Liam Meldung - Week 1 - Pick a Poet (Mary Oliver) - "The Mango"

        

                                                  

"The Mango" - Mary Oliver

        When I went through the list of all the poems Mary Oliver wrote I was drawn to this title for some odd reason. I guess I just really like mangoes and I couldn’t help but want to read this poem and share it with the rest of you. I went into reading this poem thinking that it would be all about mangoes, and I guess it was, but the author used mangoes as a way to take a deeper look into today's society.

        The poem is describing, what I think is, a dinner party of some sort. Everyone is joining in on the delicious dinner and then the mangoes come out for dessert. Everyone is given some and then it gets interesting. The poet starts to describe the conversation being had, in very few words, around her. Mary writes that “all through the sweetness [she] heard voices, men and women talking about something - another country, and trouble.” The delicious taste of the mango becomes less and less as the conversation shifts to the state of the world in some places. They continue to discuss the world problems as the poet eats the mango she is so obviously obsessed with. It seemed like this was the turning point for the whole poem. It started off all nice with getting the mango and the dinner, but then at this point everything starts to change. The discussion is changing the main point of the poem, the mango suddenly becomes less important and the discussion of what is happening in the world becomes more noticeable. 

        When I read this I couldn’t help but think about the summer reading, How to Read Literature Like a Professor. It reminded me of the chapter about eating with people. I felt like at this dinner the people invited are there to share with each other a nice meal. There they begin to talk about things that maybe they wouldn’t talk about in front of everyone. They trust the people they are with to say their opinions about certain things. That was just me connecting the poem to the summer reading for the sake of connecting the poem to the summer reading.

        The overall idea of the poem, based on my interpretation, is that the mango symbolizes sweetness, maybe relating it to innocence and then it can be ruined by the things that happen in the world. The poet is just trying to enjoy her mango, not thinking about anything but how amazing it is, but that’s ruined by the political and upsetting conversation her friends are having. The innocence is being taken away slowly until the mango isn’t even mentioned anymore, the innocence is all gone.





Comments

  1. BenSeptember 6, 2022 at 1:18 PM

    I loved this interpretation of the poem. From the sound if it, I think this poem might have something to do with the concept of "shut up and eat your damn mangoes" from the point of view of individuals sitting around the dinner table not being able to influence global catastrophes. Instead, everyone should simply enjoy their mango and enjoy spending time with others.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leah Nagle - Week 4 - College is Stressing Me Out

Image
I feel like the second we started this school year, everyone (including myself) started freaking out about college. It’s funny to me that everyone talks about how stressful junior year is and how senior year is super chill, because that has definitely not been my experience. For me, in junior year, college was only a distant thought and my workload was manageable, but now, in senior year, I am so incredibly stressed with school, the SAT, and college applications.  Although I know that I am up to date with my college application work, it always feels like I’m behind because I’ll hear from a friend that they’re ahead of me. It makes me so stressed and I hate it, so I try to not compare myself to others, but it’s hard, ya know? There really is so much that goes into college applications that I didn’t even realize until now and that stresses me out.  On top of the actual work that has to be done in order to apply to college, another thing that’s stressful about the process is deciding whic
Read more

Rosalie Weiss- Week 1- “The Hermit Crab” by Mary Oliver

Image
The Hermit Crab is a poem by Mary Oliver in which she reflects on an encounter she had with a hermit crab and the observations she made while watching it find a new home.  I believe that the ocean, which Oliver describes as always “shouting and hissing toward the future,” every wave “leaving the shore littered” with “ornaments of death,” is a symbol for time. (lines 19-25) The hermit crab fights against the ocean by making a home out of the old shells it had discarded. This “rebellion” is also a way of fighting against time, “connecting everything, the past to the future.” (lines 29-33) I interpret this part of the poem to be a metaphor for remembering and learning from our past, as by holding on to our memories, we are effectively rebelling against time and its efforts to wash the past away.   In the first stanza of poem, Oliver writes, “Once I looked inside the darkness of a shell folded like a pastry and there was a fancy face.” (lines 1-4) Upon reading this, I thought, “what a fun
Read more

Jack Yesner Week 10 - The Imposter Syndrome

Image
  The end of the first semester of senior year is quickly approaching. This semester has been the root cause of my stress for the past few months, and I am glad it is nearly over. I tell myself that next semester will be less stressful because college applications are complete and schoolwork will be more relaxed, and I hope I am buying into it. But in reality, I know that I have told myself the future won’t be strenuous multiple times, and I end up regretting my past reassurances.  Throughout my life, I have strived for perfection. I could never start an assignment without a clear plan of what the finished product will look like, I had to rehearse anything spoken, and I never settled for less than 100% effort. But as I am approaching my final semester of school, I am starting to recognize that this is abnormal behavior.  I unfortunately believe that I have developed some form of the Imposter Syndrome. The Imposter Syndrome, which is also known as perceived fraudulence, occurs whe
Read more