Poem Response

Brandy Bigler

September 7, 2010

Mrs.Darrow

English 102

Responding to a poem

            The two poems that I chose were the “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl and “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window” by Joy Harjo. Each of the poems made me feel very sad by the time I was done reading them. I believe I reacted so strongly to these writings because I felt heart break as I read the material. I reacted to “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor” because I thought it was a poem everybody could relate too. We all feel like giving up at some point and this is exactly what I believe this poem is really about. Sometimes the pressure and stress around us forces us to consider giving up on everything because we feel that there is nothing we can do to fix the situation. The one thing I believe both of these poems had in common was the fact that each poem referred to violence in some way.      
           As I was reading “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window,” one line stuck out to me in particular. The line read, “The woman hangs from the 13^th floor window crying for the lost beauty of her own life” (Harjo). This line made me feel sadness and sympathy for the woman as well as for all the people in the world that may feel this way at any one point in time. This is reality, however, and most people realize at some point that they have not accomplished everything they wished to achieve in their own lives.

            Both of the previously mentioned poems relate back to one or more events that the person regrets, whether it is the woman hanging from the thirteenth floor window wondering why she should hold on, or Bruce Weigl talking about the memories of war he can never part with. “I turned my back on the old curses. I believed they swung finally away from me” (Weigl). This quote describes how bad Weigl wants to put the past behind him. I feel as though I can relate to this line because I believe everyone has something from their past that they would like to forget.

            Everybody has regrets and we all have things we would like to go back and change. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to change these things and we must learn to live with our past. These two poems give two different examples as to how people deal with the past. One poem describes a man that just wants to forget everything and move on, and the other describes a woman that thinks she should give up because she feels there is nothing left to live for. We all handle certain situations differently and  we all feel similar emotions at one point or another. People can relate to these poems, and this is why I reacted so strongly to them.

http://www.web3.colum.edu 

http://www.poets.org/

Works Cited

Harjo, Joy. "The Woman Hanging From the Thirteenth Floor Window." Poetry Foundation. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006. Web. 1Sep 2010.

Weigl, Bruce. “Song of Napalm." Poetry Foundation. Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 1999. Web. 1 Sep 2010.