haj7’s Blog

I found this poem to be quite aweing. It seems that Edgar Lee Masters is writing from a man who ’s (obviously) awaiting his birthday, yet he is just looking back upon his life. He talks about being naive in his younger years “As yeasty heroes in their braggart teens Spout learnedly of war, who never saw A cannon aimed.” He deals with the teenage spirit of being cocky and wanting the excitments (war) that an older and experienced man. Drink after drink, the man in this poem just keeps on looking back on with his friends about the constraint of his soul with its “imprisoned wings.”

In the poem, the speaker also deals with love problems. Almost all of his problems have to do with love in some way or another with “The woman is somewhere, And that’s what tortures, when I think this field
So often gleaned could blossom once again If I could find her.” But I love it how at the end of the poem that even though he has delt so many issues in his life, all he wants to do is just “walk and hear the lark” which is something that I find worthy of putting on a head-stone.

Afred Moir – “Where I chanced to see the book in a window, With its garish cover luring my eye? And why did my soul respond to the book, As I read it over and over?”

The quote in this poem stood out because it kind of reminds me of tragic flaws. The book represents a recorded memory in which the “luring eye” cannot avoid. Responding to the book is like trying to repeat the past or make things right again like how Gatsby and Ahab tried to do. Reading it over and over represents how the menacing memory can just linger in your mind again and again while damaging your conscience. Sometimes a memory is best left alone instead of being revisited over and over again. Nostalgia can lead to much anguish in one’s soul.

One of the poems that I found interesting was Mrs. Sibley.  In her poem it’s just describing the blatent truths behind everthing like earth- rock, stars-gravitation, etc. However, the thing that seemed to intregue me the most was when she said, “My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.” The reason why this brief poem seems to hold so much meaning is that I can relate it to my life. One of the biggest mysteries isn’t the physical world, but more or so the human mind. The human mind seems to be one of the biggest mysteries of all. The will of a human being can seem so spiratic than anything witnessed in nature. I love it how “secrets” are compared with such cosmic things as the sun and earth.

“Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, and with broken pride and shameful hummility; I sank into the grave”- Ollie McGee pg. 2

I found the relationship of the McGee’s to be quite an interesting one. From what we can tell from the headstones, we know that they weren’t really a happy couple in life. It seemed that Fletcher drained the life out of Ollie and took away her youth. When someone’s youth is taken away, it could mean that their younger years were wasted or that they’ve basically been stressed to the point in which it physically drainds them.

Deacon Taylor’s headstone was also one that I found interesting. It was about how a deacon of the church died from a bad liver from drinking too much in private. I think this applies to life that even the “purest” of us has to indulge once in a while. Taylor seemed to be going almost against human nature by living a pure life but a human being and not God, we will always succumb to basic desires and wants. It’s kind of ironic that such a man in a holy position died of something from something that contributes to a “sinful” lifestyle.