19 Varieties of Gazelle: First Response

For my first readers response I wanted to focus on the poem “Arabic coffee”. I especially enjoyed this poem because it reminds me of my own father, and times that we have shared together. I started drinking coffee because I wanted to be just like my father; he would always wake up promptly at 5:30 AM and would drink his coffee with two creams and two sugars. This poem is also about how coffee brought people together throughout their hardships. No matter what kind of struggles my father was going through at the time, he would always wake up, 5:30 AM and drink his coffee with two creams and two sugars. The sense of consistency always brought me a sense of serenity. When I started going to an out of town high school, I had to start waking up at 5:30 AM, and I started spending my mornings with my father, drinking my coffee with more than two creams and two sugars, but still learning from him. Those mornings were spent watching the news, discussing plans and how the family was doing. While I was in high school my father lost his job, but we still spent our mornings together. In the poem “Arabic coffee” there is a line about “the hundred disappointments… and the dreams tucked like pocket handkerchiefs into each day”. This reminds me that no matter how much was going against him, my father would always wake up every day, 5:30 AM, and he would bear all the weight of the problems, and just keep going on.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you -- Nobody -- Too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!

How public -- like a Frog --

To tell one's name -- the livelong June --

To an admiring Bog!

By Emily Dickinson

            I really enjoy this poem because it made me smile, which is something that I can’t say about every poem I read, especially since most of them just make me want to bang my head on a table. Anyway, one of the reasons that I enjoyed this poem was because of its voice. I really enjoyed the way it felt like the speaker was having a conversation with me, it definitely caught my interest. Another reason why I chose this poem for my blog was because I found it interesting that the poem was about being a Nobody. When I read the poem the first time, I found it interesting that the speaker called herself a Nobody. At first I thought that she meant being 'a nobody' is actually just being an individual. The line ‘How dreary to be a somebody’ gave me the vibe that she felt it must have been boring to fit in and actually be a ‘somebody’.

After I read it a second time, I realized that it also could mean that she just wanted privacy. Being 'a nobody' meant not advertising yourself, and just keeping to yourself. When you’re 'a somebody', you tell your name, and then you’re obligated to the people that you call friends and family. And the thing about being a recluse is that there’s always someone who will want to draw you out of your shell, even if you really don’t want to come out.