Inoculation

The Inoculation was actually one of the first poems i read throughout our packet. I never wanted to blog about this poem because i found it so confusing. This poem seemed to be about a slave and the disease holding down his freedom even more. I believed the poem was once again a poem about freedom and all the different ways that it was possibly taken away in the time of slavery. Once i heard Jeff talk about the poem to the class i completely understood the poem when spoken to me. The entire class saw it from the eyes of the bible, and slaves. They saw it in the way i did when i first read the peom. Obviously for me not to write about the poem it wasnt because i didnt like it, but because i knew there was more meaning behind the Inoculation. Inoculation means to affect or treat in the medical world. As being a student devoted to learning more about medicine, i realized that this poem about small pox was not only relating to freedom, but also the way the disease was becoming controlled. Small Pox was around for many years killing people of all ages, as the poem was saying, people would find someone already infected with the disease and try to scratch a part of their skin to inject the infectious disease. Although this theory of treatment seemed a little extreme it was rather an experiement that would change the way we control diseases for the rest of our lives. This poem was talking about the beginning fight for freedom amongst slaves, as much as the fight for freedom against killing diseases. Vaccinations was the thought i got out of this poem the more i began to read between the lines. This is my favorite poem it is something that im completely interested in, and its something that most poets dont want to write about. If you dont know the history, most readers wont understand the point of the poem. I think more poems should be history related, rather than love or life or death.

The Halo That Would Not Light

The Halo That Would Not Light, was a brilliantly written poem, but it was hard to understand why she structured the poem the way she did. Some of the sentences were aligned differently than others. Im not sure if there was any significance to the structure but it was something that I noticed. Also it really helped once Elena talked about how the author wrote this poem, she wrote it in memory of a young child that had past away. When i read this story i viewed it as a child who was abused, i thought that the "halo that would not light" was the child that couldn't smile, or "live". i didnt view it as someone who past away i thought it was someone being robbed of her childhood in conclusion to the abuse. Either way it was viewed i thought it was the best poem within our packet. Not because it was sad or anything but it had more meaning, and not so many pointless metaphors like the others.

A Gray Haze Over The Rice Fields

When I read this poem I thought it was written directly for me, because if i look back on when i did live in Ohio that is how i feel. I used to live with my grandma in the middle of nowhere in Ohio. I would always look beyond the fields and our long road to the city. My grandma was always a bitter lady, although she is still with me unlike the poem, i feel the same pain now that i am away from her. My mom was around, but probably not as much as she wished, so "the soft dampness of my tears when my mother didn't notice me..." also kind of matched my life. This poem to me was just a young girls cry to a past life that she missed, she missed the people and the place. She was having trouble letting go of her childhood but knew she had too in order to continue living. I think that Jayanta did a good job of writing this poem and had a creative way of putting all of the words together.