http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance/poems/detail/37525
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/92730
The two websites that I enjoyed, aka poetryoutloud and poetryfoundation, were very similar but different in certain ways. For Poetryoutloud there seems to be a lot less poems on this website because when going to the "Z" section of poems there literally were only two poems listed where I'm sure that there are many more poems begining with a Z in this world so it just felt a bit limmited. Poetryoutloud had more detailed biographies of poets which I really enjoyed because it was nice to be able to go straight to their bio's to learn about them more. I would give Poetryoutloud 3 stars out of 5 because they have a lot of great features and include a lot of good poems but I think that I'm left wanting more poems from the website.
Poetryfoundation was the other website that I looked into and I thought that it balances pretty even with poetryoutloud due to a couple reasons. I think that poetryfoundation was a lot more organized and professional looking than poetryoutloud because the web design is very clean cut and well put together whereas the poetryoutloud seemed thrown together in some sections. Another thing that poetryfoundation does well is that they have a large selection of poetry in this website and exponentially more poems than poetryoutloud which made it seem like I could choose from a large selection which was nice to have the options. But something I didn't like about the website was that the bios were a bit harder to reach and it seemed sort of careless of the poet themselves. I thought that the website overall was very well done and easy to use. I'd give this website a 3/5 stars as well because I think that the pros and cons of each site balances to be at the same place.
The poem I enjoyed off of this poetry search:
Onions
By William Matthews
How easily happiness begins by
dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter
slithers and swirls across the floor
of the sauté pan, especially if its
errant path crosses a tiny slick
of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.
This could mean soup or risotto
or chutney (from the Sanskrit
chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions
go limp and then nacreous
and then what cookbooks call clear,
though if they were eyes you could see
clearly the cataracts in them.
It’s true it can make you weep
to peel them, to unfurl and to tease
from the taut ball first the brittle,
caramel-colored and decrepit
papery outside layer, the least
recent the reticent onion
wrapped around its growing body,
for there’s nothing to an onion
but skin, and it’s true you can go on
weeping as you go on in, through
the moist middle skins, the sweetest
and thickest, and you can go on
in to the core, to the bud-like,
acrid, fibrous skins densely
clustered there, stalky and in-
complete, and these are the most
pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare
and rage and murmury animal
comfort that infant humans secrete.
This is the best domestic perfume.
You sit down to eat with a rumor
of onions still on your twice-washed
hands and lift to your mouth a hint
of a story about loam and usual
endurance. It’s there when you clean up
and rinse the wine glasses and make
a joke, and you leave the minutest
whiff of it on the light switch,
later, when you climb the stairs.
dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter
slithers and swirls across the floor
of the sauté pan, especially if its
errant path crosses a tiny slick
of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.
This could mean soup or risotto
or chutney (from the Sanskrit
chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions
go limp and then nacreous
and then what cookbooks call clear,
though if they were eyes you could see
clearly the cataracts in them.
It’s true it can make you weep
to peel them, to unfurl and to tease
from the taut ball first the brittle,
caramel-colored and decrepit
papery outside layer, the least
recent the reticent onion
wrapped around its growing body,
for there’s nothing to an onion
but skin, and it’s true you can go on
weeping as you go on in, through
the moist middle skins, the sweetest
and thickest, and you can go on
in to the core, to the bud-like,
acrid, fibrous skins densely
clustered there, stalky and in-
complete, and these are the most
pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare
and rage and murmury animal
comfort that infant humans secrete.
This is the best domestic perfume.
You sit down to eat with a rumor
of onions still on your twice-washed
hands and lift to your mouth a hint
of a story about loam and usual
endurance. It’s there when you clean up
and rinse the wine glasses and make
a joke, and you leave the minutest
whiff of it on the light switch,
later, when you climb the stairs.
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PS: Thank you for such an enjoyable class, I will miss all of you.
I love the poem you chose for this final journal. Made me laugh at all of the ways this poem expresses an onion with elaborate examples and it includes so many sensory details that it captures nearly all the elements of an onion. I think the overall simplicity of the title and topic is hilarious. My favorite part was the "nuggets of nightmare" haha, I dont think I have seen those two words used together to describe something before. I had a great time with this class also, enjoy your summer buddy.
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