Book response Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Book response - Essay Example The poems are easy and full of affective yearning, with which any reader can identify. Further, Dickman’s theme oriented composition makes it interesting for readers to discern crucial life lessons and get inspired to make amends where necessary. One predominant theme in All American Poem is â€Å"scraping for joy†, which this essay seeks to explore in greater detail. The first poem in Dickman’s collection, which explicitly addresses the theme of scraping for joy, is Slow Dance. The basic meaning of this phrase is that, people must strive to derive joy from every action they take or every experience they go through. Just like the poem title suggests, life should be a slow dance, where one soaks in every moment of happiness and avoids taking for granted the joyous aspects of life, however meager. Dickman’s poem is infused with a sense of pleasure and expectation, as one skims through the verse line by line. There is a promise of hope even in the most unexciting or demoralizing everyday activities. The poem is also emphatic on the need to eagerly grasp the relatively few moments of slow dancing with exquisite unfamiliar persons. Such acts in essence, constitute cheating life or coping with aspects of life that might seem too difficult or painful to handle. Dickman’s detailed description of ritual of slow dancing gives one, as a reader, insight into the need to live life easy and take in all the little joys. By drawing a reader’s attention to the purported mundane moments of life, and comparing these with the happy times people would enjoy if only they took the time, the poet is successfully convincing on the issue of scraping for joy. For instance, he points out mowing the lawn, making another person suffer, suffering from insomnia and even dying, as some of the negativities of life. The poet establishes juxtaposition of these negative aspects of life, with positive ones like the hope of an almond grove in pitch darkness,