Sample Poem #1

"My Parents Have Come Home Laughing" is a poem created by Mark Jarman about when his parents went out to a friends house, they came back very oblivious and obviously very happy.  It sounds like the feast for Robert Burns was a success.  I chose this poem because it is one of the few examples of one of Jarman's carefree pieces of work.

My Parents Have Come Home Laughing

By: Mark Jarman

My parents have come home laughing
From the feast of Robert Burns, late, on foot;
They have leaned against graveyard walls,
Have bent double in the glittering frost,
Their bladders heavy with tea and ginger.
Burns, suspended in a drop, is flicked away
As they wipe their eyes, and is not offended.

What could offend him? Not the squeaking bagpipe
Nor the haggis which, when it was sliced, collapsed
In a meal of blood and oats
Nor the man who read a poem by Scott
As the audience hissed embarrassment
Nor the principal speaker whose topic,
"Burns' View of Crop Rotation," was intended
For farmers, who were not present,
Nor his attempt to cover this error, reciting
The only Burns poem all evening
"Nine Inch Will Please A Lady," to thickening silence.

They drop their coats in the hall,
Mother first to the toilet, then Father,
And then stand giggling at the phone,
Debating a call to the States, decide no,
And the strength to keep laughing breaks
In a sigh. I hear, as their tired ribs
Press together, their bedroom door not close
And hear also a weeping from both of them
That seems not to be pain, and it comforts me.

The poem "Canticle" by Mark Jarman is about the circle of life and how life just repeats itself over and over again.  He also says that every time you repeat something, you add something new.  I chose this poem because it is a very "deep" poem and you have to really analyze it to understand the true meaning.

Canticle

By: Mark Jarman

Beautiful repetition, the caress repeated, again,
That makes one say and repeat "Don't stop."

Reiteration, restatement, the beat brushed into skin,
The pulse responding to breath, counted, touched.

Beautiful pattern of change, cyclical as blood,
The axle pivots, the planet wanders.

The moon comes back and leaves, a total story or slice
Of life, shining with meaning, like a life.
Beautiful repetition, the haze of new grass
Rises from scattered seeds, a green dawn.

A chickadee's claim rings the seed bell by the window.
The world tilts too, a ball dented by song.

Look at it happen again, always in a new pattern:
Famine again, war, after the odd peace.

Habit, the great deadener, narrows our affections
To one face, reappearing in the mirror.

Look at it happen again, always for the first time:
Death of the father, the mother, absolute.

No way to bring them back, except to become them.
Tragic re-enactment, beautiful repetition.

Is nothing real but when I was fifteen,
Going on sixteen, like a corny song?
I see myself so clearly then, and painfully--
Knees bleeding through my usher's uniform
Behind the candy counter in the theater
After a morning's surfing; paddling frantically
To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me,
Trundle me clumsily along the beach floor's
Gravel and sand; my knees aching with salt.
Is that all I have to write about?
You write about the life that's vividest.
And if that is your own, that is your subject.
And if the years before and after sixteen
Are colorless as salt and taste like sand--
Return to those remembered chilly mornings,
The light spreading like a great skin on the water,
And the blue water scalloped with wind-ridges,
And--what was it exactly?--that slow waiting
When, to invigorate yourself, you peed
Inside your bathing suit and felt the warmth
Crawl all around your hips and thighs,
And the first set rolled in and the water level
Rose in expectancy, and the sun struck
The water surface like a brassy palm,
Flat and gonglike, and the wave face formed.
Yes. But that was a summer so removed
In time, so specially peculiar to my life,
Why would I want to write about it again?
There was a day or two when, paddling out,
An older boy who had just graduated
And grown a great blonde moustache, like a walrus,
Skimmed past me like a smooth machine on the water,
And said my name. I was so much younger,
To be identified by one like him--
The easy deference of a kind of god
Who also went to church where I did--made me
Reconsider my worth. I had been noticed.
He soon was a small figure crossing waves,
The shawling crest surrounding him with spray,
Whiter than gull feathers. He had said my name
Without scorn, just with a bit of surprise
To notice me among those trying the big waves
Of the morning break. His name is carved now
On the black wall in Washington, the frozen wave
That grievers cross to find a name or names.
I knew him as I say I knew him, then,
Which wasn't very well. My father preached
His funeral. He came home in a bag
That may have mixed in pieces of his squad.
Yes, I can write about a lot of things
Besides the summer that I turned sixteen.
But that's my ground swell. I must start
Where things began to happen and I knew it.

The poem "Ground Swell" by Mark Jarman uses two key poetic devices: imagery and tone.  The poem is about Jarman reliving the summer that he turned sixteen, and what events were important to him.  He met a boy who was a bit older than he was, who acknowledged his presence.  Jarman expressed utter delight in his acknowledgement.  However, soon the clouds covered the sun and disaster struck.  The boy was killed in the Vietnam War, and Jarman's father preached for the funeral.  He had only just met the boy, so he didn't know him well enough to grieve for his death. The following quote is an example of the fantastic use of detail in Jarman's poems: "To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me,/ Trundle me clumsily along the beach floor's/ Gravel and sand; my knees aching with salt."  This quote is an example of the imagery that Mark Jarman uses in his poem.  While I was reading this, I could really see his knees scraped and bloody, and I could even almost feel the pain.  Jarman most likely used imagery and tone because in this poem, to really feel the beach and the pain Jarman went through, you have to use sensory details.  This is overall my favorite poem because of the amazing use of word choice and detail by Mark Jarman.