affection and completely changes the direction of the poem. When Whitman puts the last few lines in, he gets the point across of having an emotion so innocent that doesn't fit in the surroundings that it touches the reader.
In comparison, a blog I came across  posted a series of poems written by Krystal Languell. One of her poems named "Hydraulic" really caught my eye. She writes a situational poem about sitting in a car shop and waiting for the full report about what is wrong with his or her car. Along with this, she writes that a discussion is taking place between the men fixing the car. The men have fixed the car but the person in the poem learns their lesson about taking their car to be fixed in with places that do not claim sales tax.
Although the poem in this situation doesn't match up to the formalness of Whitman's, they do show similarities. One of the major one's is the situational poetry used by both poets. As mentioned before, they both take the reader into the situation and make them feel as if they were actually there.

Languell's poem: http://lemonhound.com/2013/09/27/krystal-languell-five-poems/