The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People

“The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People,” by David Ferry, is a depressing Sestina about Ellen, a homeless and helpless victim of sexual abuse.
I believe the poem is somewhat straightforward. The first stanza relates the character, Ellen’s, internal struggle; she is the victim of abuse and she carries so much shame that she cannot share her experiences with anyone. She is also homeless as a result of whatever tragedy she endured. In a way Ellen represents the mass of street people gathering for supper. She is not alone in her torment. “All the guests are under some kind of enchantment,” either victims of poverty or similarly victims of abuse as hinted to by the line, “whispering in the ear things divine or unclean.”
The next four stanzas (3, 4, 5, 6) serve to further give the incident of abuse a debilitating effect on our main character. The “source of torment” is reasoned to be something done “by a father’s body to or upon the body of Ellen,” a blatantly incestuous instance. Ferry repeatedly uses the word “enchanted” not as a positive, but as a term similar to “chained,” captive to the event that will always make her feel filthy, used, and unloved. In similar fashion Ferry references the “spirits of the unclean,” another symbol of Ellen’s entrapment by her past. The fifth stanza continues this idea of spirits by comparing Ellen’s curse to one of supernatural effect, literally possessing her and never letting her catch her breath. “It speaks itself over and over again in her voice, cursing maybe or not a familiar obscene event.” The curse, the obscene spirit, by the end of the poem, transforms itself into a conceived devil as the poem reads, “the pure unclean rising from the source of things, in a figure of torment seeking out Ellen, finding its home in her poor body.”
At close, the author once again repeats the main words in the poem: torment, unclean, and enchantment, and the idea that Ellen is eternally possessed and tormented by the unclean spirits that will not ever leave her alone. It speaks to the nature of physical abuse, and while many poems have hidden meanings, I believe that Ferry legitimately wanted to express the horrors that cause many women to be homeless and helpless bystanders waiting for supper.

Horton hears a WHO

My Mother’s Pillow
The poem, “My Mother’s Pillow,” by Cecilia Woloch is about an emotionally sick mother who has trouble coping with the fact that her children are grown up and her husband is physically sick. Her only supposed comfort now is the Bible that she keeps on her pillow, although it is clear that the woman gains no reassurance from the Bible; it is talisman of wishful thinking. Evidence for this lies in the first stanza. She reads to fall asleep but she is paranoid when awoken, unsure that everything is okay, and she checks to make sure she is alive.
There is a theme of impending death in the poem as there are many references to shallow breathing. This signifies the skeleton that the woman has become as a result of emotional instability. Woloch references her forgotten passion of sewing, something that gave here strength, but she no longer has that strength. Instead, the mother “stitches in her heart,” trying to keep control of her emotions and regroup in a losing emotional battle.
When she still had her family, the woman took the days for granted as evidenced by the line “Once she even slept fast, rushed tomorrow.” Now, all alone, the woman mourns the passing of time, constantly becoming frailer as her husband and children become more distant.
The poem ends with the daughter floating through the halls of the empty house, the father’s breath shallow now as he is literally dying. Without him, the house will be truly hollow. He is the only connection to reality that the woman has, and his death will signify her death. Woloch communicates in the last stanza that the daughter is actually dead, floating as a ghost down the halls of her old home, here breathing shallow. This knowledge makes the mom’s suffering all the more understandable.

SB CHARLIE SHEEN

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“Body” by Alissa Leigh

            The ode poem, “Body,” by Alissa Leigh, is about the body (or more specifically the mind) that is under constant warfare from always having to make decisions and weigh options.

The poem starts with a juxtaposition, “terror and pleasure,” that immediately establishes the body as a place of psychological warfare. The body is “ardent junk,” a passionate piece of flesh that is constantly under stress to make the right choices. The “echo” in the second stanza and the “silent armies” in the third relate that the person is under obligation to be a vehicle for the voices of dead people, and decisions that they never made. The description of the body as a “labyrinth” and a “factory” further makes the body seem a confusing, busy place, and the mentioning of “desire” and “impulse” contrast sharply with the usual feelings of logic and responsibility. It is clear that the mind is at war with itself.

            In the fourth stanza, the issue becomes like a disease needing careful treatment. The body is “wheeled into the ward,” and the body is grateful when it reaches dusk because he no longer has to think for the day. Its dreams are erratic and it cannot sleep because of the war going on inside its head. It is grateful for even a moment’s peace. The body is in a literal state of insomnia, not being able to physically sleep, but all of its ailments are also mental. Any given mind never stops to rest because the human brain is always moving, and this can be exhausting work. In the last stanza, the poet summarizes the true emotion of the body, which is odd, because the body shouldn’t have any emotion. The body has lost its identity because of others’ input. It “forges a passport to the country of tenderness,” trying hard to escape the confines that his emotional toil keeps him in, but it cannot escape.           

A Thought of the Nile

A Thought of the Nile

The Poem “A Thought of the Nile” is about the majestic nature of the Nile River and its commanding influence over the surrounding area.

Although the poem is about the Nile River, the river in question is never actually mentioned in the passage. Instead, it is likened to a benevolent ruler who commands respect from his people. Because it is never literally mentioned, the reader sees the Nile as something much more powerful than a river, rather an entity that gives life and purpose to all the lands. The speaker describes Egypt as “hushed” when the Nile flows through, much like a reaction that a mighty ruler would receive in the same position. Egypt literally stands in awe of its magnificence and prowess. The river later becomes a “thought threading a dream,” and the poet uses this imagery to relate the interconnectedness that the Nile shares with all aspects of the surrounding culture including “caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands,” While civilization progressed and evolved and devolved, the Nile stayed constant, always flowing through the “young world.” This Nile resembles Sesostris, or King Ramses II, furthering the royal comparison and cementing the Nile as an object of wonder.

There is a clear shift in the second stanza. An even “mightier silence” comes along, as if the multitudes of people have disappeared; it is quiet. The emptiness acts as a haze on the surrounding communities, but the sound of the mighty river, oddly named here the “fruitful stream” reawakens their senses. The river becomes a symbol of purpose and life for everyone who hears and experiences it, and it makes them reflect on their own lives and purposes.      

Summer Job

“Summer Job”

            “Summer Job,” by Richard Hoffman, is a Sonnet about Manny, the narrator’s practical boss who criticizes intellectuals for overthinking the meaning of life, and being, well, intellectual. This is a very unconventional poem, and it does not resemble any sonnet that I have ever read except in length. It has no rhyme. It has no syllabic structure. It has no figurative language. It reads like a parable disguised in a fourteen line rant by a know-it-all, and that is exactly what it is.

            As elderly people often do, Manny sees this encounter with our narrator as a teaching experience. Everyone has a great-uncle or grandma or in-law who is thoroughly convinced that only they hold the truth about any given subject, and from the start the reader can sense Manny’s opinion of the situation by looking at his first line, “The trouble with intellectuals.”  The next few sentences feel like they come from a man who knows, not “thinks,” but knows that he knows everything. He argues that intellectuals don’t accept anything that they can’t make sense of and that they don’t change thought processes until their life is half way over. There are two instances of irony here. First, Manny uses comic irony when he says, “a guy like that at last explains to himself that life is made of time,” the irony being that the intellectual has wasted time figuring out that time is important. The second irony is situational irony, namely that Manny is seemingly criticizing intellectuals for their apparent know-it-all attitudes (they either kill themselves, get saved, or become depressed), while Manny himself is claiming to “know it all.”

            The sonnet ends very abruptly with Manny waking up from his rant and relaxing back into his practical workmanlike persona and criticizing (once again) his employee for making a mistake.

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“A Sunset of the City”

            “A Sunset of the City,” by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a poem about a woman who realizes that her value diminishes with age. The first word of the poem says it all: “already.” She is already “no longer looked at with lechery or love.” The word “already” communicates to the reader that the author cannot keep up with the pace at which her life is moving. In her children’s eyes, she is like “marbles and dolls” ready to be packed up and moved out of their lives, entering a new chapter. The description of her husband as “polite,” despite the meaning of the word, is depressing, as politeness lacks passion. Politeness can be fake and lacks meaning. The only thing that stays the same for her, her constant, is the night. It is still cold. The reference to summer is not describing the natural season but rather a passing episode in the author’s life. Life’s pleasures have lost their luster for the author, and she does not attempt to sugar coat them.

            In the fourth stanza, the author continues to spiral down into her loneliness. The “fall” has come, and she senses that the “winter” (the worst of her despair) is not far in the future. The line “I am cold in this cold house,” roughly means that the author is lost in an unfamiliar world, a world that use to seem to bright and welcoming, but that comfort is now only a wisp. Her life is only an echo, and she seems out of place and nervous because she no longer has her crutch (family) to lean on. The final stanza of the poem concerns the author’s battle to retain her dignity and to lift herself up out of the ashes. A small voice nags at her, and the author knows that she is still holding on to the one thing she can control: her self. Her own sanity keeps her afloat, and she leaves the reader with a final question. Is it better to slowly melt into non-existence in a lonely world or to live passionately albeit for a short amount of time? The author eventually decides that maybe she has read too much into her dilemma and that she should just take the “seasons” as they come.

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