Poems

Hackett Avenue

by John Koethe

I used to like connections:
Leaves floating on the water
Like faces floating on the surface of a dream,
On the surface of a swimming pool
Once the holocaust was complete.
And then I passed through stages of belief
And unbelief, desire and restraint.
I found myself repeating certain themes
Ad interim, until they began to seem quaint
And I began to feel myself a victim of coincidence,
Inhabiting a film whose real title was my name --
Inhabiting a realm of fabulous constructions
Made entirely of words, all words
I should have known, and should have connected
Until they meant whatever I might mean.
But they're just fragments really,
No more than that.
A coast away,
And then across an ocean fifty years away,
I felt an ashen figure gliding through the leaves
-- Bewitchment of intelligence by leaves --
A body floating clothed, facedown,
A not-so-old philosopher dying in his bed
-- At least I thought I felt those things.
But then the line went dead
And I was back here in the cave, another ghost
Inhabiting the fourth part of the soul
And waiting, and still waiting, for the sun to come up.
Tell them I've had a wonderful life.
Tell Mr. DeMille I'm ready for my close-up.


I think that the poet is trying to tell us all of the bad things that he has seen in his life and what effect they have had on him like when he was talking about how he liked comparisons then used the leaf analogy to describe the Holocaust by saying "I used to like connections:Leaves floating on the water like faces floating on the surface of a dream,On the surface of a swimming pool once the holocaust was complete."
I think that the meaning of this poem was to show us that there are terrible things in this world and that they can take there toll on us as people. When the poet saw the dead man in the room and he felt nothing yet he tried, I think that he had become hardened by all the death that he had seen. If I saw a dead body I would have felt something but since he had seen death before he had become used to it. Therefore the meaning is that death takes a toll on us.


Exquisite Politics

by Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton

The perfect voter has a smile but no eyes,
maybe not even a nose or hair on his or her toes,
maybe not even a single sperm cell, ovum, little paramecium.
Politics is a slug copulating in a Poughkeepsie garden.
Politics is a grain of rice stuck in the mouth
of a king. I voted for a clump of cells,
anything to believe in, true as rain, sure as red wheat.
I carried my ballots around like smokes, pondered big questions,
resources and need, stars and planets, prehistoric
languages. I sat on Alice's mushroom in Central Park,
smoked longingly in the direction of the mayor's mansion.
Someday I won't politic anymore, my big heart will stop
loving America and I'll leave her as easy as a marriage,
splitting our assets, hoping to get the advantage
before the other side yells: Wow! America,
Vespucci's first name and home of free and brave, Te amo.

I think that the authors are trying to tell us that voters can be clue less. "perfect voter has a smile but no eyes". I think what the authors are trying to tell us with this quote is that the idea of a perfect voter is a person voting on what that person hears. They are saying that most people don't even form their own opinions, that they are blind. "no eyes" I think they are saying that one day that will stop and they will open their eyes to what is happening in politics.
I think that the meaning of the poem is that something needs to change. That the clueless voting needs to stop. People need to pick a candidate based on their own opinions not the opinions of others. I think the authors are trying to convey that if the mindless voting doesn't stop people are going to give up on our country and leave it. They are saying that people need to tune in and start paying attention to the issues not the opinions.