Poetry Day

a line analysis of classic poetry

Waiting for Christmas by BU (age 5)

Icicles hang at Christmas.

The author is metaphorically referring to the silver tinsel which adorns the tree. Real icicles are not cost-effective for indoor tree decoration, given their tendency to melt.

They are Lovely to.

Some scholars argue that this line is incomplete, and believe that the missing words are either "eat" or "poop on". Detractors of the theory suggest that the author was a horrible speller. Proponents of incompleteness notes that every misspelling the author has ever made has been intentional, for satirical purposes.

Ornaments hang on the tree.
And I want Voltron 3.

Yet again, the young author impresses us. His facile use of the rhyming couplet is augmented by his reference to current events, since Voltron 3 was the must-have toy of the 1985 Christmas season.

We are Eating turkey.

This is obviously a sly reference to Turkey's 1983 transition to democracy (the US way) following the 1980 coup d'?tat.

The Christmas tree is up.
Things are Hung on it.

Like the all good poets, the author has a preoccupation with death and dying, evidenced by his overuse of "hang" and "hung". Scholars note that the author jumps from H to I here -- the absence of the letter R represents death, as in "a dearth of life".

Infint is Jesus.

At first glance, this is a reference to the baby Jesus. However, a study of the author's later works reveals a deeper message -- "Infint" is actually a misspelled form of "infinity", making this a less-trite way to say that "God is everywhere".

Santa is here.

Obviously, this is an intentional misspelling of "Satan", and provides counterpoint to the previous line. The theme of this poem is the titanic struggle between Good and Evil.

The Tree is beautiful to.
Mistletoes are up.

It is telling to note that had the author been unable to spell "too", he probably would not have been able to figure out "mistletoes".

Angels are out.

By this point in the author's life, angels were so 1984.

Stars are up to.

There are two competing interpretations of the incomplete final line -- "Stars are up to something" suggests a massive astrological conspiracy, while the more mundane "Stars are uptown" simply suggests that the author is not high society and lives in the suburbs.