Break. :)

I'm taking my break from blogging this week. Thanks for the day off!

Poetry Response 2

I found the poem "Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock" really interesting. I liked the first image, "The houses are haunted/ By white night-gowns," because it gives the reader a picture of the scene: a dark house with people silently walking throught the houses, barely visible in their flowing ghost-like nightgowns. It sets a somber and monotoned feel for the rest of the poem. I also liked how Stevens then contrasted this idea by describing with some detail how colorful and patterened the nightgowns are not; how uniform and common they are. I didn't know what the word "ceintures" meant, so I looked it up. It means "a belt or sash for the waist" according to Dictionary.com. The fact that they are beaded made me think less of actual night-gowns as one might wear to bed, but more of priests, who wear beaded shashes around their waists. This changed my interpretation of the poem. it could either literally be describing priests, or just making a comment about society in Stevens time, and how most people were so strictly devoted to christianity, and figuratively wore it to bed as a sash around their waists, even though it told them to be plain, loyal, and just like everyone else.Either of these made more sense when I read the second half of the poem, that talks about how none of these plain night-gown wearers will have exciting or creative dreams, and how "an old sailor/ Drunk and asleep in his boots" (most likely referring to sinners) will. I think the whole poem's message is about how society stifles people and diminishes their potential--similar to what we were talking about in class with "A Work of Artifice." Initially when I read this poem the last two lines stuck out to me; they didn't seem to fit with the rest of it. After coming to the conclusion that the message of the poem was about society and religion, I decided that "Chasing tigers" probably refers to dreams and goals the sinner can "chase," but the society-smothered cannot. And I thought "In red weather" meant something about the sinner having a sort of tempestuous life, referring to the weather, and the weather being red because it is often a color associated with the command to stop (which the sinner does not), something bad or incorrect (as "chasing tigers" would be seen by society), or even the devil, which obviously would make "red weather" frowned upon as well. So although the sinner may not be accepted by society, he is still free to dream of his full potential, even though being an outcast of society might prevent his dreams to come to fruition.

Poetry Blog 1 (2nd Quarter)

Since my poem for the class is "The Snowman," I thought I would have it be my first blog. I read this poem twice and interpreted it in two ways. The first was from the snow man builder's perspective. The lines "One must have a mind of winter," "Have been cold a long time," and "...and not to think/ Of any misery in the wind" seem to describe a person who has braved the cold to build a snowman, and appreciate the cold, but nonetheless beautiful winter landscape. The other way I interpreted it, was from the point of view of the snowman himself. The quotes I thought described a person could also be seen as personifying the snowman, because he braves the cold and is not bothered by the wind, and literally has "a mind of winter," since he is made out of snow. Looking at the poem this way made the last stanza make more sense as well. "The listener" could very well be the snowman, because he is only able to observe the world around him. It also makes more sense that a snowman would be "nothing himself" and would "behol[d]/ Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." I definitely like this interpretation better. But thinking about it again, it could also be interpreted in a combination of those two ways, with the first four stanzas pertaining to the creator of the snowman, and the last stanza, the first place where it mentions "the listener" could be describing the finished snowman that has now been left by the creator to "liste[n] in the snow" to the almost nothingness of his surroundings.

Poetry Response 7

When first reading the poem "1943" by Donald Hall, I didn't really understand it. However, when we went over it in class it made a lot more sense. Sometimes I forget to consider a poem's title when reading or analyzing it. It's an easy and sometimes very confusing mistake that I think I made when first reading this poem. When I finally remembered that probably the title had some sort of significance in the poem, the first two stanzas made perfect sense. I got a little confused when the poem started talking about milk, but when it was mentioned in class that milk can be a symbol of sustenance or youth, the image became a bit clearer. It seems like Hall is making a statement about how in WWII troops fought hard so Americans could continue to enjoy a high standard of living where we take things like milk and cream for granted. The milk reference could also tie back to the first stanza, where he's talking about high school, to illustrate the loss of childhood when young men went off to war, and their longing to return to a simpler time in their lives. Figuring this out explained all but one line of the poem to me, and made it much more impactful. The line that still didn't make sense was the very last: "--with frostbitten feet as white as milk." Someone in class mentioned that frostbite isn't white at all, but when I think about it, the simile can still make sense because feet would turn white before frostbite can have its full effect, because the blood will leave the feet in order to keep more important body parts warm. It could be possible that the color of their feet in the cold reminded Hall of the "frozen cream [that] lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles." This makes for a gruesome, yet meaningful and fitting image of what soldiers in WWII had to go through. This poem overall has a dark feeling, but it really makes you think.

Poetry Response 6

I hadn't read "Little Apocalypse" until we read it in class, but our discussion made me curious about it. I went home and re-read it a few times, and realized what I think it means. To me this poem sort of illustrates the "stop to smell the roses" idea, in the sense that it wants to get across that there are whole worlds of organisms that we pay no attention to, simply because they are small; and how things we would find non-threatening can be like an apolcalypse to them. This makes sense to me because of the way Charles Wright describes seemingly peaceful things, such as a robin or a butterfly as vicious and unsettling, and a thunderstorm as "a drop of fire and a drop of fire," as maybe they would appear to insects. I don't think Wright is describing the apocalypse of the whole world, but is using classic apocalyptic imagery to describe harmless organisms and an average thunderstorm. He does this in order to point out how these daily happenings can be apocalyptic for the "basements of the world" that we often do not think about, because we never see that world from that perspective.