"I Thank You God" Poetry Blog.

I thank you god
i thank YOU God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-- lifted from the no
of all nothing-- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
-E.E. Cummings

     Like all of E.E. Cummings' poems, this one has a very unusual style and many grammatical errors like Cormac McCarthy uses in "The Road." This poem thanks God for everything natural and infinite and positive- or, as he says it, "yes." He asks how humans who interact with everything that is "no" can doubt the existence of God. He is thankful for believing and having his ears and eyes awake and open.
     The antecedant scenario may have been a renewal of his faith in his god.
     Using parenthesis, colons, semi-colons, and commas (or lack thereof) gives accentuation to certain words and phrases. He brings attention to "YOU" by putting it in all capital letters to show that his thankfulness is large and directed at his god. He does not not capitalize "i" or any other letters except for "God" and "You." This makes God seem to be more significant than the narrator or E.E. Cummings himself.
     This poem is pretty easy to understand, but I'm not exactly sure that I understand the second stanza completely.

"The Snow Man" Poetry Blog.

The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold along time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-Wallace Stevens

     "The Snow Man" is a poem that describes winter. It tells us that only people who have truly experienced winter and "had a mind of winter" can see the beauty of it. Many people see the snow and cold and wind and see it as an ugly day. Only people that know can see the beauty of these things. The "snow man" is a part of winter, yet he isn't really anything; because of this, he beholds everything that exists before him and at the same time doesn't because he isn't really alive. To understand winter, we have to be like the snow man, or, at least, this is how I interpreted the poem. I found it a little confusing.
     For the antecedant scenario, Wallace Stevens may have been thinking about winter, or perhaps looking outside and taking into mind the different perceptions of winter: a beautiful, sparkling wonderland or a freezing, disgusting outsider.

"A Work of Artifice" Poetry Blog.

A Work of Artifice
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.
-Marge Piercy

     On the surface, this is a poem about those small, nicely pruned bonsai trees. The trees could grow to be very tall, but a gardener carefully spends his time to dwarf it and shape it into what he wants it to be. Looking deeper, this poem could be seen as a commentary on the treatment of asian women. These lines: "the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers the hands you love to touch" definitely imply physical aspects of asian women. By binding their feet, crippling their brains, and making their hair pretty the men of their society dwarf and prune them like bonsai trees to make them the perfect little women that they desire.
     The style of this poem is simple with short sentences; it is not overly flowery. This style helps the meaning of the poem because it reinforces the themes of smallness and control.
     The antecedant scenario may have been Marge Piercy thinking of a comparison to the atrocious treatment of women in China and other asian countires. She might have been thinking about these women and decided she wanted to write a poem that brought attention to the issue in an interesting way.

"I'm a Bad Vegetarian" Pie Day Poetry Blog.

Gobble, gobble! Mr. Turkey!
Mr. Turkey doesn't want to die.
He trots away into the murky
distance and lets out a sigh.

Oh no! Here come the rifles
and fat, hungry men.
Mr. Turkey- a breath he stifles
and he knows this is when

He will die
and be served on a table
beside stuffing and pie
like the Thanksgiving fable.

And so ends the life
of Mr. Turkey with barely a fuss.
Now he's under a knife
and in my esophagus.

"Unveiling" Poetry Blog (11/13).

UnveilingIn the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planed table
at family dinners.
And walking beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad
for them, just left out a bit
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite ready yet to learn.
     -Linda Pastan

     This is a very simple poem. It doesn't have any specific or special or flowery structures; it is simply 22 lines of run on sentences. The meaning is not difficult to discern, it is simply about the speaker's family who are dead and in a row in a cemetary where they used to live together. The speaker doesn't feel sad when he walks past their graves, rather a little jealous- as if they are all part of a secret that he can't know just yet. That idea is new to me, and it is different and a little depressing in some ways. The simple structure of the poem seems to fit with the simplicity of death- there's nothing overdone or formal about it, it just happens.
     The antecedant scenario is most likely Linda Pastan contemplating death in a new light or thinking about her passed away loved ones who she has yet to join. Maybe she sees that as being unfair like the speaker in this poem does.

"Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock" Poetry Blog.

Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock.
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green.
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings,
None of them are strange
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
     -Wallace Stevens

     First off, this poem confused me thoroughly, but I think that's part of the meaning that goes along with the title itself. The word "ceintures" was unfamiliar to me, so I looked it up and it means a girdle or belt. I didn't understand the colored night-gowns at all.
     I think it means that most people are the same and not fancy at night, and only the old "sailor" with experiences has strange and more exciting dreams. The antecedant scenario could be Wallace Stevens being awake himself late at night and feeling this disillusionment, or perhaps he was merely thinking about how people are at night. The overall tone of this poem is whimsical, trippy, or heavy like sleep itself. The descriptions, examples, and words used add to this tone because they feel strange and like "disillusionment at ten o'clock."
     "None are green. Or purple with green... with blue rings...." I did not understand this section of the poem at all. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to understand or if I'm overthinking it, but I'd like to know what Stevens is trying to say here.

"The Possibility" Poetry Blog.

The Possibility

The lizard on the wall, engrossed,
The sudden silence from the wood
Are telling me that I have lost
The possibility of good.

I know this flower is beautiful
And yesterday it seemed to be,
It opened like a crimson hand.
It was not beautiful to me.

I know that work is beautiful.
It is a boon. It is a good.
Unless my working were a way
Of squandering my solitude.

And solitude was beautiful
When I was sure that I was strong.
I thought it was a medium
In which to grow, but I was wrong.

The jays are swearing in the wood.
The lizard moves with ugly speed.
The flower closes like a fist.
The possibility recedes.

               -James Fenton

 

     This poem is basically about a person's view on beauty and they are seeing it in an unusual way. James Fenton describes things that used to be beautiful, but now they are ruined because something about himself changed. The rhythm and rhyme makes the poem flow really well and it fits the idea; it flows like beauty, although, each stanza ends strongly with a different sound and feeling than it began with. The antecedant scenario may have been James Fenton contemplating beauty, the changes in his life that have made things uglier, or a new viewpoint of beauty itself. The tone is honest, a little melancholy, and reflective. It makes me wonder and feel a bit sad.

"The Coming of Wisdom with Time" Poetry Blog (10/23).

NOTE: I know this is a day late, but I was extremely sick all weekend and I wasn't even lucid enough to know that it was Sunday, let alone that I had a poetry blog due. Sorry!

The Coming of Wisdom With Time
though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
               -William Butler Yeats

     Often times we think that something that is shorter is easier to decipher, but shorter does not mean simplicity. I had to read this several times to understand what the words meant. It says that although there are many leaves, there is only one root and will always only be one. Then Yeats says through all the "lying days" - days of leisure- when this person was younger he/she swayed his/her "leaves and flowers in the sun." The last line says this person may now "wither into the truth." The meaning could be that when we are younger, we are like a tree and sway our many leaves in a sense, but when we become old, we remember our root- our greatest common factor in a way, and die knowing the truth.
     I'm not sure if this is a typo, but I found it interesting that the first word was not capitalized. And, obviously, the shortness of this poem is a very important structural aspect. This shortness gives it impact and is easy to remember.
     The antecedant scenario could have been William Butler Yeats remembering his youth and what changed when he got older. The tone seems to be wise and knowing and pensive.
     This is definitely one of my favorite poems that we've read so far.

"Mr. Fear" Poetry Blog

Mr. Fear
He follows us, he keeps track.
Each day his lists are longer.
Here, death, and here,
Something like it.

Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams,
What do you have for me tonight?
And he looks through his sack,
His black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds
The right one. Maybe he's sorry.
Tell me, Mr. Fear,
What must I carry

Away from your dream.
Make it small, please.
Let it fit in my pocket,
Let it fall through

The hole in my pocket.
Fear, let me have
A small brown bat
And a purse of crickets

Like the ones I heard
Singing last night
Out there in the stubbly field
Before I slept, and met you.
-Lawrence Raab

Lawrence Raab was born in 1946 in Massachusetts and often writes about human fallability and doubt and the fine lines of our lives. This poem definitely goes into those categories because Raab writes about the line between having fear and being given fear. The antecedant scenario was probably just Lawrence Raab being frightened and thinking about fear; maybe he was wishing for an entity to blame it on- "Mr. Fear."
The climax is a little difficult to find in this poem; it feels like it is leading up to something throughout the poem as a whole, but I saw the climax as being "make it small, please." It feels as though Raab is leading up to this point: let the fear he gives me be small. After that line, the emotion seems to coast down til he says, "before I slept, and met you."
This poem's tone seems to be a little pensive or pleading. He wonders about the nightmares and terrors we all get from this dark Santa-esque being and how we want the least amount of fear possible and go back to when we weren't afraid- when we had "a small brown bat and a purse of crickets like the ones I heard singing last night."

"I am the Moon" Identity Poem.

I am the moon.
Bright, changing, yet constant.
Less important than the sun
and less mysterious than the stars.

I am the moon.
I'm distant and covered in scars.
I watch from afar
too observant for my own good.

I am the moon.
Though far, I'm always present.
You may not see me when the sun is bright
but I 'm still there.

I am the moon.
Lonely at times
beautiful at others.
Silently shedding
          my light on the world.

Heart of Darkness Alternate Ending

With my heart heavy in dread, I approached the looming, dark door; the only bit of light coming from the gleaming golden knocker. My fist gripped the engraved gold and made three heavy, low thuds.
The door creaked open a few silent moments later and I saw her: the Intended.
Her face was downcast, shadows spilling over her stiff black dress. After a year of knowing of Kurtz's demise in that black forest, she still wore the strict clothes reserved for mourning.
"May I help you?" she asked meekly, staring at the cold stone ground.
"My name is Marlowe," I answered with great reluctance, "I knew Kurtz in his final breaths."
She looked up immediately with her bland and empty eyes widening.
"Please come in," she said in a hushed tone.
I entered and she led me into her living room. The lights were dim and the air felt thick with sorrow and longing. The darkness was barely kept at bay by the candles that were scattered about.
The Intended sat on the edge of an over-sized chair, her face pale, and I on the sofa across from her.
We sat in uncomfortable silence for what felt like an eternity. She finally looked up at me and cracked the silence with a sigh.
"So, Mr. Marlow, you knew my fiancé?" she asked solemnly.
I looked into those glassy eyes but before I could speak, she continued.
"You were present at his passing?" she asked in a whisper.
I swallowed hard. "Yes."
She seemed a little hesitant. "Please, what were his final words?"
I could feel my heartbeat increase. She obviously needed closure, but I couldn't bring myself to disrupt her world.
"Please," she begged again with more intensity.
I closed my eyes and nodded once. I felt I needed to confess this awful truth to the woman who most deserved to know.
"The horror," I whispered, "the horror. Those were his final words."

"Beginning Again" Poetry Blog.

Beginning Again
"If I could stop talking, completely
cease talking for a year, I might begin
to get well," he muttered.
Of alone again performing
brain surgery on himself
in a small badly lit
room with no mirror. A room
whose floor ceiling and walls
are all mirrors, what a mess
oh my God-

And still
it stands,
the question
not how to begin
again, but rather

Why?

So we sit there
together
the mountain
and me, Li Po
said, until only the mountain
remains.
-Franz Wright

Antecedent Scenario- Before writing this poem, Franz Wright was probably thinking about new beginnings and why people feel the need to start over again. Maybe he felt like he needed his own fresh start, but questioned why.
The Climax- The climax of this poem seems to be when he says, "Why?" Here he gets to the point: that it isn't about how to begin again, but why we should do it in the first place. It is structurally significant as well; he puts the single worded question by itself for impact.
Tone- The tone of "Beginning Again" was a mixture of exasperation, bitterness, contemplation, and sarcastic. The words "muttered," "brain surgery," "oh my God," and "Why," led me to the conclusion that, in regards to beginning again, Franz Wright's poem had those tones in it.Meaning- This poem is all about how to begin again- to start over. It says that to do so, one must stop talking, look into one's own mind ("brain surgery") in a place without distractions, but with mirrors everywhere to see and criticize oneself. It asks, "What's the point?" Why should we sit there trying to create a new beginning for ourselves as things change around us?

"The Halo That Would Not Light" Poetry Blog.

The Halo That Would Not Light
When, after many years, the raptor beak
Let loose of you,

                         He dropped your tiny body
In the scarab-colored hollow

                         Of a carriage, left you like a finch
Wrapped in its nest of linens wound

With linden leaves in a child's carboard box.

Tonight the wind is hover-

Hunting as the leather seats of swings go back
And forth with no one in them

As certain and invisible as
                         Red scarves silking endlessly

From a magician's hollow hat
                         And the spectacular catastrophe

Of your endless childhood
                                                  Is done.
-Lucie Brock-Broido

     My first observation of this poem is its structure and arrangement of the lines. There are many indentations and spaces that create a certain drama. The spaces put an intenstity in between the sentences and adds to the sharp and somber tone.
     As to the meaning of the poem, I like to go stanza by stanza or, in this case, line by line. To me, the beginning seems to be replacing the idea of the stork that drops off babies with a raptor; this creates already a sad idea. The raptor dropped "you" into the hollow of a carriage as if "you" were wrapped in a nest-like thing of linden leaves like a finch. This example of the helpless bird wrapped up and stuck in a child's cardboard box is a vivid image that helps enhance the tone and main idea. Then, it goes on to describe the swaying of empty swings in the wind and how there are similar to red scarves coming out of a magic hat. These empty swings being "hunted" by the wind adds to the somber and slightly cold tone of the poem. Finally, it says that the "spectacular catastrophe of your endless childhood is done." I'm not exactly sure what that last line means, but I think it has something to do with the end of the magic that goes along with childhood and innocence. It is a very strong ending with the impact of the "is done" at the very bottom right of the poem.
     I'd like to understand how the title relates to the poem, but I can't think of how it does.

"Inoculation" Poetry Blog.

Inoculation
Cotton Mather studied small pox for a while,
instead of sin. Boston was rife with it.
Not being ill himself, thank Providence,
but one day asking his slave, Onesimus,
if he'd ever had the pox. To which Onesimus replied,
"Yes and No." Not insubordinate
or anything of the kind, but playful, or perhaps
musing as one saying to another:
"Consider how a man
can take inside all manner of disease
and still survive."
Then, graciously, when Mather asked again:
My mother bore me in the southern wild.
She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived
to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave.
-Susan Donnelly

   First I looked up the terms I didn't know:
1) Cotton Mather- He was a New England Puritan minister in the late 1700s and early 1800s. He was a very important person both socially and politically; he was also very well educated.
2) Inoculation- taking a vaccine as a precaution against contracting a disease.
3) Onesimus- This is a biblical name for a slave that fled after robbing his master and was then religously converted.
   With this, the first two lines make more sense: Cotton Mather was a minister, but he studied small pox instead of "sin" for a while. He wasn't ill himself so he was researching the disease because so many others had it. He asked his slave Onesimus if he had ever had small pox. Onesimus says "yes" and "no." Technically, Onesimus had the pox when he was young, but he lived through it and in that way did not have the pox.
   The last stanza is in italics to emphasize what Onesimus is saying; he was born in the "wild," got deathly sick and survived, and then came to be Cotton Mather's slave. Instead of quotation marks in the previous stanzas, this one stands out gramatically and in meaning. It seems to be more than just an anwer to Mather's question, but an idea and his life story. He survived something major, but then became nothing more than a slave.
   As to the title, "Inoculation," it seems to just be referring to the medical need to get a vaccine to protect oneself from a disease like small pox. But, in this poem's time, there wasn't a vaccine for small pox, so maybe it's not a vaccine that one needs to protect from small pox, but something less material.

"Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle" Poetry Blog.

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle

The celebrated windows flamed with light

directly pouring north across the Seine;

we rustled into place. Then violins

vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms,

seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness,

bit by bit, the vigor from the red,

the blazing blue, so that the listening eye

saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes

of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held

the holy glowing gantasy together.

The music surged; the glow became a milk,

a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed

until our beating hearts, our violins

were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead.

-John Updike

Before reading this poem by John Updike I looked up Saint-Chapelle and learned that it is an old, restored building in the heart of France that has an extensive stained-glass collection. I believe that the stained-glass has much to do with this poem. In the first line, Updike calls the windows "celebrated" and describes the light they shine onto the French river Seine. A few lines later, the colors red and blue are mentioned along with the phrase, "...shapes of shield and cross and strut and brace...." These sound like stained-glass windows in churches which makes sense because Saint-Chapelle was a chapel. It seems that Updike is saying that the "vaunting," or boasting, violins playing the compositions of Vivaldi and Brahms sucked the intensity from the colors in the windows so that all one could see in them were the lines and shapes- the skeleton. In the evening concert "music surged" until the windows' glow slowly disappeared and all that was left was the solidity of the music.

Heart of Darkness

I used the annotating technique number 2: bracketing, underlining, circling, summarizing, and defining words and parts of the text. This was the best annotation to use for Heart of Darkness because it was easy to get lost in the older writing style and unfamiliar vocabulary. The glossary was very hepful and nice to go back to when I would see the same unknown word more than once. It was much easier to keep up with what was going on while using this annotating technique.
Even though it could get boring or tough at times, I really liked Heart of Darkness. It had so many great messages and ideas in it. I also liked seeing what it was like in those times when people would go to "undeveloped" countries and settle them as their own. Most of the characters I didn't like, but Marlow and Kurtz were like the two rays of sunshine among all that "darkness."

The Kite Runner

I used the reading-to-writing annotation (type 3) while reading The Kite Runner. This annotating style was really helpful; keeping notes on the writer's style, tone, patterns, rhetorical devices, and so on kept me engaged in the book and more aware of many things. It helped me to see how certain things sounded a certain way and how the plot, conflict and tone (which was usually self loathing or nostalgic) came across.
I loved the storyline and his writing style. I liked learning about Afghanistan and the Muslim culture. It was interesting how Hosseini used Farsi words and phrases and metaphors to bring meaning and tone across.
Even though the storyline was sad, I really enjoyed seeing how Amir coped and reacted to all of the awful and great events in his life.

The Great Gatsby

     I read The Great Gatsby using the "Text-to-Self Connection" annotation type. This form of annotating was simple and usually just symbols, pictures/organizers, and comments/questions, but it helped me stay connected to the text and alert while reading.
     I was initially surprised by the recurring racist and sexist remarks and observations throughout the book; however, it was true to the time period the story was set in and helped form that decade in my mind. I kept a running character list while reading this book to keep track of all of them and their unique characteristics. I found that each character, even small ones such as "Owl Eyes" and Dr. Eckleberg, were well defined and developed by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
     This book vividly showed the '20s using a simple, yet controversal, romantic situation between Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanon, and Myrtle Wilson. There seemed to be a connection between the theme and tone of each event in the story with the weather. For example, when Tom and Mr. Wilson finally find out that their wives have been involved with other men and everyone becomes angry and pushed to their limits, it is the the last and hottest day of the summer.
     I enjoyed this book and Fitzgerald's writing. He seemed to write at least one poetic assertion in each chapter that was incredibly simple, yet honest.

First Post

Hi, I'm Emma. I'm going to start with The Great Gatsby using the first type of annotation: text-to-self connection.