Poems

We were assigned to read 4 different poems this week. I randomly selected 4 from the given site, and oddly they all seemed to be centered around death. It was from a specific magazine so I imagine that it was the theme for the month. In a Beautiful Country by Kevin Prufer was the most appealing of the 4 selected. The poem starts off with the line, "A Good Way to Fall in Love" which sounds nice, until the next line talks of speeding at night with the lights off. Similar suggestions throughout the story paint a picture of someone attempting suicide, such as a good way to fall is for a rope to catch you. The lines he uses vividly describes horrific scenes in ones demise yet I feel there is more depth this poem. He talks about a war, and it is unclear to me of what war he is talking about. Whether it be warring nations, or a war within himself. It is also unclear if he is talking about love within the story between he and the gold-haired girl, or if starts every sentence with a good way to fall in love as a contrast to death and then telling you how to die, in essence saying love is death. The girls happy words could also be construed as a helping hand trying to pull him off the edge of his thoughts, or an ironic twist pushing him closer to killing himself. I feel the poem though somewhat direct, has many options for one to take upon its reading and be analyzed in many different ways.