Analysis Of Charles Simic’s ‘My Shoes’

Speaker

Provide a close reading of the bellow poem.

By close reading, I ask that you demonstrate your critical reading and writing skills, meaning please consider:

Speaker: who does the speaker seem to be? Is the speaker an “I” or a “we” for example? How does this close or distant relation to the speaker influence our connection to the poem. Does the information seem objective, or subjective?

Voice / Tone: Does the speaker feel legitimate, honest, level-headed? Compared to, say, feverish, angry, nervous? Is the speaker reliable?  Because of the mood of the voice, we may be able to say something about the mood of the poem. Is the voice loud or soft? Does this effect the mood of the poem? What is the mood?

Subject Matter: It’s not always clear in some poems, but can you say what the poem is about? Or what is the poem suggesting? A sense of place and or setting sometimes helps us ground this.

Audience: Is the speaker in the poem aiming their words at a specific audience? For example, we might say in Jericho Brown’s summertime the speaker, Janis Joplin, may be aiming her rant at middle class America and all their narrow expectations, or aiming her rant at those in Port Aurthor.

Structure: Where  does the poem begin, emotionally, logically, politically, ethically, etc.,? Can you offer an interpretation as to what brings the poem into utterance? For example, we might be able to say “Facing it” comes in to utterance because the poet is standing in front of the Vietnam Veteran’s Wall, and the poem is in response to that. Then consider how the poem moves – do new points get made? What is realized? (this can relate to the methods idea we pursued in Walser’s micro scripts), and finally, consider where the poem ends in comparison to where it began. Has anything changed, or been realized? Or do we stay in the same emotional, logical place?

Consider the order in which you want to talk about these things. And again, it is not necessary to talk about everything i’ve mentioned if the poem does not make itself available to all these things. Do not hesitate to discuss how these different elements influence each other, too.

My Shoes

Shoes, secret face of my inner life:
Two gaping toothless mouths,
Two partly decomposed animal skins
Smelling of mice nests.
 
My brother and sister who died at birth
Continuing their existence in you,
Guiding my life
Toward their incomprehensible innocence.
 
What use are books to me
When in you it is possible to read
The Gospel of my life on earth
And still beyond, of things to come?

In the poem “my shoes” by Charles simic, he records a dynamic relation between the individual and the environment by a way of mutual dialogue a disoriented speaker and between a topical symbols which is relating to the experience of the poet during world war two.

Speaker: In the above context the speaker is referred to as the poet that is Charles Simic himself.

The information that we get from the poem is subjective in nature. The poet lauds his affinity by illustrating a close bond between his shoes and himself. By forgoing the concepts of traditional religion like “the strange church building/ with as the altar” the speaker is emphasizing that he is learning by experiencing rather than trusting the books of people’s conjectures. “The gospel life on earth” is the only certain thing that the speaker knows and thus becomes “the only true likeness” (Simic, 2007).

Voice/ tone: the speaker here feels level headed. The speaker here is to some extent angry as the speaker has lost his closed ones in the world war two. He has made a courageous statement that from his lost parts he will be able to build a cosmic structure which will be divine in the “strange church” with the old shoes as the altar.

subject matter:  in the poem “ my shoes” the speaker is not sure about the world he call in mind by making lines in a white colored page which indicates absence as the environment of the speaker. He breathes in air and breathes out air which shows inspiration and rejuvenation. The poet is transforming the dead or the expired air into signs which are meaning bearing. He said that the poem is concerned with the breaking of the silence (Simic, Hulse, 2002).  It is a procedure to go to the border of language and divine silence. The miracle of a single word which comes out when there is inability to speak. The poem says that by disturbing the silence, a relationship to an object and a self which is in the process of forming will be revealed. Simic is recalling such a type of world which has fallen out of view.

Audience: in the above poem the targeted audience is the people who were the resident off the war torn that was held in the 21^st century, the people who have faced the world war two or any other war (Luxford, 2007).The post modern workshop participants are also the audience.

Structure: the poem begins with saying that the psyche is made up of components two of which is collective unconscious and personal unconscious. The later is determined the past. Under the layer of personal conscious is the layer that is present in every species that is termed as the collective unconscious (Kennedy, Gioia, 2013).  the poem is starting with relating both the personal conscious and the collective unconscious. The two gaps toothless mouths, shoes and the animal skin are referred to as collective unconscious.

He ends with that collective unconscious can be found in anything from ox to the saints. And he is truly formed of the collective unconscious.

Reference

Kennedy, X., & Gioia, D. (2013). Literature. Boston: Pearson.

Luxford, D. (2007). McSweeney’s book of poets picking poets. San Francisco: McSweeneys Books.

Simic, C., & Hulse, M. (2002). Charles Simic in conversation with Michael Hulse. London: Between the Lines.

Simic, C. (2007). Sixty poems. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt.