Gotta Get Me Some John Donne

Originally, I wasn't planning on blogging about Death, be not proud, but instead intended on covering the printed-off handout poem.  Then I realized, "Wow, the 'Don' has a poem in this week's selection.  Now I have to cover that!"  Also, I remembered enjoying this poem the first time I read it; so, here it goes.  Basically, the speaker is being his normal rugged, indomitable, fearless, machismo-filled self and telling death straight up that it is worthless.  He calls death a "slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men" [line 9] and after throwing more insults, asks death "Why swell'st thou then?"  He just wants to know why death is so arrogant when it is obviously so pathetic.  The final line boldly sums up the speaker's whole point for the poem, "And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die" [line 14].  So epic.

I just love everything about this guy.

Contentment with Chaos

(#17) The pattern/form of Robert Herrick's Delight in Disorder matches with its content to a tee.  The lines vary in length, and although there is clearly an 'aabbccddeeffgg' rhyme scheme in place, the rhymes are often broken or semi-perfect.  The poem in and of itself describes a man's heightened feelings for his woman when she looks unkempt, rather than movie star-esque.  Also, the extensive use of oxymorons ("sweet disorder", "fine distraction", "careless shoestring", "wild civility") further supports the disarray related to the poem.  Now, having established a well-paved and superbly academic approach to this poem, I will now interject my inclusive thought on the work.  The speaker, a man, is expressing how he finds his love more attractive after a sexual encounter than he did before said activities took place.  Based on descriptions within the poem ("disorder in the dress", "erring lace", "crimson stomacher", "cuff neglected", "ribbons to flow confusedly", "tempestuous petticoat", "careless shoestring"), the woman is, or once was, obviously dressed up formally for an occasion at one point.  However, these elegant articles are no longer perceived in so elegant a way.  They are destroyed, disheveled at best, and the speaker is attracted to her all the more for it, as spoken in the closing couplet, "Do more bewitch me than when art / Is too precise in every part."  He thinks his lover more beautiful 'after the fact' than he did at the start of the night's adventures when every detail of her appearance was untouched.  Specific textual evidences supporting an undertone of seduction are "crimson stomacher" and "tempestuous petticoat".  A stomacher is part of a corset, usually worn formally, and I find it intriguing the word choice of crimson, an intensified red and a color most would consider the epitome of lust or love.  The tempestuous petticoat behaves as it is described.  It instills conflicting emotions within our human speaker while also itself being conflicting; feelings of arousal are coupled with a messy exterior.  Our speaker loves this woman, and then loves her even more after loving her the first time.  Ah, poetry.

Extra long post here, my bad.  I got caught up in proving my obviously correct point.  I'll make up for it with this Calvin & Hobbes strip...

Norman Bates' Character was Based on a Serial Killer Named Edward Gein, Just Saying...

Alright.  Edward.  Creepy stuff here.  Along with Anna, all I could think of while reading this poem was Psycho, the 1960's classic thriller.  I did a little inch-deep skimming of some research, and I did in fact discover that Norman Bates (the serial killer from the movie) was inspired by a real madman named Edward Gein from 1957.  And because the poem was published anonymously (I have no idea when, either), it sounds to me like we're fittin' into some sort of cone of reason here (nevermind that both Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs were also created from his ego).  Anyways, the poem itself was just eerie in my opinion.  A son, Edward, after being questioned by his mother, confesses that he killed his father.  "Mother dear", however, shows little to no remorse over the murder, instead rather we get the feeling that she set the whole thing up in the first place.  This is proven, as well as Edward's feelings of guilt, in the second half of the final stanza, "The curse of hell from me shall ye bear, / Mother, Mother, / The curse of hell from me shall ye bear, / Such counsels you gave to me, O" [lines 53-56, emphasis added].  By not telling the whole story as to what happened, though, the author effectively keeps us bamboozled, left only with the assumption that the poem is indeed an homage to Hitchcock.

Classic. View at your own discretion...muahahaha :]

Hideous-looking, Obese, Smelly, Ill-tempered, Lazy, Cowardly, Chronic and Complete Liar Seeks Total Opposite

After reading this week's list of poems, I've realized that I enjoy villanelles most.  And seeing as Wendy Cope's Lonely Hearts is a villanelle, it wasn't too hard to swallow.  Basically, the poem seems to contain different "personals", from a newspaper for instance, in which singles search for a soulmate.  I found evidence of repetition having a function (#15) in the poem, mainly in the two key lines repeated throughout the poem.

"Can someone make my simple wish come true? / Male biker seeks female for touring fun. / Do you live in North London? Is it you?" [lines 1-3, emphasis added]

Because the bolded lines are brought back at the end of each stanza alternating, they must serve some function.  Although each stanza described a single searching for specific attributes (e.g. "gay vegetarian", "bisexual woman, arty", "slim non-smoker, under twenty-one", etc.), the first and last lines of the poem remained as the constant.  This conveyed the idea that, while their interests varied, all the ads commonly sought the same thing, love; literally, they wanted one to make their "wish come true...in North London".  I think Michael has something to say about this...