Poetry Was Like It Analysis

This Same Sky, a collection of poems that contains a wide variety of works from authors all over the world, with a diversity of ideas and a use of language that is not clearly found in novels or many literary works. I found several topics worth talking about such as love, pride and family. However, the topic that caught my eye and that I found really fascinating is memories and the longing for the past. Many of the poems repeat these ideas and I consider that the reason is these are universal feelings. Memories, an idea that provokes melancholy and doubt for what is to come and the longing for the past, the search for a familiarity to feel comfortable even if we miss the great things in life.

Poetry has been on our lives since early childhood, whether was for a homework or an English class. In the poem, Poetry Was Like This by Al Mahmud the author reflects on how poetry has been part of his life since he was little and this art form brings him joy because he links it to the consistent things that used to occur in his life and the surroundings during his youth. For example, on the first stanza of the poem he says, “Poetry was the memory of adolescence. / It was my mother’s sad face, / the yellow bird on a neem tree, / my little brothers and sisters/ sitting at night around a fire/ of dry fallen leaves.”

In addition, the poem also discusses how time changes people and as we grow up, we don’t appreciate things the same way as we used to. Also, time damages us and derived from this, bitter kind of emotions are always overwhelming us; such as anxiety and sadness instead of living as children and finding happiness on the details, as it is expressed in line 13, “/Had I ever worn the anxious look I wear now?/ Make my poems a rag to wipe with-wash here, was there./ Make grating sounds- wrench here, wrench