Dudley Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham"

When asked which of many poems moved me the most, I automatically think of "Ballad of Birmingham". While it wasn't on the list, and was only one of many (250) poems I read, I can't forget about it and the chills it gives me. This poem is absolutely beautiful in its language and chillingly tragic in its story and message.

The necessary background for this poem is pretty simple. In 1963, a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama shortly before Sunday service began. The church was predominantly black and was a meeting spot for civil rights leaders. While the 60's was a time known for the advancements in civil rights in the US, it was still a time of racism and persecution, as evident in this appalling event.
You can read more about the incident here: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing

The poem itself focuses on a mother and her daughter living in Birmingham, Alabama before the bombing. To start, the young girl asks her mother if she can go to participate in a Freedom March. Fearing for her daughter's life, the mother tells her that she must not go to the Freedom March and instead go sing in the church choir. Despite her mother's attempts to keep her safe, the daughter dies when the church is bombed. Her mother runs to the church after hearing the explosion and looks through the rubble for her daughter only to find her shoe.

Sadness and tragedy is seeped into every aspect of this poem. First, there is the cold irony; The mother told her daughter to go to church instead of the Freedom March to keep her safe, and yet it was in the supposedly safe church that her daughter was killed. The message isn't any more cheerful; when people are persecuted, there is no place that is really safe for them. Going to church was no safer than going on a Freedom March because the hatred of the racists was not confined to the streets but rather invaded the lives of everyone it seeked to destroy. There's really no positive way to look at it.

Besides having a real, tragic story to it, this poem really moved me because it was so raw and emotional. The daughter is obviously innocent, as her only wish is to join her friends and march peacefully for freedom. The mother is shown to be caring and compassionate, as her one wish is to keep her daughter, her baby safe. And then, when the mother hears the explosion, she immediately runs to the church in fear and looks for her baby, only to find a shoe. The fear is evident where "Her eyes grew wet and wild" and I couldn't help but feel the desperation in her heart when the mother "clawed through bits of glass and brick" looking for her sweet child.

I was so disturbed, saddened, and generally moved by this poem that I couldn't help but ask to read it to my parents. It was my mistake, for as I read it my voice threatened to crack and I thought I might cry. It's hard to say what my "favorite" lines were, because this poem is so tragic and reflects a tragic part of American history. I can say, however, that the 6th and last stanzas moved me the most. The read, "The mother smiled to know her child was in the sacred place, but that smile was the last smile that came upon her face" and "She clawed through bits of glass and brick, then lifted out a shoe. 'Oh, here's the shoe my baby more, but, baby, where are you?" I can only hope that there will be a time when such poems are no longer created due to a lack of such material.

Carolyn Forché’s “The Colonel”

If I were asked to point out a piece of poetry without actually reading it, I would look for the format of the words; I would expect the lines to be broken up in such a way that they are more separate than if they were in a paragraph or an essay. However, we can't rely upon the format of a piece of writing in order to decide if it is poetry. Poems, after all, can take all kinds of shapes and forms. They can be shaped like animals or objects, they can be pushed to one side with each part of the sentence containing only a few words, and they can even be formatted so that all the sentences are right next to each other like in a regular paragraph.

Keeping this in mind, I decided that I could not rely upon the physical format of the poem "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché in order to decide if it was a poem or not. Since poems are so much more than their physical representation, I knew that if this really was a poem, it would be apparent in the words.

First, the choice of words led me to believe that this piece of writing was a poem. I felt that there were numerous parts in the poem that were very poetic. The author included phrases such as, "the moon swung bare on its black cord", "they were like dried peach halves", and "It came alive there". If this were not enough, the last two lines of the poem are undoubtedly signs of poetry. The last two lines are "Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground." While it is possible to skim over these last two lines and accept them as mere descriptions, they hold a much deeper meaning. These last two lines capture the author's feeling that the inanimate ears represented their living (or once living) whole selves, and enforces the idea that the colonel was oppressing the people he was exerting power over. Also, while repeating the start of the sentence as "some of the ears on the floor" would usually be unacceptable in a developed paragraph, it is perfectly at home in the art of poetry where repetition is a common technique.

I also felt that overall the poem was meant to explain a situation/event that meant something to the author and stuck with her. One of the elements of a poem that makes it different from other forms of poetry is that it's meant to express something that has to be expressed through metaphors and abstract statements; it's not enough to say "the crazy colonel cut of the people's ears and I saw them." If the author felt that a mere description would do, then she would have written an essay or developed paragraph. This is an example of poetry because it uses description and metaphorical statements to try and get the reader to understand and feel the emotions that the author felt.

While "The Colonel" may not look like a poem from a distance, the emotion and language used are definitely poetic. Turns out you can't judge a poem by its format. "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché is a poem.

"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe

Every time I hear the name Edgar Allen Poe used, I automatically think of creepiness and darkness. Edgar Allen Poe is a very well known poet for poems such Annabel Lee, and I remember him as writing the play The Telltale Heart. Concerning Annabel Lee, one of the elements of the poem that makes it extra creepy is the use of rhyme.

Annabel Lee has a dark topic and is creepy even without the use of rhyming. The topic being the author's love for Annabel Lee and her dying is very sad and dark. As part of the poem, every other line rhymes (ABCB pattern), except for the very end where there are two couplets (AABB pattern). The incorporation of rhyme in the poem makes it sound like a lullaby; there is a very clear, simple meter, and if you changed the words to something more light, it could very well be a children's poem.

Making a dark poem sound like a lullaby adds to the creepiness of the poem. Usually, one would associate a lullaby with a baby or small child and therefore life, yet the poem is very obviously about death and mortality. Bringing together the feelings of life with the feelings of death is very chilling in that it shows how close the two are. The lullaby-like rhyming of the poem forces the reader to recognize death as a part of life as opposed to some far off thing that only happens to certain people.

While the combination of lively rhyming with a deathly theme may seem ironic, but in reality is like shining a light on mortality of man; what's creepier than that?

William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just to Say"

Personally, I am a big fan of William Carlos Williams' poetry. I've always preferred shorter poems that can portray their message in a more concise form. While my favorite poem by him is "The Red Wheelbarrow" I also really love his poem "This Is Just to Say".

When first reading "This Is Just to Say", it may not look like much and may not have a clear message. The poem is very short, a mere 12 lines. There isn't any clear meter in it, and it doesn't rhyme at all. In fact, it looks like it is nothing more than a note to someone that was then formatted to look like a poem. There is no complex theme of life or relationships or anything; it is merely a poem about eating plums that someone had in the fridge.

The simplicity of this poem is exactly why I love it and laugh every time I read it. While some poets went to great lengths to include flowery words and vague references to dead people and sophisticated philosophical ideas, William Carlos Williams wrote a note about plums. I always laugh because it's what I call an "apology that isn't really an apology". After explaining that he ate the plums with the knowledge that someone else wanted to eat them, he asks for forgiveness but says that they were "delicious so sweet and so cold". In other words, he doesn't want the owner of the plums to be mad at him, but he also doesn't regret eating them because they were really good.

The blatant succinctness and uncommon theme of the poem makes me wonder if William Carlos Williams wrote this poem with the purpose of pointing out how few poems are like it. I have never heard of any other poem that talks about eating plums that someone left in the fridge, and I think that Williams probably noticed this as well. Since poems are meant to express emotions and feelings that readers can relate to, why would there be no poems about such a human topic? It's not like no one has ever had the experience of taking something that wasn't theirs and then apologizing half-heartedly; it's just that most wouldn't regard it as incredibly intellectual.

I hope I haven't completely misinterpreted the poem in such a way that Williams turns in his grave. Whether or not he intended a deeper meaning that I simply missed, I will always love this poem and laugh when I read it or recite it in my head.