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.

Heart of darkness alternate ending!!!!

At the end of the heart of darkness, Marlow is face to face with Kurtz's Intended. She wants to know what Kurtz's last words were before he died.... Marlow decides to protect her memory of Kurtz and tell her his last words were her name. Had he told her the truth, I think it would have gone something liked this:

"'To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his very last words...' I stopped in a fright.
"'Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. 'I want - I want - something - something - to - to live with.'
"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
"'I know he loved you very much, but there's something you need to understand. Being out in that country for so long, living with all those savages, it can change who you are. You must understand he wasn't the man you knew before he left. His illness had taken over his body and mind, and his soul dissipated before our eyes. In his dying hour, his last words reflected what his journey had shaped him to be. 'The horror! The horr!' Those were his last words.'"
"With that, I turned and left her to face the truth of the darkness that had overtaken her one true love."

"Lost Brother"

            I originally read this poem from the perspective of the author and about half way through realized it made more sense coming from the perspective of a tree. So I began the poem over again thinking of it this way instead. I believe that was how it was intended to be read. 4,862 years old and in a matter of minutes, cut down, completely destroyed. The beauty of nature is so magnificent and to throw it away like that can be so angering! Yes, some argue we have to get our paper from somewhere. But I argue that the world we’re living in, the only planet equipped to sustain life, is not going to support us forever. And we’re only shorting that time period by abusing and wasting its precious resources. The colon in the middle of this poem was placed there to help the reader visualize the surroundings this tree had lived its life in for so many years. Then came a set of dashes, separating the wildlife from the rest of the surroundings. The habit of these creatures was being cut down, utterly destroyed. Where were they to live now? Some species described in this section were unfamiliar to me. The pink mountain pennyroyal is a flower used to create a remedy that gives clarity of mind and blocks negative energies. Ironic? Quite possibly. The white angelica is another plant described in the surrounding of this tree that can be used to create oil which calms, sooths and encourages feelings of protection and security. Hmmmm, this was not just a coincidence. The author specifically chose these plants to communicate the exact opposite feelings present in a situation like this one. Overall, I really liked this poem and enjoyed how the author communicated his point of view.

Wallflowers

This poem reminded me so much of mr Moore!!! He always got so excited about new words!!!!! Although I get really frustrated when I'm reading and come across a word I don't know and i have to look it up, I really do agree it's a great thing! I'm just lazy ;) as heather and Julia told us in class during their poem presentation, zoanthropy is the delusional idea that a human has transformed into an animal. Now, I'm not really sure when I would use this word... I don't generally talk about being an animal and I don't know anyone who thinks they are an animal..... Soooo maybe I don't have much use for this word?? But regardless, it's an interesting little fact to know! I think the theme of this poem is to take initiative to educate yourself and learn new things about the world around you! The tone was cheerful and reverent of the importance of words. Personification was also used in this poem to create emotions and characteristics in words!

Ps.. I typed this on your iPad in class, sorry for any typos ;)

Poem Analysis -Week 2

“Mr. Fear” by Lawrence Raab was a very well written poem describing the presence of “fear” in our lives. This poem reminded me immediately of my childhood. I think I lived a fairly paranoid childhood looking back at it now. My parents divorced when I was 8 years old and I remember feeling so vulnerable and unprotected after my dad moved out. I would lie in bed at night and visualize someone breaking into my house and killing my mom, then proceeding upstairs to kidnap my brother and me. I would try to anticipate exactly what the murderer would do in this situation, and I would plan out exactly how I would out-smart him. Sometimes I would plan how I could sneak into my brother’s room to warn him, and where we could hide together to save ourselves. I was quite the troubled child! These memories flooded my mind as I read, “Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams, / what do you have for me tonight? / And he looks through his sack, / his black sack of troubles. … Tell me, Mr. Fear, / what must I carry away from your dream. / Make it small, please.” This reminds me so vividly of my pleas to God every night to protect my mom and my brother and me. Please, make my fears small, God. Please, protect us.

Fear is unavoidable in this corrupt world we live in. All we can do is pray our fears will be small and drift quickly away from us and that the soothing sounds of the Earth at peace will return to us again.