I, like most likely everyone else in the class do not understand poetry. I really can’t interpret what the poet is trying to say and when I do it is always way off base and doesn’t make sense, but I’m going to take a stab at some of these poems just for fun.
The first poem, Sleeping Out at Easter discouraged me from reading any of the ones that followed, but here’s how I interpreted it and please don’t poke fun. There was a common reoccurrence of the word light so I knew that there was something there to be interpreted.
-Line 2 “This forest is drawing a light.”
-Line 10 “A light has told them their song.”
-Line 19 “A light should come round the world,”
-Line 33 “For the King’s grave turns him to light.”
-Line 46 and 48 “For the King’s grave turns you to light.”
I saw this light as representing a calling, or something that needs to be accomplished by someone. The calling I thought could have been a need for a change in the way a person lives their life. For instance line 39 states, “Of a father returning from darkness,” and I saw this father figure as being the person who saw this “light” and turned his life around. He changed his lifestyle and in a sense went from bad to good. Another thing that was repeated numerous times was this talk about the king’s grave. In line 48 it says, “For the king’s grave turns you to light.” I couldn’t figure out what it could possibly stand for but I know that whatever it is it helps people change their bad behavior into good behavior. So overall when a person sees this light and the king’s grave they change their lifestyles to make the dead king happy? I hope this is remotely close.
The next poem that I decided to live life dangerously and try to interpret was The Underground Stream. This one, I think is about a person who is unhappy because it takes the person a long and drawn out time to get a smile. It has to go down the well, through the stones, in the water, and back up through the ground. It just seems like it takes too much to get this person to be able to smile and that saddens me because smiling is great. Also I noticed that “light” was used in this poem to in line 15, “Of the world, of light, and of me.” I don’t really know whether it is supposed to mean the same thing as in Sleeping Out at Easter, but I do know he loves “light”. James Dickey, in this poem used some pretty interesting word usage. I loved this part of the poem, “And the smile I filtered through stone motionless lie, not murmuring but listening only, and hearing my image of joy flow down.” I love when poets make things seem alive and like they have person-like qualities. For instance, the smile being able to hear, it just makes the smile seem so be human and have human characteristics and I love that kind of writing.
I don’t know whether any of this makes sense, it most likely does not but like I said before poetry is not my strong point.