Sammy Hodes Week 7 - Pick A Poet #2

 Alone by Phillip Levine

    I think one of the most powerful aspects of poetry is the fact that poetry allows people to express themselves. Sometimes people feel super uncomfortable talking about how they feel internally. That does not necessarily mean, in my opinion, that there are not people comfortable talking about themselves. I just think that more often than not people try to keep their personal feelings to themselves. 

    That being the case, Phillip Levine is a primary example of utilizing poetry in order to express his inner feelings. In his poem "Alone" he discusses his loneliness and how empty he feels. Levine spends the whole poem describing a man, presumably him, walking through a trail. Levine states that he is "someone alone following a broken trail of stones toward the deep and starless river." Levine then closes his poem by discussing the man's path down the trail. In a powerful concluding line, Levine states "Nothing happens when the man gets of the trial." That last line resonated with me because I felt that Levine's character had taken this journey of the trail on yet when he was walking down it, he realized that nothing had changed, rendering him still lonely.     

    Although somber, I believe this poem sheds an important light. Something I always try to do is reach out to people. You never know what is going on inside someone's head so it is very important to make sure that if someone is dealing with something they talk about it rather than dealing with it alone.