Week 8 - First collection of poems

Starting a new section into something different, I have to admit, I did enjoy, however, I didn't necessarily like all the poems. 

One that I did like was My Papa's Waltz - I appreciated the authors descriptiveness and this poem could have been interpreted different ways.  The way that I interpreted it was that his father did drink and while he didn't like it, he hung on to his father tightly.  They danced crazily making the pots and pans and other items spill about - much to his mothers chagrin - he talks about how his father beats time on his head.  I found this endearing, however, the word beat sounds harsh to me.  I thought it was more a tap on his head...I didn't take it to be so hard.  It also talked about the hands of his father.   he sounded like he was a hard working man - and those hard working hands danced the little guy to bed.....and the boy didn't sound like he wanted to as he still clung to his fathers shirt. 

My father never drank, but he worked hard....I too adored any attention given to me by my dad because those times were few and far between because he was busy.

Another one that I could relate to partially was White Lies - while I didn't lie about my racial identity, I definitely lied about other things as a child and I didn't get my mouth washed out with soap b/c of lies, but I did when I said a naughty word...so I could relate with that.  Although the line at the end of the poem left me wondering what she meant exactly  - the line says "believing her, I swallowed suds thinking they'd work from the inside out."  Was the young girl wishing that not only would the soap clean her lies but also clean off the color of her skin?

I am not going to comment on all the poems - I didn't particularly like "The Fish" not because it wasn't a good poem, more so that I just didn't really get into a long poem about a fish. 

Again, it is a nice change of pace to read poems.  I find it interesting that you can, for the most part, get an entire story in just a few words.