I chose to write about Robert Creeley’s Oh No. I thoroughly enjoyed the irony of the poem, and the mood overall. Creeley in my opinion talks about the journey of getting old, and the destination that you reach when you arrive. I interpreted this place to be heaven. The first line alludes to growing old, and the remainder of the poem says that when you reach heaven you will be given a chair that is unique to you, and all your friends will be there smiling with their own unique chairs as well. I took the nice chair to be everyone’s unique interpretation of what heaven will be like.
If you wander far enough
you will come to it
and when you get there
they will give you a place to sit
for yourself only, in a nice chair,
and all your friends will be there
with smiles on their faces
and they will likewise all have places.
The irony of the poem is that the title is something different than what is meant by the poem. It infers that the poem will be saddening, but the message is rather positive and uplifting. However, I also thought that the speaker can be giving an exaggeratedly positive spin on death, and the afterlife. That the poem is meant to be read with sarcasm. And if this was case the irony and mood of the poem would be completely different. The mood would be littered with contempt and the irony of the situation would be that the title is indicative of how the speaker feels, but the positive message would be interpreted as the naive outlook of the foolish. I thoroughly enjoy how two people can read this poem and come back with two different opinions on what the message is.