This section of Nine Gates focuses a lot on the history of poetry, written and spoken words, and memory. I thought that this poem went very well with this section. In the poem, the speaker talks about wanting to speak the language of many different things like circus elephants and tar pits. To do this is to understand and live in the memory of these things. Hirshfield tells us that poetry allows us to do these things. The section of Nine Gates also talked about how meter and rhyme help to make the words more memorable. It is easy to see that Betts has chosen each word in this poem very purposefully. The words and the sound of the words help in the telling of this poem.
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I like your statement that "The section of Nine Gates also talked about how meter and rhyme help to make the words more memorable." Does anyone have any thoughts on how exactly that plays out in this poem?