Poetry Explication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Poetry Explication - Essay Example The fact that it is "smudged" and written in "erasable ink" (2) says a good deal about the students feelings on the topic. The confession, of course, is the students desire to be effortlessly beautiful, and the poem makes us complicit in this confession, asking "isnt it strange / how we want it, despite all we know?" (3-4). Here the sense is one of compassion for the student, and also a vague sense of embarrassment to be caught in the same trap of wanting beauty even while knowing that it is not that easy or important, or even realistic. The imagery used while comparing the narrators daily life to the photos of models builds on this idea, making it clear that the photos are fantasies through descriptions of models as "cobalt-eyed, hair puddling / like cognac" (5-6), or in one case as "curved and light-drenched, more like a beach / than the beach" (7-8). Through these images, the ideal of beauty is shown to be completely unrealistic, and removed from any sort of achievable goal, while at the same time also being something that is just naturally desirable. The poem asks us who has not wanted to be beautiful, and shows us why we want to, at the same time. This is compared to the boring, every-day, and cheap life of the narrators reality. For instance, now her daydreams are limited to seeing a magazine "in the checkout line" (11), which nonetheless inspires in her "the old pull, flare / of the pilgrims twin flames, desire and faith (13-14). Here, the poem compares fashion magazines to religion, which inspire readers to believe in them and want what they show, even though the narrator should know better. The narrators childhood is presented similarly, how she went "from store to store" (15) buying "polyester satin, / machine-made lace, petunia- and Easter egg-colored" (16-17). The cheapness of the materials she can afford is contrasted to the fancy clothing of the models in the photos she admired, described as an "angel inside