tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7765970379462364539.post8899052970224541255..comments2008-04-12T07:53:16.041-07:00jillypoetnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7765970379462364539.post-82792695592376077012008-04-12T07:53:00.000-07:002008-04-12T07:53:00.000-07:00I see the use of such small and insignificant things to focus the reader throughout the poem. Prufer uses the images of seeds, blood drops, pills, and the drips from broken faucets. This poem reads like a meditation on the small things around us and serves to free the reader up to slide into the larger emotional unknowns.Pamhttp://coosacreek.org/amputated/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7765970379462364539.post-42476146650623043932008-04-10T18:58:00.000-07:002008-04-10T18:58:00.000-07:00Therese, you always have such wonderful insights into poems. You bring my understanding to a new level. Thank you.jillypoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951224240914478371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7765970379462364539.post-86821106802701791052008-04-10T16:19:00.000-07:002008-04-10T16:19:00.000-07:00from Therese--Recently I had a medical scare (which has not yet entirely gone away). For me, this poem captures how it felt for me to come to a full understanding that "this could be it". I wasn't frantic. Instead, I felt a deep, quiet, animal cautiousness. My senses lingered over the things and people I loved as if I were seeing their preciousness for the first time. I get that same sense from this poem. Isolated image by isolated image, the poem turns slowly, cautiously, towards the last heartbreaking possibility. (Jane Hirshfield has talked about the importance of "indirection" in poetry.) The poem's first few lines create a painterly "still-life" composition with green, orange, red, and blue organic forms (seeds) that may represent death-in-life ("vanitas" style of painting). But the last few lines of the poem drain to white: white moon, white nurses, white halls, white bedsheets. This poem is an interior monologue or reverie in which the speaker first observes, then recalls the onion-man, then finally turns to address directly the beloved one. But within this talk is the seed of non-talk, of silence (the "unable to call" muteness at the end). Within any one thought is the seed of the next thought (this is how the poem moves via its lines). Within everything is the seed of something else.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com