The poem “Dew” by Kay Ryan was generously given to me by Professor Bannett as I was unable to find any poems on the trains I use to get to school. My initial reaction to reading the poem was “While this poem is nice, it’s meaning seems very general”. The art is very simple, it’s a green stem with green leaves. Green is usually synonymous with life, so I thought I think the leaves represent individual people. I believe that this poem was chosen for train riders, because it represents every day life. The speaker appears to an outside point of view, this poem has no first person or third. The speaker is more invested in the scene before him, probably watching people walking around in front of him.

The subject is plants which I believe to be analogy for humans. “But unattached and subject to their weight”, this could mean that all people have different goals in life even when they are working together. The theme is life. People come and go in your life every day, some contribute to your day and others are just random strangers. Yes, I think that “Dew” is accessible for general readers since it’s meaning can be interpreted in many ways. Some questions I have would be: Where was Kay Ryan when she was writing this poem ? What inspired her ? Why is she being so cryptic ?

The title of the poem that I found on the six train line is “Notes on Longing” by Tina Chang. My initial reaction to this specific poem was that is was a bit hard for me to understand what it was talking about. The visual arts that accompany this poem is a towel, a sock and what appears to be a bed sheet drying outside by the sun. You could see the sun that is being represented by the sun and it’s being reflected off a blue and white background. There is a few others colors such as green and white on the sock, blue, white and gray on the bed sheet and a white towel with three white lines. I believe that this poem was chosen for the subway riders because people can relate to it, riders have families to go home to. The speaker to this poem is unknown and the subject is coming home. In my understanding the themes that this poem explores is home and family. This poem is accessible for general readers because they are riders that are on their home and its not a hard poem after you’ve read it more than once. A question that I do have about this poem is what does the first two lines in the beginning mean, what do they have to do with the rest of the poem?

The poem Subway was written by Billy Collins in 1941. My initial reaction to this poem was ‘wow, he’s right. I never thought about that’. So often we neglect to appreciate the hard work that goes into creating things we rely so deeply on, in this case, the subway tunnels. This poem is specifically about those who made the tunnels, but is relative to so many things in life. How often do we think about or appreciate those who do the “dirty work”? Occupations like sanitation, construction, civil architects and engineers. We rely on and use their finished products in our everyday lives but how often do we stop and think about the hard work they put in? I know that prior to reading this poem, I gave them little to no thought at all. The speaker of the poem is unknown. The subject is the focus of the poem, the subject being those who worked so hard to create the tunnels. The poem is presented in white letters with a purple background. In the bottom right corner there is an illustration of what to me seems like a pile of pieces of paper, similar to confetti, beginning to disperse. The illustration makes me think of the way litter flies when a train is entering or leaving a station. I believe this poem explores consideration, or lack thereof, appreciation and thoughtfulness.

Here is a sample post with a photo of a poem from the subway:

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Hit enter to continue adding text. Then write your blog post.

Hi everyone,

I found the directions for how to add an image to blog posts.  There is a new feature that was added since I wrote the directions for this assignment.  It’s actually really easy to add the alternate text and doesn’t involve using the text box at all.  When you click on Add Media, you’ll see a menu on the right hand side of the screen.  If you scroll down, you’ll see there’s a place to add Alt Text–put in  the title and author of the poem you’re righting about here and you’re all done.  Then click Update.  Very easy. Here’s a screenshot:

If you forget to add the Alt Text, that’s when you’ll see that giant text box.  If that happens, you can click on this link from OpenLab which shows exactly what to do with the giant Alt Text box and then how to delete it.  Click on the bold where it says WP Accessibility for step-by-step directions.

I will demonstrate how to do this on Wednesday now that I understand it.

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/blog/help/wp-accessibility-plugin/

Here are the directions for Blog Post #1, which must be posted on Open Lab by Monday, October 29th at 10 am: