"For a Duro" by Philip Levine

After searching through all of the blogs from last year looking for some research about this poem, I found a few helpful things.  A duro is a coin used in Spain until it was replaced by the euro in 2002.  The picture on them as mention by Levine is Franco who was recognized as the ruler of Spain in 1945.  The speaker of the poem seems to be a wealthy man who can afford fancy things such as "coffee and a plain roll" or "the cars, the woman, the seven course meal and a sea view."  Around the rest of Spain though, there seems to be a lot of poverty.  A soldier sits on the side of the road, and the hotel goes out of business that was once a luxury to stay in.  The hotel is now being used as animal hospital.  The parrot in the hospital represents peace in the poem as told in the last few lines.  Levine is saying that while the world was once great and had some trouble is now working its way back to its once grandeur.  Because just like the toucan which was "leveled by an unknown virus but now alert and preening" the world is getting back into the thick of it.

"Wallflowers" by Donna Vorreyer

Donna Vorreyer creates a reality for words that are rarely used.  They are forced to live in "Dickensian bedrooms" where they wait for people to use them.  I like how Vorreyer makes the comparison between the orphanage and Emily Dickenson because Dickenson used a lot of obscure words in her poems.  Therefore, it is very fitting for weird words to live in Dickenson themed bedrooms.  The next comparison she makes is to a high school where the shy kids sit in the corner.  They wait for their chance to shine.  They wait for the opportunity to be used and become popular.  The last metaphor compares making a safe place for unused words like Ellis Island.  Vorreyer then gives "gegenshein" and "zoanthropy" for examples.  Gegenshein is a shining that is seen directly opposite the sun.  Zoanthropy is a mental disorder where a person thinks they are an animal.  I think I will start to use words like this to make them feel less lonely.

"The Halo That Would Not Light" by Lucie Brock-Broido

This poem is telling a story of somebody's childhood which was filled with emptiness.  This person has undergone great tragedy throughout his life.  The poem has a bunch of fancy imagery in it.  Most of it is related to birds.  A "raptor" drops the subject in the first stanza "like a finch" into a "nest."  Then the wind is "hover-hunting", which after some research I learned is a tactic used by some raptors to catch prey.  The linden leaves mentioned in the fourth stanza of course come from linden trees which many small birds nest in.  The third stanza speaks of "red scarves silking endlessly from a magician's hollow hat" which is used in a simile for how the swings are going back and forth by themselves.  The last two lines talk about somebody's endless childhood ending.  The poet is trying to say that childhood is just as hollow as the magicians hat.  We pretend to pull things out of it like the red scarves but they really mean nothing because the hat is still empty.  As for the birds in the first half of the poem, the poet talks about finches which are known to not take care and abandon their young.  The child talked about in this poem was abandoned and, therefore, condemned to have a hollow childhood.

Donald Hall's "1943"

This poem is about being in the United States during WWII.  Donald Hall talks about how "they hardened us for war."  He also mentions how quickly things changed.  Ten months after being knocked out in the heavy-weight championship, Dominick Esposito was knocked out at the of Tarawa.  Another feeling Hall conveys to the reader is how inconsequential life was in the States.  People were getting milk while marines were dying in water and suffering from frostbite, but nobody in the States could do anything about it.  To portray this emotion, Hall releases an exasperated interjection of "what could we do" in the last line.  Hall structures the poem into five stanzas each with 2 lines each.  This structure makes the poem a little unnerving because the reader never finds a rhythm since sentences are always broken up across two stanzas.  This is very similar to the life people were living in the States.  Every morning getting the milk as if nothing was wrong but knowing that people are dying everyday to give you that right.