4 responses to “How’s the weather?”

1. 

   Claudia

   Jan 24

   Weather: I compared myself to the wind last class, saying that I moved at a lot of varied paces throughout my day.

   Poems: I do not have a lot of experience analyzing poem’s but I got a lot of emotion from this weeks, I felt power and also juxtaposition. I will leave you all with the lines that I found impactful,

   ” cleaved the fig with

   what remained of her

   teeth…”

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2. 

   Brandon Engelhardt

   Jan 26

   From Sunday

   The door swings wide,
   heat rushes out,
   a nest of bodies hatched
   from different lives,
   huddled together awaiting the game.

   One jersey’s beaten- handed down by generations,
   eyes locked on the screen,
   hands pressed together like a prayer.
   Another, arms crossed, stands tall—
   stoic with nerves of what is to come.

   In the corner, a visitor squints,
   confused by the chants,
   the way strangers pound the bar
   like it’s the heartbeat of the room.

   The screen flickers—
   a moment holds its breath,
   like the O-Line in a V on the 1,
   we’re all we got.

   we’re all we need.

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3. 

   Austin

   Jan 26

   I am a rolling thunderstorm, perhaps volatile, but not destructive. The kind that disrupts the body, but gently shakes the earth. Yes, there are intermittent breaks, just long enough to assess and reflect on the sensation of vibrating in tandem with the earth. The thunderstorm deposits a type of frustration that is out of any one person’s control. A frustration that only grows with attention. I find it more peaceful to just be and allow the rolling thunderstorm to touch and unsettle the things in its path, while knowing that things can always be picked up and pieced back together.

   The two poems were such a lovely reflection on the intimate interactions with those close to you and that of strangers. I found the poem by Hanif quite visceral, in which he observed the monuments/artifacts of heartache and heartbreak, while connecting it to his memories of his own heartbreak and grief along with that of his father’s. He allows the wind to blow through the crack in the window in a powder blue Ford Taurus, which rides along the highway, which is well versed in the sound of abandonment, while scoring the poem with a famous track by Journey. Hanif often uses nostalgia and music as a tool to navigate grief. In this instance, a track that was attached to his friend and his friend’s mother’s grief flipped to be a tool for healing. Hanif made vulnerable two parents-which are often seen as impenetrable by our younger selves- who took on a childlike essence, and as this was happening, Hanif wove in his friend’s experience of coming into manhood while falling back into childhood, a dance that nostalgia often concerns itself with.

   Ross Gay quickly moves from a world of isolation and rumination into the intricacies of shared experience, where strangers become familiar. He highlights a world said to be lonely, where much time is spent in one’s head, often thinking about interactions and what should have been said. He then speaks to the universal language of connection. Ross highlights natural beauty, neighborhood connection, and chance encounters, showing how they’re inextricably linked. He moves from feeling lonely to describing the intimate act of eating from a stranger’s hand, to sharing sweat with a stranger, to sustaining acts of joy.

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4. 

   Paul Yun

   Jan 27

   I wrote that my weather is very sunny, but though it sounds really nice, the un-bearable heat tends to leave me very tired of the constant light, wanting it to be night so I can finally take my cue and go to a long deserved rest

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