Sunday, April 22, 2007
The Dickey Poems
At first reading these poems it was hard to get some of the underlying themes that Dickey was trying to present. I was utterly confused but the two poems that i really enjoyed were "Cherrylog road" and "Falling." The one that I am going to talk about is "Falling." when starting out reading the poem I thought that it was a weird subject to be writng about, especially since it was an article about a woman falling out of the emergency door on a plane. I'm not sure about you but when I first read that and then when we talked about it in class, my first thought was DAMN!! how the heck did she fall out of an emergency door. But the way that Dickey used this incident and wrote a well-thought out poem about it was awesome. Also Dickey incorporated some humor into the poem as if to lighten up the moment and event. Such as the part about her forgetting her umbrella, i thought that, that was somewhat humorous. I did enjoy reading this poem and i was a little nervous about reading poetry in this class, I usually think that poetry is so incredibly boring and dry, but this wasn't half bad.
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5 comments:
I agree that Falling was a captivating poem, but I found myself disagreeing with Dickey’s approach as the poem progressed. While I am glad that the subject of the poem was able to free herself from the constraints society had placed on her identity, I feel perturbed that she seemingly only embraced life right before death. I suppose this does serve as a good warning to us by expressing the message that we need to get in touch with our true selves, as many of his other poems suggest, while we have more time. However, I did not identify with the emotions expressed in the poem. How can the woman be calm and playing in her mind with notions of skydiving or diving as she is about to die incredibly painfully? Dickey seemingly entirely ignores the pain element completely. I feel like I would have thought of that almost the entire time I was plummeting. I would not have been exploring my sexuality and stripping. Instead I would have been praying, asking forgiveness, and hoping I go to Heaven. I think the most gruesome element of the poem is when the stewardess crashes into the earth, sinks in, and is still alive, “a little sight left in the corner / Of one eye fading.” This must be horribly painful, but again Dickey acts as though pain is irrelevant and instead focuses on her thoughts of how she would have made it if only she had found water. He made a horrific event into a somewhat uplifting and inspiring story, which I congratulate him on, but I could not have approached the event in the same manner.
Inspiration is found everywhere for TV shows (like CSI, Law and Order) books, poems all are inspired by real life events and the way Dickey is he probably asked himself what she was thinking and this poem was created. I really enjoyed this poem also. I loved the pace changes that reflect her thoughts. It was really a good poem.
Sharae, I think that falling was probably the poem i liked the most that we went over in class. I also think that the way he did throw a little bit of humor into the poem was a good technique. I think it's really amazing how well Dickey wrote a poem about a person that fell out of a plane. I have to admit my first impression of the poem was... ok how is this lady falling out of a plane. I mean i think you thought the same thing. It was a little crazzy at first and then getting into the poem with the different themes and the writing techniques. I liked this the most. How it felt as when we were reading that she really was falling.
I thought this poem was interesting also. But after I learned that it was somewhat based on a true story, I was a little concerned about Dickey's writings. It's not that he made fun of the stewardess for falling out of the plane, but he took the story in his own hands, and interpretated it in his own way. One of my thoughts when reading this was what if this girls family had also read this poem? I can't imagine what it would be like to relive this event, perhaps in two different tellings.
I did enjoy the ending of the poem because it reminded me of myself. I have always said (and don't take this the wrong way)that when I die I want to die naked. We come into this world naked, we should leave it naked. (I'm pretty sure my family won't go for that.) But being naked does feel freer. The way I think of it is, all winter we bundle up in sweaters, scarves, hats, coats, boots, etc. When summer comes around, I am ready to be comfortable and shed all those heavy close, which is closer to being naked.
I also really enjoyed "Cherrylog Road" and "Falling." I think that this was because they were the easiest to understand at first sight. "Falling" was a little more confusing, but it still had a lot of ideas that were just put out there for the reader to understand.
I agree that this poem was "awesome." It was my favorite out of these poems. I also really liked the idea of writing a poem about a woman falling. I liked how she became more alive and free and was able to she her "stewardess" identity and find her inner-self.
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