Poems for March 12

Alone by Maya Angelou, 1928 – 2014
3 poems selected by Ploughshares by Rosalie Moffett, for her poems, “Why Is It the More,” “To Leave Through a Wall,” and “Hurricane, 1989.”

We compared "Alone" with the spirited poem by Angelou, "Phenomenal Woman"-- and my question was, what kind of day would you be having to want to read the poems?
One reminds us of power,the other of the importance of collaboration, but, both have a warm embrace that connects us to feeling alive, with a sense of the possible.

The three poems by Rosalie Moffett give us a different woman's voice-- addressing events in her life that lead her to seek patterns.

We read "Why is it the more" connecting the title to the first line, "I see of the world..."
and thought the NBC headline might be a better title, than brazenly interrupting the flow of thought -- but perhaps that is the point. We re-read the poem by sentence, pondering how the form helps or hinders our understanding as reader. Some of the line-breaks are highly effective, e.g.
"I'm sure there is someone / close by (note, how the words are far away from someone)
... to tell me this / is ill-guided." Followed by a fragment naming this idea as "hope",
immediately contradicted by this wrong/way to go about it.

Lively language and quite a viewpoint overlooking the world.

The second poem left us feeling as if we were witnessing a ghost -- although at the end I am not sure I am convinced that going through a wall is "the only way to return exactly to the same place as/the same person" because I am not sure why this is an enviable thing to do.


The Hurricane created the confusion of disaster -- even the scattered energy of the "little yard leaping with fleas"... and the demise of the brain. Having just seen "The Theory of Everything" about Stephen Hawkings ALS, the metaphor of hurricane seems very appropriate.

Dreamcatcher -- also discussed March 16 -- beautiful twining of
half-remembered / twine of the string.
An idea of sisyphus -- where, the dreamcatcher protects from the reality, so the rock-rolling cannot hurt in the dream, but the last line, plunks us solidly into the living nightmares.
Brilliant use of half rhyme, sounds, images of what thoughts arrive in the dark.