Love and Youth Group
5 Poem Responses
Poem Response #1: The Fly by William Blake.
Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
The Fly is a poem that compares the similarities between a human and a fly. Unimportance and immortality are the themes in this poem. This poem explains how the little things in life can be disregarded and insignificant. Blake uses words like “blind” and “thoughtless” to show how little things tend to go unnoticed. We go through the day without noticing the little things such as a chirping cricket and a buzzing bee. This poem teaches us that little things can appear to be unimportant but size and quantity don’t always contribute to the importance of something or someone. What the poet is trying to say is that we should pay attention to life and all of the simplest beauties of it. The human and the fly are related, neither life more important than the other and we are all interconnected.
Poem Response #2: Homework by Allen Ginsberg.
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Poem Response #1: The Fly by William Blake.
Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
The Fly is a poem that compares the similarities between a human and a fly. Unimportance and immortality are the themes in this poem. This poem explains how the little things in life can be disregarded and insignificant. Blake uses words like “blind” and “thoughtless” to show how little things tend to go unnoticed. We go through the day without noticing the little things such as a chirping cricket and a buzzing bee. This poem teaches us that little things can appear to be unimportant but size and quantity don’t always contribute to the importance of something or someone. What the poet is trying to say is that we should pay attention to life and all of the simplest beauties of it. The human and the fly are related, neither life more important than the other and we are all interconnected.
Poem Response #2: Homework by Allen Ginsberg.
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie