Beginning Again by Franz Wright

For this poem, two rather distinct pieces stood out to me: The beginning = good; The ending = ???

The beginning (aka) the good part :)
I think that the imagery here is just darling, So darling, in fact, I believe I'll post it on here.

“If I could stop talking, completely

cease talking for a year, I might begin

to get well,” he muttered.

Off alone again performing

brain surgery on himself

in a small badly lit

room with no mirror. A room

whose floor ceiling and walls

are all mirrors, what a mess

oh my God--

Hopefully, you'll notice that I tried to keep the structure intact as much as possible. The way a poem looks is so important, even if you are not a fan of the awkward structure. Personally, I love it. It gives the poem personality, and it makes my brain read it differently. For example, in this poem, I mentally "paused" and added emphasis. I think Mr. Wright did a lovely job of arranging his brilliant words. On to the brilliant words part of the poem I assume the most important part? ;)

The imagery is excellent--flat out perfect. You ask yourself, 'Why wasn't there a mirror, mister? You're going to do a positively crummy job of brain surgery if you can't see what you're doing." Then the whole room becomes a mirror, and only then would a handmirror be completely useless because everything would be a big shiny mess! (...that totally made more sense in my head.)

--But maybe the mirrors don't have to make sense. Maybe they're just imaginary mirrors the sick man thinks he needs. The man is performing brain surgery on himself; which pretty much classifies him as a crazy in my book. But, that's me trying to rationalize the poem, and poetry can't exactly be rationalized because it's not exactly rational. (You know, beating it with the hose...am I making any sense here?)

Next comes my favorite part :)

And still

its stands,

the question

not how begin

again, but rather


Why?

In all its puzzling glory, it's practically truth. Why should a person change? Who has the right to say that the person was bad before? (A side note: the form here is absolutely beautiful. It definitely got the point across.)
I don't really have much else to say about this stanza rather than it's fantastic. Some things are better left untouched.

Unfortunately, this brings me to the second half of this poem. It's short so I'll post it:

So we sit there

together

the mountain

and me, Li Po

said, until only the mountain

remains.

First and foremost, who is Li Po and how did he get there? I honestly read that line and got a bit irritated; I feel like Li Po had trespassed on such a brilliant poem. (Ridiculous, I know, but I didn't like it.)
Secondly: mountain? What mountain? I was enjoying a room full of mirrors, not a huge rocky mountain. I live in Colorado, Mr. Wright; We have plenty of mountains, thanks.

The ending just didn’t make sense to me. I felt it was unrelated and irrelevant. And I didn’t really like Li Po (or the mountain for that reason) they both felt really out of place. Then again, I doubt Franz Wright cares what I think about the last portion of his poem since he wrote it, and became famous because of it. :P

Hopefully, the ending might make more sense after hearing other people's thoughts in class. Thanks for reading!

P.S I do believe my blogs are getting longer every week... :/