Poetry Analysis Essay – Human Nature by Alice Anderson
Agent Curry Chan
Mr. H.
English 283
Due date: October 27th, 2009
Poetry Analysis Essay – Human Nature by Alice Anderson Review
When the news dawned on me and my classmates that such an essay was expected from us so shortly after the midterm, I was kind of frustrated, but I’m glad to have risen to the challenge. For my book, I looked through many known authors like Maya Angelo and many more unknown poets who kept most of their poems under the titles of “Untitled”. I went for the little black book, because usually the best things are in little black books. This one was right on the money. A book of poems titled Human Nature by a female poet named Alice Anderson. Rape, lust, consensual sex, and family incest are the subjects pretty much all the poems touched in this book. It is a sick and twisted, yet delicious web of words woven into intricate poems. Most of the poems do not follow many rules or pattern or rhyme scheme, but this is not a flaw but a support. If the poem is hindered from the start by having to rhyme, most of the story can be lost from just trying to purposely make things rhyme. Anderson must have knew this from the beginning and told the stories of her fractured and maimed past as straight forward as possible without going off into a tangent and making it a full blown series of short stories. The very first poem in the book called, The Split, can be treated as the ‘weed whacker’ poem. I think Anderson made sure this poem came first since it spreads everything out on a platter right before the reader. It focuses in on a young woman getting kissed by her lover after getting out of the shower and then – Zip! – the poem changes its already slightly confusing train tracks.
The focus is now about how a little girl falls and scrapes her knee, assuming is it Anderson herself, and being tended to by her father. The scene seems to revert back to the young couple about to make love. But the narrator makes a jump and then the poem goes as
Mr. H.
English 283
Due date: October 27th, 2009
Poetry Analysis Essay – Human Nature by Alice Anderson Review
When the news dawned on me and my classmates that such an essay was expected from us so shortly after the midterm, I was kind of frustrated, but I’m glad to have risen to the challenge. For my book, I looked through many known authors like Maya Angelo and many more unknown poets who kept most of their poems under the titles of “Untitled”. I went for the little black book, because usually the best things are in little black books. This one was right on the money. A book of poems titled Human Nature by a female poet named Alice Anderson. Rape, lust, consensual sex, and family incest are the subjects pretty much all the poems touched in this book. It is a sick and twisted, yet delicious web of words woven into intricate poems. Most of the poems do not follow many rules or pattern or rhyme scheme, but this is not a flaw but a support. If the poem is hindered from the start by having to rhyme, most of the story can be lost from just trying to purposely make things rhyme. Anderson must have knew this from the beginning and told the stories of her fractured and maimed past as straight forward as possible without going off into a tangent and making it a full blown series of short stories. The very first poem in the book called, The Split, can be treated as the ‘weed whacker’ poem. I think Anderson made sure this poem came first since it spreads everything out on a platter right before the reader. It focuses in on a young woman getting kissed by her lover after getting out of the shower and then – Zip! – the poem changes its already slightly confusing train tracks.
The focus is now about how a little girl falls and scrapes her knee, assuming is it Anderson herself, and being tended to by her father. The scene seems to revert back to the young couple about to make love. But the narrator makes a jump and then the poem goes as
Cited: Gunderson, Elizabeth "Adult books: Nonfiction." Booklist 91.9 (1995): 796. EBSCO MegaFILE. EBSCO. Web. 25 Oct. 2009. McQuade, Molly "Forecasts: Poetry." Publishers Weekly 241.48 (1994): 54. EBSCO MegaFILE. EBSCO. Web. 26 Oct. 2009. Anderson, Alice. Human Nature. New York: New York University Press, 1994.