Rambling - There is No Feasible Reason

In the poem next of course god america i by e.e. cummings, there is very little punctuation. We all know this; it is no mystery. Now, the mystery lies in why there is a lack of punctuation. The theory that the speaker is in the midst of a drunken rant is preposterous. The end of the poem clearly identifies this as a speech made by a politician or other recognized representative. The only reason the speaker would take a drink of water after this rant was if it were being made publicly. Not too many respectable politicians would show up to a speech or public address intoxicated, so I think that can be ruled out. Also, there is a theory that the man was nervous and his words started to ramble together in a barely comprehensible mess, which could hold some merit if the politician were new to the game or running for his/her first election, but odds are that, if someone is running for an office, they have been in the spotlight a time or two.

And I Repeat: Ignorance is Bliss

The material in the poem APO 96225 by Larry Rottmann can easily be compared to the attitudes of the public toward the war in Vietnam. Really, no one knew what was happening in Vietnam. The only real way to figure out was to do as the mother in this poem did and ask. Clearly, this was not an effective process to go through if the mother is not really prepared to hear the truth. This also related to the American public at the time. They all wanted to know what was happening. News coverage was abundant, although hardly reliable. Propoganda was not created in the war against terror. Sadly, it has had its roots in the U.S. from the get-go. In my opinion, if the American public had known what was happening in Vietnam, the only way soldiers would have fought was compulsory service, which eventually became the case for the most part. The American public wasn't prepared for the truth, just as the parents in the poem were unprepared.

The Test of Time

Ozymandias is characterized as a tyrant. I knew this before reading the questions because of the diction Bysshe helley uses in her poem Ozymandias. "And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read." One also reads on to find that he proclaimed the greatness of his empire only to be surrounded in moden day by ruin. While these details speak for themselves regarding the character of Ozymandias, it is very obvious that these traits can also be attributed to every person. While we are alive, we believe that the things we do will matter in the long run and that the marks we leave will be eternal, but nothing could be more false. Sure, when we die, we will be remembered. For a while, at least. but what happens when those who knew us die? And their sons and daughters die? All that is left to commemorate one's life is a headstone. And what does a headstone really say about us?

Who Plays With Barbie Dolls Anymore?

The girl in Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy is depicted in a sense that contrast the title of the poem itself. Almost every detail Piercy includes shows this contrast. For example, "...tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity." Basically, this girl possesses many traits that are typical in men. Society's view of a standard girl is pretty to look at, yet not as delightful to listen to, weak and mild so as to let the men protect them, meek, and clueless when it comes to manual skills. This girl's traits were atypical of a stereotypical girl. Because of her insecurity in who she is as a woman, she commits suicide after classmated and peers tell her she has a big nose and fat legs. The Barbie dolls I had growing up were thin-torsoed with perfectly sculpted features. This is simply an unrealistic vantage point for women to have to view themselves through, which is the overall point of the poem.

Valentine's - A Lonely Day For Cat Ladies Everywhere

In Margaret Atwood's poem "February", the speaker says, "it's love that does us in". This seems paradoxical in the sense that the popular view of love is that it is almost necessary to sustain life. Still, in this poem, I believe the speaker is confused as to what love is. She talks about STDs and things of that nature that do not define love. Love is not equivalent to sex, so the word "love" in this sense cannot be taken literally. She is also apparently very bitter at the prospect of being "valentineless" during Valentine's. This is natural, but she seems especially depressed by the thought. And again, the source of her agony is a direct correlation to the number of cats she keeps at her house.

Star Light, Star Bright

In John Keats' Bright Star, the speaker wishes to be unlike the star only in the sense that he does not want to be lonely. "Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night." Here, the speaker is saying that stars are beautiful and marvelled at, but they are out in space all by themselves. He does not want to be by himself. He wants to be lying in bed with his love for the rest of his days. The speaker wants to be "steadfast" in the sense that he is supposedly lying with his love while the poem is happening and wants to stay with his love forever. He is also saying that, even though "earth's human shores" and "new soft fallen mask"(snow) are beautiful, they are nothing compared to his lover. He would rather stay with his lover forever and gaze at her than be alone up in the sky, only appearing at night.

I'll Follow You Into The Dark

My associations with the poem February by Margaret Atwood at similar. I would not say I totally agree with all the things she mentions because they are very depressing. I definitely do not see winter as a time of despair. I do, on the other hand, agree that winter is a time of "growing" people. The general population loses interest in remaining in shape because "bathing suit season" is no longer an issue. Also, the loss of sunlight makes people feel depressed and too schlumpy to go to the gym. This is natural and I understand this feeling completely. I strongly disagree with anything the author mentions about cats. Somehow, her obsession with them is entirely creepy. And she wonders why she's a lonely old cat lady. It might have something to do with lying on her bed, eating fat, but who am I to judge?

5, 4, 3, 2...Understanding

In Langston Hughes' poem, Dream Deferred, the topic of the poem is in the title, so that is no great mystery. The real window into the mind of the writer comes with the revelation that he was a black man in a time of racial strife in America. The poem begins to not necessarily take on a new meaning, but become more specific in its motive. African Americans at the time likely saw many dreams deferred. When one considers the hard times they went through with slavery, segregation, the Civil Rights movement, and other related subjects, it is difficult to imagine a dream becoming recognized by someone of a different skin color at the time. To me, this poem seems to be a sort of letter to himself. He is essentially asking himself what he will do with all the dreams that could not be fulfilled because the color of his skin. One might say that this is reading too much into the poem, but it really makes perfect sense. Hughes, at the end of the poem, asks if the dreams will explode. This is symbolic because that is exactly what was happening to the Civil Rights Movement. It was exploding to a scale no one thought it could reach and people of every color were becoming concerned and involved.

Live Above the Influence

In I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed by Emily Dickinson, the entire poem is an extended metaphor comparing alcoholic intoxication to nature. "Reeling-thro endless summer days...," gives the reader the sense that the endless summer days give the speaker a kind of intoxication like that of the alcoholic variety. The word reeling has a connotation of inexplicable bliss. "Inebriate of Air" spells out the way nature and her surroundings make her feel. She wants to "drink the more" when she catches a glimpse of a butterfly. These little things in nature are what make her feel alive and like she can do anything, much like alcohol does. The speaker even says the Rhine, a river, yields an alcohol, which is completely factually incorect. Still, it is a pretty strong visual considering the speaker wants to express her "addiction" to her drug of choice - nature!

Ignorance is Bliss

In the poem Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, the narrator obviously is speaking about his father. Almost automatically when dealing with poetry, this sends out an alert to my brain to look for religious connections. Needless to say, the connections flowed with this piece. The beginning of the poem details all the things the father did for the family with zero gratitude in return. Similarly, God does all kinds of things for us and is the reason for our existence, yet we hardly find time to thank him for all he has done. A little later, the narrator addresses the "chronic angers of the house". This also fits the religious connection. I know personally that one big motivator for prayer is the fear of hell. The narrator arises to dress because he fears his father's anger. Christians fear God's anger with us and rise in prayer to avoid that anger. In the line "what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?", the narrator is basically saying he knows little about love. This is similar to my feelings regarding my faith because I feel that it is not my place to question God's motives or actions because I could not understand them if they were explained. I am in no place to question God's authority or love because I am ignorant to the ways of the kind of love God gives.

Barrels Full of Empty Dreams

Trying to make some kind of important connection to real life with the poem After Apple Picking by Robert frost proves to be a challenge. It is entirely possible that there is not a deeper meaning to the poem, but I simply refuse to believe that, so I am making one. I feel as though this poem could be symbolic of the process of life. At the beginning the narrator is explaining that he feels tired of apple picking due to the length of time he had been doing it and that there was an empty barrel beside him that he had not yet gotten to filling. I think this could represent the feeling of getting old. Older people often feel tired and as though they have not accomplished all they had set out to do. This is where the empty barrel comes in. The narrator had fully intended to use the barrel for the apples, but had gotten caught up with all the other barrels that he tired before he could fit it in. Similarly, aging people make "bucket lists" on which they write all the things they hope to do before they die. Very rarely are all the tasks completed and I believe this is where the poem starts off. It then progresses to address sleep. Sleep is notoriously representative of death, which is a natural part of the progression of life, following the theme I mentioned earlier on in this blog post.

Brain Funerals Are The Worst

In Emily Dickinson's poem, I Felt A Funeral In My Brain, I got a sense that the funeral was symbolic of her descent into insanity. The mentioning of "sense breaking through" implies a lack of sense early on in the poem. Then, at the end, the author says she finishes knowing. This is kind of a mysterious line, but by looking at the series of events in her spiral, it makes sense. She eventually came to know that she was unstable and that was okay, but knowing seemed to be a relief in some way. Simply the use of a funeral as the setting for the poem is symbolic of her process being one of the death of a part of herself. She struggled at the beginning to find reason. It was clear in the reading that she had tried, but throughout the pace of the poem, the narrator gives up the facade and comes to accept her fate.

Mind-Forged Manacles

In line 8 of the poem London, Blake aimed to use imagery to assist the reader in his overall point. The "mind-forged manacles" are not literally manacles. They are restraints in the sense that the mind cannot escape the weakness and woe the narrator sees in the faces of the people along the Thames. The minds of the people are locked into one setting. That setting could be regret, sadness, weariness, or any other suffocating emotion, but the manacles are not literal. The phrase is intended to be figurative. War could be the source of of London's problems simply based on the line depicting a soldier's blood on the palace walls. While this is not literal either, it certainly represents the sacrifices of the peasants and lowly for those of the upper-class, which is common in war.

Visual Images

In the poem London by William Blake, the images are critical. They give the reader a sense of destitute suffering, as is shown in the line, "In every infants cry of fear,...". The word "cry" is used many times, which is really pretty self-explanatory. Crying symbolizes sadness, loss, and/or an unfulfilled need. The visual of soldiers' blood running down palace walls is also deep and symbolic. It really makes the reader picture the scene and put the puzzle pieces together regarding the deeper meaning of the poem, which is the poor of London suffering for the privileges of the rich. I also like the mentioning of marks of weakness. I believe this adds a human aspect to the piece as weakness is a common human attribute, especially in poetry.

Perrine? Who Knows

So, I found myself disagreeing with numerous things in this piece. It's not that I think he is ignorant or a poor teacher. I just think the majority of the things he instructs readers to do are more a matter of opinion. For a reader to come upon a book with no preconceptions is unheard of. It's delightful in thoery but simply unrealistic. For example, when a reader decided to delve into a classic, they know beforehand that it is a classic. This reasonably influences them to look for deeper meanings and try to like it based on the rave reviews it has received. I also disagree with his observation that good readers do not read books to gain factual knowledge. I know that with reading many novels about war or other related topics, I learn plenty. Reading a war novel in Mrs. Helbing's class about the Civil War was what truly gave me a deep understanding of the motivations and causes of the war. I do agree with the statement that rereading is key. One can always catch extra detail when reading a piece for a second, third, or even fourth time. Similarly, when I first viewed Zoolander, I missed out on a lot of the brilliant humor. One must see Owen Wilson in action several times to truly understand why he is the best character ever created. This is why I pay no mind to those who discredit the movie. They have likely only seen it once and have not fully experienced it.