"Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt" by Jorie Graham

The poem "Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt" by Jorie Graham contains such vivid descriptions of certain paintings. As I was reading the poem, in my head I could actually picture what the paintings must look like. Jorie Graham does such a great job in reacting to what she is looking at in such a detailed way. This made me want to see which paintings inspired Jorie Graham to write this poem. One of my classmates pointed out the website http://www.iklimt,com/work.html . This website was extremely helpful because they gave you a little bit of information about each of the paintings. On this website there are many different pieces of Gustav Klimt's artwork. Two of the paintings that I believed inspired Jorie Grahams poem are "Beeches" and "The Bride". I believe that she is referring to "Beeches" because one of the lines in her poem states "crossing this yellow beech forest" which could very well be describing this painting. The line "rendered in graphic, pornographic, detail--something like a scream between her legs" made me think it was referring to the painting of "The Bride". I noticed that many of Gustav Klimt's paintings contained different nude women. It was definitely a re-occuring theme in his artwork. There was also a lot of paintings referring to life and death. I also read on the website that he started painting a lot of life and death after the death of his son. I believe that Jorie Graham's poem directly reflects many of the pieces of art on this website, especially "Beeches" and "The Bride". All of Klint's paintings were very in debt and very interesting, just like Graham's poem.

"One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch

"One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch is actually read aloud by Kenneth Koch himself on http://poets.org/viewmedia.phb/prmMID/15592. This poem like many other poems this week, was extremely confusing and hard to understand at first. After listening to it many times and reading it for myself, I think I have finally realized what Kenneth Koch is trying to get across to his readers. Kenneth Koch actually reads the poem very slowly, with many pauses, giving you time to react and sink in what he is trying to say. This way of reading the poem actually helped me understand the poem quicker then I thought it would. Ironically, I believe that the way he reads the poem slowly, shows what the poem is supposed to mean as well. I think he is trying to say that we should live life slowly, and get everything you can out of it. The way he reads the poem actually allows you to get everything out of it that he is trying to tell you through his poem. You need to take life slow, and let everything sink in, which is not normally how people take life on. Most people don't take their time when dealing with problems, people or different situations. Throughout his poem, Kenneth Koch repeats the verse "One may hide another" numerous times. This is showing us the readers that we should take on everything slowly because you never know what is coming next. Many different situations overshadow each other. In the end I really enjoyed this poem and it even got me thinking about how I handle different situations in my own life. I think Kenneth Koch has a great writing style that actually gets through to people. This is a very important piece of wisdom that Kenneth Koch teaches us through his work.