Poem Reaction 2

Sequioa Sempervirens

The poem out of the book I decided to write a reaction from is Sequioa Sempervirens on page 18.  As far as structure of the poem, its is none of which I seen before.  The poem is structure and organizations was quite strange as there were many spaces as though there were words missing from the sentences.  Another thing is that there were sudden line breaks also like if the sentences were unfinished.  Later in class we had a discussion about the line breaks and spaces.  It was determined that the spaces symbol punctuation and the line breaks symbolized pauses.

The content was a comparison of "We" to something.  It started off even with a comparison stating "we are what a squirrel is to a tree."  All throughout the poem there was a constant comparison of "we" to something.  Which was pretty much the only repetition in this poem; the repeated metaphors.  I had no idea what the comparison was until the class discussion made it clear it for me.  The discussion showed that the poem was a symbolic comparison of man to a squirrel.  Couldn't believe that I didn't see that comparison.  After a discussion in class  I reread the poem a couple more times and I understood but it was unknown to me what the author was trying to compare man to before the discussion.

The space and page length was 2 and a half pages long.  Probably because there were many sudden line breaks and large spaces in the sentences where on average about 5 or 6 words were on a single line.  The language is simple.  The vocabulary was fairly simple with no complicated words to think about besides the title which is in a different language.  The imagery this poem created a setting like a park in New York.  The visuals were squirrels in the park gathering nuts for the winter and tall buildings behind them.  I thought of New York when the author compared the squirrel climbing a tree and people in the city, buildings are like our trees in this case.  This is a very unique poem which you might have to read over 2 times or more to understand.