Ed Roberson Finale

To start off this second bit about Ed Roberson I will begin with a short discussion of today’s class session. I thought everyone had wonderful ideas revolving Roberson’s poetry. It’s always fun to hear about what others think because they always come up with things that I have yet to think of. Height and Deep Song was talked (although I think it might have been the lecture prior to today’s). The comments on this poem were insane. The line, “but unable to jump strapped in” was intriguing. I did not see this as a suicide poem, but more of a ‘trapped in your own body/mind sort of poem. I definitely did enjoy this poem though solely for the controversy and discussion that ensued post inspection.

Spontaneous Supremacies was also discussed today. This one was like taking dozens of tiny needles and trying to perform self acupuncture on my brain with no instruction or guidebook. “it isn’t as its equal it in anything,” is the perfect line to end with if you want your reader’s brain to implode. I re-read this poem several times after it was brought up and I still had zero interpretations. It’s almost like Roberson used small words (like it, its, and in) so many times in one poem that it became a force shutdown command for my mind. I still don’t understand this poem and so I shall move on to another.

The “State as Body” Aspect of Eunuch Rule was a wonderful, albeit dark, poem. I loved the opening lines, “I want to kill for my incapacity to feel. To feel I feel want as want. to kill. I’ll be simple.” It starts off sounding sort of like it’s a poem about insanity or maybe inside the mind of a murderer. I think it’s more a metaphor for escaping the bonds of oneself. I thought this was represented with Roberson’s lines, “’til I no longer have body with which to want the crossroad’s saddle of milepost that multiples the earth.”

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the second half of Roberson’s book much more than the first half. The second half of the poems seemed to have a more “normal” structure which my eyes and mind found easier to read. I loved the whole section Ornithology just because of all the bird references. I’m pretty big into animals and nature, so naturally I’m more into poems that use nature and animals. After talking about Roberson’s poems I ended up liking them more than when I read them on my own; however, his work is still something I wouldn’t necessarily read by my own choice.