How easily things can be broken.

"The Arm"

This poem at first gave me great confusion on why this man would talk about a baby doll. Then when I read

on into the poem he explains different scenarios that could have happened to this baby dolls arm floating in

the bond as he is walking his dog. First he starts with two sisters fighting over the doll and one of the sister

rips the arm off. This thought came to my mind that maybe he watched his two sisters fight over their baby

dolls when they were younger. He then states how there is a lily pad that is shaped like a heart in the pond

which kind of through me off because it really has nothing to do with this baby doll arm. He then starts to

search for this baby dolls body to see if it was floating in the water or anywhere on the side of the pond.

Another image came to his mind that maybe this little boy was playing with the baby doll and that his father

whom did not like that fact that his son was playing with a girl toy took the toy away but all he ripped off was

the arm. So it kind of puts a thought in the readers mind that maybe this man that found this arm was a little

boy who liked playing with baby dolls, but his father did not like that he played with them as a child. Toward

the end of the poem this man is trying to retrieve this doll arm that is floating in the pond, to do what with,

take it home, and of course his wife would be questionable to why he brought this doll arm home. It is

possible that this man, when walking his dog finds weird, broken things and brings them home.

"Highway 12, Just East of Paradise, Idaho"

This poem gives me thought of driving down in back road in the hill country where there are a bunch of 

woods and brush that deer would like hid/live in. It seems that he is driving down this highway at night time 

with other cars, when he witnesses the other truck hit this doe that had ran out in front of him on the highway. 

He explains how the doe's face looked when getting struck by this truck, "I saw her tongue / extend and her 

eyes go shocked and vacant" (Wrigley 3-4). He explains how the doe is slung across many yards where she 

then hit a pole with her neck and spun her the opposite way out of sight. Th man says "For which, I admit, I 

was grateful, / the road there being dark, narrow, and shoulderless, / and home, with its lights, not far away." 

This man was very happy not that the animal was killed but because it wasn't him that hit the doe is was the 

driver next to him. He makes it seem like it is very late at night in which that he is almost home that is just 

right down the road. 

Different Kinds Of Love

Valentine

Shows that the narrator has animosity towards the typical gifts that are given on Valentine’s Day. She states these typical gifts as being, red roses, satin hearts and cute cards from your significant other. She thinks all these gifts lack a sense of the true meaning of love. The narrator gives her significant other an onion, she says, “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. / It promises light / like the careful undressing of love” (Duffy 3-5). The way she explains her gift is that the onion leaves a stench on you for a while like a love for another person will stay with you. Also, how the onion will make you cry when you cut into it, “it will blind you with tears / like a lover” (7-8). She uses the onion as a replacement from “normal” gifts that would make couples normally cry over. The onion is wrapped in a brown covering, its symbolizing wrapping paper hiding the real gift that she has given. When the onion is unwrapped the rings inside look as if, “it’s platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring / if you like” (19-20). She uses the word shrink which means to reduce to explain her thoughts about marriage. Almost as if marriage would weaken the love by putting a more normal tittle to describe their relationship. It is possible that the narrator was hurt in past relationships which could be the reason why she doesn’t see the “red roses or a satin heart” (1) or the “cute card or a kissogram” (12) as showing the real meaning of love.

"Wedding Ring"

The narrator states that she doesn’t know what a claddagh is, she calls it a sweetheart ring. She describes what the ring looks like,  “silver hands clasping a rounded heart,/an apple, I mistakenly thought, / topped by a crown” (McMahon 2-3). This ring is given to show love to another person or could be given as a wedding ring. She thinks of “it as my regnant pomme” (4) which means the ring has a great influence on her. The word “pomme” is a French word which means apple, this is what she described the ring at the beginning of the poem when it is actually a heart in the silver hands. She states that the clichés wring from her, they squeeze out of her. She starts talking about how all this debris that is flying around means home to her, just meaning that it’s all normal to her. The guy that gave her the ring found it in a diner in Slingo, which is a county in the Republic of Ireland. He found the ring “wedged in the cushioned booth, rejected, perhaps, or lost…” (13). She thinks maybe the lover hid the ring while rehearsing and got distracted by something else and forgets about the ring. She says she never takes the ring off. 

"The Foot Thing"

papermed.com

I choose this poem because when I first read it, it made me think of a pregnant woman at her doctors appointment, putting her feet up on the table to have an ultrasound or just a check up. "On your first visit, you put your feet up on my polished table." (line 1-2). It made me think of this because I have a friend who is going through a pregnancy right now and she is very tiny with a huge belly. When the narrator says "i had to talk to you by leaning round." (9) it made me think of my friend because I feel like I have to do that when she is relaxing. 

As the poem goes on though it seems like it could be any kind of doctors appointment, maybe a therapist with a patient? I'm not really sure. She says that they see each other after this but she never see's her put her feet back up on the table like she did the first time. So she think's it was a test, to see how she would react. To see if she was very stern and strict about her belongings. 

The questions that I have for this poem would be, if the narrator is the doctor? And why would she "just set a knife on one side and a fork on the other" (14-15) I really didn't understand that statement. One other question I have towards this poem is why would she think she have passed whatever test it was but also feel like she failed it?