Silas+pseudonym

I knock on a heavy dorm room door, my knock barely audible over the sound of heavily instrumental music. My interviewee, Silas, answers. Silas is 23, average height, and working on his second undergrad degree. He has blue eyes, and bed thrown blonde hair that has made him quite popular with the ladies. His clothes are comfortable, casual, and questionably clean. Two guitars, both in cases, lean against the wall facing a full piano with its key cover pulled, smiley faces etched in the dust. The room is easily eighty degrees and Silas takes his seat across from an open laptop, turning the music down. The only light in the room comes from a small yellow lamp and the computer screen. Silas directs me to his bed as he explains that I have interrupted an important mission he had been conducting on WOW (World of Warcraft) and I would have to wait a few minutes for my interview to begin. I smiled. Despite his laid-back, cool guy, musically inclined, college attitude, Silas is a geek at heart. After a few minutes of Silas talking to the computer screen and my tinkering on the piano, Silas is ready for the interview. He starts by talking about the poem as a whole. As a biology major, Silas spends little time working with poetry. Reading poetry is little more then tedious and,in his opinion, most poetry is horrendously abstract. Thus, Silas had great respect for the poem’s general simplicity in word choice and delivery. He found the poem relatable, plain, and easy to understand, saying, “I remember a time when I felt like this,” he paused, picked the poem up, and traced his fingers over the works, “Oh God! can I not grasp / Them with a tighter clasp? / O God! can I not save / One from the pitiless wave?” He paused again. “Most people can probably remember a time when they’ve felt like that.” Knowing Silas to be a man of opinion, I asked him if there was anything in the poem he was not particularly fond of. He paused a moment, looked at the poem and pointed to a place on the page. “When I started the second part about the beach I thought, oh God, another love poem about the beach, but it’s really well done here.” He smiled and put the poem down. I asked him what he liked about the beach section. He picked the poem up again, but did not look at it. “Normally beaches are so cliché in poetry, it’s always sunset, two lovers walking hand in hand, and she’s always as beautiful as the ocean, but here,” he points to the paper without looking at it, “here, it’s not like that. It’s refreshing.” I was caught by something he had said, and asked him if the thought the poem was a love poem. He answered with a very confident “Yes.” I asked him what in the poem had lead him in that direction and he pointed to the paper again, this time at the beginning. “Take this kiss upon the brow!” He read. “He’s talking to a woman, I mean,” he smiled, “I don’t think he’d be kissing a man, and” he turned to the poem again, “in parting from you now,’ it seems like he’s sad about leaving her, so it would make sense that he’d be so emotional at the end.” I smiled and told Silas that I had not looked at the poem as a love poem, but I could most certainly see where his interpretation was coming from. “It reminded me of a love song.” He said, and from there we started discussing music. I thanked Silas for his time and left him to his computer games.