Thoughts on The city of Eclogue by Ed Roberson

The reading I will be focusing on is City Eclogue. When I first start reading the book I wasn't sure what to think. Although the reading was very interesting there are a lot of things I would like to touch on. The poems are told in ways for the reader to imagine or picture the life the author has seen. The visual of most of the poems are line breaks as if he wants the readers to fill in his thoughts or the fact that he lost his train of thought because of the way of the city. There was one poem that I couldn't stop reading in the City Eclogue section titles Sequoia sempervirens on page 18. It states "we rip around getting our nut off to the city; Foot totals maps ply upward impossible city on top of city even down underground layered into time...." This felt as if he was speaking of the past and the fact that things have not change even though many changes have been made in the city. It's just one of those poems that's so deep that you want to get the real meaning of the whole thing. It also made me feel like he wrote it out in that specific way for us to kind of interpret it in different ways to the point where it can be describe different things.

These poems all point out specific things in different ways. In class we discussed some of the themes that some of the poems were putting out. Like cultural (abstract) issues, historical and political events, pollution, trash, knowing self, and even becoming god. There were a variety of things some in description, some imaginary, some just for you to visualize it all. Some of the poems I got the understanding of and some I did not. Like the language of the poems showed where he had anger in like in the Beauty standing section on page 48 in the middle of the poem he states "what kind of really bastard son wishes his father had won election to eradicate his sister for the fucker's birthday?" That language creates a sound in your head and all I hear is yell and that tense in his voice. I'm could quite figure what exactly all the anger was coming from but its like that in most of the beauty standing poems. Like the part on page 41 section 1at the bottom when he says, " building up more junk on more junk doesn't pay the bills and get the light back on." That line alone tells many things and for me it say there are many things that people care about and there so worried about where trash gone go that they forget about the important things in life like water.

Overall, I think the first half is very interesting and I thought he did a good job at helping the reader to kind of picture what he has picture without saying too much about it. He language was simple yet detailed. The way he did the line breaks for majority of the poems is still a little weird for me but everyone has their way of saying things. Its like he was trying to compare reality to the way of life in his own eyes. There was one point where one of the classmates felt as if he was just writing things with no meaning to it what so ever. Like the poem titled Place lit by a window on page 33; the poem starting off sounded like he was just taking about sockets and basics in an apartment and you kind of get the feeling like this is pointless. As the poem continues he tries to create this metaphor to say things may be tough now but soon things have to get better just pull yourself up off the floor. That part I found interesting and I'm sure the remainder of the book is awesome and quite intriguing.I enjoyed it all to be quite honest.