Response to readings

Robert Frost’s The Mending Wall, Yusef Komunyakaa’s Slam, Dunk, and Hook, and Judith Cofer’s The Game all use metaphors to represent their individual themes of boundaries or barriers within human nature. Each presents a different example of a division separating two entities.
Robert Frost presents a physical boundary in the wall. The narrator describes a relationship between his neighbor, the wall itself, and him. The wall deteriorates throughout the winter and the neighbors come together in the spring to rebuild the gaps in the wall. “No one has seen them made or heard them made” shows how walls can be naturally broken. Frost refers to fixing the wall as “mending time”, which is a time to rebuild the barriers between the two neighbors. “Good walls make good neighbors”. The wall serves no real purpose and is presented in the example of the cows. The cows show that the narrator does not like the boundary and does not understand why the neighbor reverts to tradition as a means of carrying on. I believe that there are many underlying barriers in this poem that can easily be applied. Race can be one example. There are natural barriers that we put up everyday just because that is what we have always done in the past and will continue to do until we look at the reasons why our barriers have gaps in them.
Yusef Komunyakaa presents the positive barrier that is created in competition. This challenges one to look within themselves and figure out the substance that makes them who they are. The game of basketball separates the players by the team they are on or the fans on each side of the court, but also breaks down these physical barriers for the passion of the game and self fulfillment that one receives. “In the roundhouse, Labyrinth our bodies, created we could almost last forever”. I really liked this line in the poem for some reason. I think it involves this self fulfillment of being consumed by the atmosphere surrounding and the intensity of a close game where one must look inside themselves and come up with these sort of involuntary motions ( ex. Gatorade commercial). Sports and other activities bring people together through this internal love or desire that one feels and all those who participate know that at least they have one thing in common.
Judith Cofer presents an interesting piece that begins with a medical ailment. Her mother does not send her to school and when she goes over her friend’s house to play, her handicap is never discussed. But this is not the barrier the narrator discusses. Although it is relevant, the barrier seems to be more related to reality: the reality of the situation at a point in time. They play in a world that Cruz created. It is one of imagination and praises that consumes her. The game separates the external reality of the life she is forced to live and the internal reality of the life that she wants to live.All three of these poems present a journey into the metaphysical world. It is a world that searches for meaning in the beings present and the abstract nature of the text. The barriers are an endless search for truth in human nature.