I couldn’t read much deeper into Robert Frost’s “Out, Out-“ or Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” than the sawing off the hand and being whipped at a boy. It was too sad! I hated how Roethke made his drunken dad metaphorically seem like a ballroom dance. A Waltz is upbeat and happy, a three beat song where the dancers step down on the first beat and get up on their toes for the second and third. Being beaten should be more like a Rammstein song where there’s screaming and anything resembling dancing is thrashing. I wasn’t a fan of Roetke’s poem.

I loved Saenz’s “To the Desert.” I first thought it was about love, about passion, but the first question about the poem asked, “how does the speaker feel about the land being described?” Then in the last part of the poem it says “save me, my God, take me, my land. Save me, take me.” So then it sounds like a prayer. I think that the poem IS a prayer to God. The entire poem sounds like a contemporary song we’d sing at my church. Especially the line that says “…then bend/ Your force, to break, to blow, burn, and make me new.”