Personal Response to Poems - Essay Example

As do the plums, with their taut skin and juice, the tart flesh, all connected to the word 'delicious', suggesting a sensual, selfish, joyful gluttony, which children often indulge in. It makes me want to laugh, it is almost naughty. In Mary Oliver's 'August', the imagery here combines a joy of eating fruit again, but shows a child happy with nature and its own company, a pleasure in just 'being', conjured up in the way the poet says 'my body accepts what it is'. 'The Word Plum' stands out as concentrating entirely on the fruit and the sensations it elicits, while the others give more descriptive and external images to link the fruit and the child to an environment.

In Roethke's 'My Papa's Waltz', there are sad and slightly dangerous undertones. The feeling aroused here is one of concern for the potential destruction of the little boy's happiness. I begin to become worried for him, despite his enjoyment and excitement, as something unpredictable and frenetic is present, I think the whiskey smell alerts me to this feeling. The words 'But I hung on like death' are significant, this father is creating mayhem, wrecking the room, and the child is half-delighted, half-fearful of the final outcome.

But for love of his father, he suffers this delicious fear, as well as the buckle scraping his face. Even more sad is Robert Hayden's 'Those Winter Sundays'. I think of the fathers who work so hard and do so many unnoticed kindnesses, who are taken for granted. The child does this, the voice of the poet as a man, is filled with regret. There is also a feeling of potential disturbance expressed in the words 'and slowly did I rise and dress fearing the chronic angers of that house'. The last two poems of this group, while recalling childhood memories, suggest a more mature understanding, an awakening to the dangers which can effect the happiness of a child.

They also make me think that with this awareness comes the realization that there are things a child cannot control or fully understand, but that despite this, they will try to remain happy, to keep their innocence intact. All the poems suggest love is abundant, in various forms. The next group of poems also speaks of love, with many facets depicted, but it is the grown-up reality of the ways of the world which are portrayed. Marilyn Hacker's 'Villanelle' shares, I think, the discovery of young, physical love and tries to deepen understanding of how it takes over ones life, as in 'routines are harder to perpetuate.

' It brings out a feeling of striving for what cannot be fully understood or attained; complete possession of another, because the separation may be as much mental as physical. Louise Gluck seems to echo this in 'Parable of Faith'. The other three poems seem to be more mature, or have more certainty, without losing the wonder of being in love, or loving deeply. For example, 'Love Poem' by John Frederick Nims tells of somebody accepting the beloved's faults or apparent inadequacies, the small, everyday things that do not really matter, because the essence of the person is far greater than these, and he loves her for that.

'With words and people and