Blog 8 Collins & Mueller Tina Radstone

I happened to be drawn to the poem "Schoolsville", by Billy Collins. I liked it because it was easy to read and the story was clear; I didn't have to read into it. The poem didn't have a rhyme scheme, but I found that to be alright. This poem doesn't have to rhyme in order the reader to understand what is going on. I felt that it was a little mini story of a teacher who reflects on his career and speaks negatively of the students that he has taught. Perhaps, Collins might be speaking about his own life. His negative description of the students gives the reader that some didn't care about his class and maybe some of the students didn't graduate. A great example of Collin's negativity is when he speaks of the girl “brushing her hair like a machine" (19). This is a great way to express to the reader that there is quite a bit of repetition and the girl lacks interest in the class. He even says that he forgot all of their "last names first and their first names last" (13-14), but he knows of them through their actions in his class. Collins shows a clear example of remembering his students through their actions by stating, "the boy who always had his hand up...and the girl that signed her papers in pink lipstick" (15-17). I can't say that I absolutely love this poem but I can say that I do like it because it is so easy to read. On the other hand the poem that I don't care for is "Hope", by Lisel Mueller. I was fooled by this poem because the title clearly states what the poem is about and I obviously didn't catch on to that until after I had read the whole entire thing. I was thinking to myself, what the heck is this about? The title of this poem is deceiving because the content of the poem doesn't specifically say the word "hope" throughout the body; it just gives physical descriptions so that the reader ends up forgetting what it is that they are reading about. Mueller gives a great example by stating that, "it sprouts in each occluded eye/ of the many-eyed potato/ it lives in each earthworm segment/ surviving cruelty" (9-10). He is trying to convey that hope opens the eye of people that are blind to the things that they are scared of or maybe blind to what they are confused and feared by. Earthworms don't have sense of sight so they have to dig and find their way through. The point that I am trying to make is that I didn't understand what the poem is about until after I read several times through and then of course referring back to the title is when the light bulb blinked profusely. Maybe to some other people, they might like this kind of approach with poetry but it utterly confused me.