The Many Emotions Involved in "Getting Out"

The poem "Getting Out"speaks of the trials and tribulations of a failed marriage. A constantly quarreling and physically fighting couple is depicted throughout the use of many language devices. The poem inspires a feeling of sadness in its audience. The animosity I could feel in the first two paragraphs made me feel for this couple who had had such an awful time. The sadness in the last paragraph made me feel horrible for this couple that is still so clearly in love. The line about the "lawye'r's bewilderment" really stood out to me; divorce lawyers aren't used to seeing couples still care about each other once divorced. It was lines such as these that allowed me to imagine so clearly the poem's happenings. The poem actually reminded me of the song "Pieces." In the song, there is a line that states "it's good when you're here, but it's better when you're gone." I think that this line perfectly sums the poem up; the couple has matured into realzing it's best that they don't stay together.

"Crossing the Bar"

I found the poem "Crossing the Bar" to be kind of dull and boring. I understand the poem's attitude of acceptance toward death. I think the point is a very good one; eventually, we must all accept our inevitable death. I can see the extended metaphor, as well as the different metaphors throughout the poem. I know that the poet is hopeful toward his fate of death. But I cannot understand why I found this poem to be so dry! I don't think that it's because of the language or even the time period; I like other poet's work from this time period. There is beautiful imagery I will admit"; "the Twilight and evening bell," the Sunset and evening star," and the "when that which drew from out the boundless deep"are lines that I can easily picture in my mind. Since these are not the things that bother me about the poem, I am at a loss for what else it could be. I suppose it might be something I need to consider more thoughtfully. 

Central Theme of "My Mistress' Eyes"

In " My Mistress' Eyes," the poet's central theme is satirizing poets who use untrue and exaggerated metaphors. Specifically, he is mocking the poets who do this to compare nature women.The poem could actually be seen at first glance as a man being negative about his girlfriend's appearance. However, the last two lines prove that he doesn't want to give her false compliements. He spends the first twelve lines satirizing poets who do make false comparisions. He wants to make a clear point in the poem that doing this is actually a disappointment to one's lover. It is clear that he loves this woman very much. He believes that one's love deserves the honet truth: she "is as rare as any of those women who have been compared falsely."

Tone of "The Apparition"

"The Apparition" is an intensely vengeful poem. The tone throughout the poem is most definitely full of bitter revenge. The speaker's words and language easily prove this to be the case. The speaker wants this woman who betrayed him to feel his horrendous pain. He wants this woman to think of him when she's with her new love. He even takes it so far as to say that he will come back as a ghost to haunt her. He blames his unhappiness and her rejection on the current situation of his life. He plays the part of a jilted lover incredibly well; it is with his clear tone that the audience understands his feelings. The audience easily identifies and sympathizes with the speaker in his pain.

Amuricans

I remember the first time I ever saw an e.e. cummings poem I was very confused; I didn't understand why a person wouldn't capitalize their own name. I honestly still don't understand, but I do know that I like his poems. "next of course to god america i" was a poem that took me several readings to begin to comprehend. There was SO much information in the first few lines that it was difficult for me to process them; however, once I began to break it up into the quotes, songs, cliches, and colloquialisms, I understood it much better. Once I understood it, I decided I liked how it was satirical; I liked how it was calling politicians out. I am a pretty opinionated person, so this poem was something I could definitely appreciate. e.e. cummings manages to somehow make a very good point/argument in a 14 line poem, which is something to be admired for, especially since he doesn't really make the point until about the last half. I think this is a perfect example of a quietly intense argument. 

Whites, Darks, Reds, and Colors

I really enjoyed the poem "Sorting Laundry." I think this is because I'm a sentimental person; I love memories, especially remembering moments based on a photo or a trinket or a postcard. I loved this poem because I found the metaphors for life and laundry to be relatable and easy to understand. I was intrigued by how seamlessly the author seemed to transition between actual acts of sorting laundry and how they related to real life events. Certain stanzas really stood out to me. For instance, "And what's shrunk is tough to discard even for Goodwill" reminded me a lot of my mom. She has a really difficult time getting rid of our old clothes. She says it's because we never know who might need them, but I know it's because she hates that my sisters and I are growing up. Of course, there were emotionally touching lines such as "pillowcases, despite so many washings, seams still holding our dreams" or "I  think of folding you into my life." It was the great many lines like these that allowed me to really appreciate this poem; it is a very accurate metaphor for two people's futures becoming one in my personal opinion.

"Life in Plastic, It's Fantastic"

Allusions are contained throughout the entire poem "Barbie Doll," starting with the title itself. The title sets the tone for the poem-the idea that little girls (or women) are supposed to conform to society and the expectations it places on individuals. One of the best examples of this is in fact a barbie dolls. Little girls see these dolls as what they are supposed to look like & dress like. As they mature, this idea is stressed even more. Girls are supposed to look a certain type of pretty, act a certain type of pretty, and well, just be pretty. The speaker is clearly stating that society can ruin a child's (or an adult's) self-confidence, self-satisfaction, and self-esteem by "wear[ing] [their] good nature out." Giving us the image of a well-known, famous toy before the poem even begins allows us the mindset of such a society. Immediately, we have an image of what society believes women should turn into, and this image sticks with us throughout the entire poem.

Figurative Language in Letters

The poem "APO 96225" was one that I found pretty easy to read and understand. I feel like I also picked up on the understatements and situational irony of the poem rather quickly too. Clearly, the soldier makes understatement's when he writes his mother saying, "Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here," and "Wow! You ought to see the funny monkeys," and finally, "The sunsets here are spectacular!" The audience knows these are understatements because this man is fighting in a war; our thoughts are confirmed when the soldier gives into his mother writing, "Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm on women and children." It is in this sentence that we can be certain that the soldier is not experiencing wonderful things like as butterflies and sunsets, but terrible things like bombing.
We see situational irony in the writing between the soldier and his mother. The mother nags her son to tell her what he is truly going through in the war. However, when she receives the truth, the soldier's father tells him that he (soldier) cannot say these things; he must hold back. The effect is a clear example of situational irony, intending to show to the audience that we cannot handle what soldiers do, even though we act as if we wish to know.

Whimsical Intoxication

I'm beginning to actually enjoy Emily Dickinson's writing style and poems. The last poem we read in class was dark, but the imagery and meaning were intense. When I went on a college visit to Vanderbilt, one of the buildings had a line from another one of her poems written above the door, and the entire poem carved into the wall right inside the foyer. I thought it was really cool of a college to do something like that to remind its students that "The Brain- is wider than the Sky-" (that's the line, which is also the poem's title, inscribed into the building). Honestly, at first, I thought Dickinson was just a sad, dark, gloomy woman who lived alone. Now, I'm beginning to realize that she was lighthearted too, as "I taste a liquor never brewed" exemplifies. I believe that this poem is about nature and its liveliness. She uses the liquor/drinking metaphor to give the idea of intoxication; the rest of the poem is about nature intoxicating her. Her joyful phrases such as "endless summer days," "butterflies renounce their dreams," and "leaning against the sun" all are references to different parts of nature. Lines such as these made me smile as I read the poem and considerably less stressed about life. I hope that if we read more of Dickinson's poems, they will continue to be powerful poems.

Pink Dogs?

The poem "Pink Dog" was confusing to me the first time I read it. After I read it again and we discussed it in our small group, I grasped it somewhat better, but not to its entirety. The main thing I understood about the poem is that Bishop speaks of Carnival, the Brazilian celebration much like Mardi Gras. I caught onto this because of 1)the mention of Rio de Janeiro and 2) the mentions of "Ash Wednesday will come" as well as "dress up! dress up and dance at Carnival!" When my group established this, we dug a little further and figured that the poem is criticizing society. We believed it was speaking of the different aspects within a society (changing appearances, staying true to oneself, etc.) that Bishop saw. I thought too, that she was chastising society's need to have beautiful appearances. Hopefully, I come to have a better understanding of this poem. Right now, I think there it is too busy for me to truly comprehend.

Wistful Wonderings

The poem "Bright Star" by John Keats has a decidedly wistful tone to it. The speaker is wistful because he yearns to be like the star: see everything, be "steadfast," and be "unchanging." Most of all, though, he wishes to be able to watch/be with his love for all time.  The speaker is longing to be like the star, which we see in the first line when he uses an apostrophe. He speaks of each wonderful thing that the star has and how jealous he is of it; he then informs us he would give up all of these to be with his lover. He does mention briefly how he would not like to feel alone like a star. But, this too proves wistfulness because he would not be able to handle life without his love. The entire poem is written in pensively, using words such "gazing" and "unchangeable." The term wistful clicked with me because the poem focuses on one-sided love, which is full of yearning when expressed.  It also helped that the title of my blog came from a song ("Seeing Stars" by Jack Ingram) that was written in the same deep, yearning thought process. It allowed me to better identify the tone.

Analysis of a Revoltingly Descriptive Cat Poem

"February" by Margaret Atwood is supposedly a poem that we (as teenagers...) are supposed to identify with. I personally do not connect with it much; however, I was able to realize the central purpose of the poem more fully once we talked it over in class. Atwood is telling her readers (and/or herself) to stop whining and move on with life. At the poem's start, Atwood wants to simply be lazy: "eat fat" and "watch hockey." As the audience reads on, we find that Atwood believes February to be "the month of despair." Yet, Atwood does a quick 180 degrees a few lines later when she writes "so get going on a little optimism around here." It is clear she has had a moment of recognition-probably an epiphany for some reason- and now has changed her mind. I think the purpose of beginning in such a negative tone was to connect with her readers who are feeling slothlike because of the winter. She wants to show to them all the negativities in order to encourage us to combat those feelings and celebrate life.

"Keep your dreams alive..."

In Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Deferred," the speaker uses one main figurative language type. Lines two through nine are written as five different similes. He compares "a dream deferred" to a raisin, a sore, meat, a sweet, and a load. Each of these provide a clear visual to the reader, allowing them to imagine an unreached dream being equal to these five things. Hughes furthers this visualization when he adds unfavorable words like "dry," "fester," "stink," "rotten," "crust," "sags," and "heavy." Each simile is therefore a negative one; this verifies in the reader's mind that a dream pushed aside can only cause horrible things. After using similes for the entire poem, Hughes sets aside the very last line and applies a metaphor. He asks, "or does it explode?" He draws special attention to this point by using these two techniques. It is with this metaphor that the most important comparison (in Hughes mind) is made. By using similes all the way up to the metaphor, Hughes allows the reader to become comfortable in their comparison and visualization abilities that are vital for this last line.

Spring is to Bliss as God is to Heaven

I am really glad we are allowed to write two opinionated blogs over the eight poems because I don't think my reaction to just one poem is enough. The final poem of this set that I am going to blog about is "Spring" by Hopkins. As the first poem we read, I had high expectations for it, and I am happy to say I liked this poem. I really enjoyed a light, airy poem contrasted with the many poems we read after this one on depressing subject matters. The first line "nothing is so beautiful as spring" sets the tone for the rest of the work. Reading this poem made me feel better; it also caused me to focus on God. Almost immediately I realized that the poem was praising God for all his wondrous works and asking him to return to the innocence of the Garden of Eden. I would say I am an upbeat, outgoing individual; the poem reflects the tone of such a personality too. On a smaller scale, I also enjoyed reading this poem because it rhymes. Personally, I enjoy poetry more when it rhymes because it seems more poem-ish to me.

Imagine, Visualize, See

One of the poems I found really interesting was "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. I became intrigued by the poet's poignancy over his childhood, specifically his relationship with his father. I was enchanted by this novel because of the powerful imagery Hayden creates in each line of his entire poem. At first, the harsh lines lead me to assume Hayden was writing his experiences of abuse using metaphors. Phrases such as "chronic angers" definitely grayed the subject matter for me. Yet, as we talked it over in class and attempted to clear everything up, I decided that the poem was one of a regretful son. Hayden allows his audience to SEE everything his father did by using great control of language. For instance, "blueblack cold" allowed me to imagine a color associated with the extreme cold; "cracked hands that ached" granted me the ability to visualize hands that were chapped and ruined; "banked fires blaze" made me think of fires warming every inch of an individual.  This entire poem actually reminded me of The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In one of her novel titled The Long Winter, there is a scene depicted much as this one was by Hayden, where Wilder describes the extreme chill of her home on winter mornings. Remembering the book's scene definitely lent to my visualization of the poem's scene too. Because of the great attention to detail Hayden uses in lines, I was able to put myself into this scene, just as I had in Wilder's book. I could easily imagine and identify the senses Hayden went through as a boy.

Trust Me, I'm Feeling a Funeral in MY Brain Too!

Time for a blog on my personal opinions! Okay, so a poem I really, really did not enjoy in the slightest was the poem "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" by Emily Dickinson. There are a myriad of reasons why I do not enjoy this poem, but unfortunately, I don't have the space or patience to list and describe them all. The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that the poem was written in a childlike manner; for some reason, I cannot get past this. Dickinson may be a respected writer, but I just cannot understand why she writes as if she were eight. I counted; she uses the word "and" to start TEN lines. In addition to her childish writing technique, it bothered me how she ended the poem...but stuck the word "-then-" on after. Another annoyance was her clipped phrasing. She used hardly any description, but an incredibly intense extended metaphor of the body throughout the poem.  Honestly, I think this poem just did not click with me. It bothered me that it took me a way too many tries to get the gist of the poem because it was well, too simple. 

The 'Ship of Dreams'

In the poem "Convergence of the Twain" by Thomas Hardy, the entire poem is clearly an allusion to the Titanic and its horrible fate. Even without the phrase in parentheses stating "lines on the loss' of the Titanic," the poem is obviously about a shipwreck. The supporting details that perfectly line up with the facts of the Titanic wreck only aid in clearing up the little confusion the reader may have.  The reader's first thought in reading this poem is the disaster that was the Titanic, for it is undoubtedly the most famous ship to hit an iceberg. Each stanza is a clear allusion to a certain aspect of the actual ship or the iceberg. For instance, stanza nine combines both the Titanic and the iceberg. By this point of the poem, the reader is positive that the author is alluding to the Titanic, and by the last line of the poem, he or she can no longer have any doubt. The details and imagery that Hardy lends to his work only add to the fact that this poem is a well-developed allusion.

London's Misery & Despair

In the poem "London" by William Blake, the tone can be described as bleak, dismal, gloomy, and sinister. He achieves a ominous ambiance with the usage of words and phrases that exemplify this adjective. He uses words such as "cry of fear," "hapless," "appalls," "blood down Palace walls," "plagues," "Hearse," "curse," and "tear." Each word or phrase that is mentioned has a negative definition or connotation to go with it. Furthering this negativity throughout the poem, Blake intensifies the despair felt by Londoners. For example, in line four, Blake writes, "marks of weakness, marks of woe." In lines such as this throughout the poem, Blake makes clear to the reader the horrors of the political unrest currently occurring in London. An additional detail that adds to the tone is the mention of the time. The line "but most through the midnight streets I hear" allows him to accentuate the darkness of the poem. The tone of "London" is made crystal clear by Blake in a variety of ways.

Time for Ryhme Comprehension

Making sense of poetry has forever been difficult for me; I have always found it easier to be on the other side of poetry, penning my thoughts onto paper. It was tough for me to decipher what the poems meant when we were handed them in class. And then, when I read Perrine's musings on the matter, it did not add to my confidence in interpreting poetry. I was totally wrong on several lines, not to mention entire poems! But then I began to think about Perrine's essay. In the first few reads, I found that he seemed to be quite contradictory, almost as if he can't make up his mind. He says, "there are no correct or incorrect meanings; there are only readings which differ more or less widely from a statistical norm." It took me until my third reading of the essay to understand this line, but I still think it to be a bit hypocritical in my mind. There are a variety of spots in the article in which I believe Perrine to not be able to decide for himself what the rules are in regards to interpreting poetry.
In addition to Perrine's varied statements, I did learn a few things about interpreting poetry. In his second paragraph, I was forced to consider that a poet might believe "'the meaning may be different for everyone.'" I found this concept to be rather intriguing; I like that poets want their work to be versatile. Also, before reading this article, I had not ever thought about the fact that the entire poem (as in every word) must stand for something. I had always believed that poems were symbolizing the gist of an idea. I now feel pretty unintelligent to not have recognized this at a previous time in my life, but I suppose 'you learn something new every day.' A final thought about Perrine's essay is that I did like reading the universal accepted interpretations of each poem we read in class. I found it to be interesting to see what I had and had not understood. I am hoping that I will improve my skills of interpreting poetry by using techniques from this paper as this year continues.