Thanksgiving

Turkeys, stuffing, and pie
in piles that reach the sky.
Yams, beans, and rolls
overflow in their bowls.

Pumpkin Pie,
Green bean Casserole,
Apple Pie,
Hash brown Casserole,
Pecan Pie,
Broccoli Casserole,

So much food to my delight,
too bad I can't take another bite.

Ethics

Linda Pastan

In ethics class so many years ago

our teacher asked this question every fall:
If there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face

leaving her usual kitchen to wander

some drafty, half imagined museum.

One year, feeling clever, I replied

why not let the woman decide herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand

before a real Rembrandt, old woman,

or nearly so, myself. The colors

within this frame are darker than autumn,

darker even than winter—the browns of earth,

though earth's most radiant elements burn

through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one

and all beyond saving by children.

Linda Pastan was born in New York on the 27th of May in 1932.  She is currently living in Maryland.  She has twelve poetry books published.

     In lines three through six, Pastan states the question her Ethics teacher would always ask.  The question is if there were a fire in a museum which would you save, a Rembrandt painting or an old woman who hadn't many years left anyhow? 
 

Above are some of Rembrandt's paintings.  I couldn't find how much his paintings are worth because they aren't for sale, but what I did find was his paintings would be well over a couple hundred million dollars.  If I was asked that question my answer would be the old lady.  I would choose her because even though a painting is worth more money than I'd probably ever see, a life is priceless.  In lines 13 through 14, Paston answers the question by asking why the old woman can't choose for herself.  Her teacher then explains that then she would be running away from her responsibilty to decide.  When she is older, she's in a museum standing before a Rembrandt and she realizes that a kid would choose to save an old woman simply because it's the right thing to do. 

A Study of Reading Habits

Philip Larkin

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

 

 

  I interpreted the first stanza as using books as an escape from life's dilemmas.  I also took from this stanza that Larkin used books to learn how to deal with problems.  The second stanza I visualized Larkin as a teenager, rather than a kid like I did in the previous stanza.  In line seven, when he says, with inch-thick specs, this goes back to line three.  Larkin read books so much throughout his childhood he needed glasses by the time he was a teenager.  The third stanza represents Larkin as an adult.  I thought it was funny because Larkin is now the opposite. He doesn't read anymore or go to books for solutions.  He got too bored of the same general themes.  In line seventeen, when he says, get stewed, I did some researching and found out it means to use drugs or alcohol as his escape, instead of books.  The last line is my favorite because you don't expect it, especially how much he loves books in the beginning.  I liked this poem because it is very humorous and different.  It's also not about death, which is a first. :)

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
  

 The first line, One must have a mind of winter, I took as the mind is dead.  When I think of winter, cold and dead trees first come to my mind.  Then in lines two and three, Stevens goes on to talk about how we don't see the beauty winter contains.  In the second stanza, Stevens repeats the idea in the first stanza of how people don't apppreciate winter. In the next stanza, he talks about some reasons why somebody might not appreciate winter.  In the fourth stanza, he talks about how bare winter can be.  The last stanza I think "the listener" is being referred to as the snowman.  The last line is my favorite because I took it as even though it may appear as if there's nothing there, there is always something.