Getting Out, Henry VIII Style

After reading Getting Out by Cleopatra Mathis, one emotion/tone/feeling I am sensing heavily in the work is remorse.  The poem highlights a couple who split, yet still potentially have feelings for each other.  The speaker (the woman, in this case) never gives a fully detailed reason as to why the two grew apart, leading one to believe even more so that this divorce is not the way it was meant to be.  However, she does acknowledge that "Days were different" [line 8], and maybe life just got in the way of love.  Towards the end of the relationship, both felt like a mental patient, "like inmates/ who beat the walls" [lines 1-2].  Obviously the two strived to make the marriage work, but to no avail; "I think of the lawyer's bewilderment/ when we cried, the last day" [lines 20-21].  I can see where girls would totally get into the poem because it's sappy and sad and stuff, but I don't know.  I'm just not buying it, I suppose.

"Taking hands/ we walked apart, until our arms stretched/ between us.  We held on tight, and let go." [lines 21-23]

I'm with Calvin on this one.

Patrick Swayze (Too Soon?)

Of this week's poetry collection, I'm pretty sure that the Don's poem The Apparition wins out as my favorite.  So, ironically, we find out fairly early on that the speaker is not actually dead (yet) and is not an apparition per se.  However, apparently he can't wait until he is one.  In my humble interpretation of the poem, I saw a woman who cheated on her man (the speaker) who now seeks vengeance.  However, he does so in a very sophomoric way.  First, there's the threats: "Then shall my ghost come to thy bed" [line 4].  Then, there's the insults targeted at the new man: "in worse arms shall see" [line 5].  After that, the classic 'you're gonna miss me cause he ain't love you': "in false sleep will [he] from thee shrink" [line 10].  Finally, he spits pure hate: "What I will say, I will not tell thee now,/ Lest that preserve thee;" [lines 14-15].  I can't say I don't back the guy on some of these things, but boy does he sure know how to cut to the bone.  More power to him.

Boo!

Julius Caesar

#7...
The central theme of Lord Tennyson's Crossing the Bar is the speaker's wish for a peaceful death and his acceptance of said death.  He compares his passing to a ship leaving the harbor and embarking on a journey out towards sea.  He wants "no sadness of farewell" because he has accepted the inevitability of death.  The title itself refers to a sandbar, and he uses this literal crossing of ships in contrast with a figurative crossing of the soul into heaven.  Heaven is evident as the destination because of his "hope to see [his] Pilot face to face", face being capitalized because of its reference to God.

This poem wasn't so bad, and it was nice to finally read a poem that portrayed death as not such a bad thing.  It was also mildly soothing, in a weird sort of way.

Ugo

Please keep the following image of beauty fresh in your mind before reading any further:

Now read William Shakespeare's My mistress' eyes, a poem about beauty.  I'm guessing you're now thinking more along the lines of this...

Ah, poetry.

While reading the poem (and trying to remove the above mental image from my brain), I picked up on a satirical tone (#8) given by Bill.  He is satirizing the poets and writers who compare women to unreasonable beauties.  The opening line, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", serves to set the tone for the entire work.  Bill goes on to list all of the things that his mistress is not, making her sound quite unattractive and subpar as a romantic interest.  A major shift takes place in lines 11-12 where Bill states that, although his woman is not as great as all of nature's treasures, he still loves her just as much as one who showers a love with false compliments.  These final lines most clearly show Bill's jab taken at others who describe beauty unreasonably.  I guess this poem was alright, but I don't know if I agree with Bill's approach to seducing the ladies...

APO 96225 -- Sweetest Title of a Poem. Ever.

Ok, so, it may be offensive to admit it, but this one was a sort of guilty pleasure for me.  I really liked it; 'twas my definite favorite of the last set.  The reason I believe I connected so well with APO 96225 by Larry Rottmann (and yet also the reason I feel bad about liking it at the same time) is because of the summer reading we did over The Things They Carried.  Even if this war poem weren't based around the Vietnam Era, O'Brien's novel still would've pertained.  The author perfectly depicts America's fake, two-faced approach towards war through the use of a mother and her fighting son's exchanging of letters.  Even when the son tries to protect his mother by holding out on the truth, she continually presses him for information as to what the war is really like and implores him to go past "'Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here.'"  The irony appears when the son truly reveals what the life of an American soldier stationed in Vietnam is like, "'Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm on women and children'", and the father rights back saying, "'Please don't write such depressing letters. You're upsetting your mother.'"  This whole situation fit so well with what O'Brien's character repeatedly tried to prove about America showing empathy, but only to the extent of where it's not an inconvenience.  I don't blame her.

 

Doing a Job I See Myself Doing Only in the College Years

Sorting Laundry, by Elisavietta "Weird Name" Ritchie explores the ever-exciting world known as the Laundry Room.  The speaker talks to herself for a good while about clothes and such, reflecting on the memories held within each article and its significance to her.  The woman starts off strong in the first stanza with "Folding clothes,/ I think of folding you/ into my life."  This nice little snippet of foreshadowing returns to us later in the poem, as the speaker goes back to directly thinking of her man and not just his clothes she sorts.  The irony involved in this poem stems from the fact that, although the speaker talks the majority of the poem about how much the clothes' connotations mean to her, they are simply not the same as her man in the flesh.  This is evidenced in the last stanza when she states that "a mountain of unsorted wash/ could not fill/ the empty side of the bed."  I almost found myself feeling sorry for this dutiful assumed housewife, because she does her chores at home alone and they just simply don't do it for her.  Oh, and I think he's cheating...

Barbara Millicent Roberts

I think a good indicator of my future grade on this test is that I enjoyed these poems much more than last weeks, which isn't saying a whole lot, but still I'm at least getting a kick out of them.  Like the next one Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy.  Some people would like to believe Piercy is attempting some sort of social statement with this work about how our culture views an attractive woman, but I believe it goes deeper than that.  But before one is able to examine that, one must realize the allusion (#14) made in the title of the poem to understand where Piercy is coming from.  Nowhere in the poem does the speaker mention a Barbie Doll nor what one is, yet an educated reader will immediately acknowledge the famous perfection of the doll and the controversies that have long come with one, expanding and amplifying Piercy's point.  The verbal irony used in the poem is where the main focus is at, with the final stanza ironically reflecting on a woman who killed herself for failing to fit society's standard of said woman, while looking uncannily beautiful in the casket.  She cut off her nose and legs, the parts of her body she was so often told were ugly before doing so.  The eerie cool part for me was how the funeral-goers commented on how great she looked because she had a fake (putty) nose and the legs are never shown at a showing.

Yet Another Jewel from Dickinson

So, I open my lit book to the first page on our list, and what do I see?
Emily Dickinson's poem Much Madness is divinest Sense staring back at me.
It -- had -- lots -- of -- dashes, and things -- of -- that -- sort.
Burning this book?  No longer a last resort.

Alrighty.  Dickinson in the house.  It wasn't my favorite poem, but it was fairly easy to analyze.  In examining the poem we realize that its premise is paradoxical (#13), because she states that madness (as in crazy) is "divinest Sense", and yet having "Much Sense" is "the starkest Madness."  Throughout the poem, Dickinson refers more positively to the first rather than the latter, indicating that she believes the book smart of the world are simply conforming and that if one is not referred to as insane, they are not truly sensible.  This all seemed really pointless to me, because we all know Dickinson was a crazy shut-in no life in the first place.

Pink Dogish

I wasn't sure, but I think this poem might possibly have been a social commentary or something.  Elizabeth Bishop's Pink Dog was kind of funny, I suppose.  I enjoyed "all the beggars who can afford them now wear life preservers." [lines 23-24].  I saw the where the speaker was poking fun at the poor and lower class, even in a mean-spirited way.  The use of Carnival and Ash Wednesday towards the last three stanzas no doubt has significance, and Costello says the location (Rio de Janeiro) also means something, thought I'm not sure what it all means.  I really want to talk about this one in class tomorrow hopefully because I don't think I got the whole picture, especially the significance of the pink dog itself.  I haven't really grasped that concept just as of yet.  Also, I noticed that two words, fantasía and máscara, were italicized -- o, mystery!  I can't wait until we get to write our own poems...

Oh, Please, Help Us All.

Scary?  Yeah, I thought so.  This is the face of Margaret Atwood, crazy, scary, fat, feminist, cat lady.  I am shocked that she has no one to spend Valentine's Day with.  To answer #7, I guess I would say, "February is a time to shift from dread and despair in winter to life and happiness in the spring."  But somehow I just feel like that doesn't encompass it all.  In the poem, Atwood recommends we "snip a few testicles" [line 16] or "eat our young, like sharks." [line 18]  Margaret is a bitter, loveless woman who manifests her lack of relationship skills as hatred for everyone and everything good in the world.  She's Canadian, so naturally this only confirms my thesis and supports the random use of hockey.  Atwood has an unhealthy need to discuss her cat's hygiene and body parts ("enough of your greedy whining and your small pink bumhole" [lines 29-30]) with the speaker, a need I do not appreciate in even the slightest.  All in all, I wasn't a huge fan of the poem, and I most definitely did not connect to it.  I must be missing something big here.

I Could Go For Some Sleep Right About Now...

So, this next poem, Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes, was probably my favorite one of the bunch.  This worked out pretty niftily seeing as we've spent the most class time up until this point discussing it.  The contextual history of the poem is very important; we know Langston was a black poet of the Harlem Renaissance and strong supporter of equal civil rights.  In the poem, Hughes uses several instances of figurative language; answering #11 is easy.  Each line in the poem is a simile or metaphor (except for the first, which is simply a rhetorical question).  Hughes writes this poem as food for thought for fellow civil rights supporters who may grow weary of the fight or slack on activism.  Each description of what happens to a dream deferred fits an equal demise to the fight for racial equality.  The best aspect of the poem in my humble opinion is the final line "Or does it explode?" [line 11]  I believe Hughes uses this as a worst-case scenario to show what may happen if whites backlash against the rising surge in black independence.  All very interesting thoughts to think about, knowing the outcome.

Darwin Award

In Emily Dickinson's I taste a liquor never brewed, Dickinson fails to capitalize the title of her poem but instead capitalizes everything else.  This upsets me.  Anyways, it seems to me in this poem that the speaker is getting high on life.  Self-described in the passage as an "Inebriate of Air" [line 5] and stating that "Not all the Vats upon the Rhine/ Yield such an Alcohol!" [lines 3-4], the speaker "shall but drink the more!" [line 12]  There is an extended metaphor in this poem, though I'm not sure what it is.  To be honest I just really want to talk about this one in class (and we probably will tomorrow).  I'm not afraid to admit that I'm finding this week's poems much harder to analyze than the previous chapter's.  And after this last poem, I can't say I like Emily Dickinson anymore than before.

Supernova

After studying the first poem I'd like to discuss in this week's batch of literary genius, John Keats' Bright Star, I've decided to answer question #6.  In the poem, the speaker directly addresses a 'bright star' through apostrophe, pondering how grand (or not so grand) it would be to hang in the night sky.  At the beginning of the 9th line, however, the speaker contrasts this with his current state by starting with "No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable" as describing his desire to instead continue his life as it is.  He goes on to detail his pleasant life with his lover.  Through these descriptions, the purpose of the poem seems to form; the speaker would give up all the great things stars have to be with his lover eternally.  Now, you may be thinking, "Aw, that's cute."  And I suppose I would agree with you.  I guess that's really all there is to say about this one.

Next, I'm Going for London, England. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I'm interested to see what my classmates will say on William Blake's London, because we didn't get a chance to talk about it today in class.  In our small group discussion of the poem yesterday, we all sort of had this consensus of a dark, unhappy, immoral, provacative, macabre city where there is some serious conflict going on.  The repetitive description of a cry in stanza two and words like 'blood', 'blight', 'plagues', and 'hearse' just give this impending sense of death and disease.  One person in our group (Kati, I believe) said that they saw this undertone of London being like a metaphorical prison one can't escape, with "mind-forged manacles" [line 8] and the "hapless Soldier's sigh" [line 11].  I agree with this interpretation, and building on present the concept that this metaphorical prison is imposed on the lower class by the aristocrats, who look down on a degenerative society where, in stanza four, "the youthful Harlot's curse" can destroy a marriage ("plagues the Marriage hearse") [lines 14, 16].  I look forward to hearing the large group's opinions on the poem; one which I believe accurately conveys an image of London so common in literature of that time.

Sweeney Todd came to mind upon reading this last one.

These Summer Thursdays Where I am Really Busy and End up Doing Copious Amounts of Homework Without Regard for Nourishment of the Mind or Body

Once again, I find myself not entirely hating the poem I read, this time it being Those Winter Sundays by  Robert Hayden.  However, I was slightly troubled in class today when everyone (besides Jodi, towards the end) was taking the poem literally, even going as far as to suggest that the father was abusive!  This bothered me because I saw the main figure in the poem, the father, as a #12 perfect-fit symbol for God.  The first stanza depicts a hard-working and providing man who no one ever thanks; additionally, I took this last line ("No one ever thanked him." [line 5]) to be remorseful, a common lament over one's relationship with God, the Almighty Father.  In the second stanza, the speaker "would slowly rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of that house," [lines 8-9].  The word choice of 'slowly' here leads me to believe the speaker is simply going through the motions of praising God without truly believing, motivated by the 'fear' of hell and retribution.  This theory is further supported in the final stanza when the speaker "[speaks] indifferently to him,/ who had driven out the cold/ and polished my good shoes as well" [lines 10-12].  These are the thoughts of a man who was indifferent to a God who had removed the bad in life and nurtured only the good.  The poem is closed with a repeated rhetorical question to himself of "What did I know, what did I know" [line 13].  Obviously, the father is symbolic of God, and the speaker is thinking back with regret on how he treated his Father.

The Concurrence of 'Samuel Langhorne Clemens'

vaingloriousness (n.) -- excessive elation or pride over one's own achievements, abilities, etc.

So I'd say I enjoyed Thomas Hardy's The Convergence of the Twain fairly thoroughly.  It answers #14 with a great jump-off point by alluding to the massive cruise liner Titanic and its largely public and fatal demise.  For the first half or so of the stanzas, Hardy describes the opulence and luxuriousness of the ship as it was, and as it presumably is now on the ocean floor.  The most striking of these lines is in the fifth stanza, "Dim moon-eyed fishes near/ Gaze at the gilded gear/ And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down here?'..." [lines 13-15].  The speaker here seems to me to mock the wastefulness and the use of over-excess that those who created the Titanic were so fond of, showing instead fish pondering what its purpose serves on the bottom of the sea.  Later in the poem the author appears to recount the actual event of the crash, supplying the reason behind it as fate and coincidence.  The final stanza refers to God as the 'Spinner of the Years' and details his role in the great catastrophe as well.  Very good stuff, I say.

I felt Conceitedness, and other Stuff

The audacity of Emily Dickinson has no bounds.  If her poem I felt a Funeral, in my Brain is any indication of the rest of her poems, then I just don't think I'll get along with Ms. Dickinson one bit.  I hate the unnecessary capitalization, other than that it's alright.  We talked about this poem quite a bit in class today, and several ideas and theories as to the theme or purpose were thrown around.  Personally when I read it I took it rather (but not too) literally, where the speaker was some mess of dead but still sharp in the senses in the casket.  A popular opinion during discussion was that the funeral was taking place in the mind, akin to the speaker going insane.  This theory certainly deserves merit and Perrine would be pleased; one could definitely make the supportive case based on diction used in the story (Taylor pointed out the use of the mental "Brain" instead of the physical "Head" in the first line).  Overall, I enjoyed the depiction of the senses and the vivid imagery of the funeral's symbolic meaning, not so much a fan of the syntax and punctuation.  I heard Emily Dickinson was a shut in.  Weird.

Keaton's Lament of Poetry in Falltime

The title of this blog may be a misnomer.  As much as it kills me to say this, I didn't entirely hate William Williams (yes, that's his name) poem The Widow's Lament in Springtime, though probably not for academic reasons.  First, the sentences were split up into friendly little lines of five or so words, making the poem easy to read and pleasant looking.  Second, the ending was really creepy ("I feel that I would like/ to go there/ and fall into those flowers/ and sink into the marsh near them." lines 25-29) and conjured up for me images of The Ring and other charmingly disturbing visuals.  On a more scholarly note, I saw this as the opportune time to answer #11!  You see, this poem is filled with literary contradictions like paradoxes, oxymorons, and juxtaposition usage.  How exciting!  Some prime examples are a reference to "cold fire" [line 5] or the placement of the words "grief" and "joy" only two lines apart [line 15, 17].  It is my belief that these conflictions were used to show the internal struggle waging war on our widow, who both recognizes the beauty of spring and fails to fully appreciate it due to the loss of her husband.

Isn't spring beautiful?

The Art of Interpreting the Interpretation of an Art

Hmmm...where to begin?

For starters, I hope it's not too erudite of me to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading Perrine's "The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry", because *gosh* I just hate being scholarly.  Alas, I found aspects I disagreed with, but these were miniscule in the grand scheme of the, eh...lecture, essay, paper?  I must admit it was shocking to hear someone take such a stance on one's ability to judge the correctness of poetic interpretation, but I suppose education made me biased.  All my academic life I've been told how awesome I am for pointing out the sailor could stand for a bee or intertwining colors of the sunset or some other outlandish answer that the author most definitely had no intention of conveying to the reader.  But that was what I liked about poetry; it made it simple.  You knew you were never wrong because there were no wrong answers.  I like Perrine because he understands this and doesn't fight it.  He says, "My belief is that a case can be made for all of [the interpretations]; that the symbols allow them all; that we are not forced to choose between the two interpretations of the Dickinson poem or the one by Melville."  I thought his analogy of a field of acceptable interpretations being like a searchlight shining into a night sky hit the nail pretty hard on the head.

Perrine's take on interpreting poetry is something I think I can dig.  Multiple answers are correct, some more correct than others, and there is a definite line to cross into the incorrect region.  The one aspect of this article I had beef with though was Perrine's idea that one can find a be-all and end-all best interpretation of a specific poem or work.  Personally, I saw the section where he proved that Dickinson's poem pertained to the sunset and not a meadow as a highbrow, obnoxious attempt to validate his own self-worth by bashing college freshman.  Maybe that's just because I saw it as a meadow; I don't know.  All of Perrine's arguments were sound and his two criteria for judging the correctness of an interpretation were especially logical, stolen from science no doubt; however, something about his presentation just didn't sit well with me.  I suppose you could say I would make a business deal with the man but I just couldn't see myself being friends with him.  But I digress.  Essentially what I can take from this reading and apply to my individual study of poetry is that I shouldn't just bovine stool my answers when I'm assigned a poetry interpretation assignment, because I won't always be right.