City Eclogue by Ed Roberson

The major themes that this author seems to reiterate are life, cities, and the destruction of the Earth. It seems that the author is making a push for naturalism or is an environmentalist.

(the collection), on  page 52 first caught my attention because the title was rather interesting. It is in parenthesis an all the letters are lower case. Further, it was unlike other titles in this book because it was not in bold. The structure of this particular poem also caught my attention. Like the other poems, each section is made up of two lines. More specifically, there are fifteen sets of two. In addition to the structure, the author made use of gaps in almost every section. These gaps, I suppose provide a breather or absorption period for the reader. It reminds me of the pauses when playing a piece of music. I think it serves as a beat or tempo to the poem. Finally, I noticed that he included a beginning parenthesis in the fourth line, but did not include an ending parenthesis. "(& abt their papers" this part just did not make sense. He included two abbreviations and I am not sure what he is trying to relay. Maybe and about their papers.

While reading this poem, I was able to sense various details. Such as on page 53 where he talks about someone setting their recyclables to the curb. The wind caused the bottles to bounce about the street. I can picture this scene, feel the breeze, and also hear the bottle hitting against the curbs and pavement. Visually, this poem is alive. Finally, he described our lives as being on a schedule. We know when to pay our bills by, when the take the garbage out for pickup etc. This is very true, our lives our constantly revolving around a clock. But, the one thing we cannot really schedule is when we die. He described it as we only get notices for the things we do know about. However, we never get a notice that we are about to die.

The second poem, Escape Training: Instructor's Flying Rappel  on page 121, also brought my senses to life. From the jumping off a cliff (or building) makes my stomach tense up. Further, when he discusses the fire I can hear the fire alarms, people screaming, the crackling sound of a fire and the sirens from fire trucks. I can also smell the smoke, feel the heat and even feel the moment of panic. Next, the structure is very similar to the poem above, but there are only fourteen sets of two. The gaps or pauses are once again used, and there is also an even larger gap between one section and the next.

It was interesting how he described the life of a fire fighter. He showed the risk of how they do the maneuvers, some times you have to do them with out the aid of a rope and still manage your way down the levels of a burning building.