About February

It is a poem from James Harms in which a lot of typical imageries are used. From the first three sentences, the magnifying glass, two poker chips and the plastic dinosaur in the packet of sleeping Walt, supposing to be a child, the poet has formed a kind of quiet and peaceful atmosphere in Spring.Other nouns here include bologna, noon, carnations, plums, daisies, petals, sunlight, pine floors, a basket of warm clothes. The nouns are so
powerful that they almost support the whole central theme of the poem.

Another interesting thing is the structure of the poem. For most of the poems. I like their sentences are short and has special spacial arrangement for line breaks. This one is an exception, as mentioned before, a large part of the attractiveness of the poem lies on its vivid and typical imageries. The sentences in this poem are actually quite long, but it does not produce any difficulties for the readers to read it.

The last thing is about the whole concept of the poem. The nouns are almost displayed in a way of listing, except for some of them there are really good verbs to link them. It seems to be that nouns and verbs are more important than adjectives and adverbs. A good poem can be written with verbs and nouns only, but not only with adjectives and adverbs. It may also relevant to the use of concrete language, since nouns and verbs are definitely less subjective, and hence less abstract than adjectives and adverbs are. I do not personally oppose poems composed of imageries or narration, as long as it has good choice of verbs and nouns to support the whole central idea or theme
of the poem.

* Chan Wing Hong