City Eclogue

To start out, I didn't like the book at all. Most of the poems in the book sound like scattered thoughts about city life and other things. It seemed too confusing to follow along with. I couldn't really tell if there was even a possible pattern in the poems. Of course this doesn't help the fact that I'm not that good at understanding what poems really mean, unless the language is really easy to follow.

In class, my group had to discuss about the "Beauty's Standing" section. The poems really aren't about beauty. The title is more of a contradiction to the poems in the section. The first poem in the section on page 41 seems to talk about environmentalism, so reading this makes you think the rest will be similar; however, that would be wrong. On page 48, it randomly mentions politics and how the leaders are hypocrites. The rest of the section is about city life and the problems with it.

Later it discusses that there are things people see and hear everyday in the city, but don't give a second thought to it without continuing their normal day path, this is seen on page 50. They're things that are normal for city people. The people ignore the horrors in life to try and see the beauty in their lives. It's as if we see the bad, but blink to erase the memory to see the good things in life. On page 56, the poem tends to be very violent, "he woke in a fight for his life in that he went at the alarm clock as if to kill before that something about waking killed him." Also, that poem shows corruption by, "the city subcontracts with the mob." There is attempt at suicide if not succeeding on page 58. On page 49, has a somewhat similar message that most people are associated with, which is turning a blind eye. What I like to think about these poems is that people see negative things all the time, but we don't do anything to help it, we just look down upon it to make our lives seem better.