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With this being a relatively short poem, there isn’t a lot to it overall. Yet, it strikes somewhat close to home because of how true it really is. The Truth talks about failure in the respect that you had a dream, and you let the possibility of it coming true slip away, and then you having to deal with that mentally and emotional. Your dreams don’t leave you unless you realize that you don’t need them, like they were a hope but not really a goal. But when you have a dream that is ultimately a goal you wish to achieve, and you don’t, that can mentally weigh on you when reevaluating your life’s decisions and how you got to where you are in the present and when trying to figure out where you want to be. The life lesson of this poem in itself is heavy and pushes the reader really evaluate what they are doing in their life, which makes the poem highly effective despite its shortness in length.

I noticed right away Schultz’s word choice in this poem, for the words he chose stick out noticeably for they are somewhat abstract. Words such as “greasy” to describe a dream is very interesting because I’m not completely sure what he meant. Greasy isn’t a word I’d use to describe a dream typically, making me wonder the type of dreams he’s referring to. “Contrite and fearful” to describe the speaker’s feeling of guilt about the situation of him not fulfilling his dreams adds an interesting depth to the idea of possible jealousy of those who have more than him, for there’s no one to really blame for them having more but himself. The phrasing of sentences sticks out in the same way the word choice does. “it’s there in the unquiet ideas that drag and plead one lonely argument at a time” caught my attention because to say that an idea can drag and plead is a personification, but also makes it sound like an annoying and dreadful creature that follows you around like it’s in pain, which is both terrifying and understandable. Schultz wanted the fears and guilt of failure to come alive, and with his descriptive words and phrasing, they do in a somewhat haunting way.

For the week, I cheated on Schultz with Jericho Brown. The difference between the two of them is very evident in the fact that Schultz talks a lot about death and loss to where I feel like Brown talks a lot more about things that have been taken.

In the poem, “Duplex,” I honestly felt a little lost to the themes and overall meaning behind it. I had skimmed some of the other poems about lies being told and rape and so on and this was the first poem that I found that evidently showed a light within the darkness. Beginning with, “ I begin with love, hoping to end there,” caught my eye immediately because Brown LITERALLY began by beginning with it, which is an interesting choice that I appreciated. One of the other things I noticed from the very beginning was the format of the poem, since it’s divided up into chunks of two lines, and every line connects each chunk to another chunk with repetition. This format made the title, “Duplex,” make sense since the title means a house divided into two apartments with separate doors, meaning that they’re separate but connected. The poem works the same way. The thing that really confuses me is the repetition within the poem. It’s a move Brown made on purpose, and I guess in a way it makes sense since it connects the separate pieces, but it also makes the poem seem highly repetitive in a way that I don’t fully understand. I also don’t fully understand the overall point of them poem. It gives off a lot of “lost on thought” vibes, like it’s not one cohesive thought but a bunch of different thoughts floating close together and the writer was just bouncing from thought to thought. I felt like Brown was caught in a daze. Perhaps that was the point.

This is what I picture Brown looking like right before they wrote this poem.

This poem was harder for me to pick apart than my first poem. “Failure” is about a man talking about the failures of his father, and in some ways, reflects those failures on himself. The title was the first thing I noticed because of the fact that it leads directly into the poem. Most poems have the title separated or the title is mentioned later on in the poem, but Schultz made it directly part of the poem itself and used it repetitively throughout the poem.

The shifts in this poem are not as obvious as many other poems we’ve looked at have been. The best I could tell was when Schultz changed who his father had failed in some way. The rabbi, who his father failed by not being religious so when the rabbi spoke at the funeral, Schultz found it obvious the rabbi didn’t know his father at all. Then, with his uncle, who his father failed to love and honor. And then with his family because of his father’s lack of beliefs. The only time the tone within these switches felt personal was at the very end, when Schultz said “I left town but failed to get away.” Speaking of his own failures in a poem written about his father’s failures connects them in a father-son type of way. As the saying goes, like father like son. Though I feel that there are some levels of shame in this connection, for there are no positive aspects connected between his father and the failures in his life, and I can’t imagine Schultz seeing his own failures any differently.

“Only the guilty ask why

they deserve such punishment,

only the stupid expect kindness.

Always it comes to this:

how much pain we can tolerate.”

This poem was particularly intense. I picked it based on google number generator because I didn’t know where to start with my poet. So, I let google start for me and google smacked me with a poem about a two-year-old girl drowning. Always a great way to start your Sunday mornings.

This poem put me in a very strange mood that I can’t quite express. Schultz was able to put a weight on my shoulders from an experience that wasn’t even my own. His word and phrasing choices mixed with his philosophical approach to death and grief are sitting on my heart as I write this. He spends the first half of the poem explaining the situation and asking the two questions that weigh on the mind the most after a tragedy; what could have happened differently for this to have never occurred, and “how much pain we can tolerate.” He states this matter-of-factly rather than as a question, knowing that it may be the only questions that gets asked consistantly when in comes to grieving. The part of this poem that truly enticed me was after the switch, which occurs at “Three generations of womanhood...”, because the tone shifts from trying to cope to a tone I feel the priest often uses when talking at a funeral. It felt like Schultz was almost directly quoting a priest based on the philosophical, almost “higher power” tone of it. He even concludes the poem with “Lord!”, furthering my feelings that Schultz probably attended the funeral and may have included a few direct lines from the priest himself.

“Exquisite with Agony” was a title that caught my eye from the very beginning, and only made more sense after reading the poem. Exquisite, meaning extremely beautiful and often delicate, and agony, meaning extreme suffering, the title comes together to say extremely delicate with extreme suffering. I didn’t understand the full meaning of this until reading through the poem in its entirety. It’s said that there is no greater pain than that of losing a child, and that’s exactly what happened. I can only imagine the pain of losing someone who was suppose to out-life you. (362)

I’m sad now, have a nice day.

I feel this is going to sound somewhat shallow, but the first thing that caught my eye about my poet was his name. I recognized it and decided to take a closer look. His poems were intriguing in a a way I don’t typically find with the poets I regularly read. I also looked at Camille Rankine but I felt that Schultz’s work had more wisdom within it and the moves he chose for his poetry really help you to relate to what he talks about, even if the exact events aren’t always something you directly relate to. The nicest thing about poetry is it can be left to the interpretation of the reader and they can make what they wish with it to help them relate with their own experience. With Schultz being an older poet with a lifetime of experiences to talk about and me only being a senior in high school trying to get my college applications in order, I like the idea that maybe he can teach me more about the world and the people within it from a more grown and matured approach.

It’s Sunday Morning In Early November

and there are a lot of leaves already.

I could rake and get a head start.

The boys’ summer toys need to be put

in the basement. I could clean it out

or fix the broken storm window.

When Eli gets home from Sunday school,

I could take him fishing. I don’t fish

but I could learn to. I could show him

how much fun it is. We don’t do as much

as we used to do. And my wife, there’s

so much I haven’t told her lately,

about how quickly my soul is aging,

how it feels like a basement I keep filling

everything I’m tired of surviving.

I could take a walk with my wife and try

to explain the ghosts I can’t stop speaking to.

Or I could read all those books piling up

about the beginning of the end of understanding…

Meanwhile, it’s such a beautiful morning,

the changing colors, the hypnotic light.

I could sit by the window watching the leaves,

which seem to know exactly how to fall

from one moment to the next. Or I could lose

https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/jessica-quinn-i-lost-my-leg-cancer-then-became-amputee-model

This article was really interesting to me because her story paralleled in a lot of ways to Josh’s. The insecurity and worry over the fake leg was a big deal for both of them and created this weight that they both had to carry around. The biggest difference between them was that she came to terms completely a lot sooner than he did. Josh still held on to some of his insecurities without even realizing it, and it held him back a lot in life. But once he could come to terms full circle with it, his weight was lifted just like hers.