Week 6: Reading Response

Digging versus Cutting Greens

Although I’m not really going to compare these two poems (although some would) I liked the message behind both of them. I like to read poems where it doesn’t take me too much time to figure out what the poet is trying to say. I liked both of these poems for the same reason; they both were experiences from the author’s life. In Digging, the poet speaks of how his father and grandfather were gardeners or they simply dug things. However his form of “digging” was completely different from theirs. He digging was in the form of writing. As a poet he was accomplishing something just as his father accomplished something by digging into the Earth. In Cutting Greens, I do not completely understand the significance of the greens or the color black. I don’t know what point the poet is trying to make her. So why did I even bother writing a few sentences on this poem? Well when I first saw the word collard greens it made me think of my home. From time to time, my mom will cook collard greens on a special occasion (ex. Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other big holidays) or if she wants to get them.  So I thought of the process of cleaning and cutting the collard greens and putting them in the pot to cook. This why I chose this poem because it brought back a memory although I’m not exactly sure what the poet is trying to say about herself and the process of making collard greens. I note that the poet doesn’t have any kind of structure well, a little but it seems like prose poetry. Whereas in Digging, the poet has rhyming on the end words. I like this technique.