I posted this a while ago any comments on this poem and the last verse in particular it confuses me?

[buzzard]

Goblins

In my garden
Where I toil
And stain my hands
With it’s brown soil

Rules a King
Of earthly things,
Which out from winter
Each year the sun brings.

His name is Gob
And is slow to trust,
But a vengeful enemy
So please him you must.

His subjects will tempt you,
Because they are fair,
But pick them too selfishly
I warn you don’t dare.

His Kingdom is paradise
Like a place in sweet dreams,
But to most who do visit
This is not how it seems.

Our world of iron
And new technology
Is slowly destroying
His society.

To the kingdom of Gob
I plead of you,
Be much respectful
And give all care due.

[buzzard]

1. Ok please comment it was a poem I kept that my daughter wrote in grade 9, I am missing her.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. My dear buzzard...

I was a little confused by your question, but now I think I know what you're asking...

I am so sorry about your daughter...

The last verse?

Looks to me as though your daughter means to say that we should be respectful of this goblin Gob, and give him all the respect we can, because he can be mean.

Does that help?

:hug:

[buzzard]

3. Thank you Peggy but until the last verse I knew what she meant then it confused me, because I think

in her way she was saying respect nature but it seems as though the last verse was not in keeping with what was meant, or I am really bad in interpreting poetry.

[Orrex]

4. My thoughts?

It sounds like a plea to respect the Earth, coupled with the latent threat of what's in store for us if we don't.

The last two verses sort of break the meter, which is interesting, the minor discord implying an urgency that isn't present in the first five stanzas.

One possible reading assumes that the speaker isn't your daughter or even a human character, but rather contemporary society itself, retaining oases of the pristine natural world (e.g., the garden in line 1).

Something else to consider is that Goblins are seldom portrayed as friendly to or even tolerant of humans, and the Goblin King in this poem seems to possess great power that we should fear or at least respect (line 27). Identifying him as a steward or keeper of Nature, the poem suggests that Nature as a whole is deliberately hostile (potentially, at least) to humanity. It should also be mentioned that "Gob," while obviously a shortinging of "Goblin" is also pretty close to "God," who is also often portrayed as a King.

Gob's "subjects" (line 13) are clearly flowers or, by extension, any sort of natural, growing thing.

The phrase "slowly destroying/his society" (lines 23/24) is interesting because "society" can mean "community," but it can also mean "companionship." Thus we can read the phrase to indicate either that we're destroying Gob's community (Nature in general) or that we're damaging his polite companionship with us. Or it can mean both.

Then we have to consider the title: only one Goblin is mentioned in the text, but the title is plural. Why?


How's that for a start?

[DeepBlueC]

5. It kind of combines myth and ecology I think

It is about gardening and about growth and the fruits of the earth. The "god of earthly things" is the god who governs the seasonal fertility of the earth. The earthly things are literally the things that grow from the earth. Each spring he restores the earth to fertile sun and warmth. The writer is a gardener who, in pointing out that he is "slow to trust" is saying that you have to acquire the skill of growing things and that there is a right way to do it or you will excite Gob's vengeance and you'll get nothing for your efforts. His subjects, fruits and vegetables and flowers and trees, are beautiful but you can't be too greedy about harvesting them. The verse about "his Kingdom is paradise" says to me that the writer is comparing the beauty and abundance of things grown and ripened and blossomed to the hard, dirty, sometimes unpredictable, work of gardening. The next verse warns that large scale technologically driven agribusiness is threatening to change and even destroy the practices of traditional gardening and growing that respect the needs of the earth, the limits we must observe, and the balance of nature generally in order to preserve the cycle of annual renewal. The last stanza I read as a call to respect the earth and leave it as healthy as you found it.

Does that work for you?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. I read this the other night. For some reason, I thought you had

written it.

Sounds to me like she is warning us to take care of this earth. That most of us do not realize we are in a paradise and are destroying the real paradise for a man made world.

Sometimes I think Gob is her pun for God.

Anyway that is my interpretation. YMMV.

[buzzard]

7. Thank you all for your comments on this, it is a poem I have kept from my daughter for years

for some reason I thought it expressed her relationship with nature or a higher being but I have been missing her lately and just came across this again. She just turned 21 this year and is contemplating grad school next year I don't suppose she is coming home again.