final!

 

Prospective Immigrants Please Note (Rich)

from the tone of this poem, adrienne appeared to me as if she had become disenchanted with both immigration to improve the quality of your life, and America as a whole. i like how she shattered the idea that your new land would be a utopia without effort, and that you would have to work hard in order to ameliorate your life.

One Art (Bishop)

i get very depressed after things end in my life. will & grace, the new england music festival, mexico, and the summer vocal institute all cast me into a brief, but intense, bout of sadness and moping around. i want things to last forever in my life, and when they don’t, it really upheaves my world. why can’t life be like a music festival? i guess that’s what prompted my career choice, because i don’t want to give that aspect of my life up. however, i still have to come to terms with the fact that things just can’t be infinite. just because one thing isn’t forever doesn’t mean you can’t have something else, though. the art of losing isn’t hard to master because the art of gaining eases the pain, and supplants the grief.

Having a Coke With You (O’Hara)

This was a wonderful little love poem I recognized an anaphora (‘partly…’) I felt so proud of myself This poem like the love that O’Hara described was never static His use of imagery made me feel as if I was actually looking at them looking at each other in New York City and if you can’t tell already I’m going to go punctuation-less in honor of Mr O’Hara I also found interesting the fact that he compares this moment to masterpieces in art and he says he feels bad for him so I would say that he is a firm proponent of love above all else

A Poison Tree (Blake)

This is one of my favorite poems that I’ve ever read. I loved how Blake used the apple image, since it has such a plethora of interpretations symbolistically. This sounded a lot like a fable to me, too, except for the end, which you probably would not want in a children’s book. It was kind of weird, though, since I get angry all the time at people and I don’t tell them, yet my anger always dissipates. Maybe Blake was super angry.

A un Desconocido (Cervantes)

Maybe it’s just me, but this poem is soooooooo sexually charged. Her use of opposites coming together with climactic results was very erotic. My favorite line was when she talked about “boiling my bones in the absence of hands”. I can’t pretend to know what that means, but I like how it flows, and how it sounds.

Camouflaging the Chimera (Komunyakaa)

I know that this is probably really obvious, but this guy seems really affected by the war. Many of his poems deal with how much Vietnam affected him and numerous other families. I had lots of trouble with this one. I still don’t understand the part about the rotating globes under eyelids. I suppose it has something to do with them becoming a part of the earth when they camouflage, or whatever Mr. Teacher said. Oh well!

Pied Beauty (Hopkins)

I recently read an article the other day in Seventeen where readers were upset that they all could not look “perfect”, like the models in the pages. I’ve heard once the opinion that without flaws, positive traits wouldn’t look as good as they do. It is also a relief to see something out of the norm, and see some individuality. This concept has always seemed weird to me, though, since when you break away from the mold, there are other people doing the same things that you are, so you are still not fully individualized.

Mirror (Plath)

This poem reminds me of that movie “13 Going On 30″. Jennifer Garner hates what she sees in herself at a young age, and so she wills herself to be older; she soon discovers, however, that she has mistakenly eliminated those memories which we despise when we are younger, yet cherish as we travel down the slandered road of age. I love how Plath describes the mirror as being not cruel, but true, and that turning to anybody else would be lying to yourself.

I Hear America Singing (Whitman)

This poem really inspired me. I heard the other day at work a boy (a law school hopeful) ridiculing a girl for being a fashion design major. I felt irate at the time, and this poem really cemented the idea that everyone has oma contributions, even if they’re not as “weighty” as somebody else’s. I also found the idea that everyone was unique and no two people were alike very powerful. Although this picture is not a completely congruent fit, it captures the message that diversity in skin color, gender, profession, et al. is essential.