City Eclouge Responses

The Open

I chose to respond to this poem because after reading it through the first time, I thought it was fairly easy to grasp and it had a good rythm to it. The way the words sounded when they are said next to each other sounds cool in this poem.

From the first couple lines of this poem, I got a clear visual in my head. I pictures construction in a city with that dusty haze filling the air. It says that the bulldoze blocked the air to open light and took your breath. Already I can tell that one of the themes of this poem is going to be how we are building too much and taking for grantid the natural land.

The poem goes on to talk about how we have taken away other peoples land to build building upon building. I like the line, "a highway through someone else's possibility." This makes it sound like we have made people move and give up their land for construction. We are taking away their possibilty and running them over without any thought.

The author talks about how the air smells of money. I thought this was really powerful because it's like they are saying that money consumes us so much we really don't care what we are destroying to get it. Money is such a central part of our lives, it's like we can smell it in the air.

Standing Strong

The first time I read this poem through, I thought it was a little more difficult to understand than some of the previous ones, but I thought it sounded cool so I chose to write about it. What I liked most about this poem was the way the words all flow together. Some parts of the poem use the same sound multiple times in a row. "As if he could not see what he sees to wear what he seizes on as medicine from here from standing strong." This line repeats the "ss" sound.

The word choice in this poem also helps to set the scene. Some of these words and phrases are: dark roads, dead as night, gunshot bulls-eyed, gang, night crimes. These phrases set the tough street life scene.

I think the shoes are kind of a metaphor for his life. At the end of the poem it says that somewhere out there there's a couple decent pairs of shoes. The poem writes that these shoes have been washed by the black pavement and dark roads. Shoes are what you wear on your feet and your feet are what take you where you want to go. This poem is saying that these shoes have been worn through the hard times on the dirty, dark roads.

The name of the poem is "Standing Strong" and I get the feeling from the poem that he is frustrated. He says "He wants to walk away from this." And in the poem, this line is only one that is isolated and has a period at the end. It's like saying plain and simple, he's tired and wants to get out of this life and he is "standing strong" to get through it.