Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all my readers, although I don't think there are any of you. In this post, I'll be finishing up Poems to Live By: In Troubling Times and tomorrow I'll be starting Holocaust Poetry. 


The last two sections of the first book are "I Gave Away That Kid: War and Violence" and "Ourselves Again: Peace and Justice." From looking at the  section titles throughout the book and the poems, it's clear that the book is a sort of journey through dealing with turmoil, from the initial event to moving on and returning to peace.

The first poem of this section is "American Wars" by Ursula K. Le Guin, who is an author I have dealt with much in my Creative Writing class, although never with her poems. And I really like this poem because it says something that many people my generation have felt as a result of the wars in the Middle East. When we were younger we learned about many wars throughout history, but they all seemed distant and in the past, but as said in Le Guin's poem, we have war happening right now. It has become real, which is a scary thought.
"Conscientious Objector" is another particularly noteworthy poem in this section, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, someone I've always found to be quite interesting. In it, the narrator refuses to assist Death in killing people, which is directly representative of not wanting to go to battle in war. I had never thought of war this way before, although I have never really been a full supporter of it either. In a way, war is just helping Death collect lives.

I think the first poem in the last section of the book is brilliant, or at least the idea behind it. It's "When They Sleep" by Rolf Jacobsen and it says we are all children when we sleep: innocent and peaceful. Aside from what may be going on in our minds, especially bad dreams, I have to agree with this. Jacobsen writes "They open their hands and breathe/ in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them" (129). When we're sleeping, we don't really have the ability to think ill thoughts toward others or commit sinful acts, unless you have an extreme case of sleepwalking. If only we could live our lives as if we were sleeping....but be awake.
"What I Leave to My Son" by Du Tu Le is a really simple poem that speaks of leaving a better world to our sons, which is something that we all aim to do, I hope.
The very last poem of the section and book is "The Place Where We Are Right" by Yehuda Amichai. It was translated from Hebrew by Stephen Mitchell. The poem says the place where we are right will not be the place where flowers grow, but a place where the ground is trampled and doubts and love has dug up the world. This poem is taking me some time to get, although I think it's saying that as humans, our lives will always be filled with turmoil and stress, but also love. We must come to terms with that. The end of the poem, "And a whisper will be heard in the place/ where the ruined/ house once stood" (142) possibly is saying that all the troubles in life will pass and all that will be left is a memory of what happened. I was hoping the final poem in this book would be good and this one certainly is.

Overall, this book has been very interesting, and I've been surprised to find that it's more complex than I thought. I had originally thought it would just be a collection of poems all pertaining to how to deal with troubles in life. However, I have found it is more of a journey, with each poem having an individual facet in the way we should handle troubling times. At my current point in life, I'm not dealing with any major events or issues, but if I were, this book could potentially help a great deal. I'll have to remember it and I would recommend it to anyone.