Daily Archives: November 21, 2014

“Observation” by Dorothy Parker

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Sorry to post another poem that may not be a great fit for class, but this is one I felt really fit well with most of us as college students:

“If I don’t drive around the park,

I’m pretty sure to make my mark.

If I’m in bed each night by ten,

I may get back my looks again,

If I abstain from fun and such,

I’ll probably amount to much,

But I shall stay the way I am,

Because I do not give a damn.”

 

I feel like this is something a lot of us have to go through now that we are in college. We received all those lessons on time management early in the year and this poem shows that for a lot of us, we know what we should do with our time, but we just do not care enough to do those things. Instead, we would rather stay up late (not me, I actually go to bed at 10) and have a good time. This certainly is not a bad thing, as whatever we have done has gotten us this far.

“Subway Rush Hour” by Langston Hughes

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I found this poem on page 68 of our poetry book. I am not entirely sure this is a great poem for us to go over in class, as it does not take any special talent to decipher what it is about. It is rather short, spanning just 16 words. Nevertheless, this is a very powerful poem that I figured was worth sharing, since not everyone would see it. Because it is short and I doubt many of us read these posts with our poetry book open, I will copy the poem here:

 

“Mingled

breath and smell

so close

mingled

black and white

so near

no room for fear.”

 

I think those last four lines are especially meaningful, as it speaks to the diversity of New York, but more importantly, to the fact that you cannot fear others when you are always around them. Hughes explains that there is no way to hide from people of a different race and, unless you plan to always be fearful, you cannot be afraid of these people. You have to recognize that a person’s skin color is not related to the kind of person they are. This poem also goes beyond race and beyond the subway. New York is so diverse with many people of different religious beliefs and sexual orientations and they are all over the city, not just in the subway.