Friendship
I didn’t choose the theme friendship because of its deep meaning to everyone in the world. I didn’t choose these poems because of their brilliant use of metaphors and enjambments and an amazing use of all the figurative language. I didn’t choose this theme so that it would be simple to choose poems on friendship, I didn’t choose friendship so that people could say,” wow that must have been easy to choose”. I chose friendship because of the way I feel about friendship, having that one or a group of friends to hang out with on the weekends and to tell all of your secrets to, someone to spill your soul out to, and just to have that special relationship with.
With friend ship there are many different kinds. There are kings like hanging out with them once in a while, hanging out with them all the time, bee BFF for your whole life, or become even more than a friend and becoming man and wife. These different kinds of friend ship can always tell what kind of relationship you have with someone, weather it be a difficult one or a fun enjoyable one. I hope everyone can love and relate to these marvelous poems as I did.
Friend
by Jean Valentine
Friend I need your hand every morning
but anger and beauty and hope
these roses make one rose.
Friend I need a hand every evening
but anger and hope and beauty
are three roses
that make one rose.
Let's fix our bed it's in splinters
and I want to stay all year
Did you hear what that woman on Grafton Street was saying?
You won't be killed today.
We don't even know we're born.
by Jean Valentine
Friend I need your hand every morning
but anger and beauty and hope
these roses make one rose.
Friend I need a hand every evening
but anger and hope and beauty
are three roses
that make one rose.
Let's fix our bed it's in splinters
and I want to stay all year
Did you hear what that woman on Grafton Street was saying?
You won't be killed today.
We don't even know we're born.
"You won’t be killed today. We don’t even know we’re born”. Probably one of the most powerful phrases I have ever heard from a poem. It feels as if just those two lines, completely sum up the whole poem, even though the poem was terrific on its own. What Jean Valentine is saying is that he never wants to be apart from his friend, this is obviously a European country, from him wanting to hold his friends hand, which I know is big in France. With this poem, one of the biggest things are enjambment, every single sentence or even half sentence is splitting its lines so that it will put more emphasis on that particular phrase or sentence. I am also seeing some symbolism with Valentine saying,” but anger and beuty and hope these make one rose”, twice in this poem. This poem is showing what true friendship is, never wanting to part from them, wanting to do everything with this one specific person.
Book Loaned to Tom Andrews
by Bobby C. Rogers
I'd already found out that one of the secrets to happiness was never loan your
books. But I loaned it anyway. We were all of us poor and living
on ideas, stumbling home late to basement apartments, talking to ourselves.
What did we own except books and debt? When the time came
we could move it all in the trunk of a car. Tom knew what a book was worth—he
brought it back a week later, seemingly unhandled, just a little looser
in the spine, a trade paper edition of The Death of Artemio Cruz, required reading
for a course in postmodernism we were suffering through.
The book's trashed now, boxed up and buried in the garage with a hundred other
things I can't throw away. When I moved back south I loaned it again
to a girl I'd just met. At some party I'd said it was the best novel since Absalom,
Absalom!, which may have been true, but mostly I was trying to impress her,
and convince myself, still testing all I'd been told about the matter of a book
is best kept separate from, well, matter. Months later it turned up
on my front steps without comment, the cover torn in two places, the dog-eared
pages of self-conscious prose stuck together with dark, rich chocolate.
by Bobby C. Rogers
I'd already found out that one of the secrets to happiness was never loan your
books. But I loaned it anyway. We were all of us poor and living
on ideas, stumbling home late to basement apartments, talking to ourselves.
What did we own except books and debt? When the time came
we could move it all in the trunk of a car. Tom knew what a book was worth—he
brought it back a week later, seemingly unhandled, just a little looser
in the spine, a trade paper edition of The Death of Artemio Cruz, required reading
for a course in postmodernism we were suffering through.
The book's trashed now, boxed up and buried in the garage with a hundred other
things I can't throw away. When I moved back south I loaned it again
to a girl I'd just met. At some party I'd said it was the best novel since Absalom,
Absalom!, which may have been true, but mostly I was trying to impress her,
and convince myself, still testing all I'd been told about the matter of a book
is best kept separate from, well, matter. Months later it turned up
on my front steps without comment, the cover torn in two places, the dog-eared
pages of self-conscious prose stuck together with dark, rich chocolate.
This poem is more of a let’s see if we can trust anyone enough to loan this hens worth, maybe becoming a friend in the future. The point of this poem is to let the reader know that it is okay to try some things out like loaning a book and trying to make a new friend. Knowing that you can trust someone is always a good quality in a friend, even though that he wasn’t trying to make a friend. There is a extended metaphor in this poem, the extended metaphor is that all good things come to those who wait, because this man is just giving his book to almost complete strangers for some odd reason, he doesn’t even know why, him loaning books to people getting it completely ripped up and finally at the end h gets his book back and stuck together was a dark, rich chocolate. Although this poem is not completely about a friend at first, it turns in to another one of these great poems about friendship.
How I Am
by Jason Shinder
When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings
of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less
than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up
with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices
like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle
passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.
I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away
from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.
This poem speaks to me by this poem being on a personal level. It has a deep meaning of friendship and being able to talk to those people that you care most about in your life. The poem uses brilliant uses of enjambment and an amazing metaphoric poem by saying that I can never tell my friends who I really am because in life we really cant trust anyone but ourselves in situations like this because you never know that person and you could have a falling out and he/she could say who you really are and just crush you. This poem really relates to me and I think everybody because there isn’t really one person you can say this with because you never know what could happen, its not like your God and know everything and when it is going to happen
Your Catfish Friend
by Richard Brautigan
If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."
by Richard Brautigan
If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."
This poem is one of the most interesting poems I have ever read. It really speaks to People by saying that everyone in life is looking for that one friend that you can spill your soul To and talk about anything about. Richard Brautigan uses ingenious uses of symbolism and Enjambment (once again) and symbolism in this poem about a man wondering what his life would be like as a Catfish and that would want somebody to love you in that boring little pond, and that opposite person asking if there are any catfish in this pond because it would be perfect for them. I think what Brautigan was try was trying to say in this poem is that people may be able to think whatever they want but having an opinion isn’t all that matters, the fact is what matters in the little cat fishes Eyes.