“Welcome Morning”
Meaning: This joyful poem celebrates the beauty and wonderment of everyday actions, objects, and situations. The speaker expresses her joy in hairbrushes, newly washed towels, eggs for breakfast, the whistle of a kettle, her table settings, and the sight of birds at her kitchen window. She seems to be happy about the gift of life, and she believes that God exists in even the simplest and most mundane things. The poem abounds with religious imagery and figures of speech such as “the chapel of eggs,” “the godhead of the table,” and “the holy birds at the kitchen window/peck[ing] into their marriage of seeds.” She states that God resides in “this laughter of the morning,” and she ends the poem expressing her desire to share her joy, since joy is meant to be celebrated and shared (“The joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,/ dies young.”)
Sound: The poem contains assonance (pea, green, each, mean; kitchen, in) and alliteration (kettle, coffee; morning, mean; pain, palm).
Language: The poet skillfully balances her use of both figurative and literal language. Her figures of speech generally compare everyday objects to religious relics or religious symbols.
Literal concrete images: “the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning”; “the table that I set my silver, plate, cup upon, each morning”; “pea green house”
Figures of speech: “chapel of eggs” (metaphor); “outcry from the kettle” (personification); “godhead of the table” (metaphor); “marriage of seeds” (metaphor)
Form: The poem is written in conversational free verse, but the poet does repeat the line “each morning” as a kind of refrain. The repetition of the refrain has a kind of hymn-like and prayer-like quality that mirrors the poem’s content.
“These Have I Loved”
Meaning: In her poem the author, Barbara Fainstein, is simply listing an array of images that give her happiness. On first glance this makes the poem seem simplistic and mundane, but on closer examination the reader notices the skillful use of various poetic techniques. Miss Fainstein’s list doesn’t include the “Big Ticket” items that many people may include in such a list. There’s no gold, money, lavish gifts, jewels, gemstones, big vehicles, or luxury items of any sort. There aren’t even any of the emotional “Big Ticket” items such as love, loyalty, trust, or passion. On the contrary, Miss Fainstein’s list includes simple, everyday examples such as rain, flowers, sand castles, warm blankets, and light breezes. The theme is that simple pleasures make life worth living.
Language: In keeping with her simplicity theme, Miss Fainstein employs easily understandable, concrete language. However, her images are not delivered simplistically. One technique she uses is that she emphasizes contrast. “Warm rain” contrasts with “cool dew”; “green frogs” contrast with “pink peonies”; “sweet” contrasts with “bitter”; “cold nights” contrast with “warm blankets.” Another technique Miss Fainstein employs is that she appeals to all of the senses (she is especially fond of tactile imagery), as indicated below:
Sight:green frogs; lily pads; pink peonies; dew drops; red ink; chubby, blond-haired children building sand castles; mud puddles moving as the wind makes tiny ripples across them; large footprints; old men on park benches feeding the flocking pigeons
Sound: dripping over tile roofs; frogs bellowing; crinkly paper
Touch: warm rain; damp with cool dew drops; wet grass between my toes; crinkly paper; mud puddles moving as the wind makes tiny ripples across them; wet sand; cold nights and warm, wooly blankets; light wind upon my face; wet paint brushes; rough rice paper
Smell/Taste: sweet potato cart; bitter city streets
Sound: The poem contains several examples of alliteration: pink peonies; dew drops; mud, moving, makes; sweet … city streets; warm, wooly … wind … wet; rough rice; feeding, flockingas well as assonance: mud, puddles; city, bitter; light, rice
Form: This free verse poem contrasts not only colors, tactile sensations, and types of taste, but also it contrasts line length: lines are as long as ten words and as short as one. I believe Miss Fainstein is reflecting her belief that it isn’t the size or length or breadth of something that makes it special, and that even the one word, “silence,” can be precious.
“You Understand the Requirements”
Meaning: Have you ever been so angry that thoughts and images incoherently fired through your brain like a steady barrage of nightmarish sights and sounds? That appears to be the case with the speaker of “You Understand the Requirements.” The word “sorry” echoes through her head like the blare of an annoying alarm clock that won’t shut off. At first glance the poem seems to be a random hodgepodge of phrases that begs the question: Who is sorry and why?
The speaker of the poem appears to have been enrolled in a graduate school program in some sort of obscure theological or historical field related to “16th Century English Anglicanism.” Getting into graduate school is not easy, and taking graduate classes can be grueling, not to mention expensive. Often one has to put one’s life and career on hold while one meanders through the politicized world of getting published, meeting deadlines, and pleasing your graduate committee. Therefore, if one suddenly gets booted out of such a program, the news would have to be devastating. This apparently is the fate of this poem’s speaker. She has received a letter from the college that basically states, “We are sorry to have to tell you that you have failed your comprehensive exam satisfactorily. You understand the requirements…. We regret you will not be able to stay or finish … best wishes for the future … it has been a [pleasure working with you] … [We are simply following] the university policy …” The detached tone of this rejection letter infuriates the recipient/speaker, who seems completely out of control of her emotions and whose mental state isn’t very stable. She’s extremely upset by the news because her dreams and goals have just been shattered by a form letter.
Is her exit from the program fair and warranted? The poem suggests there may have been political and personal factors that led to her ouster. She probably had a conflict with one of the professors on her committee about her professional appearance and demeanor (“your hair should have been/piled up higher”’; “didn’t look as professional/as desirable/or sorry dignified”), which certainly didn’t help with the evaluation of her comprehensive exams.
Form: The form of the poem mirrors the content. There’s little logical order to the words, the punctuation, or the lines, and this lack of a coherent structure reflects the chaotic and furious state of the speaker’s mind. Everything is rushing and bombarding her brain as she tries to come to terms with what just happened to her.
Sound: The poem sounds chaotic, disjointed, and choppy, again reflecting the speaker’s frenzied state of mind. There are no poetic sound techniques other than repetition of the words “sorry” and “regret,” which echo inside her head like an evil chant.
Language: The language is literal but disconnected, disjointed, and illogical. On closer inspection, one can see the contents of a rejection letter interspersed among the “sorry’s” and “regrets.” The tone of the letter sent to the speaker is formal and impersonal, which makes the speaker’s anger and sarcasm completely understandable.
“20th Century Survivors”
Meaning: The speaker of this poem is sitting in a bar (“we’re cosmic and critical,/sneering in some bar”) with a loved one with whom he has been quarreling (“Must we as enemies remain?”). The breach between the two of them seems serious, and the speaker seems to be feeling hopelessness and despair (We have no answers,/don’t even know the questions”). The use of alcohol isn’t helping them work out their issues (“deadening that part of us/we claim is more enlightened”). The speaker’s cynicism shows when he comments on the TV show that he’s watching on one of the televisions inside the bar. On the show, “the good guys” (like himself) are “always winning,” but in his life he never seems to “emerge unscathed” from conflict. The speaker’s hopelessness is reflected in the third stanza when he compares his and his loved one’s plight to that of “shipwrecked sailors” whose “hearts keep fleeing to opposite ends of the island.” The figurative language in the rest of the poem (“waves,” “ends of the island,” “rescue,” etc.) extend upon this comparison. The speaker wants to patch things up with his loved one, but he needs help, and none is forthcoming (“Nobody comes to my rescue./Nobody’s coming to yours.”). At the end of the poem, the speaker shows his neediness and vulnerability in his appeals to his loved one (“Hold me under our stars”) and in his wrenchingly painful similes (“let my tears ooze out slowly like blood from a wound”). His despair is evident in his last appeal to her: “cuddle me like a baby/with a touch like waves on my shoulder/’til I fall asleep or die//And wake up desperate to find you.” His depression is severe enough to kill him, and only she can offer him hope and consolation.
Sound: Sound techniques are not as important as word choice in the poem, as there is no rhyme, onomatopoeia, or rhythm. There is some assonance and alliteration, as shown below:
Alliteration: questions/cosmic/critical; good guys; sit, sailors, survivors;
Assonance: sleep, fleeing; entice, minds; we, emerge; untainted, unscathed; deadening, enlightened; blood, cuddle; ooze, wound
Language: The poet balances his use of both literal and figurative language and uses vivid and powerful word choice to engage the reader emotionally.
Literal Language: The entire first stanza and most of the second stanza.
Figurative Language:
Metaphors: “we spit fire”; “survivors on a beach”; “opposite ends of the island”; “rescue”;
Similes: “We sit like shipwrecked sailors”; “Let my tears ooze out slowly/like blood from a wound”; “a touch like waves on my shoulder”
Personification: “The television waves/entice our minds to sleep,/yet our hearts keep fleeing”
Form: The poem is written in free verse, with no regular pattern of line length, stanza length, rhythm, or rhyme. The content dictates the form in that the first and second stanza describe the setting of the poem in a mostly literal way and thus provide a backdrop for the speaker’s later musings. The third stanza introduces the comparison (“We sit like shipwrecked sailors”) that is extended throughout the rest of the poem, in which the poet primarily employs figurative rather than literal language. Two of the stanzas in the poem are only two lines long in order to emphasize their emotional impact. Therefore, although the poem is written in free verse, it is not “unstructured” but instead has a definite reason for the way it is constructed by Gregory Markus.