Tuesday, May 24, 2011

"Summer," Carlo Betocchi

And it grows, the vain
summer,
even for us with our
bright green sins:

behold the dry guest,
the wind,
as it stirs up quarrels
among magnolia boughs

and plays its serene
tune on
the prows of all the leaves—
and then is gone,

leaving the leaves
still there,
the tree still green, but breaking
the heart of the air.

8 comments:

  1. I think the imagery in this poem is very interesting. I like the image of the dry wind and how it "stirs up quarrels among magnolia boughs." I also like the last line - "breaking the heart of the air." I not quite sure what it means, but it is a very interesting idea.

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  2. I like the idea of the wind just passing through. I think it's interesting how the poet portrays the wind as a guest: just coming in, playing its part, and leaving just as quickly as it came.

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  3. I'm not entirely sure if I like this poem because I'm having a tough time interpreting exactly what is being expressed in this poem. I can tell that it is depicting summer and along side it expressing how quickly it comes and goes, for it comes to the trees "and then is gone." The poem also compares the summer to humans when it talks about how it grows even for us "with our bright green sins." Bright green sins indicates that our sins are very easy to see.

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  4. I love this poem! But also I hate it. The words are beautiful, but because we are so close to summer it makes me mad. We still have 10 days left. 10! It is nuts to think we were supposed to be getting out a week from today...

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  5. I really like the poem! 1. because I love summer! and 2. I really like how this poem describes summer perfectly, like it starts by describing how awesome summer is in the beginning but then it leads to the emotion involved at the end of summer

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  6. Carlo Betocchi's poem "Summer," is very creative. Its name would lour any student to read it at this time because we can not wait until the summer vacation. In his first stanza "And it grows...even for us with our bright green sins," I believe he is trying to show how the hope of summer finally coming gets stronger for anyone. I also agree with Alaska about how the imagery is interesting. Carlo does this by using words like "green..wind..and leaves."

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  7. I like how Carlo Betocchi says that even people with "bright green sins" all share Summer. This poet doesn't seem to think very highly of Summer. He makes it seem boring and says the "dry" wind stirs up "quarrels" which doesn't make it seem very peaceful like Summer really is.

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  8. I liked the idea of summer growing, it really does, it ripens and gets better as it progresses. What are our green sins? The rest of the poem is kind of unclear to me, what does it mean the heart of the air? The metaphors are really cool and different but they I don't completely understand them.

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