Assignment due Thursday 2/6/14

When reading the City Eclogue, the poem "Cowry She" stood out more so than some of the other poems I had been scanning through. When I first saw the word "Cowry She" I didn't have any idea as to what a Cowry was/what the word meant. Researching further, I found out cowry was a shell used as a currency dating back to the dawn of the Chinese. When Roberson says "The spirit of a many old cracked lips laughing" Maybe Roberson was referring to an ancient civilization that has died out, hence the "old cracked lips" making me envision a person of elderly age. When Roberson goes further into the poem saying "The boards of the counting game" I found that cowry shells were also used in India for board game purposes. Roberson goes further into imagery, comparing cowry shells to gulls. Roberson says the gulls can't stop moving and the cowry can't cease its movement in order to be counted. It felt like Roberson was saying that cowry shells, like money, were used all over the world for various purposes, and when used for money (which people are likely to take very quickly) it's hard to stop and count the money. "The grabbers can't imagine being let make it to the ground" may be a simile for the fact that the takers or users of money, cowry shells, cowry counting games, etc. cannot imagine the fall of the cowry shell or the end of its usefulness. Maybe this is a message to the greedy American culture and trying to say that a shell is simply a shell, and can only move so fast before falling. The last paragraph of the poem reads "Alchemy of handling, its still a shell, and shells have their voices" Alchemy was an interesting choice of word to me because it is a scientific word, used to describe the transformation of certain things like metal; gold. This led me to reason that the cowry shell is just a shell, as money is just money, and we cannot make it turn to gold or something of sheer significant value because it is not, it is just "dirty thrown around paper" as Roberson previously states in the poem.