Response to "Intro to Poetry", "Snow Day", "Homage to my Hips", & Girl

"Introduction to Poetry" in my eyes the speaker is trying to encourage poetry readers to examine poetry through many different perspectives. "press a ear against its hive" > listen to it, let it speak to you

"drop a mouse into it" > get lost in it and let it guide you out.

"waterski across the surface...wave to the author on the shore" > have fun with, allow it to take you away like a vacation. the author is the ski instructor. he's given you what you need now leave him behind and go for it. 

But instead of enjoying poetry, readers are so concerned with finding out the poems "deep meaning".

I found this poem to be rather funny because I tend to tie poetry to a chair and beat it with a hose but Collins has inspired me to waterski. 

"Homage to my Hips" is a poem of confidence. The enjambment did not hinder the reading of the poem like it did in "The Lull'. The poem has its most natural flow when read to the punctuation. The flow of the poem makes me think of the rhythm of walking. I believe the speaker walks with a very confident stride and maybe Clifton is trying to convey to fluidity of her steps through the rhythm of this poem.

In Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" the speaker (who i guess is the mother) is reading off a list of daily tasks (to who I presume is her daughter) and the proper way to complete them. The mother seems to be trying to prepare the girl for adulthood. Throughout the poem the mother continues to encourage her daughter not to become a slut, though from what she says, the girl is already hell bent on being one. the tasks the mother is speaking of are tasks that are usually considered to be woman's work. Though the poem is titled "Girl" the mother is doing what she can to ensure her daughter is prepared to be a woman.

"Snow day" was a cute little poem. It is probably one of the more simplistic of the poems we have read so far.  (5 lined stanzas all ending in punctuation). At first I was thinking the speaker was probably a teenager or a pre-teen with the him being so excited to be out of school for this unexpected snow day but when the radio announcer begins to read off the list of closed schools, it led me to believe the reader was much younger. The cute little names of the schools had me laughing out loud, especially "Peas-and-Carrots." But then again as I sit back and re-read it, perhaps the speaker is at an older age and maybe the sweetness of the school names is being used as a sort of time warp to foreshadow the kind of child like antics that will take place on this day, particularly the possible snow ball war that is partially indicated at the end.