Favorite Poems: Mostly My Nightmares Are Dullby Andrew Hudgins

Page 857 of the Norton

It is kind of a long poem, so sorry I am not typing it out. Anyway, I was drawn to this poem (in the tone section) because of its sarcasm and snarl, which I find amusing and sympathy toward the writer. The speaker talks about "autum nights" and hte death of his relatives. I think that the speaker is stuck in a suburbia, due to the fact that there are seasons and autumn, where you need a house to have leaves to rake.

This speaker also alludes to Shakespeare's "To be" speach where dreams are what occurs during death, and how they could be nightmares or good dreams. The speaker dreams of his dead relatives, therefore having a nightmare.

I expecially like the last "couplet" so to speak the concluding three lines of the poem:
"I wake, they die again, and I walk out
into a day, I'll live as carelessly
as if I'll only-fat chance- live it once"

This excerpt sums up his ideas regarding his nightmares, and how they reoccur. His tone of "fat chance" seems resentful and condesending, as if he jsut wants the nightmares to go away.

Favorite Poems: After a Death Roo Borson

After a Death
pg. 967

Seeing that there's no other way,
I turn his absence into a chair.
I can sit in it,
gaze out through the window.
and then go out into the world.
And I can return then with my useless love,
to rest,
because the chair is there.

I was drawn to this poem becasue of the imagery that was set up in such a simple poem, as it is short. I like this poem becasue it sets up such a feeling of sadness and comfort in only eight lines. This poem is under the language section, appropriatly, as seeing how she uses a chair for a metaphor of hte loved one she lost. The speaker, presumeably a woman, as she talksabout "his love" might be talking about her father or a lover, as the poem is unclear. The ambiguity however allows the reader to use their imagination and interperate the poem uniquely.

If she were talkign about her father, the "chair" might be the support of her parental figure, and how she still needs his support to live in saying "seeing theres no other way". The cahir is her stability, as it is "always there" which provides comfort for the girl in her sorrows. The peom can easily be about her lover or husband, as she takes her "useless love" (maybe she is not ready to go back out into the world) as she returns to the chair. The window acts as a means of distraction, and a look into the other side of sorts.