Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Book

This Sunday, I decided to blog about this lovely poem The Book by the lovely author Miller Williams. Oh this poem. I'm not going to lie, I didn't even know about this poem until someone presented it in class. When they presented it, I thought that this was a very interesting poem. First off, why would Williams write a poem about a book made out of human skin? Creepy. Either way, it was kinda cool.

My favorite thing about this poem was that it was written in the form of a story. I mean, anyone could write a creepy poem about a human skin bound journal. It almost made me connect more to the poem because he wrote about someone stumbling upon this unique book and placing the story of his life in it, and then himself learning of the truth while holding the book. It was an interesting perspective. Almost a third third person? I don't know, but it was written interestingly.

The book consists of 7 stanzas: a singlet, two tercets, 3 couplets and one quintet? It has five lines. It doesn't really have a rhyme scheme other than the occasional ab rhyme. I think that this set up makes sense because well, it's written like a story. The story just flows very nicely.

While reading this, I can picture the book in my mind and then the man holding it in his hands while the other is telling the horrific story. I can just see the man holding the books face warp in horror as he learns about this book. This was probably one of my favorite poems.

2 comments:

  1. I know! Why do we all like such a creepy poem?? :) It think it has a lot more to say about human nature than we even scratched the surface of!

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  2. This was also one of my favorite poems. I agree that it was very easy to visualize what was happening in the poem. I think it's interesting how the most gruesome stories or poems are often our favorite.

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