Lost in Thoughts

All poems have similarities and differences. Whatever poem is read, there's always something a reader can compare one poem to another poem. These comparisons may be thematic, structural, or subject matter. There are more possible comparisons that can be made. Reading the poems for my English 1302 class made me realize similar themes between two or more poems. The poems "Waiting for My Clothes" by Leanne O'Sullivan, and "The Russian Greatcoat" by Theodore Deppe are both similar in a sense that both poems involve clothes or clothing, and narrators lost in thoughts. However, they are different in a sense that O'Sullivan's poem is surreal compared to Deppe's poem, which is realistic.

The poem "Waiting for My Clothes" is in the point of view of a girl in a waiting room, possibly in a mental institute. She is anxious because her journal is now in the hands of strangers. Her whole life is written in private paper, and there is a great risk of it being unraveled by strangers. The narrator even thinks that the doctors might ask, "Who is this girl that is speaking?" (O' Sullivan 26). However, her daydream is interrupted as soon as her clothes are returned to her thus wringing her back to the real world. The narrator's thoughts are surrealistic. She describes how she thinks the doctors think of her, holding her "the way you would hold a baby" (16), and examining her life through her journal. The narrator also feels like, as her journal is opened and read, she feels herself "fall open or apart" (24), which ties in to her thoughts of someone opening her up and taking her soul from her. All of this surreal thoughts might just be in her mind, but it might be happening inside closed doors as "behind the door, nothing is said" (31). This might mean that the doctors are quietly reading her journal, and once they finish reading it, they decide to return her clothes, which brings the narrator back into reality.

In the poem "The Russian Greatcoat", a man is probably having a vacation with his family, and while enjoying his time watching his children play in the water and keeping his sleeping wife company, he begins to be lost in thoughts. He begins remembering a time in his life when he was probably still unmarried. He remembers a former lover, who demanded him to throw away his "five dollar 'Russian greatcoat'" (Deppe 7). His former lover didn't give any explanations, and he didn't ask for any explanations and simply did what he was told and threw away his coat off of a bridge. While the narrator's thoughts in "Waiting for My Clothes" are surreal, the thoughts of the narrator in "The Russian Greatcoat" are realistic. Also, unlike the clothes in O'Sullivan's poem, the greatcoat in Deppe's poem serves as an invitation into thinking rather than bringing back the narrator into reality, because of how his thoughts involves this piece of clothing. The author didn't use language that may seem surreal to describe his thoughts, but he puts in detail in describing the memory. He describes how his "man-sized coat fell / in slow motion" (10-11). He also remembers he shared a cigarette with his former lover in that memory. He even remembers their entrance to the city, possibly they were walking together, and sharing a "thin black coat" (16) around their shoulders. Although the narrator claims he can forget about the memory for weeks, the memory is clearly a significant thing in his life for how he describes the memory in such detail, even the way in which his Russian greatcoat fell down off a bridge.

With all things considered, both poems may have their share of differences in the way they are written, but both involve narrators with some type of thought while staying in a place. The narrator's thoughts in "Waiting for My Clothes," are more surreal than realistic, probably because of the effect of her anxiety about her journal being taken away from her, and which the doctors might have read. In "The Russian Greatcoat," however, the narrator recalls a memory so his thoughts are more realistic because his thoughts actually happened in the past, whereas compared to the narrator in O'Sullivan's poem, the narrator's thought might all just be in her head. Both poems also have something to do with clothing. All in all, these poems show how a person can be lost in thoughts, be it surreal and fantastical, or realistic. They also show how something like a piece of clothing can bring someone back to reality or invite someone into recalling a memory.