Dan - Week 3 PAP 2 - "Dangerous Astronomy" by Sherman Alexie

    In his poem “Dangerous Astronomy”, Sherman Alexie describes his new life with a baby son and the magnitude of his importance in his wife and son’s life and uses the stars in the sky to symbolize his feelings. As the poem progresses, Alexie begins to have a sort of epiphany that he is not as important in his son’s life as his wife is, and that makes him extremely anguished. He also begins to believe that he may not even be as important anymore in his wife’s life either.

    The title of this poem is extremely meaningful, as stars play a vital role in this poem. For one, Alexie uses repetition with the word “stars”, as it is said seven times in the poem’s six stanzas. Stars are very important in this poem, as Alexie begins by describing his desire to “walk outside and praise the stars,” but his baby son David’s health is more important, as he has been coughing. Even after “comforting and kissing” David, the narrator cannot get him to calm down or feel better. Ultimately, the narrator’s wife is able to feed and comfort David, making Sherman feel useless and almost nihilist. He ties it back to the stars by describing how he “feels less important than the farthest star”, and asking if his “comfort is more important than the stars?”

    Alexie finishes the poem by showing the reader that the narrator has matured and fixed his ego problems, and he has also become more humble and empathetic. “Forgive me, rough God,” begs the narrator, “because… I thought I was more important than the stars.” Compared to the beginning of the poem, the narrator is a completely different person and has undergone an epiphany of his role within the world as well as within the life of his newborn son and his wife.

https://poets.org/poem/dangerous-astronomy