For today's blog, my goal is to speak about the City Eclogues book. I won't be touching on Bird by Bird just yet, but rather I wish to focus on Ed Roberson's contribution to our classwork. I have a few points I wish to make, and a few things I've noticed that I wish to point out. The tone, themes, recurrences, etc. But first, I would like to start from the perspective of the book. During class on Tuesday, you brought up a page that said Eclogues were about rural things. However, the book is quite clearly about cities. It's right there in the name! At first I thought that maybe this was from the perspective of a rural person speaking about a City. But certain poems made me rethink that. For example, the poem on page 56. I then thought that maybe it was a city person writing about a city. But that doesn't quite fit along with Eclogues, and it seems more complicated than that. That's when I made a possible realization: these poems were written by a city person SPEAKING FROM A RURAL PERSPECTIVE about cities. As in, someone from the city putting themselves into a rural person's shoes. I doubt I'm right, but it feels right.

Next, I would like to talk about the tone of the poetry. Of what I could understand, due to my complete lack of understanding of poetry and the like, the tome felt quite dark. Depressing, angry, etc. The writer spoke from out of a dark place in his heart, about something clearly important to himself. Pollution, sex, the destruction of natural beauty are all common themes he touches on. We them over and over again, lending themselves to the darkness of the prose. This doesn't seem to be trying to be a happy book, certainly.

The final bit I would like to touch on is form. While some of the poems are obviously quite normal, several of them take unconventional paths to being written. Odd line gaps, etc. While it can make the reading more difficult, it also makes the reader wonder if there's a purpose. Is it supposed to evoke emotions? Make you think what the mindset of the writer was? Be a subtle clue at a deeper meaning? For someone like me, it meant confusion and deep resentment of all written words. For someone better equipped to read poetry like this... it may be a masterpiece.