Week 6: Gluck, Alexie, Louis, and Espada

Gluck:
Someone ripped out all the pages of Gluck. I really do not like the previous owner of my book.

In "Penelope's Song" and "Quiet Evening" Gluck focuses on nature and the speakers family life. I wonder who Penelope is waiting for. I feel like it's her father, but it could very well be another male member of her family. I love the images this poem presents. I also noticed that in two of her poems, "Penelope's Song" and "Parable of the Hostages" she mentions 10 years. I just thought that was interesting that 10 years appears in two of her poems that are not of the same subject. I don't like the Parable poems as much as Circe's poems. Circe is awesome. She is a powerful and dominate woman. She shows no remorse for her actions. It's interesting that she doesn't capitalize the word God in either of those poems. Perhaps it shows her lack of religion or it shows that Circe is in fact mortal like the rest of us and she is just a fake God.


Alexie
"Evolution" is by far the coolest poem I've read this semester. I hate Buffalo Bill. He is some sort of EVIL genius or just a plain asshole. Evolution is an interesting name for this poem because it does not evoke the typical thoughts of the development of man. It seems to me that the evolution refers to his store and not man at all. It's the development of the store and his inventory. He starts by collecting valuables from Native Americans that have been passed down for generation after generation. He takes advantage of people at their most vulnerable moments.

Lisa made me lose my train of thought because I couldn't disagree more with what she had to say.

Then after he has accumulated all their belongings and cataloged them in a very methodical way he decides to just re-name the store and charge people to see what they use to own! OUTRAGEOUS. I have never had a "fictitious" character more.

Louis
I think that "Looking for Judas" impacted me the most while reading Louis's poems probably because of the last line. The speaker of the poem is talking about his ancestors traditions when they kill an animal. The speaker talks about the act like his ancestors were there working with him. He talks about the meaning behind the act, but the last line throws all of that away. "or something like that." like it means nothing to him anymore.

Espada
"The Skull Beneath the Skin of the Mango" was definitely the most moving of his poems. It was intense and graphic and extremely interesting. I wonder if this was based of fact or on myth.