Blog #2
I hate naming blogs, so I’m just going to number them.
The assignment was to read one of three poems and blog about them: Louise Gluck’s “Midsummer”, Paisley Rekdal’s ”Why Some Girls Love Horses”, and Peter Everwine’s ”Rain”. I read the three of them and struggled between picking between “Rain” and “Midsummer”. Unable to understand or just get the flow and meaning in some parts of Rekdal’s poem, I had to cast that one aside to the looming pile of poems that I don’t have any feelings about. I wound up picking “Rain” only because it felt like it had a little more mystery in it. The speaker of this poem is an older man, he’s struggling with a wave of nostalgia brought upon by the sound of the rain. It’s a very tactile piece, heavy with the smells, but more so with sounds. The rain, the loon and the lapping of water are consistent sounds that carry the reader through the poem until the end. Even though it was a poem about the loss of the speaker’s father (among others unnamed) the poem seemed pregnant with emotion, as if it were about to give birth to a new self, one that had more of an understanding of these emotions. It was also a pregnant pause of one’s own loneliness. “Rain” used the desolate call of a loon to bring forth the lonely and abandoned tone in the poem. I also really liked the poem because, to me, it felt as though it was written at the time approaching the Witching Hour, when everything has more potency and virility. It is a time when thoughts turn hazy and concrete lives are left in the background. “Rain” is relatable to most audiences, especially if they have lost someone close to them.
I have to give a nod towards “Midsummer” because of the relatability, sensuality, and cadence. It had great rhythm and it flowed well with the topic of the time of sexual discovery in adolescence. The poem also dealt with nostalgia, but it was in such a way that it celebrated life and exploration.
