Napo 15

 

Admiring Jessica Barksdale’s “Zoo Story”

 

This is such a wild poem! The metaphor here is a little messy, but I think that’s ok. At first I thought the poet was comparing her marriage to bears, then her life to walking through the zoo at all of the different animals, and then at the end, the speaker actually is one of the zoo animals herself, the aging gorilla. So I guess the metaphor shifts as the speaker walks through the zoo? Anyway, it’s fun and interesting.

 

The poem ends with a kind of “feel good” message—basically, life is beautiful, even for the gorilla in a cage. Enjoy the moment, especially when “The sun is shining” and you can “feel the wind blowing through your fur.” 😊

 

So, we live many “lives” throughout our lifetime, and walking through life is like walking through a zoo. Ok, I get it. And it’s overall pleasant, though not without its dangers.

 

Some cool moments in the poem:

 

The opening stanza is really great—there’s a sharp turn where vehicle and tenor clip twist into one another:

 

“Let’s not talk about bears, or anything cute (and dangerous) / like a marriage”

 

Ooph. That line break.

 

Another great line break moment:

 

“Hard to hug a giraffe / without threat of death”

 

It’s like, these lines turn dark quickly!

 

Ok, so some ideas:

 

Play with line breaks so they twist in a similar fashion

What animal would you compare yourself to today?

For this poet, life is a walk through a zoo. What might be an apt metaphor for my life so far? A run in the park? A trip to the grocery store? Planting a garden? Planting a garden, definitely!

Write a poem that incorporates similes.

 

Planting a Rosebush

 

Let’s not think about roses—or anything lovely (and thorny)

That may never flower, like your flesh, and how things go wrong.

 

Let’s not think about how you planned this flowerbed

While lying in bed together, while dreaming of spring

 

And everything it would bring. Let’s call this the best laid

Plans of men and women. Let’s call this a mistake that never

 

Blooms. It’s hard to get this right, impossible it seems.

Every place has too much sun or too little sun or too much

 

Water or too little rain. And my God, the wind. It all must go

Perfectly for this to work out perfectly. And the waiting

 

And the mystery. Will the roots take? Did you soften the soil

Enough? Is your garden soil trash? Are you trash? For a gardener,

 

You’re not very good, but God knows you try. Your fingernails

Are ever caked in dirt. Your body aches. Your rose bush outside

 

Is but a dream, a wish, a hope, and at some point, there’s nothing

You can do but let it grow, or perish, by the grace of God.

 

You might have to accept, girl, that your thumbs are not green,

And that you’ll never smell in the sweetness of a blossom’s first breath.

I'd like to come back to this poem and further develop the metaphor. So, some back story so I remember: I planted some rose bushes yesterday, and ever since, I've been worrying over whether or not I did the right thing in planting them in the place I chose. Also, I tore up the whole front yard in preparation for their coming. And what if they don't even take? What if they just shrivel up into sticks and die? I'm doing my best here, but sometimes, to quote the mighty Picard, you can make no mistakes and still lose. That's life.

And the worst? I do indeed make (and probably made) a lot of mistakes in my planting.

So, I was just thinking about this and how it relates to so many things in life that are and aren't within our control.