The Halo That Would Not Light

I might be taking this poem the wrong way, but I think it's about a child dying or the murder of a child. Then again one of my favorite poets is Edgar Allan Poe and he tends to have really dark, gruesome poems so I could be missing the symbolism of this poem and taking it too literally.
The first part, "When, after many years, the raptor beak Let loose of you," I took this as a decaying body and the raptor beak is the beak of a bird such as a crow or vulture who eats decaying flesh. The next part, "He dropped your tiny body In the scarab-colored hollow Of a carriage," I thought it was unusual that the author specifically addressed, "He", which made me think that some man had taken this child, killed him and left him somewhere out in the open where the birds got after the body. Scarab-colored would be blue and gold so I think it means that the man put the body into some old time carriage. The part, "left you like a finch Wrapped in its nest of linens wound With linden leaves in a child's cardboard box." The comparison to a finch was confusing because a finch is just a small bird that was introduced to North America and the Hawaiian Islands and I didn't find anything about a finch leaving it's young so perhaps it used the comparison so the nest of linens would make more sense. The nest of linens is just what the body was wrapped in along with the linden leaves. I also looked up linden leaves and it is usually used to help with anxiety and a few other medical purposes so perhaps the leaves are just to decorate the body. Cardboard box I think is just the coffin, it is a child's cardboard box because a small child would be able to fit into it.
The part about the swings going back and forth with no one in them to me is just to show the emptiness of life without that child. I also thought it could be a ghost of the child swinging on the swings.
"As certain and invisible as Red scarves silking endlessly From a magician's hollow hat And the spectacular catastrophe Of your endless childhood." I just pictured this as a magician pulling endless amounts of red scarves out of his hat that are 'invisible' when you look directly into the hat. I also view the red scarves as representing blood. "Spectacular catastrophe Of your endless childhood." This part is what made me think it was a murder instead of a death and then a funeral procession because it was a catastrophe, an event that ended horribly. Also the endless childhood, I see as the child as a ghost. The child was never able to grow up or finish his full time in life. Also since he was never able to grow older, the child will forever be a child, like the poem said, and endless childhood.

Mr. Fear

"He follows us, he keeps track. Each day his lists are longer." I liked this poem, it had a darker vibe to it and delved into subconscious stuff. I think this line means that our fears never leave us and as time goes on we develop new fears which makes that "list" longer.
The second stanza was about nightmares. Mr. Fear's sack of troubles are things that frighten us in our dreams even though in real life we may not be afraid of it. In the third stanza, the author asks whether Mr. Fear is happy when he reaches into his sack and finds something or sad. When it said happy, I imagine a sinister smile, Mr. Fear would be happy because he's about to cause us that fear and because he is evil and dark he find pleasure in it. The sad side of it, I imagined as he's sorry that he has to cause this fear but he has to do it.
"Tell me, Mr. Fear, what must I carry away from your dream." I see this line as when something from a dream haunts you. Frightening things from a dream really sticks with you and sometimes you never forget it. The next part in the poem about where the author begs fro Mr. Fear to make whatever he is pulling from his sack to be small, so that it can be easily forgotten and won't haunt him. Near the end of the poem about the crickets and the author listened to them before he slept. I thought it was interesting because often we dream of stuff we saw right before we went to bed or of stuff that's on our minds. So hearing the crickets and then dreaming about them at night was a correlation I had because even a minuscule thing like crickets can scare you when they become something frightening in a dream.

On a side note I was thinking of this when I was writing this. When I read a poem I automatically think a woman wrote it and then I look at the author's name and realize it was a man who wrote it, it sometimes changes my perspective on the piece. So I wondering does everyone automatically think a piece of literature is written in their gender's perspective if they don't know who the author is?

In Blackwater Woods

In the first stanza of the poem it said, "the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light." This line stuck out to me because I think it means the trees are timeless, they have turned into these stone pillars that will never die. The, "of light", part means they stand for something good or pure. The next line, "are giving of cinnamon and fulfillment," is like smelling a familiar and nice smell that the author might familiarize with fulfillment. Such as the smell of burning wood is a comforting and nice smell because it reminds someone of a camp fire which usually has fond memories.

The next part about cattails is just a description, the top of a common cattail is brown, soft feeling, and oval shaped. When it blooms all of it's fluffy seeds emerge and are carried away by the wind or water. "Blue shoulders of the ponds," means to me just the color of the water, when ripples are created it's kind of like tiny waves that could be seen like a blue shoulder. The part where the author talks about how every pond is nameless now I think means that people never remember or know the name of a pond because it's just a pond, nothing big or great like a lake or river.

"The fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know." I visioned this line like heaven and hell. The ,"fires", is hell and the, "other side", is heaven. "The black river of loss," is that journey everyone takes that will either lead them to heaven or hell. It is a river of loss because people go through life not knowing if they will go to heaven or hell or if there is a heaven or hell, they are unguided. "Whose meaning none of us will ever know", is referring to the salvation part because no one knows what happens after death or what heaven or hell will be like.

The last two stanza's about the three things everyone must do is talking about finding something in the world like family, friends, or something you choose to believe in is the mortal thing a person must love and a person has to hold it against them like they're life depends on it is because of that river of loss. A person is unguided so they need something or someone to believe in and to hold on to, to help them through life and then, when the times comes part, is about death, when a person is about to die they have to let go of that person or thing and just let death come.

A Gray Haze Over The Rice Fields

I really liked this poem, the author used a lot of descriptive words such as, "long-legged, little kisses, and soft dampness" as well as many other words phrases in the poem. I also liked this poem because it had a gloomier side to it.
One line I was confused with was in the first stanza, "I am looking out in search of memory, not death." I think the author meant that she was writing about past memories and she wanted to point that out so people wouldn't confuse it with her seeing her life flash before her eyes before she died.
I found it interesting as well how the author started out with nice, fond memories and then she transitioned into those gloomy ones. In this part though another line confused me, it was at the very end of the first stanza, "my mother didn't notice me from beyond the closed door of her youth." I'm still not sure what this line means but I thought maybe it meant that when her mother was young she had many dreams and hopes that she never accomplished and now she wallows in those lost dreams and closes herself off to the rest of the world, especially her daughter.
In the next stanza where it begins talking about the thread, I thought it might symbolize things that she can not accomplish or attain or perhaps people she can not connect with or reach out to. Many things are passed down from parent to child so perhaps this means that she now shuts out loved ones like her mother did.
The next line, "It's not that I wait for judgment.", could connect with my previous idea that she knows that what she is doing hurts other or what her mother did, shutting people out, hurts others but she is not waiting for someone to judge her or for God to judge her. The lines about the shadow I think represent redemption, she is freed from those past memories that emotionally scarred her and now she can just think about the happy memories she has and forget about the bad ones.

Little Apocalypse

In this poem, I noticed there wasn't a particular rhyme scheme, it used a lot of personification which made it sound elegant and flowing. The personification was mostly in the beginning of the poem, "The ground shudders," was the beginning of the second stanza. "the clouds assemble and mumble their messages," came a few lines after and, "the earthworms huddles, " came a few lines after the line about clouds.
The author also used a lot of knowledgeable words like rapt, and avaricious, and he even made up a word, dragononing. I found this helped the poem sound elegant and pretty.
I thought about trying to find the deeper meaning of this poem but I think the poem is about what's right in front us, nature. The line, "Afternoon's ready to shove its spade deep in the dirt," and, "the clear-out's begun," I think means exactly what it says. It's talking about how all these organisms are living in this habitat and then a human caused disturbance disrupts that cycle. The clearing of that environment with the spade going into the dirt. Then some of the last lines talk about fire and fog which could mean smoke is talking about man made fires that kill all those organisms and their habitat. The poem then ends showing how life begins again with the line, "from the black horizon, four horses heave up, flash on their faces." Although flash usually means something sudden light a flash of light, it can also mean a sudden outburst of joy. So perhaps the author shows that although nature is destroyed it will grow back again and the things living there will be happy again when their habitat is restored.