LiLRiceBoi, there is a reason I think many people do not understand poetry. I think the reason is a lack of experience and a lack of effort to understand what it is to see what the author saw in writing the poem. Even though you don't really show effort, I will post my thoughts on what this poem is about.
EVERYBODY loved Chick Lorimer in our town.
Far off
Everybody loved her.
Look at the language. This is a universal love. What kind of love is such that it is present in all people? What sort of state is what the writer calls "far off"? EVERYBODY was in love. But what is love? Maybe the writer will tell me they why of the love and I can recognize this experience as my own so I read on.
So we all love a wild girl keeping a hold
On a dream she wants. 5
We love Chick because she is wild. Untamed, unbridled, pristine somehow and why? Because of a dream, of something she wants. We love thus, we all do, something feminine and we do so because of the dream, because we see Chick as having a dream that she holds on to and will not give up and so we love her because of that, we all do. What else?
Nobody knows now where Chick Lorimer went.
Nobody knows why she packed her trunk .. a few old things
Everyone loved her and she is gone. She had a dream, and look she held on to it. She was larger than life and look, now she is gone. She didn't have much, too busy being wild and dreaming, and she left our town, that little me that self that loves and that part all that so all love.
And is gone,
Gone with her little chin
Thrust ahead of her 10
And her soft hair blowing careless
From under a wide hat,
Dancer, singer, a laughing passionate lover.
This is just imagery. Why do we love Chick? She is real. She has a wide hat, flowing hair, not necessarily beautiful on the outside but there in our perceptions Chick is someone who has a dream and holds on to it. We love her because not only does she hold on but she is alive, perhaps more so than those who love, and all do.
What does it mean to love? To throw oneself wholly into another, to experience a tugging at the heartstrings so powerful that the body aches. And what does everyone love, not only in the little town but in the world, as is the implication? We love Chick, that sort of thing or person who never lets go and follows her dreams. But look, she is gone. What we loved is no longer with us. What once was no longer is. What we had we lost and so what do we do now?
Were there ten men or a hundred hunting Chick?
Were there five men or fifty with aching hearts? 15
Everybody loved Chick Lorimer.
You see how it is. Everyone loved. No exception. This is a universal claim. They could not control and this is why they love and now that it is gone, the heart aches.
Nobody knows where she?s gone.
Since this Chick was self-determined and wild and not willing to give up dreams, that thing is gone. It is hunted for but is not found. Men pine for her but she is gone. And nobody can find her. And they continue looking.
Look at what the poem is saying in totality. At first, there is a town, a restriction, a society, a sort of place where people live. They all have one thing in common: they all recognize the existence of something beyond and extraordinary. There is a Chick, a certain free and wild person untamed and never stopping to consider other than her dream, that dream she pursues. Nobody can stop her. Nothing keeps her here, because she only has a few old things. And so she goes away almost unnoticed. That is immediately seen as a loss. The town loses something it is and so do the people. The people want this state and search for it. But it is its own person, unrestricted by society and thus without the same obligations. And that is what this love is, it is something they cannot have but know they can be. They need Chick because she provides them with glimpses into the possible world, she provides the object of love and in everyone loving, the people can see love. Love though disappears because the object has volition. The object can do as it pleases causing loss and separation.
I need an explication and the theme. I know its about love so please dont just post that.
It may be an allegory for growing up. The unbridled youth with its dreams is so loved. It is loved by all. It is loved by our selves since it is relatively free from rules. It accepts on authority. But then it leaves and it is missed. That free state of Chick-ness is subdued to an other, an outside, and then we are left looking for that state we once had and loved and loved being since all loved but yet lost because it was too powerful to contain since we did not want to join those dreams but only look from the outside. The moral lesson there may be that in order to maintain love, effort is required, but there are many more complex ideas weaved into it. There's really no theme but more of an experience.
what were your reflections? Why do you say you are no good at poetry?
Cheers !
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