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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ESSAY: AT NIGHT THE AUTOPORTRAIT AT NIGHT, by ELENI SIKELIANOS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Each evening from my bed I calculated & compared Last Line: Second elbow Subject(s): Essays; Soul | |||
Each evening from my bed I calculated & compared the state of my soul with the state of Kansas, because a place also carries a name. Did my body make an objection to traveling across Texas internal conditions in which I abstracted myself Chicago I never had to force myself to immigrate to the inside thought // like a possum // playing dead // leaving as little as possible living at a surface // which might be burned // a lamp, a desk ... entered the eye ... to prove something ... was going on ... outside the skin Baltimore Deployed over the gutted city: an immense crude sky, scene of some crime or other, a brusk separation parented by nature knowing nothing or understanding nothing requires some concentration except the things the heart can do directly Between the dark & the bed approaching each place or thing my eyes (a body) must accustom themselves anew ...... If a being could be the product of a ground one tastes, then I was Texas developing a vague science of joy or beauty Forgetting the particulars that make it go a paysage abandons a window to get an inkling of the sky or the sky's second elbow | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CRUEL FALCON by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE WHOLE SOUL by PHILIP LEVINE I KNOW MY SOUL by CLAUDE MCKAY HONORING THE SAND; IN MEMORY OF JOSEPH CAMPBELL by ROBERT BLY THE CHINESE PEAKS; FOR DONALD HALL by ROBERT BLY |
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