Final Post!

For my last and final post I chose to write about "After Tonight" by Gary Soto.  Though this poem may seem rather grim and quite saddening  there was a much different meaning that I picked up on as I read the poem.  The narrator describes different scenarios that involved some sort of wait or expectation of something or someone."You expect your daughter/to be at the door at any moment/And your husband to arrive/with the night.(Line 19-22)  These are simple everyday expectations of a mother/wife that she may never think those expectations could be gone in a blink of an eye.  Tomorrow isn't always guaranteed for anyone so why do we as people always expect everything and everyday to be the same.  We should always cherish the life that we have and the loved ones who are in it.  We should of course always expect the best from them but never expect that they are guaranteed to always be a part of our life.  This is the idea that I believe Soto was trying to make with this poem.  Never expect what you think should be certain because nothing is ever guaranteed in life or ever certain.

"We real cool" By Gwendolyn Brooks

Brooks herself has stated that when she wrote this poem she drew her inspiration from music and as you read the poem you are immediately thrown into a rhythm and beat.   Brooks drew from the environment she found herself in and the world around her.  Jazz was one of the most influential forms of music heard around the world.  Jazz was a creative art that in turn influenced others like Brooks to be creative in their works by drawing inspiration from simple things like a pool game or the actions of two men at a pool house.  This poem is a musical reality that uses real life people, and kids who thought they were real cool because they were doing everything they wanted.  They followed the beat of the drum and the sound of the sweet music that existed within their soul.  That is what Brooks was writing about.  She saw that people were real cool because they allowed inspiration to be a part of their life.  "We real cool" was indeed a real cool poem that brought creativity to the reader by the form of sound and music.

"Horses" by Ted Hughes

This particular poem begins and ends in darkness.  It's as if the world has frozen and become this horrible place where their is but one wrong belief.  All this talk of a grey world really represents Hughes views on the idea that the holiness and purity of faith and religion has been lost forever.  The horses that are seen and described in the poem are the only thing left that still holds the faith and purity that once existed.  It's as if Hughes still wanted to leave a piece of hope for the lonely world hoping that someone or something many see what the world has become; the world has become nothing but a lonely dark place where the idea of faith and religion is just that an idea that will never have true meaning if the people do not stop seeing it and not believing in it.  Though Hughes really no longer believed in the sanctity of having faith I believe that he wrote this poem as a form of hope.  Hope that someone somewhere could restore the belief that he and many others once had.  Hope that the one thing that was still pure had the power to restore the world from the lonely grey world that now surrounds everyone as they go through life.