The second half of City in Eclogue
     In Standing Strong at first I thought that he chose to wear mismatch shoes, it's not until the end that you find he did not, this appears to be about a man in a gang, examples ". . .one of your boys was gunned . . . lights a hole through the gang hours . . . the night crimes". There are four religious referances in this poem; in the second paragraph when he says "no more shamanic a dress up than that" being a reference to shamanism. canonical incantations in the third paragraph, kind of an contradictory statement seeing as canonical means "belonging to the canon of the bible"(dictionary) and Christianity doesn't really cater to incantations. The next is in the the end of the third beginning of the forth paragraph, "his feet washed by the hands. . ." being a reference to Jesus washing the feet of the apostles, ". . . of black angels" black could mean dark or African American black in this instance. the last one I saw is at the end of the forth paragraph when it mentions towels and basins it made me think of Poutius Pilate washing his hands of Jesus' crucifixion.
     Ornithologies is the zoological field that is devoted to the study of birds, and as such almost all the poems have references to birds in them. in the first one, Urban Nature, he says it is specifically "not the dead of no bird sing" and he also mentions the "hawk's kiosks". then the topic skips two poems to come back in Open/ Back Up(breadth of fields) when he mentions "the auspice" which according to the dictionary is a form of deviation using birds. In Monk's Bird Book it mentions morning doves and talks extensively about owls and their soft, silent feathers. In Painting From Science for Hui Ka-Kwong it mentions the reptilian linage of birds. One In Its Oldest Body is sort of a set up for Ornithology which set up the image of the trains arrival board resembling a flock of gulls. the gulls continue in Cowry She which is actually mostly about a mollusk.
   The last two poems caught my attention because they are mostly about time, a very important thing to think about even though in counting it you lose it. The second to last poem addresses the commonly used analog clock and the less common hour glass. the last one addresses in detail the sundial and how it works and all the physics related to keeping tract of shadows, going so far as to quote the bible about the valley of the shadow of death (reference found in psalms 23:4, your welcome for finding that so you don't have to).

I'm going to talk about 3 underlying themes I saw in these first poems (I did some math and Page 73 is pretty much the middle page).
    The first underlying theme is not hard to see, probably because I have been raised to be sensitive to such references, it is racism. At fist he's very subtle about his reference to it only mentioning color, which makes one think about it with out actually coming out and saying anything racist. Towards the end of the second section of the book "Beauty's Standing" he comes right out and says Nigger which kind of erases any hopeful doubts that he might not choose to talk about racism. Even later he mentions "the tv's black and white" and then "our lynched . . ." lynching being something that was horribly common placed torture and murder of blacks in the south before... well I'm not sure if it has been completely eradicated, but it is certainly not as common placed now as it was before The Civil Rights Movement.
    The second underlying theme I noticed is he talks a lot about bad economy, like in (the collection) when he talks about trash picking, and not having money and not being able to get jobs. On page 64 he mentions "vagrant progress" a vagrant being someone with no legal income and no home (I found the dictionary very helpful in understanding the reading). The author also mentions, multiple times, 'the city' being in various states of complete ruin. On page 54 it talks about being emptied out into the city dump, and making up losses for the union boss. The most obvious hint however is on page 57 where it says "we couldn't even get the job
of hauling

away
 our dead" morbid but clear.

   The last underlying theme was about Gods, I'm just not sure what about them.he mentions God two or three times by title, twice by related reference and two Gods from ancient societies (and also a phoenix which is odd but besides the point). The two ancient Gods that he mentions are Ra on page 24 when he is talking about celestial bodies and their orbits, which is fitting since Ra is the Egyptian sun God; And Athena on page 47 in saying that she no longer means anything to the people and is not taken seriously, but he also cites her as one of their gods, ironically on the page before that he mentions the Olympiad (the 4 year segment between the Olympics), this being ironic because Athena is of course the Greek Goddess of war, wisdom and justice. The two times he is mentioned by related reference are first on page 48 where he mentions Christians, and page 69 on which first he mentions God by name then he refers to the tornado as a "black pillar of light" which could be referring to the tornado's color or those who are following it, the pillar of light referring to the pillar that lead the Children of Israel by night on their 40 year journey through the wideness.

       The first two readings for this week reminded me of last weeks last three readings because they appear to be word puzzles. The ones from last week and the first ones from this week both have a lot of similar words and phrases as the other by the same author. For example, the two by Susen Howe are the same words turned upside down for the most part with only a few extra and different words to each poem. The Ted Berrigan poems on the other hand had a different arrangement and in between words to change their meanings. Speaking of word Puzzles, I had a fantastic time reading and figuring out the clever word play that was the poem And What Do You Get, Only one or two of  her alterations lost to me, but that was because I didn't notice a letter or of two that was removed.
      I found the way How Light Is Spent portrayed blind people really interesting. The line "the vanity of the
blind" caught me by surprise since I have never thought the blind as very capable of being vain. Vanity has always stricken  as someone seeing them selves as more lovely then all those around. it is also interesting that the author would compare the blind to vampires, although now I think about it make perfect sense since both live in perpetual darkness, although vampires are seen as dangerous and indestructible and the blind are seen as incapable. Another interesting thing that the author compared the blind to are Forsythias, a very bright yellow flower.

      Lastly the Poems by Langston Hughes really caught my interest. They are so rhythmic and fun in the way they read that you can almost miss the more serious content of them rhymes. The fist one you can see a child saying, all except for the word "deferred" but it just adds an interesting flavor to the language of the poem. But the rest of them have a dark underlying message, pun not intended. Their about Racism, it shocked me when he used the "N" word, and a little more when he announced he was black himself. His children rhymes took me in so much I did a double that after reading the last line of the first one where it says "I know I can't
be President", having been told I could do anything I put my mind to most of my life, I could not believe he accredited such a self-defeating sentence to a child, but what do I know I am white.

Hi my name is Carryn, I have 8 siblings and attend an early collage program at EMU. My hobbies are reading, sewing and being as awesome as Carrynly possible. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it affects my view on many things because I was raised in the faith, just mentioning.

I guess that sum me up.