A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields

In class we talked about how the poem had sad parts and happy parts, like the title.  "Gray haze" contrast the happiness of "Rice fields," but I'm not sure one is bad and one is good.  A gray haze can be beautiful and I feel like we can't know for sure if rice fields is a positive "memory" or a negative one.  I think "such things claim that I am looking out in search of memory, not death" is that a lot of things he thinks about seems shallow as a memory but that they are actually deeper than that.  The way he goes on to say a more memories, but these ones seem more personal backs that up for me.  But he's not remembering this things in an anticipation for death, but that he sees a change coming.  He knows, as his life has changed before, it will change again.  From "a shadow freed from the past and from the future," I get that he remembers his life, not just for the memory, but for the experience, so he knows how to handle now.  He's not anticipating the future, just being aware of now and nows changes.  He seems ready for these changes too.

Wallflowers

Yes, I'm sure everyone else has done this one, but I'm doing it too.
The first time I read through this poem, it reminded me of BeetleJuice.  Well, the line "They say if you use a word three times, it's yours" did.  BeetleJuice, BeetleJuice, BeetleJuice...and he comes for you.  So I thought it was cool that three times and this unknown word is "yours."
It also made me think of the "if a tree falls...?" question because its almost as if an unspoken word doesn't exist, but it could.  And talking about the word as if its an orphan makes me want to save unspoken words; I feel bad for them.  If her goal of this poem was to get the reader to extend their vocabulary...it's working.
But what I found a little iron was her lack of a large vocabulary throughout the poem.  While she was talking about using new or unheard words and taking them to be yours, she only used two large words and she used them as examples.  It was a little odd she wanted to create a place, a home for these unused words but she wasn't actually doing it.

1943

Well, first off, Ed Monohan and Dominick Esposito are fictional.  But I think it's interesting that Dom lost and then he died quickly in war.  It definitely shows how they were prepared for war, and Dom was less prepared.  Then, I like how it talk about milk being delivered.  I think it shows the crazy drastic change from high school to war.  One day your having milk delivered to your door, the next your bleeding "to death in the surf."  And that comes back to the beginning, the boys were prepared for this.  They were taught in a way just for war.  Taught to play with guns and to enjoy fighting.  And yet, and the last line shows, there was nothing any one could do about it.  This poem could easily be preachy or some sort of call to duty.  But with that one line: "what could we do?" it becomes just a sad fact.  Donald Hall simply wants to talk about the sad reality of war...that boys are trained for it, but not seeing the sudden brutality and no one knows what to do about it.

Lost Brother

I liked this poem...but it seemed very basic and simple.  Stanley Moss reads as another tree mourning the loss of  a tree, or his "Lost Brother."  It was sweet and made me think about the sadness of cutting down trees.  The last half of the poem showed what sorts of things trees see and what conditions they live through.  Four thousand eight hundred sixty-years is a long time to just cut down.  It even talked about their mother (who I assume is Mother Earth) and how she wanted the trees to live long.  Humans are letting her down and saddening her by cutting down the forests.  But that was all. It was, to me, a simple, somewhat sweet, melancholy poem speaking out against deforestation.