This
past week we read "The Heights of Macchu Picchu"by Pablo Neruda. I
enjoyed some parts of it, but other parts I found to be extremely confusing and
extremely random. For example, Section IX seemed like a just a series of
completely random words thrown together that had no relation to each other and
made no sense. Oh poetry... I will never understand. I always feel proud of
myself when I figure something out, even if it is extremely easy. Like in the
third section, I thought that when it talked about "eight to four or nine
to five" that it must be talking about work, and that it somehow related
to the death that he was talking about. I feel as though this suggests that the
urban people and workers are the ones who experience many deaths. The many
deaths would be just the struggles and repetitions of life that the ordinary
worker experiences. Maybe Neruda is trying to inspire people to do something
that they love instead of boring work, because that type of work eats away at
people each day. I found Neruda’s description of Macchu Picchu kind
of interesting specifically in section IX. Though confusing, a few words stuck
out to me. I noticed that starting in line 5, he uses the word stone in 7
straight lines. This obviously has to be important if it repeated so much. He
might use stone in reference to the buildings or solid foundation of the city.
The phrase “bloody rock” also stuck out to me because it gives the reader a
vivid image of what happened to the people of this great city. I think it would
be awesome to travel there and see the ruins of Macchu Picchu. Well, I know it
would be awesome actually. I feel like it is one place I really would love to
see and seeing that I have never left the country in my life. Why not? That
would be an awesome opportunity to visit a Latin American country and see an
incredible historical site that I now know about and have learned about the
culture of the people who lived there.
I feel exactly the same as you do when it comes to this poem, and poetry in general! I do remember you mentioning the idea of "eight to four or nine to five", and it being about the work day, which I did not catch at first, but after hearing you say it, it made a lot of sense to me. I like the idea of Neruda inspiring people to do more in a day then just attend their boring jobs and drag their feet because they hate going to work every day and being stuck in the same routine.
ReplyDeleteI also think it would be really neat to see the ruins of Macchu Picchu in person. I think after taking this class we can really appreciate it more than if we had actually went to the ruins before we took the class. There are a lot of things I have learned about Macchu Picchu I never knew until this year.