Day 3: The Labyrinth

Today's poem is The Labyrinth by Jorge Luis Borges. In a lot of literature the image of a labyrinth has many meanings but this is my favorite depiction in all of the stories I have read that use that symbol.

The Labyrinth
by Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Stephen Kessler

Zeus himself could not undo the web
of stone closing around me. I have forgotten
the men I was before; I follow the hated
path of monotonous walls
that is my destiny. Severe galleries
which curve in secret circles
to the end of the years. Parapets
cracked by the days' usury.
In the pale dust I have discerned
signs that frighten me. In the concave
evenings the air has carried a roar
toward me, or the echo of a desolate howl.
I know there is an Other in the shadows,
whose fate it is to wear out the long solitudes
which weave and unweave this Hades
and to long for my blood and devour my death.
Each of us seeks the other. If only this
were the final day of waiting.

Borges, for all of you who don't know, was an Argentinian writer/poet/essayist who worked a lot with the fantastic literature genre. He is known for his use of labyrinths in many of his works, each time meaning a different thing. Here, you can maybe say that the labyrinth is a symbol for life. Something that is so difficult even a god can not undo seems to be either life or death, but death seems to be personified as this Other, wanting to find and take the narrator as his own. This fear of death is in all of us and I like how this poem plays with it, making one notice that they are stuck in this life trying to get away from a monster that wants them dead. The poem reminds me a little bit of the last words of Simon Bolivar in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth, "Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?" It's interesting to think of life as this puzzle, a puzzle that the only way out really is through death. Well, at least it's a very interesting puzzle.

If you have any views on this poem that you wish to share please write a comment.

                                                                    Jorge Luis Borges

Day 2: You And I Are Disappearing

Today's poem was suggested to me by a friend and as I was reading it I noticed that I was trying to find out what this girl meant, what the burning meant. Thinking deeply about poems is good but it felt like I was analyzing it too much. Poetry, from what I've read in my life, seems to be more about the feelings that the author is trying to give/show the reader than what is on the page. 


You And I Are Disappearing 
by Yusef Komunyakaa


The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper. 
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.

A skirt of flames
dances around her


at dusk.

We stand with our hands

hanging at our sides,


while she burns 

like a sack of dry ice.

She burns like oil on water.


She burns like a cattail torch


dipped in gasoline.


She glows like the fat tip


of a banker's cigar,

silent as quicksilver.

A tiger under a rainbow

    at nightfall.

She burns like a shot glass of vodka.


She burns like a field of poppies


at the edge of a rain forest.


She rises like dragonsmoke

    to my nostrils.


She burns like a burning bush


driven by a godawful wind.

I very much enjoyed the repetition of "she burns" because it becomes clear that the narrator is seeing this, trying to analyze what this other worldly thing is by comparing it to things they know. My favorite line is "she glows like the fat tip of a banker's cigar", mostly because it's a very clear image I get from it. It's a very good poem by a very interesting poet. I was looking up information about his writing and it looks like some of his inspirations come from the time period before the Civil Rights movement here in the United States and I can completely see how this poem relates to that and the awful acts done by white supremacy groups. 

Well, if you have any thoughts about this poem you want to share please share them in the comments. I would really like this to be a more two way conversation because poetry is very different for every person who reads it. The way I read it isn't the only way to understand this poem. Tell me what you think about today's poem down below...

Day 1: Carpe Diem- El Dorado

What is poetry? Who can be a poet? Why write poetry?
Three questions I think that can only be answered by living, not from a textbook. Because of this I have decided to start this project where I try to learn what poetry really is. I fancy myself a poet-in-training but in reality I don't know much about poetry except for the stuff I have learned about it in my English classes, where a poem is taken and broken in bits until it sometimes becomes unenjoyable to read poetry, always being aware for symbols that may not even be there. This is my journey trying to see the other side of poetry and learn from the masters: Keats, Poe, Dickinson, and much more...
My plan for this journey is that I'll daily put up a poem that I have recently read and enjoyed to share it with others. I might post my own stuff as this goes but it won't be a regular thing for these first few months. This is all free spirited, in a way. I don't have much of a plan for it. I just want to get myself and others to read more poetry and learn to enjoy it in the way it was meant to be enjoyed: in your free time without homework on it.
You may be wondering about the title of this blog (inspired by the movie The Dead Poets Society). I feel that even though people are dead what they left here on Earth is to be enjoyed. I don't think of those poets as being fully dead because their words are still being read today.
Below is one of my favorite poems up to date which is by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe is always an interesting read but my favorite thing that he wrote is "El Dorado", a poem where a knight spends his years obsessed with the search for this city of gold. It reminds me a little of the story of Don Quixote but also what an obsession can do to someone.

El Dorado
by Edgar Allen Poe

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old, This knight so bold, And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado. And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow; "Shadow," said he, "Where can it be, This land of Eldorado?" "Over the mountains Of the moon, Down the valley of the shadow, Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied,-- "If you seek for Eldorado!"

Do you have a poem you have written you want me to read and maybe post?
Are there poems you recommend me to read? Please, write it down in the comments!