Blog 10 poetry

Option 3 "My Papa's Waltz" This poem is about at boy who has an unusual time being close to his  Papa. The terms used are contradictory because the description the "Waltz" seems almost abusive. "Every step you missed / my right ear scraped your buckle" Indicates that the father is very drunk and has a grip on the boy, the boy's ear is as tall as his father's belt buckle and he is insisting on doing this dance which drags the boy around. Also there is reference to the mother being very angry with this behavior, "My mothers countenance / could not unfrown itself" she is clearly upset from this statement and the boy is aware of that but he holds on. Although its hard he enjoys it because it makes his dad happy. The last stanza is rather sad because there is a longing for the boy to be close to the father however painful it may be

You beat me on the head
with a palm caked hard with dirt
Then waltzed me off to bed
still clinging to your shirt

the beating on the boys head is to the beat of the music and the reader understands that loving this man is painful but to the boy its worth it, he does not want to let go of him all the way to his bed he holds on to the father's shirt and does not want to let go. 

Blog #9 Poetry

Loved these poems this week. I am blown away at the beauty. Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 is an English Poem and Abba rhyme scheme. It is, at first glance negative and the comparisons are strange, "My mistresses eyes are nothing like the sun / Coral is far more red than her lips /".  This could not be a flattering poem about the love of a man for a woman! However we soon see that although she is not perfect compared to some things that are seemingly perfection in their discriptions of beauty, he loves her and she is perfect to him. "I grant I never saw a goddess go / ... and yet by heaven I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare".   He sees her and he loves her for everything she is.
Donne's Holy Sonnet 14 is an Italian poem it is Abba rhyme scheme. The meaning of "three-personed God is father-son-spirit and that is catholic in nature. Donne's sin is such that his god must "....break, blow, burn and make me new" however, at the same time he states to god "I am betrothed to your enemy..." which is to say he is a sinner and that makes us know that he cannot be without sin and in order to be united with God he is hoping to be changed and made a new. The only way to make him new is for God completely take him over "take me to you, and imprison me,for I / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free " This indicates that he will never be without sin while he is human. His humanness causes him to commit the same offenses again and again. 

BLOG #8 Poetry

Nov 4, 2012 (edited)  -  Public

Blog #8 Poetry
All Poems in this weeks reading were about death. That moment in time when this world ends and another begins. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Jarrell was disturbing when he quotes "When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose" the harshness of war is inconceivable and the clear disregard for human life is summed up in this sentence. The language Jarrell uses makes the point of this and the reader understands war better after reading it, there is a sad cold feeling to this poem.  In Dickinson's poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" she describes the journey of death while still earth bound and the sights she sees, she speaks of death being civil "We slowly drove--He knew no haste....my labor and my leisure too/for his Civility. This concept of sight seeing with death is wonderful. When we think of death we do not think of it as an individual who will takes us to sights we hold dear to us before we leave this world. This poem moves the reader and the feeling is joyful. Heading into Eternity on a carriage pulled by horses. The rhyme scheme was wonderful and made the poem stand out.

 

I did this the 4th of November but I just realized it was not on  my blog !! 

Fences -- blog # 7

This play speaks to trauma and overcoming hardships through forgiveness. The author August Wilson brings us into the life of a black family and their struggles. The time period for instance was tough and Troy's recalling his abusive childhood sheds light on his actions throughout the play. The fences referred to in this play are interesting metaphors. The first fence is clearly created to block out the beating Troy receives from his father this event was traumatic and life changing for him, he describes this by talking about his feelings when he was whipped with leather straps My dad was as evil as could be.... When he whipped on me, quite naturally I ran..." after the incident Troy at 14 left home and built the first fence to block out his trauma. Rose sang of a fence she hoped "Jesus would provide" to keep her and her sons safe, that is safe from her husband and his rage and safe from harm that often came to black men in that time and place.   Cory had a fence to keep out the fact that Troy never showed love and acceptance to him, in fact when Cory asks his dad Troy "why didn't you ever like me" Troy goes off on a rant about how a father owes his wife and children but he never agreed to like anyone. Cory builds a fence around himself to cope with the pain of this statement, we can see that one trauma in a persons life can effect many generations of people. Troy's time in prison and bond with his friend Bono proves to be a positive relationship, when Troy cheats on Rose and has a daughter with Alberta, Bono serves as Troy's conscience and asks him to tell Rose the truth.  Rose is aware that no fence can keep harm away and after Alberta dies during childbirth Rose takes the girl in and through forgiveness is able to raise her without hatred in her heart. At Troy's funeral many fences come down through Cory and Raynell interaction on the porch, they give each other hope and are able to allow the new family minus their abusive father a chance. They share a song their father use to sing about his dog and begin making new memories.Although much tradgedy occurs there are many life lessons in this play and much forgiveness and resolve.

Blog #6 Hamlet

Option 2
When the King speaks to his Queen Gertrude he is seemingly consoling her by saying that "sorrow comes in battalions" what he means by this is that bad news comes in multiples. At this point the King is still trying to clean up the mess made by Hamlet shooting Polonius he is trying to make everything seem okay by sending Hamlet away. Ophelia is going mad with grief and wants her brother to be by her side which will pose another problem because he has his own opinion about what should happen to Hamlet to avenge his own father's murder. Claudius has made many decisions that are not very smart. First,  he poisoned the King of Denmark, then he married the widow of the King on the day of the funeral, then he completely ignored and disrespected the requests of Fortinbras of Norway and that is not the proper practice of the King of Denmark. As a result these outcomes can be traced back to the King and completely rest on his shoulders. Hamlet on the other hand holds many responsibilities in this tragedy also, he shot Polonius and then left town,  he played with Ophelia's feelings and did not stay and man up to his responsibilities in the shooting of her father, he faked going mad because he needed to buy time to get enough courage to kill the King and he did this because his "ghost" father wanted revenge. Hamlet is just as mentally ill as Claudius each man wants what he wants and those types of egos can not be reasoned with and the outcome of everyone except Horacio dying is fitting for this whole mess. Norway is at the door, breaking it down and the focus of the court in Denmark is who did what to whom and this focus has nothing to do with the people of Denmark and protecting them against the army that is waging war. There is no one listening to counsel and when the King was getting counsel it was from Polonius who was a sneaky gossip that made matters worse from day one. Denmark is so much worse off than the beginning of the story. This is often the outcome when there are so many egos running around trying to get there way. This is not uncommon in politics to this day some things have changed but many things are the same. Most politicians care more about their ego than their public and so it goes....

Blog #5 Hamlet

Wow poor Hamlet. This is awful. I cannot imagine this happening to me. He is a scholar at college and his dad is the King of Denmark one day and the next day his dad has died and his mom is to marry his father's brother. His uncle is a person that he did not even like in the family to begin with. I feel that Hamlet's madness although staged is real in many ways, he is suppose to kill his uncle to set free his fathers ghost ! That is a lot of pressure ! He is not a murderer and he has no idea how to do this act. GHOST: revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. HAMLET: Murder? GHOST: Murder most foul, as in the best it is... The serpent that did this thing now wears my crown! This revelation and the request of the ghost get revenge is overwhelming to a young college man. The feelings of anger and shame that he feels toward his mother coupled with the grief he is experiencing for his fathers passing is difficult and the reader is saddened for these events. This cannot end well... The Queen clearly married uncle Claudius to put on a front of stability for Denmark, but in doing so she hurt her son so badly.

Blog 4 Love is an interesting emotion

I found the expression of Love to be quite interesting as I compared the stories "The Horse Dealers Daughter" by D.H. Lawrence and "The Lady with the Dog" by Anton Chekov. Each story has an unusual way of finding love, for instance in Checkov's story the character Gurov as a man married with children, he is described as being a ladies man who had very little regard for women. "In the society of men he was board, not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but with women he felt free ..... He know there was some force that drew women to him (p5). This guy is very impressed with himself, until he meets Anna, who he proceeds to fall in love with.  I felt as though the author was leaning in the direction of love but It was surprising the way it unfolds.  In the beginning he was just using her for his own comfort with the intention of moving onto the next woman, however his obsession continues to deepen and he becomes more smitten over time on the other hand Lawrence's story took me by surprise, his style of writing is such that there is no sign of love until the doctor catches a glimpse of her in the grave yard and cannot turn away from her gaze "she lifted her eyes, feeling him looking, their eyes met....her face seemed to mesmerize him, their was heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole being, as if he had drunk some powerful drug. He had been feeling weak before now the life came back into him, he felt delivered from his own fretted daily self " (p105). This example of love is one that will strengthen each individual, they each have needs and they are ready to allow themselves to fulfill them for each other unlike the first story where they are both married to other people and cannot full fill the needs they have to form a true long term  relationship with each other.

Blog#3 -- Five Kids In a Boat

In the Story "The Found Boat" by Alice Munro we experience some time in the lives of kids that are clearly poor and in need for some adventure. Their experience grabs the reader and I found myself joining them. When Munro describes their activity in the beginning of the story she states ""Eva and Carol took off their shoes and socks and waded in. The water was so cold it sent pain up their legs." (p6) I could actually feel this feeling having experienced this feeling myself. These kids are clearly poor, they are floating on a log and as they are floating she states "they steered the log around a row of trees, avoiding barbed wire..."(p14) the body of water they float on for recreation is not well kept if there is barbed wire in it. Also the boys take the boat with complete excitement even though its broken. They work hard using tar and finding pieces of wood to repair the boat which also indicates that no lumber is just laying around. When they float to the abandoned building this shows that the times were tough for business. The economy was not good in their town so this business was just a vacant building. "Does it leak? it don't leak." were words spoken about the boat and that also references kids whose parents use a lot of slang and we see this in poor economic times. After jumping in the water when Eva stood up and Clayton shot water out his mount at her breasts she says "lets hide in the bushes, we hate them anyway... dont we Carol..." This indicates that even though Eva did not hide from this incident and rather enjoyed it she is still wanting to keep the facade that she doesn't. The attitude of these was established by Munro and their characters did exactly what was expected of them.

Three Wacky Weeks

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman Perkins, is an amazing insight into mental illness. This family moves into a colonial house for a few weeks and the narrator states a lot of information about the house in the beginning of the story "The most beautiful place! It is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about". This quote makes the reader believe that she will experience the beauty of the gardens and be outside recovering from her illness, however, this woman never gets to leave the house she is forced to stay in bed starring at the wallpaper because her husband/doctor "John" has prescribed bed rest.  At first I felt so sad that she was on bed rest with an illness. Perkins describes her perspective of the wall paper as "The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint....". The feeling of laying in bed day after day looking at this horrible scene in the wall paper was awful. As the story progresses and she goes back to the wall paper and forms a relationship with it, I started to realize something was terrible wrong. The narrator is clearly suffering a mental illness and her husband is not helping matters by depriving her of being outside and interacting with people and her baby. She changes her perspective about half way through and begins to appreciate the patterns of the wallpaper,  as if the writer was allowing us into the mind of a very sick lady. Mental Illness is misunderstood by many people in the world and I feel that this was a wonderful way to portray how it feels in the mind of someone suffering a mental breakdown. Her reality fluctuates between what is real and what is not. She thinks she sees a woman trapped behind the wall paper, and in many was she does see that woman, it is herself. She ends up locking her self into the room and begins a pattern of her own, crawling and standing on furniture to rip the paper away from the walls to allow the trapped woman out from her prison. This is a metaphor for the narrators need to get out of the room and the life style that has trapped her in her own mind. She has felt trapped and must get out in order to survive and become well again. When John comes home to find her he faints from the sight of her actions that her illness has caused and what has become of her. 

After reading a little more about this author, I found that she is recalling her own life and she wrote this story in the late 1800's to allow others to understand the mind of a mentally ill person so that we may better understand this tragic sad illness.

Three Different Strong Women

Women in a family can be very different we see this in the story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker. Walker describes each woman uniquely at the beginning of the story, she starts with the mother/narrator by stating:  "In real life I am a large big boned woman with rough, man-working hands.... I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; .... one winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall" (p5). This shows the tough life this woman has experienced she has had to struggle and do the man and woman's job in her family.  On the other hand  Dee who is eldest daughter is described as a young beautiful woman who is given gifts that any woman of color would want "Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure" (p10). At another point in the story she gives a description of Dee's feet "her feet were always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them" (p16).  The tone set by this woman is one of superiority and she runs this family for sure. The description suggests that everyone has given into her wants. The youngest daughter Maggie's character is different, she is shy and has experienced great challenges, "She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground" (p9). The reader has a clear picture of these three women and as the story unfolds we see how their characters evolve, After a fire that changes their lives forever they raise funds to send Dee to college and one day she visits her family, she has changed her name and is more greedy and spoiled around her mother and sister. "Mama can I have these old quilts ?" (p59) At this point in the story the narrator is aware of the selfishness of this daughter. "I promised those quilts to Maggie for when she marries John Thomas" (p65), Maggie's character will not fight for the quilts, or engage in conflict, Walker describes the response that the mother has when she says "When I looked at her (Dee) its like something hit me on top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet" (p76). She took a much needed stand for Maggie at this point in the story. The reader becomes aware of a change and a strength that is passed onto Maggie that she will carry with her always. In the end of the story as her older sister was leaving Maggie smiled "a real smile, not scared" (p81). These women are forever changed by the events of the story. Maggie has a new confidence and a mother that appreciates her and Dee gets knocked down a few pegs. Walker does a brilliant job of the description of characters in this story.