Escape from Wreck City is John Creary’s debut collection of poems. With content ranging from PG to R rated, these poems about sex, drugs, and family are best read aloud. Though you may be hard pressed to find perfect rhymes, Creary clearly has an ear for making speech pleasing to the ear, and this collection has mastered the rhythm and line breaks that make couplets powerful. Creary’s poems are at times deeply personal, and at others bizarrely impersonal. In “Druggy Pizza” we blur our way from Winnipeg to Toronto with some odd characters. One person sleeps in a laundromat after losing his keys, and another is stranded because his flight oversells seats. These various recurring vagabonds come and go throughout the book, but are thinly drawn
The analysis of the two poems reflects the application of the above-mentioned points. The two poems, condensed and saturated with various historical figures and events, illustrate Finney’s activism and slices of her personal life in relation to public concerns. That was the night that I started to figure and configure, contemplate, and compute just how I might leave my delible mark on this life” (Inquisitors and Insurgents). The pencil is a life giving force, a fountain of life, a symbol of readiness and ability to write. Her professor and mentor Dr. Gloria Wade Gayles encouraged her to show her poems to Nikki Giovanni, who corrected them with a red pen, but assured Finney that something good was about to happen.
The descriptions and words used create the most vivid images of a mother’s escape to freedom with her son. This poem takes you on both a physical and emotional journey as it unravels through the treacherous demands of freedom. A beautiful example of her ability to rhyme both internally as well as externally can be seen here,
Ellmann, Richard and Robert O’Clair, eds. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988.
_______. Critical Review of Short Fiction. Vol. III 4 vols.. Pasadena, California: Salem Press, 1991.
Gina Meyers and Jill McDonough both illustrate a lack of control within the poems “Hold it Down” and “Accident, Mass. Ave.”. “Hold it Down” by Gina Meyers describes a long narrative of the problem, a lack of control, impossibilities and frustration in everyday life, while “Accident, Mass. Ave.” presents a narrative of a problem, a moment of loss of control, aggression and frustration in a single moment that happen on a specific day. Similarly the poems are long and include long enjambed lines disturbed by few short and small lines. Contrasting the poems are ordered and structured very differently.
Drugs is one of the themes in this story that shows the impact of both the user and their loved ones. There is no doubt that heroin destroys lives and families, but it offers a momentary escape from the characters ' oppressive environment and serves as a coping mechanism to help deal with the human suffering that is all around him. Suffering is seen as a contributing factor of his drug addiction and the suffering is linked to the narrator’s daughter loss of Grace. The story opens with the narrator feeling ice in his veins when he read about Sonny’s arrest for possession of heroin. The two brothers are able to patch things up and knowing that his younger brother has an addiction.
“The Weary Blues” and “Lenox Avenue: Midnight” by Langston Hughes are two poems written as scenes of urban life. Although these poems were written more than seventy years ago, it is surprising to see some general similarities they share with modern day city life. Dilluted down with word play and irrelevant lines such as “And the gods are laughing at us.”, the underlying theme is evidently urban life. “The Weary Blues” and “Lenox Avenue: Midnight” approach the general topic of urban life from two different aspects also.
Richard Brautigan’s short fiction stories incorporate protagonists that are recognizably fictionalized versions of the author himself. He writes in order to extract his own struggles of the past and the difficulties of discovering himself in the present. Through the characters in The Weather in San Francisco and Corporal, the portrayal of his optimistic view of life as a consequence of the rigors of daily life, and the use of symbols, Brautigan presents his personal story through the words on the paper.
“Servant trouble…political worries…almost neurosis…drinking increased…arguments with Scottie…quarrel with Hemingway…quarrel with Bunny Wilson…quarrel with Gerald Murphy…breakdown of car…tight at Eddie Poe’s…sick again…first borrowing from mother…sick… ‘The Fire’…Zelda weakens and goes to Hopkins…one servant and eating out.” (Mayfield 207)
In Shipwreck at the bottom of the world, Jennifer Armstrong tells the story of Ernest Shackleton and his crew's expedition to the South Pole which quickly goes awry, leaving the men with no ship and only the supplies that could be carried on one's back. One particularly intriguing passage occurs shortly after Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship and after he made the decision to try and reach Paulet Island on foot. In preparation for the journey, Shackleton dropped his heavy gold cigarette case and coins on the ice and then pulled out his Bible, ripped a page from the book of Job, and dropped the remainder of the Bible to rest on the frozen sea. He read an excerpt from that page before folding it and sliding it into his pocket: "Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, And the face of the deep is frozen." These words are from Job 29-30 and are spoken by God.
dislocated from the rest of the poem , from the rest of the town. The
Through this extensive, yet abbreviated, comparison of the letters I received from a stalker and Sydney's Astrophil and Stella, I think it is clear why this piece struck such a despondent chord with me. Some may try and interpret this poem as a satirical work of art, I see it as the obsessive ramblings of a man who, by his idealization and lust, imprisons a woman in fear and feelings of inadequacy. As encouraged, I have connected personally with the material studied. It has not been easy or comfortable, but it has forced me to face issues I had formerly suppressed. I have grown in my understanding of self, and begun to heal through this process.
Ellmann, Richard and Robert O’Clair, eds. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988.
Meyer, Michael. "Eveline." Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, and Writing. S.l.: Bedford Bks St Martin'S, 2014. 420-23. Print.
There are a number of reasons why the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop appeals to modern readers. The descriptive, vibrant language of Bishop transcends through time to appeal to every reader in all of her poems. What I admire the most about Elizabeth’s poetry is its combination of detailed, imaginative description and intriguing insight. She closely observes and vividly describes the world around her particularly like how Bishop’s poetry changes everyday scenes to vivid imagery. Bishop has a keen eye for detail, she transforms the visual images she observes into poetic language that creates clear images in the reader’s mind. This gives her poetry a powerful, visual quality, drawing the reader into the world she describes. She deals with a number of themes including death,loss,childhood,domesticity and the resilience of the human spirit also admire her ability to write a poem from a child’s point of view, so the poem can be seen through the eyes of a child. Bishop’s poems are rooted in personal experience, but have a genuine universal appeal.