Help! I am trying to find information out about a poem entitled "And All the Senses Are Called Seeing". I need help with its meaning and purpose for a community college english class I am taking this semester.

Could you post a copy of the poem, so we can see if we recognize it? Also, if it is under copyright, it may not have been published, which means there will be no accompanying literature on the internet.

Les

The poem is very long, but here it is:

I sit and watch this day
One as rare as almost as last day
and wonder what the way is
I cannot sit here and go the way I set for myself
Just as yesterday's compulsions
Strong as surges of sea strokes
Urge me away and out to here
The heartbeat of hearkening earth
to sense the soul of summer come
to be to live to taste
and I must go where I must go
to do what can be done
as yesterday I did and went and felt
Many things I saw and heard
and one remembrance lingers on
true beauty is a rare and aweful thing
weeds are in the plentitude everywhere
and their seeds innumerable
but the blossoms rare as a lovely death
or a good life brief as happiness
smooth as fine wine and distant wood smoke
a flash felt once and heard no more
these are few

and life in its all is similar or so it seem, on only seem
Once this tiny faucet of its sum
none I think can live lives of quiet desperation
for that is death
most of our lives have a certain sameness
but these are not remembered
what is worthy of wistful willful recall
are those few so very few days
that become the summer of the soul

The evangelical the omniprescent
the single stars we steer by
they are the best and thus the remembered

Which is what the way must be
I think that I need forget my soul
That I may find it in a little while
I think that I should leave behind my order
that through disorder I may yet achieve it

I think that I will be happy
that I might know its meaning
I feel that I must go that I may come
that I should die that I might leave
that I should stumble that I might rise
and do that I might do again
I must give up myself to me
surrender wholely to myself
to live a being unfettered
to seek beauty and suck its strength
to know all I can
there is no way but to do
to do what I want to, to do what I must
because I am me.

That's it - no author, or date -just the title

>and life in its all is similar or so it seem, on only seem

If the line above is any indication, I would say that the poem is probably written by an amateur, perhaps a former student of your instructor, or a colleague of him/her.

Meaning? Perhaps a reflection or self-introspection of one's life.

Purpose? To initiate change by reflecting on one's progress heretofor.


Les

A community college English class assigns a poem for study, but does not provide the author's name? Call me a cynic, but I'm with Les. Sounds like a teenage angst poem to me. Too many cliches, no punctuation, and faucet should be facet, to name just a few problems.