Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A SUMMING UP, by DAVID IGNATOW Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Perhaps a table set for two, or a garden Last Line: They have become so familiar to us. Subject(s): Conversation | ||||||||
Perhaps a table set for two, or a garden at the end of day, but no more. Mostly a walk through vacant spaces in which sound assails us, and shapes that are not visible oppress us with their weight. We feel them about our faces, arms and shoulders but see nothing and nobody, concentrated on one thing -- to eliminate or at least prepare for those sounds. If we are able by a sudden turn down one street to block off those noises and those weights upon us, we may find ourselves in a small room fit for two persons, with a table between, where they may eat or listen in silence to one another's complaint of the outside -- and a garden that we had no idea could exist in the rear. As we enter, its odor assails us and since we are then out in the open these sounds again and a noise of the invisible shapes colliding among themselves. Are the voices of these shapes in conflict? We sit there but we cannot communicate their beings, the noises in us, it seems, and the shapes we cannot see making our bodies their weight, they have become so familiar to us. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TODAY'S NOT OPPOSITE DAY by CHARLES BERNSTEIN WORDS THE DREAMER SPOKE TO MY FATHER IN MAINE by ROBERT BLY A CONVERSATION WITH MONICA WILSON by AIME CESAIRE TWO WOMEN ON THE POTOMAC HIGHWAY by NORMAN DUBIE IT JUST SO HAPPENS by JAMES GALVIN DRIFTERS: BELLA COOLA TO WILLIAMS LAKE by KAREN SWENSON |
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