Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt, by Jorie Graham

Before looking at any of Klimt's work, I read Jorie Grahams poem. From the very beginning of her poem it seemed as if she was describing this marvelous picture. She is describing the glitter that is coming off the trees, and is trying to say that those beautiful trees aren't doing the world enough justice as they should be. Then she begins to say how the chips that are catching the rays of sun is beautiful, and comparing that to how humans are beautiful. She then begins to speak about how those who are dead, would probably give up anything just to be back here on this beautiful earth again.

When Graham begins to describe Klimts work, it's almost as if she was going from one thing to a complete opposite. I failed to see any connection by talking about what she was, to then mentioning an artist and his work. When she described his work however, it's as if she is trying to say that the details of the art, is what really makes the art. The work wasn't finished but the way that the woman looked, the way her body was drawn out from her mouth to her legs gave the painting such an emotion. I find it interesting how the last lines of the poem are referring to the painting having something to do with pleasure.

After analyzing and reading the poem, I felt as if it would be time to look at the actual paintings, and see if it gives me anymore insight into what the poem is about. The first painting in which I looked at was Buchenwald, which was mentioned in the poem. I found that painting at, http://arthistory.about.com/od/klimt/ig/blochbauerklimts/p_1_ig.htm. While looking at that picture I felt drawn into it. The amount of detail that was used, especially on the trees, including the moss that was so meticulously drawn onto the trees really made the painting so interesting for me. The leaves on the ground look so real with their density, it's almost as if someone had been walking through the woods and took a picture with their camera. Looking at this picture you can see exactly what Graham was describing when she was talking about the beauty of trees. In fact, upon looking at this picture I felt like it was so great that I had sent it to my phone to use as a background.

I think it's great that poets can include works of art in their poetry, because it gives us as readers who enjoy looking at poetry a chance to see what inspires the poets to write.

"One Train May Hide Another", Kenneth Koch

Like several of the poems this week, I had a difficult time interpreting the poem at first. I listened to Koch read the poem two times, and then I read it aloud to myself. At first I felt like he was just going off on a tangent about things that didn't make much sense, and then I began to put more and more thought into it.

I feel like he is trying to show how things will overshadow one another. His whole poem is full of them, but for example, "One small complaint may hide a great one." To me what it means is that you may be complaining about the tiniest thing, when there are other people who have much more severe problems then the small thing that you are complaining about. I feel like I see this a lot, because where I work, we take in complaints from the people from Town of Hempstead, and I find it so frustrating that people will be calling to complain that there neighbor has too many cars in front of their house, or that a shingle is loose on the top of their neighbors house. Meanwhile, there are so many more issues going on then that one little shingle. I think that this poem is basically just a huge metaphor for life. To take things as they come instead of worrying about little things. People are so quick to judge and get things over with that they aren't looking into what really is there already.

Langston Hughes "The Weary Blues"

Reading the poem"Ballad of the Landlord," the first thing that came to my mind was that Langston Hughes was writing to entertain. Watching this video, I couldn't agree any more. Between the music, the tone and the videos/images that were being used to make this video it was hard to even tell it was supposed to be a poem, that it could have easily been turned into song.

I watched the video several times, after the first time I had brought up the poem itself so I could follow along, and while following along I noticed a strange rhyme scheme that was being used. I don't really think it has a pattern but I also think that makes the poem work better. If he were to follow a set pattern through the poem, such as the first seven lines with A A B C C B B, then of course the wording would be different, and he wouldn't have come up with the same result.

I really enjoy reading the work that Hughes does, because he makes his poetry literal, he makes you feel like you were right there in that room while that man was playing the piano, and singing the blues. In this poem I really enjoyed that he actually made words which would be to song and put them into the poem, because that also gave us as readers a sense of what the man was feeling, not just how he was playing.

I think the video did a great job at bringing this poem to life, and the way the images in the video were used, and the videos inside the video were used really tried to capture the moment of how things may have been during that time period.