Wright, Carver, Collins, & Lee

Wright: Although Wright's poems are beautiful, I could sense a lot of mental sadness within.  He sounded depressed as though he was looking at things that would try to bring back happiness back to him.  I don't know; I may be over exaggerating.  From "To the Evening Star: Central Minnesota" and "A Blessing," I sense some moodiness.  I can imagine Wright sitting in some kind of open environment and looking out into the "twilight" or the "grass fields."  I also found it interesting that in "A Blessing" Wright chose two Indian ponies to write about.

Carver: I...just...didn't...get it.  I really do enjoy reading short stories and love that their endings never really end...well.  But this one was really...different.  I though it odd, at first, that the woman was friends with a blind man for all these years.  In addition, she seemed to give so much attention to Robert than her own husband.  I mean, I know he's a guest, but the whole atmosphere was awkward until the end when I was taken completely by surprise.  Maybe, in the end, the narrator realized how powerful it was to "see" with his eyes closed.  It was as if he could see more with his eyes closed than if they were open.  As a result, I guess I did like the story just because it ended differently than what I expected.

Collins: I was very much impressed by Collins' poems.  I truly felt what Norton describes as, "The voice in a Billy Collins poem is so intimate and immediate that we feel we are in the same room with the poet" (1516), especially in "Forgetfulness."  His poems tend to be a face-to-face conversation between the writer and his audience.  In fact, I like this kind of style because that is how I write my creative pieces as well.  I feel like his questioning--"I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of 'Three Blind Mice'"--assisted his poems to be more personal: he is sharing confusion like a person would have if reading a poem.  And his metaphors are very creative, for example, in "The Night House."

Lee: It's always interesting--and I always appreciate--to see writers from different backgrounds such as race and culture.  Just comparing them to other races and cultures, one can tell the difference between them.  I also find it interesting that in "Persimmons," Lee kept going off topic to come back to the main theme of the poem: persimmons.  In addition, Lee's father is mentioned in all of the poems in the Norton.  I can never quite understand his father's role in the poem, but there seems to be some distance between the both of them.  Lastly, I loved the theme of memory in "This Room and Everything in It."  Again, his father is mentioned in the poem, but I think the format and the choice of words make the poem beautiful.