poetry #5

Poetry #5
Neal Chapman

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Title: the title of this poem"Two Kinds of Intelligence" is trying to spark conversation in the readers mind. the reader has to think what the two kinds of intelligence are, than which kind do they have.

paraphrase: the poet says that the first kind of intelligence is the one you get from being good at school, and reading books. the second kind of intelligence is basically creativity that you can't get more or less of. you are born with a certain amount of intelligence in the second sense of the word.

connotation: this poem tries to tell people that while learning from a book is good, and you can do good in life with it, you are born with  certain amount of "intelligence" and that there is not much you can do to change that.

Tone: the tone of this poem is upbeat. it says that even if you are not book smart, you still are intelligent.

shift: there is a big shift when it switches what type of intelligence it is talking about. it starts off kind of melancholy, then it switches to a more upbeat, happy tone for the second half.

title: the title of this poem really speaks to the individuality of people. no two people are the same, and that includes there not just being one way to measure intelligence.

theme: the theme of this poem is individuality in people.