Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

Brilliant poem. I think it describes war in an interesting context. Essentially, I read it as the life story of an unnamed soldier (unnamed because, in the military, you are not an individual. You are part of a unit) in five lines. Its succinct nature shows how short this guy's life really was. He was probably very young--18, 19, 20--when he enlisted and was subsequently shot to bits. The poem opens with his birth and then immediately  (within the same line, in fact) speaks of him in the military, almost as those he went straight from being born to fighting in a war. Like he never had any time to grow up and really live. It's chilling really. Then at the end, when he dies, they wash him out of the turret with a hose. It's not a personal thing at all. It brings to mind a cold, unmoved feeling. It doesn't say they mourned. It doesn't say there was a funeral. Only that they washed him out of the turret with a hose, in preparation for another young man to take his place, almost like nothing had happened at all.

Diving Into the Wreck

I know no one agrees with me, but I still don't see this as a feminist poem. I think she's literally diving ito a shipwreck. The "book of myths" is just that: a book of stories surrounding the shipwreck, which have been written by sailors and explorers of times passed. The "merman in his armored body" represents the explorers that came before her (indicating that, perhaps, the wreck was discovered by a man--though that has no bearing on the meaning). The reason that "our names do not appear" in the book of myths is because even though Rich has gone into this wreck, and explored every crevice, just as explorers before her did, she will get no credit. Her name, nor the names of other modern explorers, will ever be credited for diving into the same wreck. If the book of myths were the Bible, the line "our names do not appear" would not make sense. There were tons of women in the Bible, and many had names. Now you're going to say "Many, but not all." Well, I'll point out then, that many men have names in the Bible, but not all. It's not about sexism. It's about a shipwreck and how Rich has explored said wreck, and she feels a little sad that textbooks won't list her among those who discovered the wreck.
I don't think your sexual preferences have any bearing on whether or not you like to go diving.

Hands

It was debated in my group, and we were kind of split down the middle, but I don't thnk Wing was gay. Affectionate, sure. Caring, absolutely. When he touched George, he withdrew his hands. Not for fear that he would go too far, but for fear that the action would be misinterpreted. He was just an affectionate, caring, loving teacher with feminine characteristics. It says in the story, that a young boy  "imagined unspeakable things." This boy dreamed that Wing had touched him or done inappropriate things and then "went forth to tell his dreams as facts." He didn't abuse those children at all, but when an accusation like that is made, it's a fucking witch hunt. You can't prove you didn't touch the kids, and that's apparently evidence enough to burn you at the stake. Or in Wing's case, beaten in the school yard.

Death of a Salesman

There seems to be a lot of debate around which character is the protagonist. Personally, I see it two ways: First, the play is a tragedy, and in all tragedies, the protagonist is destroyed by his or her fatal flaw. Therefore, Willy is the protagonist. He is the titular character, after all. And he is destroyed by his obssession with success. Second, the protagonist is the character who changes and the antagonist is the character who causes the protagonist to change. Therefore, Bif is the protagonist. Willy and Happy are the antagonist, because they bring about all the change that Bif has to face. Even time could be an antagonist, because as Bif grows older, his views and opinions change. However, time has also changed Willy. So... Screw it, there is no protagonist...
Anyway, all character confusion aside, the play is very interesting. It presents a take on the dark side of the American Dream, the people who failed to be the Great Gatsby, if you will. Willy is a picture of someone who worked hard and long, and for what? A run down house, a history of domestic violence, an affair, and a kid who doesn't love him--barely respects him. It's dark, gruesome (in the sense that the American Dream is slaughtered before our very eyes). It's a true picture of America. Reminds me of Watchmen, the scene where Nite Owl and the Comedian are fighting rioters--American citizens--and Nite Owl asks "Whatever happened to the American Dream?" to which the Comedian replies "It came true. You're looking at it."
Powerful stuff.

Invisible Man

The narrator had choices.





Oh, you want more? That's not enough information for you?... *Sigh* Okay. See, the way I see it, everything that happens to us is the result of a choice. Almost everything. Sometimes, people do things to us, but we have the choice of letting them, stopping them, or running away from them. In the eyes of mortals, our free will is infinite, unlimited. Not so much in the eyes of deities, but that's a different subject for a different time.
"They forced him," you say. "He had no choice but to get in the ring and fight."
Not true. It was simply the best option. The narrator says he has no choice in the matter when really, he just knows that the alternative is that he gets the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of drunk, angry white guys. He <i>chooses</i> the better option. Plus, he was conscious enough to realize that some of the guys were jumping out of the ring, so he could have chosen to do the same. He could have chosen not to go after the money. He could have chosen to lose the battle royale altogether. But he didn't. Because he kept choosing the self-preserving options. He didn't want fifty angry white guys beating him into Jell-O.
All in all, I liked it. Maybe it wasn't about race, but there were certainly some racial aspects of it. Like the illusion of success in the black community. The white guys gave him a scholarship for his talent in speech-writing, but it was to a Negro college. They chose a college for him, they didn't hand him a check and say "Pick any college you like, son. You've earned it." Nope, they said "Go to this black school and be a good boy." It's condescending. They send the smart black kids off to college so they don't cause trouble for the white folk. Then they're free to push around the more uneducated ones. Sad but true.

Gertrude Stein

"Tender Buttons" is an interesting piece of work. In a way, it reminds me of Charles Simic, a poet who immigrated to America as a boy during World War II. Simic write prose poetry--which is sort of what Stein does, only without coherent sentences--but the thing about Simic is that he writes these cryptic freaking poems that, without significant analysis of every word, make no sense whatsoever.
The difference is that Stein doesn't set out to make meaning out of her poems, as far as I can tell. It's all modern art. It's a Rothko painting, or some abstract sculpture that means something different to everyone, because whatever you get out of it is whatever you project onto it. Darren Arnofsky's "The Fountain" is a great example of this. The movie has a definite meaning to its director, but Arnofsky has not commented on that meaning, rather hoping everyone will draw their own conclusions. And there are many interpretations of the movie, not all of which do I agree with, nor would some have even occured to me. (I highly recommend that movie, by the way.)
I didn't get Stein most of the time, but some of her poems clicked immediately. I still prefer her to Simic, because at least I can just appreciate Stein's alliteration and word association without having to search desperately for meaning.

Mowing

The class' favorite poet, apparently, was Robert Frost. Who would've guessed? I recited "Mowing," which has invaritably become my favorite of Frost's poems. The consonance of the repeated "s" sound throughout the poem, as well as the isolated imagery, give this sense of hushed, calm tranquility. The poem really shouldn't be read aloud. Whispered, only half-spoken, maybe. Frost has the uncanny ability to take something as boring as mowing (with a scythe) alone in a huge field, and turn it into a poetic masterpiece.
The poem also teaches us that only humans would do work for some kind of reward (he mentions rest and money), whereas the scythe takes its only pleasure in the work itself. "The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows." Truer words. By the end of the poem, the speaker has adopted the scythe's philosophy, and he takes pleasure in his work, not for thought of reward, but in the fact that his work is done.