Mezzo Cammin By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My poem is called Mezzo Cammin by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It is about his personal life and the hardships of being middle-aged. Mezzo Cammin itself means the middle of the journey or halfway there. It comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy. In this, Dante himself is 35. Longfellow wrote this poem when he was also 35 which was the middle of his life. In his early years, he had much success. He was from a prominent family in Maine, he went to college and showed great talent, and he was offered a teaching position at Harvard. Unfortunately, his successes were not enough to make up for losing his wife. His wife Mary Storer Potter had a miscarriage and died. He was very distressed and wrote the poem. This explains one of the lines he wrote. “Of restless passions that would not be stilled, Bust sorrow and a care that almost killed, Kept me from what I may accomplish yet”. This line means that he wasn’t lazy or passionless in his endeavors. He was overcome by grief and a care that almost killed him. This grief caused him to start spiraling because he loved his wife so much. He knows that this, while a huge setback was not enough to end his life. That is why he says when he is “halfway up the hill, he looks back on the past which is the city that is filled with all the comforting sounds and the wonderful lights. While he is looking back on his past he can hear “the cataract of Death far thundering from the heights”. This is such a detailed vivid image that furthers the point that especially now that he is in the middle of his life, he can hear the booming sound of a promising future in front of him. Thinking about death can be morbid, frightening, and dreadful, but it inspires you to continue on, forging your future. I think Longfellow wants each of us to keep in mind that while death may wait for us at the end, we should be aware of how we live our lives. We should make sure we take risks and love and do everything we can to truly live. This poem is in iambic pentameter which means it has 10 syllables per line, but the last line has 13. This breakdown in the meter emphasizes the thunderous sound of that cataract otherwise known as death. In the lines “Half of my life is gone, and I have let The years slip from me, and have not fulfilledThe aspiration of my youth” The language is clear and frank. There are no euphonious words to beautify it. The emotion is bare and very apparent. The city he describes in the poem is also a metaphor for the past. His looking back on it suggests that he is hesitant to progress in his journey. The unknown future scares him but when the imagery becomes stronger in the final lines of the poem, he realizes he must.

The Parking Lot by Phil Kaye

The poem “The Parking Lot” by Phil Kaye was one that really appealed to me because of its meaning. It is about how you can have so many friends and experience high school with them but after you graduate it is like they disappear from your life. If you do happen to stumble into the same room as them years after, it is awkward and uncomfortable, as if you’ve never known each other. This poem really resonated with me because I am in my last year of high school and I know so many of the people I have grown, laughed, and learned with for four years will probably never see me again. If we do happen to cross paths it will never be the same. I liked the part about wandering around the school because I relate to that a lot. When me and my friends have CPCC periods, after we finish our work, we use the remainder of our time to just walk around the school. Every time we do I get reminded that our final walk around the school is coming soon. This poem also has a strong nostalgic tone. The writing is simple and narrative. The descriptions sound like a high school student just talking about the day. This simple tone reflects the joys of young adulthood, where your worries are just about passing tests, going to class, and meeting people. You forge connections in high school, but as the poem shows, one day, if you run into even your closest confidantes, they ignore you. There is a terse silence and then both parties pretend that they are strangers. In the poem this is showns in the lines “and years later I would notice Josh across a restaurant in our town and we both would keep our eyes fixed on our menus”. Josh and him were close, he was his friend. He guided him through high school and taught him things like smoking and hung out with him. I think this poem is also about acceptance. Kaye, is a freshman and he meets Josh who is his friend. Josh helps him be friends with other seniors, but Josh seems to be a bad influence. He gets Kaye to skip class, he says things like “things dont really matter until you’re a junior anyway” and gets him to smoke. He represents peer pressure and a temptation to be cool. I also think that them not being close years later shows that it was not worth it. Josh was vice and he tempted kaye and succeeded. In Kayes mind, Josh was his mentor so obviously he would do whatever he wanted.

“When Love Arrives” by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye

“When Love Arrives” by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye

The poem “When Love Arrives” is by Phil Kaye and Sarah Kay. It is a beautiful poem about love and how it can change forms throughout our lives. The poets, themselves both frequently write about love and they mirror each other well in the poem. I think the title is straightforward but fitting. “When Love Arrives” encapsulates everything that this poem is. Simply a retelling of when love comes and goes throughout ones life. The poem is an apostrophe. The speaker addresses the concept of love as if it was an animate being. I loved this poem. It starts out reminiscing the beginnings of love. Phil Kaye???? starts and says “Even If I havent met love, it had wandered into my home room I would have recognized her at first glance–Love wore tight French braid”.  Then the speaker continues to share what they think love looks like and then they talk about how love actually appeared. “But when love showed up – she had a bull cut!” “He wore the same clothes everyday for a week”.I love this line specifically because the writer is trying to say how even though we have never experienced love we come into it with the expectation of what it should look like and are blown away every single time by how different our reality is. I especially love the simile, “And Love grew, stretched like a trampoline” and the simile “Love disappeared, slowly, like baby teeth”. These similes show how as one grows, one’s perception of love is distorted and changed into something else entirely. Love also leaves, much like baby teeth. Phil Kaye and Sarah Kay were trying to say that just like how you lose baby teeth, you also lose your childish perception of love and in its absence, you grow so much you are hit with it all over again when it finally appears. Then the speaker talks about how love changes and evolves. Kaye says that “love smells different now, had darker eyes”. In this line, Kaye talks about how love morphs into an entirely different thing when you are with different people. Then he talks about how he learns that love does not mean having all the same opinions and ideas. It means finding common ground and learning to love every flaw and imperfection you have. He talks about the intimacies of love and how to be in love is to be vulnerable. “Maybe Love is always in the wrong time zone. Maybe Love is not ready for you. Maybe you are not ready for Love”. After this line Kaye goes into how love can fall apart but still remain a light constant in your life. You can get divorced and still be in love and feel love for a person. He finishes the poem by reminiscing on why love didnt work. He even says “Love isnt the marrying type” thinking about his lost love. You would think the tone would continue to be hopeless but then the tone turns really firm. The words “ Love arrives exactly when Love is supposed to and Love leaves exactly when Love must” are filled with absolute conviction. This is the basis of the poem, the main idea. Then the tone takes on a softer tone as the final words are “When Love arrives, say, “Welcome. Make yourself comfortable.” If Love leaves, ask her to leave the door open behind her. Turn off the music. Listen to the quiet. Whisper, “Thank you for stopping by.” In these lines Kaye says that no matter if love is in your live or not you should always be open to it and leave the door open.

Phil Kaye

Phil Kaye

Phil Kaye is a Japanese-American artist. His work has been featured in settings ranging from The New Yorker to the New York Museum of Modern Art, and viewed millions of times online. He has performed his original poetry in twenty countries and was invited to open for His Holiness The Dalai Lama for the celebration of his 80th birthday. He is the co-director of Project VOICE, an organization that partners with schools to bring poetry to the classroom. Phil is a National Poetry Slam finalist, and the two-time recipient of the National College Poetry Slam (CUPSI) award for “Pushing the Art Forward”, given for outstanding innovation in the art of live poetry. A former teacher of weekly poetry workshops in maximum security prisons, Phil was the head coordinator of Space in Prisons for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE). His book, Date & Time, was published in 2018 by Button Poetry.