A Response to "Souls On Ice"

Metaphors are one of my favorite aspects of writing, along with irony. In Mark Doty's "A Display of Mackerel" (which he explains in " Souls On Ice") he uses metaphors in his poem that really makes his writing come to life from his point of view. Doty breaks down his poem in a way that shows how he felt gazing at the mackerel. I like the way he used short descriptive words in the poem to draw out the exact feeling of the mackerel at that time. He also mentions the fact that when we look at something and are captivated by it we seem to never get that specific feeling back by looking at the same object twice. It really makes me wonder how much i miss when viewing an object, but it also makes me great full because i can always learn more from something even if I've looked over it a thousand times. Its like looking at your favorite scenery your breath is always taken away when you look at it again, you get the same feeling but its now more familiar and you take the time to look at every detail. Doty also explains how there is a subject-beneath-the-subject how one or two words can mean two or more meanings, which i though was interesting because now it opens up the thought of everything we read or look at has multiple meanings behind it. In the last stanza in Doty's poem it says "How happy they seem , even on ice, to be together, selfless, which is the price for gleaming." this arises a thought about how we are all the same yet we are individuals at the same time (which Doty thought of too). Even in a big group we are thought of to be the same but when we stand on our own we become something entirely different, an individual. Through that individuality I think we become alone, yet not alone because we have others that are similar to ourselves. In this sense are we just a small unimportant spot on a larger painting or is there more to being a group? Maybe we feed off the group to stay sain as individuals, drawing strength and support from them to make us feel complete....