Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Haas Meditation at Lagunitas
In this poem Haas talks about the death of a word. He talks about how a word can never mean what it appears to represent. Due to what a word really is, which is just a representation of a true idea or object we can never actually say that "blackberry" means blackberry. I really like this poem because this is the everyday concept of life. And that is putting meaning behind everything we do and everything that happens. People often times do things they regret later because they don't actually think about what it means to do these things. I do not think this is what Haas is referring to at all but I think there is a direct correlation on how we go through life not knowing knowing who we really are or why we are here BUT we move forward anyway. I favor the end of this poem a lot because despite all the bad and muddiness of what he describes he says that "the body is as numinous as words" which i think means we are just as imperfect as words but sometimes in some afternoon and evenings we cannot help but embrace the beautiful reality of what we are.
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This has been a very insightful analysis of this poem. Seriously, I can't thank you enough. I was having so much trouble with understanding this. All I could think about was Shiloh telling us that a few of her classes thought Haas was referring to smart phones. My only argument to Haas' idea, is that even if we really don't know the true meaning behind anything, and if we don't know why we're here/who we are. Then why do we constantly just meander through words?
ReplyDeleteI agree that Robert Hass was telling us there are meanings behind words besides what meets the eye. If someone were to say something we automatically have the image in our brains but there might be a deeper meaning than just saying it. The start of the poem "All new thinking is loss," stuck out to me because it makes me think if going in depth behind every story or word is the right thing to do. Just like decision making, you can't just act out of impulse because one choice looks better than the other. There might be more than meets the eye and must analyze every pro and con to the situation.
ReplyDeleteI'm 14 and I love reading Hass' poetry because it is so calming and seems straightforward but really hides deep meaning within. Meditation at Lagunitas is my favorite because it's very insightful into new and old thinking. Nothing is as it means (or we think it means). Looking at a blackberry for instance the poem is saying all thinking new or old is about loss. So is the blueberry signifying loss? The woman is a metaphor for loss. Hass says it in the poem: it wasn't about her, really. And the end perfectly ties it together with the repetition of the word blackberry, a sort of ambiguous reminder that no one word means one thing.
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