Month: January 2020
Poetry in the News
Genetic Makeup
Why am I like this?
Sometimes I feel my feelings too much.
Sometimes nothing makes sense.
But that’s okay.
Sometimes I hate my irrational abnormality.
Sometimes I cry about my weakness.
But that has to be okay.
Yes.
There isn’t a definitive answer to my questions.
There seems to be more struggles than strengths.
There isn’t a clear path or a silver platter with a cure for me.
Doctors and scientists are trying to find
the causes, effects, and answers.
I sleep and wait.
But, even if they prove it is part of my genetic makeup.
I will wake up,
I will get up,
I will help myself,
and help others.
My genetics will not make up whether I give up or not.
They will not make up my mind,
or make up someone else’s.
Here are the article that inspired my poem:
My reflection/discussion:
My Poem:
Favorite Poem:
Love is the only language every human, and yet, the most misunderstood language, and hence, all the conflicting definitions of it.
The poem He Sits on the Floor of the School for the Retarded by Alden Nowlan. The poem is a narrative and the poem is about a writer visiting a school for the diable or mentally challenged people. The writer is alternately uncomfortable, embarrassed, ashamed and fearful in this situation, as the people surround and pay court to him as an honoured guest from the ‘normal’ world outside the institution’s walls.
Some figurative devices in the poem are “It’s one thing to jump a fence, quite another thing to blunder
into one in the dark.” is a metaphor and “The young woman who sits down beside me and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, rests her head on my shoulder.” is irony which ties into the theme of love.
The big theme that both the poem and novel is love. In the poem, the writer feels uncomfortable when the women puts her head on his shoulders but in reality we all have challenges with meet people with disabilities is the same challenge that faces us in all situations where we meet strange and unsettling people. But, that moment in the poem where he doesn’t care about social judgment or normes and decides to show his affection to the women show us that every human being has the same need to be affirmed, to be held, to be cherished, to be loved. In the novel, Jimmy struggles with a lot of genuine affection like how his mother left him with his distant father, then Jimmy tries to fill that void with tangible affection like watching porn and having sex. Even Jimmy and Oryx never have a genuine affection for each other but its all surface level love.