Responding to Poetry

Responding to a poem


The two poems I chose to respond to are, “Charlie Howard’s Descent”, by Mark Doty, and “Song of Napalm”, by Bruce Weigl. Both of these poems show an extreme amount of emotion and both are based off of real events.

“Charlie Howard’s Descent” is a poem based on the death of a homosexual boy in the 1980’s (Wikipedia par. 1-4). This poem reminded me a lot of the recent story of the girl who committed suicide because of the kids that teased her and made her feel like an outcast. These kinds of stories anger me. Because this boy was gay, he was teased and eventually killed because “he could not meet the town’s demands” (Doty, line 17-18); others could not accept him for who he was. Many people would say it is a sin to be a homosexual, but isn’t it a sin to judge one of God’s children. In the poem it says, “What could he do, live with one hand tied behind his back” (Doty lines 12-14); He obviously was more feminine than other men. I am a Christian myself and of course, like many other’s I still have unanswered questions. One of them being, If God makes all of his children, why would he make some of them with both male and female parts, and then say that being homosexual is wrong. I believe this would be a good poem for all teenagers to read.

“Songs of Napalm” is a poem based on a soldier’s memories in Viet Nam (weigl, Bio, par. 3). This poem is interesting in that if you’ve never seen things through a soldier’s eyes, you can never fully understand the true intensity of the things they have witnessed. This soldier gives us (the readers) a very an inside look at the effects the war had on him. I think the most powerful part of his poem is when Weigl says, “ I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings beat inside her until she rises above the stinking jungle and her pain eases, and your pain, and mine, but the lie swings back again”(lines 30-34). This part really made me feel his pain and his longing to just put these horrible memories to rest. He wants so badly to be able to live in the moment with his wife but these images in his head will not let him.

Both of these poems were written very well in the sense that in reading it a person can almost feel the pain these people were feeling. In my opinion, these poems are the best kind of poetry because they are real and heart-felt.

References
Mark Doty “Charlie Howard’s Descent.” Angelfire 1987. 9 September 2010. Web. http://www.angelfire.com/ca4/strawberry/descent.html
Bruce Weigl “Song of Napalm.”Poetry foundation. 1999. 9 September 2010. Web. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html
Charlie Howard (MurderVictim)Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 1984. 9 September 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Howard_(murder_victim)
Website for this image http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/poetryexplication





Here is a link that gives more info on the kid Charlie from Mark Doty's poem