Lovely Literature

My fellow Emily has got to be the coolest yet oddest [is that a word..?] poet from whom I have ever read material.

She just does what she wants. I kind of admire that about her even though I think she was kind of psycho. I know we aren't supposed to focus on the way she writes, but her capitalization truly drives me insane. She capitalizes all of the nouns in the body of her poem and then decides to not capitalize the important words in the title. Talk about author's preferences.

Honestly...I don't understand this poem too well. I understand that she is using liquor as a metaphor or a symbol for something else...but it's difficult to decipher. She uses words such as brewed, Tankards, Vats, Alcohol, and Debauchee that are reminiscent of alcohol, but I'm still not positive what they are in reference to.

In group discussion I formed the idea that maybe this is about the rain. The clouds are "leaning against the sun" and they take in the unbrewed liquor [a.k.a. water] for a new rainfall that quenches the thirst of the Foxgloves and plants.

This poem really got me thinking...and then confused me :/

O'Brien truly seems scarred by this one man he "kills" in My Khe. He uses repetition of the same descriptive paragraph several times.

"He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole," [page 124].

He was truly shaken up about this. He talks about it later on page 172 and says that he didn't actually kill this man physically, but he felt like he killed him. I think that's what he is saying atleast. This part really confused me...well I won't lie, a good majority of this book is confusing because O'Brien tries to explain that a true war story is never true, but it is always right. Or something along those lines.

Is this a metaphor for all those who died? He feels like he was in this war, connected to all kinds of people who were dead and were killing others. Since he couldn't stop the war himself, did he feel like it was his fault that so many people were killed? I am quite confused. Sometimes when I read books, I feel like I think much deeper than the author did when writing.

He uses repetition to show his shock from staring at this man he didn't even know. O'Brien felt like he killed this man, and he started going through the thought process that the man may have had before entering the war. The repetition establishes that even though he has seen death multiple times, it never becomes easy.