Poem Response

The two poems that caused a reaction from me were “Song of Napalm” and “Compendium of Lost Objects”. Both Poems had the same reaction for me, and that reaction was sadness. Both poems were written because the speaker had a bad experience. I think that a lot of poems like songs are written from experiences that caused sadness or were emotionally traumatizing. I think it is a way for the poet to cope with their feelings and maybe it helps them find a little closure. “ Song of Napalm” seems to be a poem about a man trying to forget the memories of war that haunt him, and “Compendium of Lost Objects” seems to be someone remembering the devastation of a hurricane possibly Katrina.
I felt sad for the speaker in “Song of Napalm” because he wanted so desperately to forget the sight of a little girl being burned to death by napalm but the image of it would be forever burned into his mind. The speaker talks about how he would image her flying away at the last second to safety, but realizes that he is lying to himself as soon as the thought is finished. “ I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings beat inside her and she rises above the stinking jungle and her pain eases, and your pain, and mine”(Weigl Lines 31-33). “ But the lie swings back again”(Weigl Line 34). “The lie works only as long as it takes to speak” (Weigl Line 35). To me these lines of the poem were the saddest. I feel like these five lines were the most powerful of the entire poem and really summed up the speakers feelings. He wants so bad to change the past or possibly forget it but he can’t and it is ruining his relationships in life with his family.
“Compendium of Lost Objects” was equally as sad. The speaker talks of the area were they grew up or spent a lot of time in, but now it has been devastated by a hurricane. I couldn’t imagine if all the places I loved, where the memories of my life were created, were all wiped away in the blink of an eye. It would be as if someone or something just took a part of your life and erased it. Before I read this poem I had thought the devastation of a natural disaster was bad but I never looked at it in the way this poem made me look at it. It made me think, what if that was my hometown, and how it would effect me.
Besides the sadness these poems made me feel I realized that poems could really put you into another persons shoes. I guess any piece of literature that causes a strong reaction can cause you to think more about it and give you a different perspective about the subject. I think reading and understanding the writers point of view can really make you understand others situations and look at them through their eyes.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/