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Nine Horses Billy Collins Analysis

571 Words3 Pages

Nine Horses Reader’s Response
Nine horses, a collection of symbolic poems, by Billy Collins shows off a simple writing style that delivers impactful messages about today’s world. “Aimless Love”, one of the poems, made me see the tiny things in life that I should stop and appreciate. One of the most important lines “I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor’s window, and later for a bowl of broth,” The author compares the love for a human to love for an object, and this shows how little value was given to human relationships by the author. This is Ironic, seeing as the amount of thought and value given to a human relationship by most people, and how the author compared it to an object. This made me wonder if we, as humans, …show more content…

When I read “Absence” first I saw that the poem talked about a salt shaker being used instead of a white knight in a chess game. The quote that stood out to me was: “about the saltshaker that was taking his place”, and what stood out was the salt shaker symbolized the people that are not as true as they seem to be, the knights symbolized the people we want in society, and the chess board represented society. When all the pieces are there, society functions properly, but when a salt shaker takes one of the pieces place, society becomes dysfunctional. Further research on a forum showed me that the salt shakers represented the heroes who we have, but we don’t want or need. Essentially, the theme of “Absence” was the dysfunctionality of society without a proper leader. Upon analyzing “Royal Aristocrat”, I realized that the author was using Salt shakers in a similar way. The author talks of feeling more useful than the Salt shakers of the world in “Royal Aristocrat”, which was similar to how it was used in “Absence”. This affects me, because I hope to be a leader, and when I see the author pointing out how leaders claim to be heroes, and how they do not carry out the wishes of the people they lead, I am essentially given a set of do’s and do

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