Weekly Poem Blog - Sun 10/30/11

"Curiosity" by Alastair Reid
I love this poem!!! =D I thought it was fantastic and presented some great advice about life! In this poem, I saw the "cat and dog" idea as a symbol of two different kinds of people in the world. There are those who take life very seriously, always thinking of the consequences of their actions, and generally not taking any chances, playing life very safe. These are the dogs.Then there are the cats. These are the people who want to get the absolute most out of life. They take risks, go on spontaneous adventures, and don't generally think or care about the consequences of their actions because it's worth it! This type of opposition is seen between cats and dogs throughout the poem. I believe the theme of this poem was very plainly stated in a couple different lines throughout the poem. "Face it. Curiosity/ will not cause us to die --/ only lack of it will." The dash in this statement after "die" brings emphasis to the statement, causing it to come across very strongly. The theme was also state when Reid said, "Only the curious/ have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all." So take some risks! Have some fun! That is the point of this poem. What do you have to tell at the end of life when you're lying on your death bed if you've played it safe all your life?? NOTHING. I absolutely believe Alastair Reid was a cat. I think he received endless amounts of criticism and correction for his carefree attitude all his life and he's sick of it - therefore giving him an antecedent scenario to write this poem. I found it interesting that the first word if this poem began with a lower case letter, and the title served also as the first word to his poem. It was different and brought attention and emphasis to the word "curiosity;" after all, that is what this poem is all about isn't it? =P

Sunday Oct. 23 Poem Blog

Those winter Sundays

The first thing i noticed in this poem that struck me was the lower case "w" in the title! Now maybe this was Mrs. White's typo ;P but maybe it wasn't! interesting...
The first stanza of this poem sets up the position of the father in the family. The first line suggests he gets up early every morning, before everyone else, while the house is still cold. His hands are rough and represent the hard work he does all week long. He builds a fire and warms the house, but no one thanks him.. Everything seems normal and you begin to feel sympathy for the father until you read the second stanza... "fearing the chronic angers of that house." where were these "angers" coming from? Father? maybe... Why does the next stanza tell us the child speaks indifferently to the father? he's not concerned with him or how he's doing? What has made him so indifferent towards his own father? Maybe he is the source of anger in that house. In the last stanza, there was an unfamiliar word - austere. i looked it up and it means severe or stern in disposition or appearance, somber and grave. This stanza asks, "What did i know, what did I know/ Of love's austere and lonely offices?" this line now reminds me of "tough love." She knows her father lover her; he drove the cold out of the house and polished her good shoes. But maybe he wasn't always a nice man, and he didn't understand why. one possible antecedent scenario that i considered was a possible death of the father. This is the son remembering all those mornings his dad got up to warm the house and no one ever thanked him - and now it's too late.

Inoculation

This poem begins a story about Cotton Mather. I looked him and found he was a very influential New England Puritan minister. He was also a writer and was known for his neutral, unbiased perspective. In this poem, he is speaking to his slave, Onesimus, which means profitable and helpful. When asked by Cotton Mather if he has ever had the smallpox, he replies, "Yes and No." Cotton Mather ponders how "a man can take inside all manner of disease and still survive." Seeing as Mather was a minister, this is also an allusion to sin in the world and it references how corrupt we can be, but still go to heaven. The third quotation in this blog is interesting. Rather than putting it in quotes as she did the first two, Susan Donnelly chooses to italicize it. Onesimus replies to Mather saying, "My mother bore me in southern wild. She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave." This quote is filled with irony. Onesimus had escaped one bondage only to be enslaved another. The sarcasm you can hear is this quote is very clear, and Susan Donnelly did a good job making it stand apart from the rest of the poem by italicizing it. This shows a slight amount of hypocrisy in Cotton Mathers. Here he is, a Puritan minister, teacher citizens to cleanse themselves of sin and disease, yet he believes it's ok to keep a slave and rob him of his God-given freedom. hmmm....

A possible antecedent scenario could be that Susan just finished reading about or watching a documentary on Cotton Mathers and decided she felt he was a little hypocritical in his teachers. this poem definitely could have been a reflection of her own opinions of Mathers.

Weekly Poem Blog - Sun. 10-2-11

Identity Poem:

I am who I am;
My childhood has formed me.
Don't change who I am.