For instance, find a poem by Anne Sexton at poets.org and juxtapose/rank it against "The Addict."
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Poetry Blog Task--due March 27
Select another poem by an author in the Google Drive folder I shared with you. This poem may not already be in the Google Drive folder. In 300+ words, analyze, explicate, dissect, translate, and rank--with rationale as to why--this poem above/below the same author's poem/s already in the Google Drive folder.
For instance, find a poem by Anne Sexton at poets.org and juxtapose/rank it against "The Addict."
For instance, find a poem by Anne Sexton at poets.org and juxtapose/rank it against "The Addict."
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86 comments:
Stensrud 5
I was instantly drawn towards Sexton’s poems while reading in class today. To me, poetic tragedy is beyond intriguing. Sexton’s poems often deal with things in life that are not talked about, such as abortion, incest, adultery, and even suicide which we see in her poem “Love Letter Written in A Burning Building”. Her bizarre poems could have stemmed from the severe mental illness she suffered from most of her life. The speaker in the poem is a married woman, who is writing this poem out of desperation. Instead of using this love letter to ask for help she uses it as a final good bye. The person she is writing the letter to is either her husband or a boyfriend I can assume due to the text in the second stanza “I have on a mask in order to write my last words, and they are just for you”. Throughout the poem she refers to things in past tense such as the first line states “a crate that was once ours” this foreshadows the speakers death once the poem/letter is fully written. Considering the love letter doubles as a suicide note, it is safe to say that she is addressing her whole life in the letter. The speaker is clearly desperate, she romanticizes her suicide, finding joy in finally being able to die (not in a clear mental state). She shows no signs of grief as her belongings and even pets burn up around her, “perhaps they will last. The dog will not. Her spots will fall (burn) off. The old letters will melt into a black bee.” Along with belongings and herself the apartment she shares with her boyfriend/husband is going up in flames. Imagery is dominant in this poem. Sexton uses distinct adjectives to describe both feelings and thoughts solidly. A symbol within the poem could be fire. The speaker’s unrelenting love is virtually destroying everything; the flame is finally burning out. I believe this poem was better than any of Sexton’s that I read in the Google Docs folder. The narrative style made it easier for me to analyze and fully comprehend the situation taking place with in the poem. I plan to further analyze more of Sexton’s poetry.
Marais1
While I was skimming through the poems I couldn't choose who to pick. At first I picked Yann Martel. However, that ended quickly since, I couldn't find more poems. Therefor I choose Emily Dickinson poems. They captured my attention. While I was researching more poems I discovered that she wrote almost 1800 poems during her life time. But she only published seven of them anonymously.Her poetry was unigue and original, it worked against many of the traditions of the time. Almost all of her poems are short, using the traditional hymnal stanza of quatrains of lines switching beetween three and four beats long.
Dickinson's poems are pretty easy to read since they use simply language but they are compex in theme, form, and execution and are usually hard to paraphrase. Thoughout her poems she has a certain theme that she returns to again and again. Death, grief, passion, faith, truth, and fame and success are the most prominate ones.
I only read though a couple of her poems and found that no two poems have exactly the same view or understanding of death. I choose to read her poems about death because I find it extremily fasinating. There are thousands of realigions that have different stories about how you will end up after you die. Some believe you just rot in the ground while others believe in a after life. How do we achieve this? When no two religions are exaclty alike each one requres you to do/act a certain way. Which makes me question if there really is something after death. Anyways, going back to the poems Dickenson write of death as something gentle, sometimes menacing, and accationally something simply inecitable. In one of her poems that I came across "I heard a Fly buzz-when I die," she investigates the physical process of a human dying. In "Because I could not stop for Death," we see death personified. Immorality is a goal that is hinted at in the first stanza, where "Immortality" is the only other occupant of the carriage. Yet, at the end of the poem we see that the speaker has obtained it. Time suddenly loses its meaning; hundred to thousands of years feel no different than just one simple day. Because time has dissapeared, the speaker can still feel with relish that moment of realization, that death was not just death, but immortality.
Dykstra 5
Although I cannot say I am a true fan of poetry, I have always loved the poems of certain authors. Gwendolyn Brooks is among these, and I have chosen to compare her work “a song in the front yard” with “We Real Cool.” “We Real Cool” is written from the perspective of a group of young men who have left school to play pool. The poem scoffs at their opinions, such as how “cool” they are, how much they like alcohol, and how “bad” they think they are. The last line of the poem is “We Die soon.” I find this line to be extremely poignant. Brooks truly gets her point across in this poem; stay in school and don’t take anything for granted, or you will regret it. “A song in the front yard” explores an entirely different topic. I believe this poem is about race; Brooks herself is black, and in this interpretation of the poem, is writing from the perspective of a white girl. The girl’s mother tells her that the girls from the back yard (the black girls) will grow up to be bad women, and that she should stay away from them. Despite this, the girl’s curiosity about life in the back yard persists. I think this is a metaphor for changing ideas on racism, as the poem was written in 1963, when people were starting to have new ideas on this topic. The white girl wants to know what it’s like to be black; perhaps she wants to go to the back yard in order to show how all people, no matter their race, are truly equal. Although I love “a song in the front yard,” I enjoy “We Real Cool” a bit better due to how few of words it requires to get its point across. I think that is the mark of true literary genius, which Brooks certainly has.
Staab Pd. 5
The Moose is an interesting poem. No rhyming, no set rhythm. It’s like life. Some days are longer, some are short, some the exact same. You go through life like how you read this poem. You take in what is around you. The smells, the sounds, what everything looks like and you wonder, ‘What is the purpose?’ You don’t find out about a moose until the last seven stanzas of the poem; just like life. You don’t know your purpose or meaning until it hits you. Literally or figuratively.
You read and read, there’s no moose. It’s a bay and an old man. Why is it called The Moose if there is no moose.
Why is it called my life if I don’t have my life yet. Someone else strings you along, like how Bishop strings you along wondering about the moose, telling you what to do, what to say and how to act. It’s not yours. There will be clutter and confusion, what does the setting son have to do with a moose? What does calculus have to do with painting? Maybe nothing. Maybe something.
It is not until you can see it. The purpose, of the poem or life, that you understand it.
There is a moose. A huge moose that people stop to stare at it. And she stops in the middle of the road, sniffing the bus, taking her time, until her time comes to an end.
There is a life. A huge life that people stop and stare at it. Some people can be envious of it. “They’ve got a better life than I do,” or “What a poor sad life that is.” But it does not matter because it’s not their life. It is someone elses, and they live their life, slowly, trying to find the true meaning, until someone else ends it.
Baum 5
I have always had a deep interest in the holocaust and the pain and suffering it pushed upon millions of people. When we got the chance to read poetry in class, I opted for Anne Sexton’s “After Auschwitz.” I believe I was drawn to this poem not only because I enjoy learning about the tragic operation Hitler enforced, but also because Sexton writes about the things other poets would not dare touch. Tragedy is difficult to write about, but with Sexton’s beautifully graphic stanzas you cannot help but admire her talented work. Numerous authors and poets, if not all, can attribute many of their works to their upbringing and background. The culture one grows up in has a great influence as well. Sexton used her long battle with mental illness, depression, suicidal thoughts, and family matters to help shape and guide her writing. She makes you want to read more about controversial topics such as abortion, incest, and adultery. While researching Sexton I came across a poem titled “As It Was Written.” It is packed full with imagery and metaphors such as “The sky is yellow with its jaundice, / and its veins spill into the rivers / where the fish kneel down / to swallow hair and goat's eyes.” The poem is written to show the destruction of Earth. Everything that is seen as beautiful she transmutes to show its nefarious side. “Your clouds wear white, / trying to become nuns / and say novenas to the sky.” I perceive this line as Sexton trying to explicate how the world is filled with evil, disguising itself as pure. White predictably symbolizes pureness, holiness, and innocence. “All in all, I'd say, / the world is strangling.” The world is on a downward spiral to destruction. Sexton discusses how the world cannot go on living like this, or acting like this. Society is to blame in her eyes. Sexton’s poems are haunting, yet intriguing. I look forward to studying more of her confessional poetry in class, along with many other influential poets.
Grage 2
The poem I chose was called, “Alone” By Edgar Allan Poe. I chose this poem because everyone feels alone at some point in their day or life. In this poem it talks about a kid that grew up alone and not having very many friends. It talked about how sad they were all the time. The poem showed their feelings through the weather. The weather gave you clues to what was going on in the poem and what this person was feeling/ going through. Once this poem got to the end, I kind of assumed that they committed suicide. The last few lines stating “From the thunder, and the storm, and the cloud that took the form, (When the rest of Heaven was blue), of a demon in my view—“. The weather changed from a cloudy normal day in the poem to a wild storm at the end. This showed what the child was going through and how she/he was feeling at the time; how alone she/he really was. It made me think that either this person was so depressed that they killed them self, seeing the devil; or this person was just always depressed focusing on only the negative things in their lives, not letting anyone else in.
To me this poem reminds me of people that I would regularly see in the hallways. You see all of these shy, lonely looking people that look like they need someone there to comfort them and make them see the brighter side of life. There are a lot of people that you see on a regular basis that only focus on the negative side of things. These people just need someone to show them how positive life can be if they look past the negative things, instead of focusing on them.
Grage 2
The poem I chose was called, “Alone” By Edgar Allan Poe. I chose this poem because everyone feels alone at some point in their day or life. In this poem it talks about a kid that grew up alone and not having very many friends. It talked about how sad they were all the time. The poem showed their feelings through the weather. The weather gave you clues to what was going on in the poem and what this person was feeling/ going through. Once this poem got to the end, I kind of assumed that they committed suicide. The last few lines stating “From the thunder, and the storm, and the cloud that took the form, (When the rest of Heaven was blue), of a demon in my view—“. The weather changed from a cloudy normal day in the poem to a wild storm at the end. This showed what the child was going through and how she/he was feeling at the time; how alone she/he really was. It made me think that either this person was so depressed that they killed them self, seeing the devil; or this person was just always depressed focusing on only the negative things in their lives, not letting anyone else in.
To me this poem reminds me of people that I would regularly see in the hallways. You see all of these shy, lonely looking people that look like they need someone there to comfort them and make them see the brighter side of life. There are a lot of people that you see on a regular basis that only focus on the negative side of things. These people just need someone to show them how positive life can be if they look past the negative things, instead of focusing on them.
Zahn 5
Walt Whitman, considered to be one of America’s most important poets. Born in Long Island, Whitman had a limited education, but he would later be known as one of the greatest poets in the nineteenth century. He abandoned conventional rhyme and meter and made the most out of the odd loveliness of homely imagery, finding beauty in commonplace but presenting it in an uncommon way. Whitman writes about life, nature and beauty in things. “Continuities” is a short, but complex poem about life. In the first few lines, Whitman says that everything has a purpose. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you came from, and how you look - you are special in one way or another. Continuity is defined as, the unbroken and consistent existence or operation of something over a period of time. The connection to this word and to the poem is, time. Time goes on and on and is constant from day to day. Time doesn’t stop when you do, it goes on without you. Even when you are at your lowest, the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west and that will always be constant in your life. Whitman’s “O ME! O Life!” poem is in the poetry folder instead of “Continuities” because it has more meaning to it. The poem is about life and how it still exists when you are at your lowest point. Even when you’ve lost faith, feel empty, or feel foolish, there’s always a light at the end that will help you overcome whatever you’re going through. The fact that you are still here and life still exists means you’re willing to overcome those obstacles so you can contribute your ideas and mark your place in this life.
Arens
The author I choose was Anne Sexton, I read the poem “After Auschwitz” and was really drawn to see what else she has written about. I found another poem called “The Operation” and it talks about another object of life we do not like to talk about--cancer. The narrator’s mother has just died of cancer and now the narrator is getting ready for an abdominal surgery, one like her mother had just months before. The mother’s cancer might have been ovarian or some form of woman cancer because it is stated that “It grew in her/ as simply as a child would grow”. The narrator also gives us insight to this because she states “Fact: death too is in the egg. Fact: the body is dumb, the body is meat.” The narrator does not want the same fate that her mother had but she also wants to be with her mother, she is torn. At the end of the operation, while she is coming out of anesthesia she calls out for her mother. In the end the narrator knows that unlike her mother she will most likely survive. “All’s well, they say. They say I’m better.” I like how Sexton was not afraid to write about the things in life that we find horrible. Most of her poems are a result of her mental illness, making her poems a kind of confessional poetry. Sexton’s poem “After Auschwitz” is very graphic, but it really makes you think. That’s what “The Operation” has also done, it makes me think about how I would feel if I were a woman whose mother has just recently died of cancer and now I have it. I feel sorry for the woman who is now going to survive from the cancer that her mother died from, that would be so hard to live with. Anne Sexton knows how to bring out the major emotions none of us want to think or believe, and I find those types of emotions intriguing.
Spurlin 5
While preparing for the poetry forum on Wednesday I came across “Winter Trees” by Sylvia Plath. I was drawn in by her work and intrigued how her background tied into her work as a confessional poet. Plath was among the great Confessional Poetry pioneers. She suffered from depression most of her adult life and at age 31 committed suicide. It caught my attention because it creates a spectacular comparison to trees aging and the memories we collect throughout our lives. Just as trees collect rings as they grow it is tied into diamond rings symbolizing marriage and faithful loving. The fact that it is a “series of weddings” makes me wonder if she is referencing divorce and remarriage multiple times.
When you think of winter trees you probably envision gymnosperms like evergreens or other trees which shed their leaves in the fall. The writers says “they seed so effortlessly” this may be alluding to the fact that evergreens--winter trees-- do not have flowers but rather seeds within the cones. Another point to consider is the lifespan of trees: they have potential to outlive us all yet they are not capable of experiencing the emotions, whether love or hate, which greatly affect our lives. Perhaps the author wishes she were a tree sometimes; she is jealous of their naiive lives. They do not contemplate abortions and “seed so effortlessly”.
One important allison refers to Ledas. Most versions of mythology tell the story of Zeus taking the form of a Swan and raping Leda on the same night she slept with her husband (a king). And two eggs were laid and children hatched from them. I can only wonder if the author has been taken advantage of by her husband and maybe suffered from postpartum depression. In the last stanza it ties back to the central idea of mother nature tasting the leaves and sweetness. Being a woman and mother is bittersweet? She concludes wondering who is painted in these pietas (picture of the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Jesus Christ in her lap) her family pictures looking so happy when really she is just depressed and utterly unhappy. Since this reference to pietas proceeds Ledas I think it is reflecting her life as a newlywed and no matter how much she makes love to her husband she cannot be truly happy she is chasing nothing.
Out of all the poems we read in class, the one that stood out to me the most was "Danse Russe" by William Carlos Williams. It states that it's okay for a man to be a little feminine and that it's okay to be weird. I found another poem of his titled "Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad!" Translated from Spanish to English, this means "Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!" This poem speaks of hopes and dreams. The narrator is obviously very poor and of low social status. He dreamed of being rich once, and his dream failed. He has spite for the men above him because he wishes that were him. The ending of this poem is also very pessimistic. It says, "Well--
all things turn bitter in the end
whether you choose the right or
the left way
and--
dreams are not a bad thing." The narrator is saying that regardless if you're rich or poor, popular or not, in the end, everybody dies and none of it matters anymore. Although this is a great poem, I think "Danse Russe" is a much better and relevant poem. It inspires and gives hope to those who are afraid to be themselves. It explicates that it is okay to be a little weird because nobody is normal in the first place. However, at the very end, Williams writes “but dreams are not too bad.” It’s almost as if he’s saying that dreams will get you nowhere and leave you penniless, but go ahead and have them because they’re fun. Although a very pessimistic view, this turns out true far too often. Many people dream big, but fall short. Perhaps Williams’s poem was made to be not necessarily an inspirational one, but more realistic. Regardless, it is a poem that should be studied and analyzed.
Murtha 5
I decided to read “The Addict” by Sexton. I saw this title and became interested because I do believe that drugs, of any kind, have become popular in our culture. The author explains herself as being a “mixture of chemicals”. Analyzing these three words you can tell that she is saying that her body is filled with different type of pills. The chemicals may mix well and be fine working together or they could be even more harmful than they are when they are separated. She may be writing as an addict in her poem, but I fell like she is trying to send a message to her readers that it’s not healthy to have an addiction. "I like them more than I like me”, Sexton explains that when you become an addict you lose yourself. You no longer are able to pick yourself up when you are down; you have to rely on your addiction to take care of you. “It’s a kind of marriage”. She is explaining that when you become an addict your hope for any relationship is gone. The only thing you care about it the pills or drink. An object has become more important to you than your own mother, brother, or significant other. Sexton really reaches out her readers I believe to tell them to not become an addict or drugs, but an addict of life and love. I read her other poem, “Barefoot”. I would say that “The Addict” has a deeper meaning and that causes it to be way better than “Barefoot”. But her way of confessional poetry is very interesting. Many of her topics(depression, abortion, and abuse) are still a common controversial conversations that are talked about in today’s society. I have researched to find that her poem “The Abortion” has been very influential and is very deep in thought, truly a confessional poem.
When hearing that we were to read poetry in class I was immediately unhappy. I have never really enjoyed reading poems before and I decided that I was going to keep an open mind about this activity. While looking through all the poems in the file I read “There is Another Sky”. It was really interesting reading how the narrator is so attuned to nature. This poem seems so down to earth. It gives you such a wonderful perspective of how we should think of Mother Nature and all the gifts she gives us. It is such a happy, optimistic poem-- in the poem the narrator seems happy to welcome everyone into his/her garden. They seem trusting enough to allow them into the safe haven that they have grown. After reading Dickinson’s poem I went out and searched some of her other works. I was struck by how different these two poems actually are. I read “Why do I Love You, Sir?” In this poem the narrator questions everything. Not trusting the love that she seemingly has for this man. She also seems to have to be convinced that she really does love this man she is talking to. Also, the writing is very different from these two poems. The one about love is very choppy like a conversation with someone who interrupts too often. The other poem on the other hand is very fluent and it just seems so well put together. The sky poem also uses comas, semicolons, a dash, and an exclamation point; whereas the love poem only uses dashes and a question mark. The love poem also does not have a true ending. The last line says “I Love Thee—“It’s hard for the reader to know if they really believe if she actually loves him or if she is just saying she does. The sky poem has a happy ending with the narrator inviting the reader to come join them in the wonderful garden that they enjoy and love so much.
As I was looking through the poems in the folder, I was very intrigued by Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool." I thought that it was interesting starting with the title because there is no verb in the title, nor was it just a noun. It is as though the verb "are" is just left out. Upon reading the poem, I was even more interested in continuing to read Brooks' poems. "We Real Cool" is probably the shortest poem I've ever read, yet it is not as straight forward as one would think. In the eight-line poem, "we" is used all eight times. We are told the subjects and setting of the poem before it starts, but we do not know the specific background. The poem is written through the eyes of an outside observer that does not have inside knowledge of what the boys are thinking. The poem uses few, small words, but says a lot through them. The poem talks about the actions of pool boys through someone else's eyes. It talks about them being dropouts drinking gin. It shows a very real side to the behavior of teens, but what is being said about them is someone else's view point based on the judgement of how they look. The other poem I looked at by Brooks, "Boy Breaking Glass", is much more complicated. In one analysis I read about the poem, it says that the poem is open to interpretation by the readers. Another talked about the poems portrayal of a poor boy. Unlike "We Real Cool", "Boy Breaking" glass shows more into the emotions of what is going on with the boy. It too, explains a "violent, destructive" stereotype some people have for the subject she is writing the poem about. In it, she shows that without a proper outlet for feelings, destruction happen--not that they themselves are just destructive. Both poems show great insight into the actions of a similar age group. Although "Boy Breaking Glass" appears to be a more complicated poem, it gives the reader much more insight into the background of the story. I think it shows that we can't just look towards actions(like in "Boy Breaking Glass") or appearances(in "We Real Cool")to make assumptions about people. I see very similar messages in both of her poems. I think "We Real Cool" does a good job at showing a stereotype of boys in a pool hall. However, "Boys Breaking Glass" not only shows a stereotype--violent and impoverished--but it also implies the real reasoning towards the action. Because it is a more complicated, elaborate poem, and allows the readers to expand with their own thoughts, I think Brooks' poem "Boys Breaking Glass" has more to get out of it.
I did also really enjoy "We Real Cool" mainly because it is short, but also because so much is said in those 24 words.
The poem I chose was “nothing false and possible is love” - e.e cummings. It goes;
“love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds”
I rarely enjoy love poems. W.H Auden, Robert Frost, even Walt Whitman all come off as sappy and distasteful to me. I do however, really enjoy Cummings work. I appreciate how Cummings experimented with poetic form and language to create a distinct personal style. Cummings poems are spare and precise, employing a few key words placed on the page. Some of these words were invented by Cummings, often by combining two common words into a new synthesis. He also revised grammatical and linguistic rules to suit his own purposes, using such words as "if," "am," and "because" as nouns, for example, or assigning his own private meanings to words. Avant-garde poems in which conventional punctuation and syntax were ignored in favor of a dynamic use of language. Cummings also experimented with poems as visual objects on the page. Cummings are a resistance to the small minds of every kind, political, scientific, philosophical, and literary, who insist on limiting the real and the true to what they think they know or can respond to. As a preventive to this kind of limitation, Cummings is directly opposed to letting us rest in what we believe we know; and this is the key to the rhetorical function of his famous language.
Pearce 1
The poem that I chose to analyze was “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. In our poetry folder, Poe has a poem called “Dreams.”
The reason I chose to analyze this poem is because it the how by favorite football team, the Baltimore Ravens, got their name. Poe was spent most of his life in Baltimore and died in that city. Due to his connection to the city and this iconic poem, the Ravens got their name via a poll done by the Baltimore Sun, the team in Baltimore was named the Ravens.
When reading this poem, one line sticks out above the rest: “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’." This line is repeated five times during the poem and is the last line in four of the last five stanzas. This line is the most famous from the poem.
There is a rhyme scheme in this poem. Each stanza has six lines. The rhyme scheme for them follows this pattern: a, b, c, b, b, b. The second, fourth, fifth, and sixth lines in each stanza all rhyme. Since the last line always ends with more, evermore or nevermore, the rhyme is constant throughout the poem. Floor, door, shore, implore, Lenore, core, o’er, store, yore, bore, outpour, before, wore, lore and explore are all used in the rhyming.
In the poem, the narrator is sitting and home mourning the loss of Lenore (who we are left to assume was his wife) when he hears a knocking at his door. At first he ignores it, but when it continues on, he finally goes to see what the source of the noise is, he sees a raven. The only word that the raven says in this poem is “nevermore,” hence the quote “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’." The narrator keeps asking the raven questions. but all the raven will say is nevermore. In the end the narrator feels that his soul will “nevermore” leave the shadow of the raven.
Martinmaas 2
After researching information about confessional poetry, I learned more about the two poets: Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. It was interesting to learn that both were very depressed women who continuously turned to suicide. Anne Sexton’s poem “The Abortion” was one poem that I read. It talks about a woman and her journey south for an abortion and the happy landscape she sees on the way there. When she travels back North though, the woman sees things differently like how “the ground cracks evilly.” She also questions if anything fragile can ever survive and she repeats the phrase “Somebody who should have been born is gone” throughout the poem. I thought it was a very powerful poem about an issue that happens a lot nowadays whether with an abortion or just a miscarriage. During this week’s forum, someone mentioned another one of her poems called “The Addict.” I decided to read it and discovered that it is a very deep/sad poem about addiction. She mentions in the poem that she likes the pills more than she likes herself, which is a sad thing to hear. She loves the pills because they make her feel nothing but at the same time she hates herself because of her addiction to them. She also stated that “It’s kind of a marriage” when talking about her pills. By this she might mean that she has devoted her life to these pills and made sacrifices for them like when two people become married. It just shows that the only relationship she is willing to have is with her drugs. I also found it strange that she had a ritual to taking the pills--“With capsules in my palm at night, eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles.” She would prepare arrangements at night to take the pills. Most people might have a routine at night to prepare for the next day while she was preparing for there not to be another day. By the end of the poem, she isn’t able to stop taking the pills and becomes numb once more.
West 1
The author I chose to write about is Anne Sexton. I chose the poem “Angels of the Love Affair” by random selection, and found it immediately intriguing--and utterly hilarious. I would consider this poem confessionalism because of how she describes it so vividly and writes the poem in the first person point of view.
The poem is composed of six parts, the first part being titled “ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS”. If this sounds like something to do with the human anatomy, it is because it is. The poem is of about her taking a massive dump. She talks about groaning while trying to push it out, “that green mama who first forced me to sing”; and how she was the poops servant and it was her king--” that pantomime (a type of stage production, designed for family entertainment) of brown where I was beggar and she was king” (parenthesis not part of original quote). You can tell that it is a massive number two because she says “I said, 'The devil is down that festering hole.'”. She has a lot of trouble passing this pestering poop and she is completely open about it.
All that time she was still trying to push this feces out of her butthole with great difficulty. When it finally decides that it is ready to come out, she states, “then he bit me in the buttocks and took over my soul.”
Well this poop must have been a hot one because Sexton describes it as “Fire woman, you of the ancient flame, you of the Bunsen burner, you of the candle, you of the blast furnace, you of the barbecue, you of the fierce solar energy”. She even says that she has to take some ice, snow, and a month of rain to pacify the agony of this horrifying number two.
The very end of the poem is Sexton describing the relieved feeling and the feeling of a great weight being released from her. We all know this feeling.
That was one nasty poop.
I would rank this poem above the one we read in class. It is not so morbid and depressing. It is comical and enjoyable. The details are s vivid and the poem flows extremely well.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/angels-of-the-love-affair/
Fritz
While searching for poems to write about, I came across All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton. Like most of her other poems, All My Pretty Ones is about death. Not just death however, but her fathers suicide. I believe I was drawn to this poem out of empathy. Within she talks about the mess her father left, as he had just died shortly after her mother. She is angry because they weren’t close; she doesn’t even know if her grandpa is in the scrapbook she has found. She expresses her confusion about his death as he had had plans to marry a pretty widow. Something changed. Three days before his death Sexton was crying on his shoulder; then he left her… Sexton calls her father her drunkard, navigator, and first lost keeper. I found this interesting because the emotion is so mixed. She hated him because he was an alcoholic, but loved him all the same because he helped her along the way in her life.
Within the folder is another poem written by Sexton, “The Addict”. Just like All My Pretty Ones, it describes death, along with prescription drugs. The title is key; Sexton is addicted to prescription pain meds. She describes the pills as her mother, as they keep her in line. However, I found this poem odd because she is going bold saying that she does do drugs, but then almost puts a hidden message to others saying don’t! One can interpret this as either a cry for help, or just a message to others.
If I had to choose which I liked more, I would have to say All My Pretty Ones. To be honest, I can’t pinpoint the exact reasoning. However, I do believe people are going to be drawn to something they can relate to. Maybe it was my favorite because my dad is also dead? I am not really sure, but for a girl who hates poetry, I think I just found my favorite.
Dreyer 2
When looking through the poems, the author that sparked my attention was Anne Sexton. The way she writes grabs my interest and pulls me in to keep reading. I searched for other poems by Anne Sexton to see what else she has written about. I saw a poem entitled "Earthworm", and knew I had to read it.
Slim inquirer, while the old fathers sleep you are reworking their soil, you have a grocery store there down under the earth and it is well stocked with broken wine bottles,old cigars, old door knobs and earth,that great brown flour that you kiss each day. There are dark stars in the cool evening and you fondle them like killer birds' beaks.But what I want to know is why when small boy sdig you up for curiosity and cut you in half why each half lives and crawls away as if whole.Have you no beginning and end? Which heart is the real one? Which eye the seer? Why is it in the infinite plan that you would be severed and rise from the dead like a gargoyle with two heads?
"Earthworm" is very intriguing to me because it is amazing that a poet can take the simplest creature such as an earthworm and write about it in such an eloquent way. She devotes a lot of credit to the earthworm, reworking the soil for the farmers who use the soil. In life, we rarely give credit to those who are small. Even the earthworms, who work around the soil all day, play a large role in the ecosystem. She calls the dirt, the "great brown flour". This uses a lot of imagery in the poem because instead of just calling it "dirt", she focuses on our senses and draws us in.
The second half of the poem really makes me think. She ponders about how a living creature can be cut directly in half and still live. She says that each separate half becomes a entire new organism and can still function on its own. When you think about it, how do you know which half is the head and which half is the back. Does it regrow a new head or a new butt? How could God make such a creature that regrows itself? Anne is trying to show us the beauty and mystery of the world. Sometimes you have to accept the mystery of the world. Amazing things happen and we always cannot explain why. We can continue to study why the worm regrows itself or we can just accept it. The worms are just like people. We can be cut down, cut in two, and split apart, but we try to move on. We may have to leave half of ourselves behind, but this may be for the better. Sometimes its better to start fresh, half experience and half innocence.
Dietz 7
I chose read another poem by Anne Sexton. She seemed like an interesting author in class and I enjoyed her other poems that we read. The poem that I have chosen to analyze is titled “Again and Again and Again.”
I can tell that she is angry is this poem. She says in past tense that “You said the anger would come back just as the love did.” She feels that in this relationship that anger and love go together. In a normal relationship, this is not how love is supposed to be. She uses the word black twice in this short, twenty-three lined poem. This shows how deep her emotions are.
It is interesting how she says she has “sewn it over my left breast.” I am sure that this symbolizes her heart. This means that the feelings she has in this moment will never go away because it is sewn there. She has lustful feelings now in her heart. They are lustful feelings that are not meant to be good. On the top of her anger list is the guy and his child. If she were to express anger they would be the first to blame.
“the blackness is murderous”
This shows how deeply hurt she was because of this man. She is maybe feeling revengeful because the love did not return when he did? She feels like she needs to destroy other men the way that he has destroyed her. She will feel like she is destroying him whenever she destroys a man. This is why she titles the poem again and again because she will never be satisfied until she feels that she has killed the man that has killed her, figuratively inside of her heart.
I would rank this as better than the other two poems we have read in class of her. I feel that she has one emotion in this poem and she makes it very clear. I enjoy reading poetry more when I completely understand the entire poem, but it still elicits feelings from me. I did not feel that this was a crude poem and it was easily relatable (except the killing part) to girls that have had their hearts broken.
Tellinghuisen 5
I haven’t ever been much of a poetry reader in my life. However once I read Anne Sexton’s “After Auschwitz” I was quite intrigued, and wanted more. Anne Sexton’s poetry really captivated me more so than any of the other confessional poetry authors worthy of study. Her work while described to the extreme in her life, can translate to our own with how she wrote many pieces on the struggles and battles taking place within herself. We can all relate to at least (and hopefully) a lesser extent. There was a great deal of power written within the words of “After Auschwitz.” It served as a much needed reminder of history for me, and I personally believe that everyone in the class should have read that poem alone. There is such a high degree of amazing description and emotion integrated into the poem, that it is as if the entire tragic tale of the Auschwitz death camp is being told right there in the stanzas. Lines like: “Each day, each Nazi took, at 8: 00 A.M., a baby and sauteed him for breakfast in his frying pan.” “And death looks on with a casual eye,” and, “Let man never again raise his teacup. Let man never again write a book. Let man never again put on his shoe. Let man never again raise his eyes, on a soft July night. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.” practically leap out of the poem and into the depths of our psyche. I wonder however, why Sexton chose to write this poem, and tell this story in particular. Given her normal style, she would usually write about the “confessions” within herself, her inner struggles, and innermost emotions. “After Auschwitz” is different. It doesn’t contain much inkling of anything going on in her life personally. That then evokes the question of whether she was writing it for a sudden Historical standpoint that she rarely has shown, or is she using the story of Auschwitz as a huge analogy for the suicidal emotions that she continued to feel throughout her life with depression?
Anne Sexton also wrote the poem “The Civil War.” This poem delves deep into herself and the battle that she describes is waging inside her everyday. There is a prominent theme of God as well. She describes a fall from grace of God that continues through a dark time and rises again, renewing herself.
As you can tell, I have a lot more to say about “After Auschwitz.” It hit closer to home for me than “ The Civil War,” and I do believe there is much more power and meaning in the Auschwitz poem. Therefore, “After Auschwitz,” sits as my number one from Sexton, and I have heard many of my fellow students agree. It is not only a descriptive poetic masterpiece, it serves as an amazing lesson and reminder of what was and what should never happen again.
Paul 2
While reading the poems and researching confessional poets, I was instantly drawn into Anne Sexton’s work. I enjoy reading her poems which include issues that even today are not always expressed openly. I find her dark poetry even more entertaining knowing her background. Being a victim of mental illnesses and suicidal thoughts gives her poems a unique perspective. In my forum group we discussed how she might use an alter ego to escape the pressure of a perfect world and cope with her disorders. She is a beautiful model on the outside but has a dark side that comes out in her writing. She makes the readers enjoy topics that are normally considered wrong. Sexton writes about situations real people face every day, making them too personal to some readers. In her poem “Red Roses,” her gloomy writing style is prevalent while she talks about abuse. She masks the abuse using a metaphor to dancing making it easier to read; however, dancing is actually the “blue lady” or mom throwing around or beating her son. I found it interesting that she used red roses to represent the bruises, broken bones, and other wounds the boy receives. I thought of the popular saying, “Roses are red, violets are blue” the same colors that describe a bruise. I also thought it was ironic that she was the only girl mentioned in the poem. I made an assumption that her husband left her and she is taking it out on her son. Every girl loves roses, so maybe the mother gets her happiness by giving her son these “red roses.” By the end of the poem the boy is in the hospital and tells them he fell, because he loves “Blue lady.” However, Tommy is greatly affected by the torture and he never spoke again. Anne Sexton brilliantly places her stanzas in all of her poems which create suspense and entertainment. I noticed this when I first started reading her other poems in the Google drive.
I found “Red Roses” was far better than “The Addict” and equally as good as “After Auschwitz.” I enjoyed “Red Roses” more because it was easy to visualize and analyze due to its symbols and more narrative style of poem. Reading Anne Sexton’s poetry has increased my appreciation for confessional poetry.
Van Egdom 5
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/poe/alone.html
Edgar Allan Poe can be summarized in one word—morbid. In the Google folder, his poem is “Dreams.” He tells readers that dreams are better than waking life; they are a person’s own thoughts. Dreams bring hope and happiness to lonely individuals. They allow them to escape the dreariness of reality for a while. Poe completely controls his madness. His creative poetry stem from his chaotic thoughts. I chose Poe, because he masterfully crafts melancholic poetry.
For my second poem, I chose Poe’s “Alone,” which provides insight into Poe’s childhood and life. He never fit in as a child—and certainly did not fit in as an adult. He constantly felt alone. This depressing attitude emanates from Poe’s loss of his parents early on. Ever since he lost them, he has not been able to stop feeling isolated. He feels like he is the only one that has gone through this life-shattering event. He feels like happiness will never come to him. Readers can see this view in the line, “My passion from a common spring; from the same source I have not taken,” which shows that other children obtain happiness, but Poe never shall. He is destined to remain alone, forever. In the last line, “Of a demon in my view,” may refer to Poe’s impending death or his despair. The demon will always impede him from attaining joy. Poe uses only one stanza for the poem, which may symbolize the short and abrupt ending of life.
In my myopic opinion, “Dreams” is a better poem. “Alone” captures part of Poe’s childhood, but “Dreams” resonates more with me. Everybody has unattainable dreams. In that moment of unconsciousness, I may be able to live out another life or vicariously experience anything. I can do anything. Waking life is lackluster and dull in comparison. “Alone” made me feel empathy for Poe. “Dreams” made me ponder the allure of sleeping forever in a flawless world.
Presler 2
So I guess I will take a crack at Shakespeare, or something. (Gasp)
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 75," shared with us, speaks eloquently of the passionate love the narrator feels for another, a love that the narrator feels compelled to express. The narrator's whole existence seems dominated by this love, which may or may not be requited; in the presence of the beloved, the narrator feels feasted with pleasure. When the beloved is gone, the narrator feels like one starved and wasting away. Put simply, the narrator's life has become one of two extremes, total satisfaction and complete deprivation.
A cursory Google search quickly led me to another Shakespeare poem called "Carpe Diem." The title was the primary motivator for me to choose this poem. In "Carpe Diem," the narrator encourages the woman he loves not to delay in expressing and enjoying their mutual love. Predictably then, "seize the day" becomes the primary theme of the poem. Indeed, the closing line explicitly states, "Youth's a stuff will not endure." Enjoy the moment, Shakespeare encourages, because "What's to come is still unsure: / In delay there lies no plenty..."
All things considered, I preferred "Carpe Diem" to "Sonnet 75." "Sonnet 75," while beautifully written and emotionally moving, was merely a commentary on a lover's feelings and had little else to offer than the phenomenon it described. Meanwhile, "Carpe Diem," though also a love story, offers a life philosophy. Shakespeare in this poem perfectly expounds on the idea that each day, even each moment, should be optimized because one can never know what the next moment will bring. Perhaps the next moments will be governed by the depressing events discussed by such poets as Plath and Sexton. In light of those disheartening, though profound and important, poems, Shakespeare's optimistic words become all the more invaluable.
Wright 1
I found myself to become rather curious when it comes to the mentality behind most tragic poets; especially Anne Sexton. I deeply familiarized myself with her two poems we discussed in class today: "The Addict", and "After Auschwitz". I was intrigued by both poems, and decided to research her other works. Sexton's poems seemed to have repeating themes, consisting of alcoholism, depression, menstruation, and of course, death. Such poems were highly frowned upon during the time when they were written. Many considered her writing to be too "taboo", or "inappropriate". Today, society seems to view similar writings through an addictive habit. We simply cannot get rid of them, due to one magical and powerful place: The Internet. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, EHarmony, and other social networks flood the Internet. There seems to be no escape from the constant need of technology to tell us how others think we should live our life. Anne Sexton wrote to express her individual feelings, regardless of others' insecure opinions. One particular piece of literature I enjoyed reading was her 1962 poem entitled: "The Abortion". Despite controversy views, and all political beliefs aside, the poem is poignant and sorrowful. She uses one line of repetition beautifully: "Someone who should have been born in gone." (532) Within this sentence the reader clearly understands the narrators regrets and resentment towards herself. She also realizes the action of receiving an abortion has caused another human's death. Continuing to remind herself that she murdered another human being is a representation of hatred and forgiveness she has towards herself. The only way the speaker can cope with her actions is possibly through writing. Hense, "The Abortion." Although Anne Sexton never had an abortion, I believe it takes courage to write about a political issue (especially during the 1960-1970's.) Most of us have a distinct opinion whether abortion is right or wrong, but nevertheless, Anne decided to combined political issues with reality; resulting in plausible works of poetry.
William Carlos Williams was a confessional poet that created numerous poems to give the reader nearly every possible emotion. From the slow, mournful words of The Widow’s Lament in Springtime to the free, and funny flow within Danse Russe, Williams appears to have mastered it all. The writing within Danse Russe show how a man may escape the pressures and worries of everyday life and can just be alone and naked while he dances. Whether people need to be nude just like our narrator or whether they just need to take a deep breath, the main point of the poem is to allow yourself independence from time to time and be alone on occasion. The opposite feel of upbeat and flowing rhythms takes place in Williams’ poem, the Widow’s Lament in Springtime, in which the narrator sees the beautiful and overwhelming whites and yellows and reds and yet can only turn away and wish to wander into the marsh and fall among the flowers. Looking back at thirty-five years of having a husband and losing him which was more strikingly intense than all of the colors that were in the flowers.
To me, the happier, unrestrained, Danse Russe, was more enjoyable as optimism is better than sadness. The increased detail and basic plot also give a more perceptible story. With the man only being in one room and all of the other characters being absent, the story can focus on the act being performed and the meaning of the dialog. For the other however, we must dig far deeper and see that the manly existence within the story is completely gone which makes me slightly less favored to it. The overall depression that also takes place within the poem really is unattractive to me at this time. If these were to be observed tomorrow, I may change my mind but for now the light and happy poem is my favorite of Williams’.
I chose the poem "Whispers of Immortality" by T.S. Eliot. Eliot is talking about 3 different characters who all have their own ideas of immortality. The first one, Webster, sees immortality as resting peacefully in a grave, even if your flesh decays the bones will always remain intact. Even if he doesn’t reach fame and fortune like so many others aspire to do, he’ll be immortal in his own right. The second character is Mr. Donne, a lustful person who never had the experience of a lover in his life. The stanzas about Mr. Donne are a little racy, “to seize and clutch and penetrate” meaning sexual relations, his lust is “anguish of the marrow”, he feels this desire not only in flesh but down to his bones. This led to him not taking care of himself and died of illness, not achieving immortality at all, who would remember the man who had no lovers? Therefore, no wife, children, or grandchildren to carry on his memory. You could say Mr. Donne died in shallow vain. The third character is a Russian ballerina named Grishkin. She wears makeup around her eyes for emphasis (durr) which gives the image of a woman who wants to stand out and impress. This character represents sexual impulse, “uncorseted, her friendly bust” means she’s not wearing a bra, and Eliot compares her to a jaguar. He focuses on her figure with the word “sleek” and uses it more than once in comparing her to the jaguar, women are often compared to felines in the way they move when enticing a lover. Her past lovers are “scampering marmosets”, perhaps even the author is writing about lover he had that stuck with him through time, which is immortality in a way, having someone remember you after many years. Even for someone as lovely at Grishkin, death is inevitable, no matter how hard they try to leave their mark time sweeps them away.
Gacke 2
Anne Sexton, personal life and drama aside, was a talented, profound poet. Her personal life no doubt affected and influenced her poetry, but I believe that without it, she would have found inspiration elsewhere to invent the beautifully written poetry she is obviously capable of. After reading through a few of her other poems, “The Fury of God’s Goodbye” came across as the most interesting to me--the most thought-provoking. The lines are all very short and choppy, and are included in only one, long stanza. The structure adds to the abrupt mood of the poem: God is saying goodbye to her (the poet, whether you read it as Anne Sexton or not), and she is left rather alone. She writes “what washerwoman / who walks out / when you’re clean / but not ironed.” To me, these lines signify the hopelessness she must have felt during the process of writing it. She longs to be refined, made to form her full potential. At the end up the poem, when the poet wakes up, she finds the sweater she has snuggled with has transformed into bricks of gold. It could symbolize success--a success that is possible without guidance and faith. The last few lines, however, make it clear that this type of success is not meaningful: “I’d won the world / but like a / foreign explorer, / I’d lost / my map.”
Furthermore, I believe the poem can be brought into a more general meaning. “God’s Goodbye” could be anybody’s goodbye--anybody who you love and care about. Though the poem ends in what one might call a depressing way (for she is a foreign explorer without a map), I think it can be inspirational as well. Strive to keep faith, and strive to meet your full potential. For this reason, I believe that this poem ranks higher than Sexton’s poems we have read in class. “The Addict” and “After Auschwitz” are both extremely thought-provoking and well-written (as well as my favorites in the shared drive), but “The Fury of God’s Goodbye” strikes me on a more personal note.
The poem I selected (“Life, VI”) is brief, but is also heartwarming and selfless. Emily Dickinson captures an image of gracefulness in few words and brings readers to a state of reflection and appreciation for the small joys in life. Unlike the confessional poetry we have read, Emily Dickinson’s poems often possess an air of hope and an uplifting nature. She makes her own life’s purpose revolve around the wellbeing of others. I believe her poem’s message can be described in part through the words of the Dalai Lama: “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.” She believes even one act of goodness can be significant. Her life--any life--will be fruitful if she can help “one”, whether that be one person or one animal. A single altruistic action can give an entire life worth. The two poems are similar because both promote positive thinking; “There is another sky” rejects pessimism by acknowledging the presence of sadness, but then the poem casts away that darkness with “Never mind faded forests”. In “Life, VI”, Emily Dickinson states four ways in which her potential for goodness can be fulfilled, and the only thoughts that do not mention “one” way she can help are the repeated words of “I shall not live in vain”. Four acts of goodness and two statements of poetic reason are described in the single stanza. This poem could have been longer--Dickinson could have reiterated that there are more acts of goodness she could do--but I believe the “one” stanza fits the “one” necessary act message. If she can write one stanza and change one person’s life, she shall not live in vain. The poem is appropriately categorized in the “Life” section of her collection of poetry because its central focus is the bettering of lives.
Emily Dickinson spent much of her life alone in the confinements of her house, and her poetry did not publicly surface until after her death. I think this background information plays an essential role in the message of her poem. She may not have touched as many lives in her lifetime as someone who was a notable figure in the community, but she knew that you don’t have to be a celebrity to make a positive difference.
Johnson 1
While reading the poems in the folder I really enjoyed the few by Anne Sexton. She was more direct than other poets but left her subject content vague enough so as to be related to humanity as a whole, or even someone’s personal life. “The Addict”, to me, was very well put together and since she didn’t label her addictions, only used colors and capsules to describe them, the reader could easily replace them with things they are addicted to themselves. I also liked how “After Auschwitz” was such a stab at humanity. Sexton basically brings the holocaust up to break the ice so she can more easily deface mankind. The poems in the drive are more vague than the other works by Sexton I skimmed and they have a much bigger picture. The poem I read by Sexton outside of the folder was “Cinderella”. She leads the poem with snippets of “Cinderella Stories” and summing them up with small parallel statements like “From homogenized to martinis at lunch” and so on. For most of the poem Sexton is creating her own kind of Cinderella story by adding a little gore and morbidity. “Cinderella” is much more of a story based poem than “After Auschwitz” and “The Addict” using characters and concrete events but the conclusion still leads to applicable content. Its hard to say which poem is the best because they all have different concepts and are crafted differently. I think I liked “Cinderella” the best because it was gory enough to not be gross and interesting enough cause deeper thinking. As well as most of Sexton’s poems that touch heavily on taboo topics: incest, adultery, suicide, etc.
Rykhus 1
“A Drinking Song”
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
~William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was a very gifted poet. He was able to construct a plethora of poetic verses that told stories and had humorous connotations. In this poem he constructs a 6 line song that addresses a common theme of beer goggles, where people get more attractive the more intoxicated you become. He did not follow a perfect poetic structure as the first line only has 6 syllables and the subsequent 5 all have 7 syllables. I do not understand why he did this. I could understand not fallowing the pattern at the end mimicking his drunkenness after drinking but to start off the poem is weir to me.
I do not believe this poem is better than the poem we have in our google drive folder, “The Second Coming”. This is because of the imagery and story invoked in “The Second Coming”. The second poem is more entertaining and more humorous to me but that is its only purpose to entertain as this is not a new phenomenon. “The Second Coming” has a more involved sense imagery and passionate content. It is a lot easier to write about the petty nights out of men but to write a poem on the return of God is truly something no petty poet can handle. This is why I believe the poem about the return of God and how it will cause the sphinx to rise up out of the dessert is the better poem by William Butler Yeats, a very masterful poet indeed.
Spencer Heidbrink 1
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it
in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.
After reading some of the poetry in the folder, I was immediately attracted to William Carlos Williams's style. After researching some of his work, I found a poem entitled "Complete Destruction." The poem is about a family who are burying a cat and burning its box to get rid of the fleas it had. The poem is three sentences long and has two stanzas. It seems that the second sentence is split to keep the first stanza focused on mourning the cat, and to keep the second stanza focused on the annihilation of the colony of fleas. Disease, sickness, and death are all topics that William Carlos Williams was more than likely familiar with, being a doctor. It is interesting that the fleas are destroyed by the three elements of earth, fire, and the cold or icy weather. This seems to be an archetype of the ancient Greek elements: earth, fire, water, and wind. (The latter two combining to make the icy weather) Some of the fleas died from being buried with the cat, others died in the conflagration that destroyed that cat box, and the rest died from exposure to the winter elements. It seems to me that William Carlos Williams is speaking about the human nature through this poem. He seems to be saying that when someone or something destroys one of our loves, we will go out of our way to completely destroy it. This may have also been a poetic explanation of the doctor's curse. He probably tried to save the cat from its infestation, but, failing, he had to utterly annihilate everything that the cat came in contact with to prevent the spread of its fleas and its disease. The whole poem is laced with the theme of the burden of necessity. William Carlos Williams wrote a short, emotional piece with the power and curtness of chapter seventy-five in Life of Pi.
Long 1
In the last couples days we have read many different poems by various authors. The author that really attracted my attention is Anne Sexton. I would be lying if I said that I was fond of poetry--I am not. However, when I read Sexton’s work, I find it very intriguing. After researching, and finding numerous of Sexton’s poems, I came across “The Abortion.” She starts the first line with “Somebody who should have been born is gone.” This immediately attracted my attention and I wanted to read on. The poem is about a lady--I could not pick out if it was Sexton talking about herself or not--who is on her way to get an abortion. As the person is driving, they note that the “roads are sunken,” and other negative aspects towards the surrounding areas. By this, we can tell that whoever this person is, is very depressed. I have noticed that Anne Sexton’s poems all of one sort of theme--the dark, depressing mood and tone. She is very assertive by the way she writes, and lets all of her feelings pour out. I ranked “The Abortion” below “After Auschwitz,” which can be found in our Google Drive folder. I think that there is such a deep message and connection within the second poem stated, because numerous amounts of people know what happened during the Holocaust and how appalling this event was for everyone who experienced, and know about it. “Each Nazi took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby and sauteed him for breakfast in his frying pan.” This line of the poem absolutely disturbed me, and I think that was one of Sexton’s purposes in the style of writing she took on. She has created many masterpieces throughout her poetry career, and these only being just two of them. For now, and in the future, Anne Sexton’s poems will always come to my mind if and when somebody mentions poetry authors to me.
Kruse 1
Finding a poet I enjoyed reading the works of enough to write about that poet was not difficult; I knew that I wanted to discuss E. E. Cummings’ poems. I really enjoy his style. He is not so much a confessional poet, but his poetry is beautiful and filled with imagery. I appreciate what I call “fruity words,” words that are pretty to say and to read. I was really quite interested in reading his love poems, because it is not a social norm now to send the person you have a special affection letters as such. We share short text messages, which are not nearly as eloquent, though still heartfelt. A poem I enjoy immensely is “If.” I have heard this poem before, because it has been transposed into a choral piece. He speaks through the poem--there are bad things, and he knows it, but he is accepting them. If lies were not lies and getting the measles was nice, he would not be who he is, and the reader would not be who the reader is. The world needs some bad for the good to be seen as such. If not everything was as it is now, we would not become who we were meant to be. Our blunders make us who we are, and we are who we are supposed to be. Wishing for things to be different is pointless, we need to accept that things are the way they are for a reason. He is also addressing another person, presumably a woman, in the poem. “We wouldn’t be we.” is a powerful line, because every little struggle and triumph shapes a relationship. I will compare this poem to “Since Feeling is First.” This poem leans more towards a personal feeling, that E. E. Cummings is writing to some lover specifically. It is written from the perspective of a completely smitten man. He is so enthralled that he cannot think clearly. Both of his poems are lovely, in the sense of beauty derived and in that their topic is of love. One addresses feelings of being completely in love, and the other addresses the flaws in love that are necessary.
I chose poems by Emily Dickinson. When reading poems by her i felt connected and was able to easily read them. She has a way of writing that draw my attention in and makes me want to continue reading. Although her poems are short and easy to read, the meaning behind her poems are far from easy. They have very complex and deep meanings. An example of this would be in the poem, ““Hope” is the thing with feathers.” In this poem, I believe Dickinson is trying to portray that everyone finds hope in the little things. She shows us that she finds hope in the birds, and how no matter what the weather is like or what time of day it is they always sing such a beautiful song. I love how Emily Dickinson is able to write with such simplicity but yet still capture such a large meaning throughout her poems. Another poem I really enjoyed reading was, “I Dwell in Possibility”. This title of this poem really caught my eye. It reminded me of people in highschool. This poem makes me think of how people who are faced with such great possibilities and opportunities tend to fail due to all the pressure. Emily Dickinson is a great poet. I believe she has hidden meanings behind her poems, and has a great way of portraying her messages.
Alex Oddy 2
I found the poem "The Addict" by Anne Sexton to be a rather powerful poem in particular. All of her poems are very passionate and powerful, most likely due to her rough early life and depression, but this one stood out to me the most because of the subject area. In "The Addict", Sexton talks about a woman who abuses prescription drugs. It is mentioned that the person in the poem knows that these pills will eventually kill them, but continues on a path of destruction anyways. Also, the narrator mentions loving the pills more than herself. This suggests that the narrator probably dislikes herself for doing these things to her body (abusing pills, destructive decisions, etc.), but the only coping mechanism that she has is to further abuse these pills. She even at one point in the poem calls the pills her mother, indicating perhaps that the pills sooth her and calm her down as a mother would. The narrator seems to have no qualms about death and the inevitable fate that her addiction is leading her to, even to the point that she says she is trying to kill herself in small amounts at a time. This most likely reflects Anne Sexton's suicide attempts throughout her life, as there were many unsuccessful attempts. During this time she probably knew that in the future one of her attempts would be successful, so in a way she too was killing herself in "small amounts at a time" by coming closer to succeeding in suicide. Eventually, Sexton did succeed when she locked herself inside her garage with her car running, ending her life in 1974. The only time that the poem talks about being hesitant of killing herself is a short line in which Sexton wrote, "Actually, I'm hung up on it.". This sentence shows that there might have been a small hesitation on suicide for the narrator, but the casualness that the narrator talks about it shows that she most likely does not care and will continue to abuse pills anyways.
Erin Buse
Pd 2
In doing my research regarding confessional poetry, I was intrigued by Anne Sexton. I think I was intrigued by her because she was not only discussing very taboo subjects, but she was a woman during I time where women are to be seen and not heard. But she refused to be silent, so she screamed. The first of Sexton’s work that I read was “Anna Who Was Mad,” which only enticed me more to further research her and her work. The narrator of “Anna Who Was Mad,” presumably Anne, feels so much remorse I thought she was going to commit suicide. She wants more than anything to talk to her friend and she if Anne brought on Anna’s insanity and death. My favorite thing about the poem is the way she ends the stanzas, it is like an echo fading out. Her last hope and will to live is fading out.
Out of the folder, I choose to read Sexton’s “The Addict.” In this poem, I specifically appreciated the content. It is hard for someone who is not addicted to a substance to understand the pain and reliance an addict goes through everyday, and this poem makes it easier to understand. The narrator speaks in a way that is almost her last breath, she just wants to get everything out and explain her pain, and her love, for the pills. She loves the pills because they bring her closer to death, but she hates them because she needs them. I like the was Sexton explains the addiction through multiple similes and metaphors in the hope of connecting with the reader. One reader may connect to the pills being like a sport, while another may understand the marriage metaphor. To me, Sexton made me understand more of what it is like to be an addict, and needs the orange, white, and green pills.
Both “Anna Who Was Mad” and “The Addict” are written as a plea for help in the narrators approaching death, whether the death be by choice or not. Anne thrusts her feelings into the world in the hope that people will further understand her and others like her. Others that are paralyzed by depression, or sold their soul to pills. Whatever Anne is trying to express, she connects with the reader through multiple similes and metaphors, yet keeping the length of the poem in check. Anne could not make these poems to lengthy because then it would not of the last breath effect. This to the point writing bombards the reader with so many emotions in such short time that it is a new experience. In “The Addict” I felt Anne’s desperation and hate and love towards the pills; and in “Anna Who Was Mad” I felt her remorse and need to know if Anna’s pain was her fault. I loved each of the poems for different reasons. I particularly liked the structure of “Anna Who Was Mad” while the content of “The Addict” taught me something I have never understood. Having to choose, I think I liked the “The Addict” more because I learned from it through Anna’s similes and metaphors.
McIlravy 2
Anne Sexton is often seen as a tragic writer. Her poems contain real-life information that most likely once happened. While reading poetry in class, I was really drawn to Anne Sexton’s work. I became very interested in what else she had to provide. My favorite poem by Sexton is “After Auschwitz.” It is interesting, yet saddening, to read her poem about the brutal holocaust. Sexton’s work is often tragic and heartbreaking, but it immediately draws readers in because she writes about events or experiences that are not always discussed. I chose to analyze the poem “The Death Notebooks” and compare it to “After Auschwitz.” “The Death Notebooks” is a confrontation with death and divinity. She talks about trying to find a God, but she has it locked away. I believe Anne felt alone and without a God, considering she composed this poem the year of her suicide. She seems to be writing about herself in this poem and that she was losing it. When comparing the two, I noticed that they both contain “darkness” or “black.” It seems as though those words are representing death. I believe Anne Sexton’s work was not always about her, but she put her own feelings into them because she could relate to the loneliness and depression. In “The Death Notebooks,” Anne asked herself, “Anne, who were you?” When reading that line I felt as if she was referring to committing suicide. She obviously did not like who she became and she felt she could not do anything. A common theme throughout Anne’s poems is death. She often talks of tragic events causing death, which eventually led to her death. Maybe Sexton was searching for a God, like in “The Death Notebooks,” but she just could not find it. Sexton’s poems are tragic but also influential. I look forward to studying her poems more.
Henderson2
When looking through the drive for a poet, I came across Shakespeare. I typed in his name on google to find some poems and found many. One poem that I discovered was All the World’s a Stage. This poem attracted me because I had heard the first two lines countless times.
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players”
I read this poem several times trying to remember a short story that I read last year. The Masque of the Red Death finally came to mind. In Shakespeare’s poem he talks about the shifts of life. Slowly starting from an infant and ending in a character’s death. In The Masque of the Red Death. There are seven rooms for the seven stages of life: birth (blue), infant (purple), youth (green), early adulthood (orange), late adulthood (white), elder (violet) and death (black). Instead of using rooms, Shakespeare used shifts. Instead of going through an average life, a specific life is shared. Starting from an infant the journey goes on through schoolboy, lover, soldier, wise judge, old man and then finally corpse. The character had quite the life I would say. This poem is one big metaphor, the first two lines give two metaphors. The world is compared to a stage. Each all the people in the world are just players/actors. They have their entrances (births) and exits (death). “And one man in his time plays many parts” every man plays multiple parts as it is part of growing up. Looking up things about the poem I found that it was said by Jaques in the play As You Like It. In the first twelve lines, there are two metaphors and three similes. The comparison of the character and other objects add some mental pictures to my head while reading it. I think this poem is spectacular just as Shakespeare is.
Mutschelknaus 2
When reading through the poems in the poetry folder, I was drawn to Walt Whitman’s “O Me! O Life!” I have never been a big fan of poetry and I always prefer poems to be short. When reading this poem, I enjoyed how short it was, but I also enjoyed what Whitman was writing about. Whitman is talking about the ups and downs of life that everybody has. When going through the downs in life, we begin to notice the bad not only in the people around us, but also ourselves. Whitman went through hard times himself and wrote this to cope with his problems. Like most of his poems, this poem relates to everybody’s lives and I enjoy that about his poetry.
The poem I chose of his that is not in the folder is “Miracles.” In this, Whitman talks about how everything in life is a miracle. He feels society takes life and all it entails for granted. When reading this poem, I completely agreed with Whitman. Unfortunately, society takes many things for granted like wealth, health, and even life itself. People who are not as fortunate do not have wealth or the greatest health. If normal people were put in that position, they would not be able to live like that and it would make them appreciate life itself. Whitman was one of nine kids in his family and his father was a house builder. His family was never wealthy and often moved because of bad investments and his father’s bad economical status. Knowing this about Whitman helps readers understand his motivation for many of his poems. He was an average person and wrote about his life which is relatable to society today. When comparing these two poems, I enjoyed “Miracles” better. Even though both discussed life, “Miracles” related to me personally much better which I enjoyed.
Hindbjorgen 1
I chose to compare Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “Dreams” to one of my all time favorite poems “Annabel Lee,” which is also by Poe. Dreams is a beautiful poem, yet is fairly depressing. Poe, the narrator, talks about the horrors dreams bring him, yet they still comfort him because they are lovely in comparison to the life he has been living. Annabel Lee is about a young couple that are seriously in love. Annabel lee dies, and the boy (presumably Poe) is so deeply in love that he sees her everywhere, in his dreams and in the stars, and even slept in her grave with her every night. Poe was very particular about rhyme in his poems. “Dreams” has twenty-six lines in it’s first stanza, with a rhyme scheme of a, a, b, b, c, c, etc. The second stanza is considerably shorter, most likely to make a statement about reality, and follows the same rhyme scheme. “Annabel Lee” is written in a song like manner. It is comprised of six to eight lined stanzas with a rhyme scheme of a, b, a, b, c, b (with the occasional extra line rhymed with the “b” lines added in). Because of it’s song like qualities, meter, and its rhyme scheme, the song almost sounds like a children's’ lullaby or fable, especially when it includes lines like “In a kingdom by the sea.” However, Poe is not a writer for children. Poe writes twisted stories and poetry, no matter how seducing and beautiful the words may sound. Both “Dreams” and “Annabel Lee” tell stories of reality not being as great as the worlds that exist in one’s head. I believe that “Annabel Lee” has a stronger meaning and translation that “Dreams” however, because it depicts the human relation between one who is alive and one who is dead. It brings out the question if one can move on after being truly in love, or if love dies, the soul dies with it. Although “Dreams” holds a very relatable subject of dreams being better than reality, it is not as original as the topic of “Annabel Lee.” Being an individual who loves music, there is a higher aesthetic appeal to “Annabel Lee” as well, because of its rhythmic and beautiful stanzas. “Dreams” definitely makes a statement with the long first stanza, but it is almost to the point of boring me as I feel it does not move on without breaks in the speech. Poe wrote romantically in both poems, as he lived from 1809-1849. The romantic era is 1800-1850--Poe spent his entire life knowing romanticism, and his poetry reflects the time period. Poe is a spectacular writer and poet, and I admire all of his work.
Ask. Pd 5
“The Raven”
by Edgar Allan Poe
My feelings towards poetry changed in seventh grade after we read “The Raven” by Poe. It was so dark, and was just so masterfully woven together. I had always thought poetry was a girly thing, although I have seen plenty of poems written by men. The Raven, is an example of that. The poem is about a man slowly going delusional after the tragic death of his wife Lenore, which is something Poe is very familiar with. He is in his chamber when a raven flies in, and answers his questions with the word, “nevermore”. He slips into terrible depression as his questions are answered, especially when asking if Lenore went to heaven. I loved this poem so much that I drew inspiration from it to write my narrative from earlier in the year, for I used the phrase “and nothing more” multiple times throughout. I in fact used it six times. I have found that using a phrase over and over becomes erie. I know it sounds novice to choose such a famous poem, and it definitely is, but hopefully I will be able to extend my knowledge in different directions and hopefully discover a new poem that I like at some point in this unit.
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.
This is honestly my favorite part of the poem. It is dark, mysterious, and overall erie.
Knudtson 5
“A Dream Within a Dream”
by Edgar Allan Poe
I am fascinated by “A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe. I find this poem to be both meaningful and true. While reading “A Dream Within a Dream” I felt as though he is trying to say one of two ideas, you cannot control how unfortunate or fortunate life can be. I also feel he could be trying to say he is waking from a nightmare, but in his waking life he lives in a nightmare. I find this easy to believe as everybody he loved died when he was young, all by Tuberculosis. After his wife died, his depression and alcoholism worsened. This is my favorite piece of art written by Edgar Allan Poe, it is real, and shows great. These lines, are definitely my favorite:
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
This is the case because they really show how we are not always in control. We may make our own choices, but I will introduce the concept of sonder. This is the idea that everyone has a complicated life, full of emotions and ideas; separate from our lives. Choices can be made from other people, who are not just a piece of the puzzle to your life. I am unsure, if he is using “God” in a case of being vain, for emphasis, or trying to inform us how God is in control.
Lusk 5
When looking through the poetry folder I first read Anne Sexton’s “The Addict.” I found it so interesting because it could be interpreted in many different ways. You could look at it as a warning to the general public about how dangerous and harmful drugs are, or you could just look at it as a story of what she went through. After reading it I was anxious to look up more of her poems. I came across one entitle “All My Pretty Ones.” This poem revolves around a topic not many people like to talk about—death. It’s about how she lost both her parents within a month. She talks about the struggles of having to get rid of her fathers and mothers belongings that she had no connection to “boxes of pictures of people I do not know./ I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.” When looking at the title of this poem it can be connected to MacDuff’s speech (Act IV scene iii) in Macbeth when he learns the about the murder of his father. I was instantly drawn to Anne Sexton’s style and wanted to read more. I was intrigued by what she would talk about. They were topics that most people are weary to talk about and don’t like to talk about. She has poems about death, abortion, suicide, menstruation, and masturbation. She creates rambunctious voice that gives the reader an unsteady feeling when reading her work. Her life has influenced so much of her poetry and you are able to tell by the details that she goes into. She suffered from depression for most of her life which is why she started writing poetry, and what made it so interesting. She would write exactly how she felt, which is what drew me in because it’s not often that people are so open out these topics.
Anderson 5
When reading the poems in the Google drive, Anne Sexton’s poetry really stuck out to me. There is something different about her poems that put a dark twist on everyday things that people do not normally discuss. These issues she talks about happen all the time, but for some people, especially at the time when she was alive, it was looked at as terrible to talk about. The one I found the most interesting and was full of detail, was her poem “The Addict”. This poem talks about how by doing drugs and taking pills she is on the road to death. This poem is focused on suicide and the longing for death because she was so confused. Sexton did commit suicide, which explains why she may have been able to write this poem with such meaning. She wrote another poem that deals with death called, “Consorting with Angels”. This one goes into detail about wanting to be equal with man. Back then, women were looking at as the normal housewife, and sometimes not treated so well by the men in their life. This also brings up the feminist movement that was slowly starting to take place during this time. She shows how much this treatment of slaving on the men bothers her by the line, “I was tired of being a woman”. The poem goes on to list the different chores she has to do in order to keep the men happy. The poem continues to explain her wanting to choose death rather than fight against the men in her life. She puts this explanation of wanting to die by placing it in a dream, as if to say it would be a dream to be dead rather than suffer alive. The line, “the king has brought me into his chamber” shows that she believes in Christ and wants to be given a better life by going to heaven.
McGee 5
Immediately Anne Sexton’s poem, “The Addict” stood out to me. Reading the poem “The Addict” was easy for me. Her words made complete sense, as she very smoothly exposed her flaws to the audience. “After Auschwitz”, another poem by Anne Sexton, also stood out to me. I really connected to this poem. Learning about the Holocaust sickens me. I think that it sickened Anne Sexton as well, but along with that I think that almost everything humankind did sickened her. The fact that America and other countries during that time were reluctant to help out the helpless sickened her. The fact that people were so full of evil and hate sickened her. In this poem she uses amazing, vivid imagery, which helps the reader really understand and relate to her distaste of mankind. I believe that Anne Sexton was severely ashamed of what the human race had become. In one line she said “(man) is not a temple but an outhouse”. She believes that everyone, even herself, have become accustomed to evil. “And death looks on with a casual eye,” I believe is the phrase that brings it all together. People can see such terrible things in her days and just be ok with it. The same goes for today; it has become the norm in mainstream America to be placid in awful circumstances.This poem, for me anyways, ranks as one of her best. I think the author’s intent was clearly understood by the reader, and I feel you cannot read this poem and view the world the same. I would rank “After Auschwitz” above “The Addict” mainly because I can relate better to it.
LienM 5
I read “To Speak of Woe That is in Marriage” by Robert Lowell. I found this one easier to read than “Skunk Hour” when it came to his word choice. The wording in “Skunk Hour” wasn’t meant for the readers to understand because of the connection he had with Elizabeth Bishop, whom that poem was written for. “To Speak of Woe That is in Marriage” gets the mind thinking about those marriages that are corrupted by lust. The husband in this poem runs off in search of prostitutes whenever there is an argument between the husband and wife. When he returns, at 5:00 AM, he is hammered out of his wits and couldn’t distinguish left from right. The wife longs for his attention so she steals his keys and money to strap it to her thigh. After she starts doing this he starts showing his masculinity and suppresses her--basically, belittling her so he can remain in control.
In my opinion I would rank “To Speak of Woe That is in Marriage” above “Skunk Hour” simply because of the fact that I understand it. I have grown up in a very loving family, never exposed to marriage corrupted as such so this is also a sad reminder that not everyone is as fortunate as me to grow up with parents who truly love each other.
Pruett 5
Dickinson's approach on poetry is a fascinating one. She discusses in many of her poems the consequences of wishing for what you cannot have, the hopelessness of what situations may seem, and overall the struggles of man/woman. Her poem in the shared drive, "There is another Sky" , discusses the hopes many people share of a better future than the present they have now. Dickinson, oddly enough, retaliates against this belief, saying that the grass is not always greener, and that the present may be what offers the most. "There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there." This is my favorite excerpt from the poem. Its beautiful imagery always forms a vivid picture in my mind, and I am fascinated to learn of her approach on a topic that is so often directed in another way. Her poem "Under the Light, yet Under" has a much different message, but the underlying themes are similar. "Under the Light, yet Under" explains the concept of always missing departed loved ones, and the pain that is associated with it. While the two poems have different concepts, their themes both portray our desire to have what we know is not obtainable. Many of Dickinson's poems are similar to this. While it is a rather depressing attitude about life, it exposes us to a different aspect that is often not touched upon in the literature we are most often exposed to. Whether its religion, politics, even life in general, Dickinson takes an approach that has not yet been expanded upon. I greatly appreciate this, and cannot wait to read more from her in the future.
Elizabeth Bishop was known for leaving personal details out her writing, while still penning deeply confessional poetry, a feat few can master. In the poems we have read she uses her excellent descriptive skills to speak of internal struggles that we can only speculate about. However, in another one of her works titled “argument” she takes a different tone. Her father committed suicide at a young age and I believe this poem is manifestation about her feels on the topic. She speaks of: “Days that cannot bring you near or will not, Distance trying to appear.” It is obvious that she misses her father and she “argues” against his choice to leave her saying: argue argue argue with me, endlessly, neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.” Once she reached a decent level of success as a poet, she travelled the world over in search of inspiration, and maybe something more. She describes: “all that land, beneath the plane; that coastline, of dim beaches deep in sand, stretching indistinguishably, all the way, all the way to where my reasons end?” She uses this description of distance to express how far away she feels from him, which begs the question: was she searching the world to somehow try and find him despite his death? Or was she trying to discover some missing piece of herself? Despite her famous descriptive power, this poem focuses much more on emotion rather than setting and events, which makes it a rare personal expression from an author who normally remained distant and vague in her works. “Argument” is not a lengthy piece but I believe it speaks volumes about the feelings and struggles of Elizabeth Bishop and certainly merits being placed among the works we are studying.
Ode 5
I choose to read “Dolphin” by Robert Lowell. In this poem, Robert Lowell is referencing a woman, the dolphin. It is referencing the woman because of the help he was given by one of his wives through times of hardship. There seems to be a theme of water. Dolphins live in water. The sinking lines could be thought of as fishing lines. He is contemplating suicide in the bottom of the poem, and wants to avoid injury. I think that all of these references to water is for him to commit suicide by drowning. Drowning is said to be the least painful way to commit suicide. Lowell introduces Phèdre. Phèdre is a dramatic tragedy written by Jean-Baptiste Racine in 1677. In the play a lady’s husband dies. She ends the play by pronouncing her love for her former stepson. I do not think that this has much to do with anything except for emphasizing his mental instability.
I would rank “Dolphin” ahead of “Skunk Hour”. I put “Dolphin” in front of “Skunk Hour” because it is easier to understand. Since “Dolphin” is easier to understand it it allows more people to read it and enjoy it, even though enjoyment is not so much the emotion produced from “dolphin”.
Bingen 7
After reading the T.S. Eliot poem in the shared Google Drive folder, I started looking at his other poems. One that particularly intrigued me was “The Hollow Men.” In the Hollow Men, Eliot describes the dangers of passivity and lack of identity. The poem describes a group of hollow men that live in a barren, desert-like valley full of cacti and stones, and have nothing but meager hopes and meaningless dreams. They often try to act, but never finish what they start because, as the poem says, “Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow.” I think that this Shadow represents failure, and each Hollow Man is terrified by it. This seems to be showing Eliot’s feelings about the society he lived in. In Eliot’s eyes, the majority of people were so afraid of failure that they became passive and relied on others to do everything for them, just like the Hollow Men expected “the eyes” to do so in the poem. In essence, I think that Eliot used this poem to say that society’s insurmountable fear of failure will inevitably result in failure of the human race. The last four lines of the poem are:
“This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
To me, these four lines are the most important in the entire poem. They seem to be saying that if everyone is overly passive, the world will not end in any dramatic fashion like one would see in a movie. Instead, humanity will wilt away, and the world will just become a barren wasteland like the one the Hollow Men lived in. In this poem, Eliot seems to be saying that periodic failures are essential in the pursuit of long-term success.
Despite the way that “The Hollow Men” sparked my interest, I think that the other Eliot poem that I read, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was superior to it by the slimmest of margins. Eliot was able to use rhyme so cleverly in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” that I barely realized that it was there. Conversely, “The Hollow Men” has no rhyme scheme. Both poems convey powerful themes, but I think that Eliot was more clever in his Prufrock poem due to the incorporation of such a subtle, yet effective rhyme scheme.
Ellis pd 7
Over his lifetime Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, or short poems with a special meter. Two of his best, Sonnet 29 and sonnet 75, contain different messages but both are about love and suffering. In sonnet 29 the poet is “in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes” so has conflict with the world. no matter what the trial, he is still happy because “thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings.”This poem ends with a positive message. The 75th sonnet differs because it deals with an inner conflict. The poet has become obsessed with his “treasure” or lover and cannot control himself. Each line is a portion of his struggle in “Possessing or pursuing no delight.”
Shakespeare has always been interesting to me. He suffered through so many tragic events and setbacks but still managed to become the best playwright of all time. Unlike some other high school students, I have never had a problem reading his plays. To understand his sonnets look at Shakespeare's life. Sonnet 29 was written during the black plague. Globe theater was shut down as well as every theater in London, so Shakespeare had difficulty earning money. He also was insulted by a fellow playwright Robert Greene which crushed his spirit. In his sonnet he says “Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, with what I most enjoy contented least,” because he valued Greene’s opinion so much. When reading sonnet 75, the reader could picture Shakespeare as a stalker because he speaks of his lover as “the food of life” as well as other questionable confessions of love. However, history suggests this sonnet was not written because of love. Possibly, the Earl of Southampton was the muse for this poem, because Shakespeare did not want to lose him as a patron for his plays. This would explain lines like “will steal his treasure” and “As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.”
Shakespeare’s 75th sonnet is superior to to sonnet 29, not because of its musical quality or unique word choice. The 75th sonnet appeals more to readers emotionally. Though we all have terrible struggles like in sonnet 29, sonnet 75 provokes jealousy, lust, and greed as well as struggle and love.
Onnen 7
E. E. cummings writes poem on many different topics. Many that I found seem to be confessing his love to a woman or writing about their love for each other. I chose a different kind of poem. The title of this poem is "Humanity I Love You". When I saw this title it intrigued me, I wondered what part of humanity cummings was writing about. When reading the poem you realize cummings in no way loves humanity. He seems to be pointing out how terrible we actually are. The first stanza says this "Humanity I love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both". This entire poem is ironic, cummings begins nearly each stanza by saying humanity i love you... and then pointing out a flaw in our world. That first stanza is saying we would rather continue to praise our own and others successes then worry about people who have been unsuccessful. He then says the reasoning for us doing this is because we are embarrassed to offer empathy for anyone; he also implies that the poor person would also be embarrassed if confronted. Cummings ends this poem my saying "Humanity I hate you", cummings stops with the irony and flat out states that he is fed up with the way humanity behaves.
The poem that is in our shared folder is much more similar to the first poems I described than to "Humanity I Love You". "Since Feeling is First" seems to be another one of cummings love poems. He writes about a girl, her kisses, and the two of them being together. He ends the poem by saying "for life's not a paragraph and death i think is no parenthesis". This gives the woman, that the poem is about, and the reader and good feeling because cummings is saying life is not short we have lots of time. He also says the death is the end not simply an added piece of life. Overall, I find cummings poems very intriguing, they all have different messages and so far all have been worth reading.
I will be writing about Anne Sexton—as she is my favorite poet that has been shared with us in our Google Drive. I particularly liked her poem, “The Addict” for how raw the material is, and the dark language it uses to tell the story of a prescription pill addict’s life. The language is excellent; Sexton can vividly describe the events in this poem because she had experienced this herself. That’s a huge reason why I particularly adore confessional poetry—it brings you into the poems through evocative imagery and allows you to relate to the story. The reader may not have been an addict themselves, but after reading this poem by Sexton, they have more of an understanding of what it’s like to be an addict. Therefore, this enables them to be able to relate emotionally to the main character in the poem. Comparing this poem to another one by Sexton, called “Doctors,” I sensed some displeasure on Sexton’s part for the medical field and those that are involved with it. Back when these were written, doctors had not known as much as they do now, and after several sketchy operations and subsequent mishaps, many were apprehensive of hospitals and doctors. After reading “The Addict,” I judged that Sexton must have had many bad experiences with doctors—after being prescribed to potent drugs, all to no avail—she developed a strong dislike for them. “Doctors” are shown as attempting to be like gods, hiding any patients’ deaths but praising their few successes that they had. “If the doctors cure / then the sun sees it. / If the doctors kill / then the earth hides it.” Doctors had limited intelligence which then led to this medical uncertainty. She realized the fallibility of doctors, but I realize that I would feel the same about doctors back in that time. “The doctors should fear arrogance / more than cardiac arrest.” These phrases were powerful; doctors were risking patients’ lives, which is a delicate concept. Arrogance leads to carelessness, which is dangerous.
Gingles 7
I chose to reflect and analyze Dreams by Edgar Allan Poe because I have always known the name and general idea of what he did, but have never actually done any research on the matter. I discovered that Poe’s father abandoned his family when he was only one year old and the next year his mother passed away. So, at the age of two, Poe was orphaned. This is definitely one of the reasons for his gothic style. Dreams is a poem that gives a feeling of nostalgia. I feel like Poe is talking about his childhood and how, now that he’s older, it seems as if it were a dream. I like this because as we get older, certain things from our childhood seem to be less of an impact on our lives as we would have thought. Remembering a certain event from your childhood is exactly like trying to remember a dream you had the night before. We can always remember bits and pieces, but almost never the entire detail. One part that stood out to me was:
Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
'Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.
We know that Poe’s early childhood was not the best, but he must feel like compared to the life he has now, he would rather be a child once again. In this solemn poem, Poe is able to describe to us just how depressing his life has been. I also like how he talks about his past life in the third person. As if he were watching it completely detached now. Because he is able to solicit such strong emotion and relation to the reader, Poe has certainly set a standard for all great poets to live up to.
Berberich 7
I picked the poem wrote by Hicks called, "Not Springing Forward in Barcelona". This is a great poem because it travels backwards in time. This poem helps us humans see and understand what we have learned all our life... except in a different view. The poem passes through the Nazis in Germany, the Aztecs from long ago, and the poem ends with Adam and Eve. As the poem states, "A cleanser upon the last sentence of history." By traveling history backward, does that make it cleansed? No it does not. This poem ends with Adam and Eve because it wants to leave the author with the understanding that Adam and Eve were possessed by evil as well as everyone in history. If there was no evil, then what would make up history? "M16s sucked bullets from the resurrected." This means, while history is flying backward the bullets are sucking themselves back into the barrels of the guns they came out of and not killing the targets whom the have pinned."Disease brought health, everyone got younger" With time floating backwards people were healthy before being struck with the powerful disease. The disease made them sick; and if you were to reverse- the disease made them healthy. Everyone was becoming younger, no one ever increased their ages, but instead subtracted years. This part of the poem reminded me of the movie, "Curious Case of Benjamin Button". This movie stars Brad Pitt as an older man becoming younger transforming into a baby. It is basically a repeat of his life...backwards. "Showers lifted poison from innocents lungs". When the Jews were in the prison camps they were rained with showers made from poisonous gas. Therefore in this poem the gas is being sucked back up and into the showers like nothing ever happened, and no one ever died. "Or the sun shadowed the rhythms of sleep". From moving history backward the sun shadow means night time, which symbolizes sleep. Sleep and night time were never a paired concept until shortly after Adam and Eve were created. "We watched an apple fall up, into a tree--". Retracing steps in history is an interesting idea. Watching something play in reversed motion is enticing as well. I wonder what it was like to watch that apple fall from the tree, as it was to translate it going up.
Woessner 7
While reading through the poems in our folder, I found it kind of hard to pick an author who really stood out to me. I decided to go with Anne Sexton. There are many male authors, so I thought it would be interesting to talk about one of the female authors. Anne Sexton talks about very different things compared to the other authors in our folder. Sexton talks a lot about gloomy topics, such as abortion, killing, and suicide. Poems are very confusing to me. I liked “The Addict” more than “After Auschwitz” because I could understand it a little more clearly. In “The Addict,” she talks about getting addicted to pharmaceutical drug pills and how they are better than a mother to her, and even how she tries to kill herself in small amounts. I do not know very many poets who are able to talk about to the whole world through their poems these topics in their lives. However, I agree with what Brady Zell said yesterday in our forum that this might have been helpful to the poets to write down their problems and let people know. Another poem I found by Anne Sexton that I thought was very interesting is called “The Wifebeater.” This is another very sad and gloomy poem about a man who beats wives and even children. The very first sentence caught my eye right away. She says “There will be mud on the carpet tonight and blood in the gravy as well.” She talks about how “yesterday he was walking like a man in the world,” disguised like any other normal man. She then says that his mother “ kept him chained to the food tree or turned him on and off like a water faucet and made women through all these hazy years the enemy with a heart of lies,” saying that his mother made him think badly about women, and that is why he is the wifebeater. I liked this poem even more than “The Addict” because, once again, I could understand “The Wifebeater” better.
Klamm 2
“Sitting on the Berlin Wall” V.S. “Not Springing Forward in Barcelona”
Patrick Hicks
“Sitting on the Berlin Wall” is about a man who climbs up the Berlin wall and sits on top of the structure, one leg on each side. It talks about how this “Peace Line” is only separating hate from hate and not really solving anything or mending the relationships on each side. He has just reached the wall as “a fresh hole smashed into the Soviet concrete.” He then is at the Berlin wall at a time when it is in the process of coming down or has at least lost some of its integrity and original purpose. He also views his city from up high in an out of body experience. In this vision he sees all the destruction this wall and the people who built it have caused to his home. He sees the funerals, the bombs and the tear gas. One of my favorite parts of the poem is the last paragraph. He talks to the concrete, personifies it by calling it “worried concrete,” and tells the concrete that “there is still work to be done.” He is saying the wall is worried about further damage to its body and face and does not know if it will be mended or will be torn down. The author reassures the wall that it will be brought down. The line will be demolished and that after all the work the wall will cease to exist.
I personally like “Not Springing Forward in Barcelona” better than this poem. This poem travels backwards in time and shows how we have caused enormous destruction by showing how the evil deeds undone. “Gashes were healed by knives” is a prime example of this. We see that the knife in the proper time stream would have caused someone to be cut but going backwards it is a healing tool. “M16s suck bullets from the resurrected...bombs rebuilt cities,...everyone got younger.” This poem covers much of history but in a backward fashion which I think is quite inventive and unique. So overall I prefer Not Springing Forward in Barcelona because of its inventive way of addressing the evil caused by humans by making that evil a healing tool.
Beldin 1
I read through many poems when trying to decide who to write about, and was quickly drawn to Anne Sexton. I found it rather strange how writing was supposed to help her broken mind and she was still drawn to kill herself. But, even in death Sexton wanted to be noticed, she made her suicide look pleasant and natural.
Sexton seemed to always try and incorporate parts of her life into her writing. In her poem “All My Pretty Ones,” she refers to her fathers “alcoholic tendencies.” She also adds how she felt as a child being abandoned by both her parents, she describes how her parents made her feel, “as cracked as wrinkled tobacco leaves.” Due to her parents lack of love, Sexton was driven to insanity.
It seems that Sexton was constantly telling the entire world through her poetry when when she was going to try and kill herself. If she didn’t blatantly say she was going to attempt suicide she would allude to it. If you simply look at the the titles of some of her poems they show you her inner thoughts. In her poem entitled “Suicide Note,” she says months in which she had attempted to end her life, then she says “how strange I choose June again.” Sexton was almost making a point in saying, I will die. She openly talks about death, almost as if its an old friend coming to visit after many years apart. it is truly tragic, she can talk about death so fondly and so passionately, it appears as though her ultimate goal was to achieve death.
Antrim 5
I found Anne Sexton’s poetry easy to read and follow. Sexton is known for her depression poems, although there is a poem that isn't necessarily depressing. “Courage” by Anne Sexton. “Courage” focuses on different stages in a lifetime and what kind of courage it takes to have at those stages in life. The first verse is childhood. Sexton describes how courage is needed to take your first steps, ride a bike, taking a spanking, and being made fun of. She explains one of these in particular. Being made fun of. She tells how you need to have courage to bottle up the emotions that flow in you and to not let them show to the bullies. Adults as well as children need courage. If not even more so than children. The second verse focuses on a soldier at war and how much courage it takes to be at war and die for your country. A soldier may have weakness but it takes their courage to shove that weakness aside. Sexton does state that when you have courage and you die for another on the battlefield it is no longer courage. It is love. Verse three is placed beautifully. Sexton in this verse emphasizes love by telling about despair. If you are going through despair, there must have been something you have lost that you loved. She creatively personifies despair in a way to make it seem loving. Going through despair can change you and form you into someone who is more understanding. Again you need the courage to allow it to transform you into a better person. In the fourth verse, Sexton describes death. “When death opens the back door you’ll put on your carpet slippers and stride out.” She describes it almost with peacefulness and a way where you die with courage. Courage is in everything we do in life. Courage is necessary in life. Without it we wouldn’t achieve our goals and we’d live a useless life. Comparing Sexton’s “Courage” with both “Addict” and “After Auschwitz” is difficult to do. I must come to a conclusion where I prefer “Addict” and “After Auschwitz” over “Courage”.
Smith 7
Anne Sexton, a curious woman who fulfilled her life with an abundant amount of remarkable poetry. Poetry that ranges from mysterious, bizarre and unique to passionate and ordinary. From the beginning of this poetry unit, I've been drawn to Anne Sexton’s poems and how she combines life stories within her work. However, trying to depict what the true meaning behind the stanzas she created is beyond confusing, and at times frustrating. I found this poem, The Kiss, by Anne Sexton, which is very intriguing. It begins by stating, “My mouth blooms like a cut.” When a young child gets a cut from falling on their bicycle, the cut begins to swell and the skin releases from each side. Similar to lips, or a mouth, opening up to embrace a kiss. This is just one example from one of Sextons works that is remarkably unexplained, yet easily comprehensible. Anne Sexton is very talented and experienced in how she is able to spill out her open heart into her poetry without holding back. This poem seems to represent Anne in love. It shows her as a vulnerable woman, who is in an uproar for love. At first the words and meanings are vulgar and vivid. But the true meaning behind her feelings and emotions are sympathetic, delicate, and rare. She describes nerves “turned on” like a “musical instrument”. From the beginning to the end, Sexton explains how the kiss is acquired into a love. A love that was composed within the fire of selfishness and greed. The passion that was exposed by the writer seems to explain more than what the reader can grasp. Anne Sexton is a diverse writer. She can create words that destroy hope, explained in one of her works, After Auschwitz. But also create a passionate love, like in The Kiss. This poem and many others created by Anne Sexton should be read by students that love poetry. A talented poet like this should not be unrecognized.
Jackson 2
I am by no means an expert at interpreting poems, but after reading “After Auschwitz” I thought I had a pretty good idea of the meaning and general mood behind it. Then I went on a search for more of Anne Sexton’s Poetry and came across a site called Poemhunter. It seemed like a legitimate site with quite a large gallery of people’s poems. I started reading some more of Anne Sexton’s and realized that many of them are not as straight forward as “After Auschwitz” where the title gives away what the poem is about. One such poem I read was “Baby Pictures”. Reading and thinking about the title made me think this would be a more joyful poem. After reading just to the second stanza I realized that this was not going to be a good-feeling poem. The title being very ambiguous also describes what I comprehend of the rest of the poem. It seems at first that she is seeing her seven year-old self in a picture and then compares that image to the image of herself now and how it has aged in an unpleasing way. Then, the poem hints that the author does not truly know herself as she asks “Anne, who are you” with repetition. In between asking herself who she is, she ‘opens’ parts of her body and sees the foul sights described with mind curling analogies. Finally concluding she answers her question that she is “Merely a kid keeping alive”. After studying through it a few times, I believe that “Baby Pictures” is about a woman, most likely Anne Sexton herself, that sees one of her old seven year old photos and realizes that through her aging she does not recognize herself.
Both, “After Auschwitz” and “Baby Pictures” were great reads and I would rank them very similar however I did like knowing the general idea of knowing what I was about to read in “After Auschwitz”. “Baby Pictures” was well crafted and gave a good representation of how many people have felt after looking through old photos by themselves. Overall, I like them both but in different ways.
Eigenberg 1
Typically I find poetry to be quite dull and hard to read and analyze. But when searching for a poet to write about, Poe came to my mind at first. His writing style of being dark, taboo, and grotesque intrigues me and keeps me interested. Also, he really makes the reader think and forces the reader to analyze what is really going on. The poem of his in the folder, “Dreams”, I found quite hard to read and even harder to analyze. However, when I searched for another poem of his I stumbled across one that we had previously read in an English class titled, “Annabel Lee”. “Annabel Lee” was a much better poem due to its easiness to read and understand and the meaning behind it all is powerful. In it the narrator starts by telling the reader of the intense love him and Annabel shared even though they were quite young, “I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love”. As the poem comes to an end the reader is informed that Annabel Lee passed away and her body was place in a tomb by “highborn kinsman” near “the kingdom by the sea”. Up to that point the poem doesn't really seem like the typical Poe, dark and gruesome. However, the last stanza is where Poe does what he does best and makes you cringe or feel disgusted. In it he tells us that the narrator will lie in the tomb with his young love and stay there, since not even death could separate their immense love for one another. The person Annabel most likely represents is Poe's first wife, Virginia Clemm, who died before she turned twenty-five. This poem is one of my favorites from Poe and every time I read it it gets much better which is why I found it to be better than the one in the folder.
Ever since I read through “The Addict” and “After Auschwitz” in class, I have become drawn to Anne Sexton’s style of poetry. There’s something about it that makes it stand out among the others. Perhaps the craziness within them, or maybe even the darkness they contain, especially “After Auschwitz.” I set out to look for more poems by Sexton that portrayed this same sense of dark craziness that I have come to enjoy. I found “Anna Who Was Mad,” which fit the description I was looking for. Upon reading, it seems like Anne has gone crazy, and is writing down whatever comes to mind. This especially becomes apparent when she repeats words and phrases at the end of the stanzas. It would seem that the narrator is an alternate personality or something similar, for it mentions “our” when referring to some of Anne’s possessions. With this in mind, it would seem like she is struggling internally with herself for some reason, which is probably revealed somewhere within the poem, but I’m just missing it. This poem could easily be compared to both of the poems by her on google drive. It is similar to “After Auschwitz” because of the crazy feel she gives off in both. It would seem like she has lost her faith in humanity, and in “Anna Who Was Mad,” her faith in herself. In the poem I have chosen, her other self says “From the grave, write me Anna! You are nothing but ashes but nevertheless pick up that Parker Pen I gave you. Write me. Write.” This actually brought another idea into my mind. Maybe the narrator is the poems themselves. In a way, creating the poetry has made her insane, as the narrator keeps asking her is they have made her insane. It is an interesting idea, and it is one of the many reasons why I enjoy Sexton’s poetry the most.
T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" seems to me the quintessential poem. I've come across Eliot's name at least several times in the last few years, including a mention in Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row", a humorous Reddit post, and on NPR.com, where Jeremy Irons narrated a lengthy poem of Eliot's. Because of these, I was already primed to be intrigued by Eliot's poems, and "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" did not disappoint. Feelings of loneliness, despair, and some happiness. A city after dark, vividly imagined despite limited description. Hidden wisdom, if the reader is willing to delve through the stanzas to find it. As I read, I felt as if this Mr. Eliot must have known a good deal about the world to find ways to describe it like the way he does.
Upon researching Eliot further, I decided to read his best-known poem, “The Wasteland.” Although I’m usually up for decoding archaic, symbolic writing, I must confess that my understanding of “The Wasteland” is embarrassingly lacking. The poem is filled with references to other pieces of literature which I am thoroughly unfamiliar with (including a several Biblical references, and at least one to Shakespeare and one to Baudelaire). Uncharacteristically, I became agitated steadily as I read, understanding approximately nothing of what Eliot was saying. I recognized most of the words, sure, but an adolescent chimp might as well have chosen their order and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. That’s an exaggeration, but not too gross of one. Doubtlessly, a poem like “The Wasteland” requires several readings for a decent understanding. Two sets of lines in the poem captured my interest more than others: part 4, “Death by Water”, and lines 366-376 in part 5, “What the Thunder Said.”
I’m more inclined to rate “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” higher than “The Wasteland.” However, I’m more than open to the possibility that I’m completely wrong and that a re-reading of “The Wasteland” is demanded. I’ll get to it.
(link to the Reddit post I mentioned: http://imgur.com/OKiz052 )
Kramer 2
Anne Sexton fascinates me due to the mystery about her, I have never found myself in her position. Sexton comes from a time where women were to be spoken to, not heard; however, cried out. She wrote about topics no woman would have dared to speak about--abortion, incest, adultery, and even suicide. I chose to indulge in Sexton’s poem “The Truth the Dead Know.” I found the “Truth the Dead Know” particularly interesting because although it is set in June, which is notorious for its warmth; Anne herself seems so cold and isolated on the inside. Death was something Sexton became accustomed to, battling death and depression in her own mind was one of the most shocking revelations Sexton had enough courage to publish her battle. Although “The Truth the Dead Know” is a seemingly shorter poem, less is more shines through, Anne’s words hit the reader like a sharp biting wind. We read words that appear to be mere grievances, but looking farther down we see the meaning goes far beyond that. Anne discusses her own break down within the poem, quoting “I am tired of being brave.” I believe this goes to show how Sexton really was at the end of her rope.
Out of the folder, I chose to read Sexton’s “After Auschwitz.” I found it interesting due to how consuming the poem is. Sexton seems to be consumed by death and anger. Death seems to be a prevalent theme with Sexton, discussing the holocaust in “After Auschwitz” which is a historical event trademarked for death. Death is so casual for Sexton, as if it is such a large part of her life she had almost accepted it as normal. In both poems Anne is at a breaking point, she is tired of being brave and finally discusses out loud her anger and frustrations. Which is also something unheard of considering the time period. After studying both poems; I, personally, would rank “The Truth the Dead Know” as slightly higher than “After Auschwitz.” While “The Truth the Dead Know” may be a shorter poem and contains a slightly lesser amount of imagery, I found myself more impacted by it. Each word cut a little deeper, showed a little more emotion, and helped me to be in Anne Sextons position. I look forward to reading more of Anne Sexton’s poetic masterpieces.
Peltier 1
Emily Dickinson, a poet in which I am mesmerized by her poems; the topics range from of life to death and anything inbetween. Dickinson’s style of poetry is different than Poe’s as the poems she writes aren’t the gruesome, twisted style Poe has, her poems deal with death just the side people don’t usually see or think of. This is what makes her different than Poe and other writers. She isn’t set on one topic for her poems either, she has the ability to illustrate death and life while grabbing the readers attention. In my opinion you don’t have to love poetry in order to lover her poems, they do stay true to most of the ideas of poetry yet they have aspect of a narrative story.
Because I could not stop for Death, is one of Dickinson’s poems that not only pulls the reader into the poem but allows the reader to feel as though the events are happening to them. This poem is showing how the human race gets so entrapped by their lives they don’t realize when the end is near. Though Death is taking time to stop just to get this character, who we can assume is a woman as the poem refers to “my gown”. The poem is showing this woman, who got picked up by Death as having a hard life,this is portrayed by Dickinson because she describes this act by saying “He kindly stopped for me”. Death is providing a better life for her but before proceeding to eternity Death shows the events in this woman life which would have shaped her into the woman she is. “We passed the school, where children strove”, this shows that even as a child she was struggling, we can assume with making friends because as a child recess was the time every child enjoyed playing; those who dreaded recess were usually bullied or they did not fit in with other children and struggled to find their place. We know recess was hard for this woman as “At recess, in the ring” follows the quote of “children strove”. The ring can be assumed to be like a fighting ring, this is included in the poem to show the fighting not only against others but herself as at a young age children start to find their way in life, the ring represents the struggle to find oneself. As the images of the children at recess pass as we are drawn back to the fact she is dead or dying when the poem states “The dews grew quivering and chill, For only gossamer my gown”, it reveals the fact she is cold the common symbol of death. This also can be seen as she has blocked these memories of the school ground out of her memory as she has lived since then trying to repress those images of the struggling girl and become a successful woman. The poem ends with the woman being laid to rest in a grave though she has been set free. She is now living in peace and time doesn’t seem to pass, “Since then ‘tis centuries, and yet each Feels shorter than the day”. The struggling she was going through while she was living has left her and she is not able to relax and rest in peace. This is what most people picture from Death; they see death as a doorway to eternal life where they will have nothing but peace. I love this poem and the imagery it creates within six stanza it creates a story. For this reason I feel like Because I could not stop for Death is one of Emily Dickinson’s greatest poems.
I rank this poem above the poems of Dickinson that we have in our poetry folder. Just the deeper connection people can have to this poem is what makes me feel like it should be placed above the other two in the folder. Though I have not read all of Dickinson’s poems (not even half) I feel this poem will remain to be one of her better poems in my eyes.
Dickinson, Emily. "Because I Could Not Stop for Death." The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., n.d. Web. 27 Mar. 2014. .
After hours of browsing poems online to analyze I gave up and resorted to the all too familiar name, Poe. At random I picked “The Happiest Day” as it appeared to contrast with the poet’s reputation. The poem was written by Poe in 1827 about himself capturing his feelings of the moments when he went to pursue his career in literature. The story is that Poe dropped of high school in order to achieve his dream; however, his father did not support his decision and, in turn, chose to stop supporting his son financially. The first stanza of the poem begins with the optimistic nature promised by the title, but as soon as the second stanza approaches the mood changes to Poe’s infamous happiness deprived niche. Without his foster father’s support, Poe was left to his own devices and realizes how difficult it will be to fulfill his aspirations. The tone of this poems seems to undulate from content and powerful to depressed and helpless; each time this switch appears the latter becomes more apparent. This is Poe’s commentary on how happiness is a dangerous emotion. He compares it to soaring, and when one soars too high he stalls; the ensuing fall becomes more and more prevalent as one rises higher, and each fall is harder to recover from than the previous. This poem could possibly explain why Poe preferred his insanity and remained cradled in his depression, because only then was he assured safety. I would describe this poem as a Siren (not anymore as most people are well aware of what to expect when reading Edgar Allan Poe) because before Poe’s fame as a writer people would be drawn to the light nuances promised by this title, and they would be shocked to read a poem with such a happy title, containing darker undertones, and ending itself in hopelessness.
When I first originally read the poem, “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” by E.E. Cummings, I thought the poem was trying to make a statement towards mankind and how unappreciative we are towards life and how humans take anything and everything for granted. The second stanza made me believe this because of the line, “Women and men (both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same sun moon stars rain”. When I read this I immediately thought of how in some ways people can be fake. Humans act like they care about one another, but it is all part of a facade and they take their neighbors, friends, even family members for granted. However, after reading more I began to think that this poem is about a man. The man is anyone. Anyone is disliked in the small town he lives in, “that noone loved him more by more” because he is different from the others. However, despite his differences he meets a young woman and they fall in love, “she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone’s any was all to her” and live happily until anyone, the man, dies and then the woman dies shortly after. Yet, the man and the woman truly lived their lives, unlike anyone else in the town. The towns people buried they couple together, “busy folk buried them side by side”. I love this poem. It reminds me of short, happy bedtime stories one would tell to their children. The story is simple, but has a happy ending. For some reason the way this poem is written it grasps at me and I am immediately interested. Cumming’s work seems to be dominated by lexical style and seems to have no grammatical construction. It is what he is known for. Yet, this adds immensely to his work in my opinion and I feel it commands the reader to exam and understand the message he is trying to get across. Though all his work is impressive, “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” is by far better than “Since Feeling is First.”
Rohrbach 5
The poem To -- -- by Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorites. We can easily assume that the narrator is Poe himself, who was once so confident in his gift of words that he believed there was nothing the human brain could think of that he could not translate into words. The poem looks upon the narrator’s epiphany; he had a thought (about a woman) that was beyond his realm of vocal description. He describes something that was beyond words and description, not a thought, or a feeling. This concept is continued through his many biblical references, such as the angles, Hermon hill, God’s creatures, and the golden threshold of the wide open gate. These allusions to the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, aspects of God and Heaven add to theme of barely comprehending.
To compare this to Poe’s other work, Dreams, is difficult. Both poems are exceptional, and deep, but I do prefer To -- --. I find that I can relate more to my chosen poem, than the one in the shared folder. I believe one of the reasons Dreams was placed in the poetry unit was how it is one of Poe’s happiest works. This is different for a lot of us who have only read some of his darker writing. I appreciate To -- -- much more because Poe attempts to explain a complicated subject (concepts that are indescribable, inexpressible, indefinable, and unexplainable). This in itself is ironic, and thus brings the reader full circle, back to the beginning, with a writer who is overconfident in his way with words.
Edgar Allen Poe is well-known for his classic poems and short stories, and he is by far my favorite poet. His dark style, deep truths, and elegant language draw the reader into the poem to be captivated, or disturbed, by his literary genius. The Poe poem that we have in the Google Drive folder is “Dreams”. This piece of work is a reflection of Poe’s feelings on dreams -- his hopes and woes. He starts with high praise of dreaming, saying how wonderful dreams are and how even a sad dream is better than the cold reality he faces in the real world. His perspective changes a little and he goes on to tell the reader how even though dreams provide a great hope, that they are simply lies to reality. Poe speaks of how a dream is sometimes the only end to suffering a man has, but they need to be strong and face reality when they wake. This poem is filled with imagery, symbolism, and even some personification. My favorite Edgar Allen Poe poem is the immortal “Annabel Lee”. This beautiful poem is quite frankly the most powerful love song ever written. Poe tells the story of his now deceased lover, the beautiful Annabel Lee. His love was no mere crush though. He speaks of a relationship so powerful that even death could not separate them. Their love was so pure and flawless that the holy angels envied them, and they decided to take her life. Here, Poe uses this gorgeous imagery of a chill coming from a cloud and killing Annabel Lee, hinting to something later in the poem as well. A noble member of her family comes to take the body and she is buried in a tomb, in that same “kingdom by the sea”. He goes on to tell us that his love was so strong, that he actually visits her tomb every night. And lays down next to her dead corpse. Yum. I think that the language, technique, and theme in “Annabel Lee” is far superior to such things in “Dreams”. I’m sure the reason that “Dreams” is in the Google folder is because we have all already studied “Annabel Lee” in one of our English classes. Overall, two great poems by one legendary writer.
Schroeder pd. 2
Reading poems by Anne Sexton helped me comprehend the concept of “confessional poetry.” Sexton suffered from a severe mental illness, depression, and many family issues. When I read her poetry I can sense the true emotions she must have been feeling while writing her confessional poems. “The Addict” is one of her many poems that shocked me; some of the lines are so bizarre that they seem creepy. She writes “My supply / of tablets / has got to last for years and years. / I like them more than I like me.” The last line is appalling but shows the true feelings of an addict.
The other poem I selected to read by Anne Sexton is called “The Abortion.” This poem automatically caught my eye because the title itself is almost taboo. Although people may not admit it, we enjoy reading/discussing things that are “off limits.” Anne starts off the poem with a single sentence stating, “Somebody who should have been born is gone.” This being a very frank and poignant statement, it gets right to the point and makes the reader feel interested and sorrowful without even reading the rest. The next line reads, “Just as the earth puckered its mouth / each bud puffing out from its knot.” This line adds great contrast by showing breathing and life compared to the title. “Up past the Blue Mountains, where / Pennsylvania humps on endlessly.” I believe Sexton intentionally placed the word “humps” in this line and wanted it to sound sexual. The image of sizable mountains makes a person think of life, breath, and birth; she wants the reader to be imagining life at this point instead of death. The rhyming in this poem makes it simple and enjoyable to read. In the sixth stanza a line reads, “and me wondering how anything fragile survives.” This made me feel doleful and commiserate for all the little babies that never had a choice. It also shows how truly powerful Sexton is with her word choice, and the way she meticulously placed them in her poems. Although this poem shows that the poet is not against abortions, in the later stanzas it shows that the poet did in fact feel remorse and regret even though right away she does not.
I think this poem is better than Anne’s poems that are in our folder. It is well written, like all of the others, but this one seems personal and real. I think that she is not pushing her views upon her readers but rather showing emotions that may come with something that is so serious.
The poem I chose was “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams. Williams is also the author of “Danse Russe”, one of the poems in our Google Drive folder. His unique style and simplistic poetry is fun, easy to understand, and often amusing for the writer. Both “This is Just to Say” and “Danse Russe” made me smile and made me feel genuine curiosity about what they author was talking about, which I appreciate and is hard for me to find in poetry.
I think both poems are amusing, but for me, “This is Just to Say” was just a little bit better than “Danse Russe”. Danse Russe created humour through odd imagery and action, while “This is Just to Say” brought its humour through seemingly random statements. Both poems show a level of relatability I have not seen yet in any other poems written around that time period.
These two poems also relate because they have similar themes. “Danse Russe” is a man telling a secret… or confessing something that may not be seen as acceptable to all. He is hiding these actions from his wife and children and somehow feels alone. In “This is Just to Say”, the author is also telling a secret. He is confessing that he has eaten all the plums. We do not know who this poem “note” is for, but perhaps it is for his wife, which creates a parallel between the two.
“This is Just to Say” is a poem which attracted me though it’s oddness and simply the way it stood out me by just being seemingly plain. It sparked recognition and enjoyment in me in a way that the dark poems of Poe or the complicated themes of other poets never could. “Danse Russe” is similarly lighthearted, but it also contains some deeper themes like the theme of loneliness. Although for short stories and novels I love to dig deeper into the meaning behind it, I really appreciate the lighthearted nature of Williams’ poems.
I decided to study Gwendolyn Brooks’s poems “We Real Cool” and “The Crazy Woman” for this month’s blog task. Whilst I was reading, I noticed both have easily discernible patterns. “We Real Cool”--discounting the pool players part--has an AA, BB, CC, DD structure, while “The Crazy Woman” follows an ABCB, DEFE, ABCB structure. “The Crazy Woman” also has an interesting meter of two iambs followed by an anapest (I looked this up, it may or may not be correct) in the first and third lines and three iambs in the second and fourth lines of each stanza. In contrast, “We Real Cool” seems to be made up of dactyls (strong stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables). Also in “We Real Cool” is the author’s tendency to capitalize the second word of the line, leading me to believe that only the first two words are important and what the reader should pick up on. (Interesting link where the author is explaining her inspiration for the poem and reading it. The way she reads it is different than how it appears in our Drive folders. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433.) “The Crazy Woman” and “We Real Cool” both seem to have a slighter darker theme to theme, evidenced in the last line of the later poem (We Die soon) and the entirety of the first. In “The Crazy Woman”, the author is saying she doesn’t want to sing a May song because they’re happy and people call her crazy for not being happy. If I was going to deeply analyze that, I could say that people find her strange for being sad and/or depressed in May because they themselves are happy and can’t understand why she is not. She’s also going against the standard normality here, because most people are indeed happy when spring rolls around, which makes her more of a target as well. But I’m not really sure how accurate that is, seeing how I made it up off the top of my head. Yay for English.
Hall 2
Anne Sexton’s unique clash of unorganized stanzas and intricate word choice led me to choose her poems for this discussion. The first poem that caught my eye was “After Auschwitz”. These short scattered stanzas give emphasis and power to each line making a lasting impression on the reader. She insists that man is evil but society doesn’t recognize it because we have grown up this way. She refers to a man’s finger as being miraculous. By doing this she is trying to state that we have so much good within us but one cannot remain good forever. Anne perfectly portrays the brutality of the holocaust within this work. The second poem I chose was “Red Roses”. This poem easily corallites with “After Auschwitz” because of its clear message of inhuman acts. In this poem we read about a mother abusing her three-year-old son, Tommy. Just like in the first poem we see a motherly figure that is supposed to represent love in a childes life, but instead leaves pain and fear within the kid. So much fear, that he obeys “Lady Blue” and does not tell the doctor the truth behind his bruises. I connected arguing to the dancing that takes place in this poem. When you dance and your footing gets off with your partner, toes are stepped on, people trip, and there is no beauty left. In this poem everything was all fine and dandy until Tommy got mad—messed up his footing—and then the torture began. Another relatable piece we are able to find is no set stanzas or line length. This appears in a lot of Sexton’s work. In the fist poem she wrote in such fashion to give extra meaning to specific phrases; however, in “Red Roses” I cannot find any evident reason for her choice of line length. Overall I enjoyed Anne Sexton’s confessional poetry. Bringing attention to such bazaar things such as abortion, drugs, menstruation, and suicides was considered taboo in this time. But writing about these things sparked new interests and relatable poems that all can take pleasure in.
Swanson 7
While searching through poems in our google drive, I came across Robert Lowell. Robert Lowell wrote the poem “Skunk Hour” in our google drive. I thought this poem was super interesting and the title was pretty sweet. I looked up more poems from Mr. Lowell and one caught my eye before even reading it. It was all in the title, “The Drunken Fisherman”. Just by the title, I figured this poem would be a great read and it really was. In this poem, Robert is the drunken fisherman and he keeps reeling in rainbow trout with bloody mouths. I did a little background research on Lowell and he had three different wives. The fish represent all the women he finds and is with and the bloody mouths represent the red lips women have. Here is the rest of the first stanza:
Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait. They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.
In the second stanza, he switches over from his women problems, to his problems with his alcoholism. In stanza two it says, “Pouching a bottle in one arm; A whiskey bottle full of worms.
He later in the poem is hoping that now he will catch Jesus Christ and catch salvation and Christ will save him from all of his crises in his life. In the last stanza he writes, “I will catch Christ with a greased worm, and when the Prince of Darkness stalks My bloodstream to its Stygian term… On water the Man-Fisher walks.” The Man-Fisher is capitalized because it represents Christ and the Prince of Darkness is the name he gives to Satan.
Berg 2
Anne Sexton is one of the major poets involved with the writing of Confessional Poetry. She has written numerous poems including “After Auschwitz” and “Baby Picture”. This poem, “Baby Picture”, starts off with Anne looking at a picture of her seven-year-old self. In this picture she has a smile upon her face showing that she has not been exposed to much of the evil found in the world. She’s innocent. She’s happy. But unfortunately, the picture itself has started to show the corruption found in mankind through the peeling of the paint and overall wearing down of the painting. The world has taken its toll on both the picture and of Anne herself as she is looking at the old photograph. By this time in her life, Sexton has endure through multiple hardships that lead her to becoming a poet. She suffered postpartum depression, mental breakdowns, and even attempted suicide, but her doctor suggested she follow her interest in writing that was formed back in high school. Ageing has impacts everything, “it’s peeling now, age has got it,”, this quote, talking about the painting, describes age as a being capable of taking from people and objects. Age has taken a lot of the beauty away from this joyful, careless, seven-year-old’s picture. The reason behind this ageing can be drawn back to the fall of man, when sin was introduced into the world along with all other evils.
These two poems, “After Auschwitz” and “Baby Picture”, by poet Anne Sexton, are very similar in theme. Both poems are relating back to mankind’s maliciousness. This is shown through the imagery involved in the words Auschwitz and Nazi--which most people almost flinch at the sound of these words because of all the destruction relayed back to them--and also shown when the author simply states “Man is evil”. One is able to put these two poems together to show the theme that everything ages and wears down due to the evilness and corruption found throughout society while everyone just stands by and watches, just as she [Sexton] is looking on at the worn out painting.
Williams pd. 2
After looking through the poetry folder, I found Anne Sexton’s poem entitled “The Addict”. The poem describes an episode of drug abuse, specifically pills, that a woman is enduring. Sexton refers to the pill not by their prescription name or their medical purpose, but by the color and quantity of the pills, giving the pills a similar identity to candy. However, the woman refers to the pills as tiny bombs that she plants inside herself, like a gambling with death. The woman can be rendered suicidal when she talks about laying on her alter which could be similar to a casket at a funeral in front of an altar. She also talks about being married to the pills, that they have some kind of hold on her and that she is a chemical mixture. This shows her addiction and her struggle with the drugs.
While “The Addict” is a poem about drug abuse, Sexton also wrote a poem about prostitution and sexual abuse entitled “Buying the Whore”. After reading the title, some may assume that it is simply about prostitution of women, but if one looks closer the title uses “the” instead of using “a” whore. This leads me to believe that Sexton is talking about a specific person, maybe herself, and referring to the sexual abuse she endured as a child. While the poem is short, it is simply innuendoes that create a scene of sexual abuse or mistreatment. She puts the reader in the place of being the “whore” in the story by saying “you” as if she is the abuser. Also, she creates different scenarios in which the whore takes on different objects such as a piece of meat, a boat, and a grate, showing that the whore is nothing more than property purchased and used at the masters will and liking. The abuser in the story has no regards to the whore except for its own wants and needs, justifying its actions with the money it used to pay for its services. The roast beef and onion represent rape, the boat being crashed represents physical abuse, the warming grate represents the whore serving a purpose to the abuser and later it states that “I vomit into your hand like a jackpot its cold hard quarters” meaning the payment is dirty sleazy money.
Overall, I would rank “Buying the Whore” above “The Addict” because it made me feel connected by the author referring to the reader as you. I felt like I had been in the poem and being called you made it more personal and sparked more emotions within me. I have never been in a situation like the ones in “Buying the Whore” but because I, as the reader, felt like I was being called you, I feel more attacked and brought into the piece of work more than reading a poem form a more distant perspective like in “The Addict”.
Polasky 5
From the beginning, I was immediately drawn to the poems written by Anne Sexton. Her poetry proved to be deeply personal and moving, like many other poets. What made her poems superior, in my eyes, was how brutally blunt and honest they were about her miserable and tragic life, filled with abuse, addiction, infidelity, therapy, hatred, and depression. Two of my favorites, "Anna Who Was Mad" and "Buying the Whore," do not reside in the poetry folder, rather I fell upon them on the internet. “Anna Who Was Mad” discusses the feelings Sexton has in regards to her maiden great-aunt, Anna, who lived with Anne’s family for a period of time in her adolescence and, in many ways, was her life support. Later on, Anna mentally broke down and was hospitalized, traumatizing young Anne. Throughout the poem, Anne shares her issues with her great-aunt’s instability and questions if she is the cause of it. Through her words she paints a mural of guilt, remorse, and grief as she blames herself for driving Anna into the grave. “Buying the Whore” contains a rather shocking description of having relations with a person out of pure rage and passion. Sexton was well known for committing adultery throughout her whole marriage to Alfred “Kayo” Muller Sexton II, especially when he was serving in Korea. In the poem, Anne confides the feeling she encounters when having an affair. This basically includes using people to get a rush of feelings until she feels even worse than before. She objectifies her lovers as well, calling them purchased roast beef, a rented boat, a grate, and so on, to display how little care she actually has for them. Though both poems speak darkly to me in different aspects, I tend to favor “Anna Who Was Mad” more. I personally felt a better connection to the poem and, unlike “Buying the Whore”, it was easier to sympathize with Sexton because Anna was one of the few, if not, the only, cherished and beloved person in her life.
In my relentless search for an adequate poem for this assignment, I decided to try to find something more famous than undiscovered, and instead try to comprehend it to myself and other readers. Since we started the poetry unit I’ve been interested in Edgar Allen Poe. I am not gothic in any aspect, or by any account interested in dark works and the gruesome strangeness that Poe writes about, but instead because of how anybody gets famous for writing about things that are so unlike anything in his era. Besides being one of the most well known poets in history, his poems have captured the attention of millions because of the unique darkness that Poe exploits in nearly all of his writing. I chose the poem “The Raven” due to its unwavering fame throughout the years. Likely one of Poe’s most famous poems, The Raven is very dark and mysterious throughout its entirety. In a quick summary, it’s about a man who is disturbed at night by a raven that enters his home and won’t leave. Now, obviously Poe goes into much more detail. Nearly every element in the poem contains heavy signs of symbolism, and not only symbolism, but multiple ways each symbol can be interpreted. The Raven is said to have been a symbol for His deceased wife, girlfriend or sister, or even the devil himself. Another symbol is a simpler one, which is the dark of the night. In many of Poe’s poems he mentions the night, which is known in the world of literature as a more evil time than the daytime. One of the last scenes in the Poem is The Raven flying out of the night, which could be interpreted as the devil or a demon flying out of hell. I really enjoyed this poetry unit quite a bit more than I expected I would, but I rarely turn down an opportunity to learn new things about topics I’m not familiar with, and this will ultimately allow me to become a more cultured and educated member of society.
John Bachman Pd 1.
Of all the poetry we have analyzed thus far I believe that confessional poetry is what has appealed to me the most. Especially talented at this form of poetry, Anne Sexton remains one of the most influential poets of all time. Anne Sexton’s poem “After Auschwitz” stood out among her plethora of masterpieces. Although never actually being a victim of this tragedy, Sexton accurately relates the feelings and fears of a tormented soul. She shows their brutality through her description of death being a Nazi guard, that is uninterested with the tortured people suffering around him, oblivious to the agony. It is men like this that causes the narrator to hate mankind and scrutinize many aspects of human nature. Interestingly she ends the poem with the line, “I beg the Lord not to hear,” in its own stanza. I interpreted this as her viewing her situation as if God had no interest in her, I mean how could he? She is on the brink of death in what seems to be hell if God had ever listened to her wishes, her situation could never be this dismal. Her trashing mankind and saying this line is almost reverse psychology hoping that her wish will not happen and compassion may leak through.
Another poem by Anne Sexton, “Buying the Whore” has a similar outlook on the human race as a whole. Both of these poems speak of mankind in a derogatory way due to the incredibly dismal situations of these two characters. However the viewpoint of the two narrators is completely different, one represents the victim and the other the abuser. In , “Buying a Whore,” a man is degrading women for being a prostitute, even though he has no inclination of her history. Where as the Auschwitz victim hates mankind because of atrocities she had to endure, not because other human are more vulnerable than her.
Smith, 5
Preparing for the forum this week was when I was introduced to Anne Sexton, the famous confessional writer. Her story, her childhood and her brutal feelings and depression are all accounted in her writing, thus making Sexton’s poems so prominent. After reviewing and skimming her writings, I was most intrigued by “All My Pretty Ones”.
This poem pertains to the remembrance of her father (who had passed away from the result of suicide). In the first stanza of the poem, Sexton depicts how that year’s curse is what separates them (father and daughter) and it appears that the alcoholic father ‘followed her mother to her cold slumber’ and he died just a little after the mother. Her father left her with nothing but a cold-hearted feeling, as she insisted everything must go. Anne Sexton’s outlook and sentiment on her father was muddled up. She reiterates childhood memories involving her father, yet only bringing out the damage of memorabilia. Sexton’s writings are deep and illustrations are sharp with detail—even to the point that she indicates the time period when her father had lived by mentioning clippings of president Hoover. In this scrapbook of the commemoration beholds snapshots of the parent’s marriage, locations and unforgettable events…seeming as Anne Sexton did not want to let go of her parent’s deceased condition. Ending “All My Pretty Ones”, Sexton then protrudes a different set of feelings of her father, an outlook that will stay with her, as she closes the diary and locates it on the shelf.
“All My Pretty Ones” along with Anne Sexton’s other writings should be found in our folder of confessional poetry. The poet’s feelings and emotions are confessed in most of her writing. Although Anne Sexton based her writing off of her life— in a mental institution with a drunkard father and her addiction with prescription drugs—may not have been the best to mimic, her poems and writing is something we all long for.
Sternburg 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM6nWRXCQD8
The poem I chose to discuss is “Wanting to Die” by Anne Sexton. Suicide is one of the most paradoxical occurrences in human nature. Literally everything alive has some inborn desire to keep living and when a sentient being decides to end its own life it doesn’t quite make sense. In this poem, I believe Anne Sexton is explaining the feeling of wanting to die. If not an explanation then at least an attempt to put the reader in the mind set of a suicidal person. The first stanza describes how the urge to kill herself just pops up out of the blue. Next, in the second stanza, she explains that it the feeling is not a conclusion drawn from intense thinking, but instead it simply comes naturally and is more of a feeling. In the third stanza she relates herself to a carpenter. Just as it is their nature to build it is her nature to want to die. After this, she begins to talk more personally about her own suicidal experiences. In the forth stanza she admits to attempting suicide twice already. She personifies suicide as the enemy who she becomes. Next, she provides a look at how it feels to be dying. She describes it with the line “In this way, heavy and thoughtful, warmer than oil or water, I have rested, drooling at the mouth hole.” The words “heavy,” “thoughtful,” and “warm” make the experience of her attempted suicide seem slow and lethargic and not at all painful. Also, she uses “mouth-hole” instead of mouth to make the image grotesque and unnatural. After this I believe she gets into what it is like to wake up and continue living after a suicide attempt. I am not sure but I believe the sixth stanza deals with being in a hospital. In the seventh stanza she says “Still-born, they don’t always die” suicides are unsuccessful sometimes and she goes on to say that if they (she) lives they are still enticed by the joy of being close to death. She continues with this thought in the eighth stanza. When she says, “to thrust all that life under your tongue!” I believe she is talking about swallowing pills as a means of suicide. My take on the ninth stanza is a new personification of suicide where she (suicide now a female instead of a male) is always waiting to empty her breath (kill her). The last two stanzas deal with what I think is either how the want die will leave altogether or that again the want will come all at once and she will be dead before anyone (even she) knows what happened.
While reading and researching confessional poetry, I found that I really liked Anne Sexton’s work. Many of her poems are short, easily understandable, and deep with meaning. However, what I liked the best about reading “The Addict” and “After Auschwitz” was arrant honesty she wrote with. Sexton certainly was not worried about offending anyone and was able to bravely assert her beliefs. I found another of her poems, “The Starry Night”, to be very intriguing when compared to “The Addict.”
In both poems, the narrator is depressed and suicidal. Characteristic of Sexton’s work, these thoughts and feelings are blatantly manifest. In a lot of ways, “The Addict” is a precursor to “The Starry NIght.” In the first, it seems as though she is providing a justification for her desire to die. Frustrated with others criticism, she cries, “don’t they know that I promised to die!” The second, is grows even more personal as she describes the ideal night to carry out her death. Another similarity between the two is the nursery rhyme-like quality that establishes a morbidly playful atmosphere that the reader, unfortunately, cannot help but relate to. In “The Starry Night”, the phrase “oh starry starry night! this is how I want to die” is repeated at the ends of the first two stanzas. It clearly is an allusion to Van Gogh’s famous painting, “Starry Night”. With this image in mind, the reader makes a connection between the painting and death. The poem and the painting both take on a new meaning. Similarly, “The Addict’s” final words are “fee fi fo fum, now I’m borrowed, now I’m numb.” Instantly, one is reminded of the bed-time story, “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It’s simplicity and innocence contrasts with the complex heaviness of drug addiction. The allusions Sexton uses in her work are highly effective for these very reasons.
I'm sorry that this is late, first of all.
e.e. cummings (and not E.E. Cummings) is an adroit wielder of the pen. His poems in the Google Drive folder were brilliant, and captivated me. I especially enjoyed “since feeling is first”, because it fits perfectly with the debate raging inside my head this year. To be rational, or to be wild? The most wondrous lines occur at the end of the poem: “Don't cry / --the best gesture of my brain is less than / your eyelids' flutter which says / we are for each other: then / laugh, leaning back in my arms / for life's not a paragraph / And death i think is no parenthesis”. cumming’s prose is straightforward, and, for the most part, overt. The best rational and logical plan that the brain can manufacture, is still not as great as the beauty of the connection of lovers’ eyes. He tells his partner, in a command to give up the overthinking, and enjoy the embrace of his arms while she laughs. The last two lines are more open to interpretation; life is not a paragraph because it doesn’t need structure, and planning, or even a thesis statement. Death is unavoidable, so we must appreciate the gift of time that we are given.
I read another poem, “[i carry your heart(i carry it with me)]”, by e.e. cummings, and was immediately drawn into alluring style. My favorite section of the poem was the last six lines: “here is the deepest secret nobody knows / (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud / and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows / higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) / and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart / I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”. This too applies to the theme of feelings over reason, as do many of cummings poems. That’s what attracts me to them, I suppose. That is also the reason that “since feeling is first” ranks higher in my book. “i carry your heart” is fantastic, but it leaves a reader with slightly less inspiration. “since feeling is first” fills a reader with passion and drive, giving them an anthem to sing. Passion is the tool to open many doors. Vital to success, it catapults you over those who are without.
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