I Love, I Hate, & I Obsess

The two poems I chose were “A Monoryhme for the Shower” and “Hate Poem”. The reason that I decided to pick these poems is because they stood out to me to be detailed. They also completely contrast each other. The similarity I found between the two is obsession. The detail in both poems was either intense or awkward which gave the idea of being obsessed of a particular feeling or subject.

The first poem, “A Monoryhme for the Shower”, by Dick Davis is an awkward obsession to me. It talks about a women taking a shower and describes the movement of her showering. It starts from the beginning saying,

“Lifting her arms to soap her hair

Her pretty breasts respond-and there

The movement of that buoyant pair

Is like a spell to make me swear” (Line 1-4).

The start of the poem gives you a sense of the subject and who is who. We have the narrator who the one watching the woman taking a shower. The subject is the woman taking a shower and a man in love with her especially with her body. The continuing lines prove to me to be obsession because he tells how he doesn’t even know the woman. He says that he wouldn’t dare to approach her. This seemed to be a characteristic of a stalker which led me to obsession. Then the next stanza goes into more of his feelings towards her, and the feelings of her toward him. He says,

“That constitute the life we share-

Slip from her beautiful and bare

Bright body as, made half aware” (Line 11-13).

These lines describe his actual emotional feelings toward her. He describes them as having things in common aside from how beautiful she may be, and that he isn’t aware half the time with her. Then the poem brings the woman in the picture. As he has this blank stare looking straight at her, she looks back and smiles at him as if she has been knowing him for a while. I guess some questions to be asked is to know how their relationship really is besides through him watching her shower. What does he mean by the twenty-odd years he mentions? Answers to these questions can help a better description connection of their relationship and of the poem.

The second poem, “Hate Poem”, by Julie Sheehan appeared to be more in an intense and in deep obsession. The obsession you can guess from the title it relates with hatred. The poem uses random objects to describe the deep emotion of hatred towards this person. This gave a sense of obsession considering how she used so many different examples. She kept nonstop talking of the matter. She talks of things she does as holding a pencil or the way she moves her wrist hating this person. At the end of the poem we conclude that she is talking of a man because she describes her head under his arm. When she says,

“The little blue-green speck of sock lint I’m trying to dig from

                under my third toenail, left foot hates you” (line 8).

The detail and specifications that she talks about in this line alone show her deep feelings for the hatred for him. The way she wrote a poem about her hatred towards him and in such detail shows signs of obsession.

Both the poems had obsession but one with more love than the other. One showed obsession through the good things of the woman in the shower, her beauty. The other showed obsession through great details to show the amount of hatred that she can’t get over, so obsesses over.  

Wedding, Ring, & a Poem

In the poem by Lynne McMahon titled, “Wedding Ring”, brought more attention to me because of the different things it includes. This poem has italicized words, parenthesis, comparisons, questions, dashes, and words I haven’t seen before. Lynne McMahon kept her poem interesting from the first line to the last. She talks about what is exactly mentioned in the title. She talks about a wedding ring, the meaning of the ring in her perspective and what happened when she encountered the ring herself.

Lynne McMahon starts a comparison in the first stanza so it automatically grabs your attention. She talks of,

 “silver hands clasping a rounded heart,

an apple,

 I mistakenly thought,

topped by a crown” (Line 4-6).

When she talks about silver hands clasping she is referring to the color of the rings. Then she says the silver hands are clasping a rounded heart that describes how the rings are something that represent soothing so strong to hold a heart or love feeling. The next lines bring up an apple and crown. She says that she misread the heart and ring to an apple with a crown. This starts to bring up questions about if she knows what the representation of a wedding ring is and what it really means involving love. Since she mistakenly thought the heart and ring to be an apple with a crown it gives the reader a sense of that she is new to love.

The second stanza has to be the most difficult for me while reading the poem. It includes the words pomme, regnant, etymologies, and also the word wring. Even after I looked up what each word meant the stanza still had me curious and confused. She mentions of the word pomme being French which gave the poem interest and curiosity which made the reader want to look deeper into the poem.

The third stanza is longer than the rest and it is also the last so there is one full meaning going on. She mentions songs that make her think of memories that she describes as “sent bowling down the street”. When she says this phrase it means that she thinks of everything that has happened in the past. The memories pop back in her head. The memories aren’t only good memories though because she continues on of sudden wind and smoky trees with rain. The wind and trees making all the racket displays how there were problems, issues, and the kind of speed bumps you get in relationships. Then she says that they remind her of home. This is when the readers begin to question … Is it good to have fights and arguments? So are problems a good thing?

Lynne McMahon writes that yes maybe the sight of marriage or being with someone can be misread. That once with someone you will have your issues or problems or both but it makes up what a marriage is. When you put that wedding ring on that’s your marriage that you don’t let go and you commit to it just as she ends with.

“I never take it off” (line 31).

“Wedding Ring”

By: Lynne McMohan