Shape--> "My Body"

"My Body"

http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/shape.html
(Example #3)

Overall, I thought this poem had a negative tone. The speaker describes their body as "an outward visual caption". I agree that looks do not define who a person is, but their is a negative undertone in this description. It leads me to believe he or she does not like their body or the way people see them.

This thought is later backed up when the speaker admits they "sometimes hide." It is possible that the speaker has appearance issues. I also found this line ironic because it is hard to hide from everyone. Sooner or later, you have to converse with strangers and it will be impossible to hide forever.

The last lines confused me. "What you see is what you will get" could mean that the speaker has given up complaining about their body or that they have accepted the way they look. Besides the fact that this poem is in the shape of a body, I do not think it lends any meaning to the poem as a whole.

After analyzing the literary terms for this poem, I understood it better. The cacophony of "walking representation" and "outward visual caption" shows the discordance the speaker has with their body at the beginning of the poem. However, the euphony of "what you see is what you will get" shows the acceptance the speaker has with their body.

Sesperian Sonnet --> Edmund Spenser

"One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand"

One day I wrote her name upon the strand
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
Vain man (said she), that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalise;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quod I); let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.


The Sesperian Sonnet has three quatrains and a concluding couplet written in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab bcbd cdcd ee.

The first thing I noticed about this poem was the repition of the first line. This anaphora shows that the speaker feels attached to this memory and values this woman. He later goes on to say that the tide "made my pains his prey." This shows that he is angry with God for enjoying his pain. This may represent the discontent Spenser has with his religion.

The dialogue between the man and woman shows that they will love each other forever. The woman says she shall "like this decay", meaning she will soon grow old. The man replies that she shall "live by fame" and their love shall live in the heavens forever.

The enjambment between lines nine and ten shows the fascination the speaker has with his lover. He does not want to speak to soon. Instead, he wishes to take time in order to respond correctly.

The purpose of this poem is to show that true love lasts forever.

"The Chimney Sweeper" by William Blake --> Dramatic Monologue

"The Chimney Sweeper"


When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet; and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, -
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

The first thing I noticed about this poem was the contrasting images of dark and light. The speaker and Tom work in dark conditions, covered in soot. However, when they die, they will be "naked and white". Although the coffins are black, the key is "bright" and they will find happiness in heaven.

These images of clouds, angels, and god allude to religion. Through this, Blake says that although one may suffer in life, heaven will bring internal peace and happiness.

There is a use of figurative language in the line "curled like a lamb's back". This simile connects Tom's hair to a baby animal, which shows his innocence and exposes the innocence of all child laborers. This innocence is also exposed by the euphemism used in the line "locked up in coffins of black." Instead of saying that the children died, Blake puts it in kinder words.

Through this poem, Blake is saying that dreams are what make the hardships of life tolerable.

Carolyn Kizer

"Parent's Pantoum" by Carolyn Kizer

"Parent's Pantoum" by Carolyn Kizer

Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses

More ladylike than we have ever been?
But they moan about their aging more than we do,
In their fragile heels and long black dresses.
They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.

They moan about their aging more than we do,
A somber group--why don't they brighten up?
Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity
They beg us to be dignified like them

As they ignore our pleas to brighten up.
Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention
Then we won't try to be dignified like them
Nor they to be so gently patronizing.

Someday perhaps we'll capture their attention.
Don't they know that we're supposed to be the stars?
Instead they are so gently patronizing.
It makes us feel like children--second-childish?

Perhaps we're too accustomed to be stars.
The famous flowers glowing in the garden,
So now we pout like children. Second-childish?
Quaint fragments of forgotten history?

Our daughters stroll together in the garden,
Chatting of news we've chosen to ignore,
Pausing to toss us morsels of their history,
Not questions to which only we know answers.

Eyes closed to news we've chosen to ignore,
We'd rather excavate old memories,
Disdaining age, ignoring pain, avoiding mirrors.
Why do they never listen to our stories?

Because they hate to excavate old memories
They don't believe our stories have an end.
They don't ask questions because they dread the answers.
They don't see that we've become their mirrors,

We offspring of our enormous children.

The pantoum is composed of quatrains where usually the second and fourth line of each stanza are repeated as the first and third of the next stanza. The meanings of the lines change with shifting punctuation even the the words remain the same. The pantoum is known for subtle shifts in meaning through the shifting punctuation and therefore new context.

In the first stanza, the speaker clearly adores their children and is in awe of how much they have grown and their accomplishments. In stanzas two and three, the tone focuses towards slight bitterness. Kizer asks "why don't they brighten up?" The line "they beg us to be defined like them" hints that Kizer resents the embarressment her children feel when she tells them to "brighten up."

Stanza four introduces a middle way that will make Kizer and her children happy, as the children stop "patronizing" and parents become "defined like them". Stanzas six and seven introduce the fact that the children will soon separate from their parents and rely on them less and less. They will "pause to toss morsels of their history" towards their parents, but that is all.

In the last two stanzas, Kizer states that the children do not understand what they will become in the future. The parents are the children's "future mirrors". Kizer uses metonymy, a part for the whole, to show that mirrors represent the future. The last line suggests that children raise their parents as much as the other way around.

The overall scansion of the pantoum has meaning within itself. The repitition of lines in different contexts give different meanings.

Villanelle --> "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath

"Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary darkness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said.

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Usually, the villanelle is composed of five tercets and a concluding quatrain. It has no set of syllables per line and has a pattern of only two rhymes. These rhymes are marked by the alternating refrain which first appears in the first and third lines of the initial tercet. The refrain lines in this poem are "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead" and "I think I made you up inside my head". They alternate to end each tercet and both are at the end of the quartet.

The repition of the refrain lines shows the internal struggle in the narrator's head. Everything makes sense when her eyes are closed, but her dreams are the only thing she wants to live for. The cacophony of "arbitrary darkness gallops in" shows the discontent the narrator has with her disconnection with reality. This line does not flow and has a harsh discordance of sound. However, when the narrator speaks about her lover, euphony is used. She dreams that her lover "sung [her] moonstruck, kissed [her] quite insance." These pleasant-sounding combination of words shows the narrators longing for a true love.

The narrator also uses metaphors to exaggerate her longing for true love. On line 10, "God topples from the sky" and "hell's fires fade". Of course, none of this actually happens but the narrator is voicing her pain in acknowledging that her obsession is not real.

What do you think Plath is trying to say by alternating "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead" and "I think I made you up inside my head" at the end of each stanza?

"Here I Am" by Roger McGough

McGough was born in Liverpool in 1937. He is part of a comedy group which performs songs that McGough writes many of the lyrics for. He is responsible for some dialogue in the film "Yellow Submarine" but was not given credit for it. He is known as a jokester and has made many mockumentaries.

"Here I Am" is found on page 1046 of the Norton.

The brevity of the line "Here I am" at the beginning of the poem voices McGough's unhappiness with the emptiness of his life. The messiness of the first eight lines of the poem show that McGough is confused and has a lot of thoughts regarded his inaction in life. There is no controlled order or external form to these lines.

Lines 9-14 in line with each other shows all he wished he had accomplished. On line 15, he repeats the line "Here I am." It shows that after all the oppurtunities he has missed, his is accepting of the life he has chosen. The further down the lines go the smaller they get, which signifies the sadness and emptiness he is feeling due to the fact that there is no substance to his life.

The two separate lines of "here I am" act as a belt to the bulging thoughts of his missed oppurtunities. At the end of the poem, McGough admits his life is "pretty dull" with a humorous tone. The last two lines of the poem have a lighter tone than the rest of the poem.

This shows that although he was not able to live his life to the fullest, he is still happy with himself. Although he may not have been able to do everything, he still accepts the choices he made.

Questions:

- What do you think the poem is shaped like? How is it significant to its meaning?

"We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks

Brooks was born in 1917 and grew up in Chicago. Although she had a functional and loving childhood, she was interested in the negative impacts of urban life. In 1967 she became involved in the Black Arts movement, where she focused on the underclass of black urban neighborhoods. "Like many urban writers, Brooks recorded the impact of city life. But unlike the most, she does not hold the city completely responsible for what happens to people. The city is simply an existing force with which people must cope" (Williams).


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWxFiFsxikg&feature=related

"We Real Cool" can be found on page 879 of the Norton.
In this poem, "we" represents teenagers. This can be inferred by the conversational language and the use of slang.
The opening line, "we real cool" shows that the speakers are ignorant. The rebelious teenagers constantly need to get into trouble in order to be considered cool.
The author of the poem is mocking teenagers. Everything that the teenagers do is leading up to their death.
The ending line, "we die soon" shows that the author disagrees with crime among young people. This leads me to believe that the author once participated in these trivial acts as a teenager, and was able to come out alive.
However, she did learn a lesson and is preaching it to her audience.By Brooks' use of the teenagers' point of view, it shows the stupidity and ignorance of their acts.

Question:
-What do you think the placement of "we" on separate lines signifies? Or the softness of her voice when reading it?

Favorite Poems --> "123rd Street Rap" by Willie Perdomo

"123rd Street Rap" can be found on page 995 of the Norton.

This poem initially caught my eye because of its structure. It is composed of eighteen double-line stanzas. Each stanza is more of a phrase than a sentence, which shows Perdomo's careful diction. He describes the bullets as "automatic", which shows that violence is the only answer to life's problems on 123rd street. The repitition of the word "for" on lines 10 and 11 make the reader feel like a "drunken mourner". This syntax draws the reader in and makes them feel more connected to the poem. Further down on line 12, the "baby men" conveys that children grow up fast in this crime-infested neighborhood. The use of improper grammar in lines 15, 17, and 19 give the poem a slangy feel. It is as if the poem should be spoken or rapped rather than read. After reading this out loud, I found that the words have rhythm and flow nicely with one another. The later mention of night and day right before right and wrong gives the reader a mental image. The only thing known for sure on 123rd street is "day turns to night." It is hard to tell "what's wrong from what's right". In this poem, Permodo not only tells about the setting, but he also reveals a lot about himself.

Favorite Poems --> "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall

"Ballad of Birmingham" can be found on page 1072 of the Norton.

This poem is divided into eight stanzas with every second and fourth line of each stanza rhyming. I chose this poem as a favorite because it had a plot line and I was interested until the very end. Also, the poem drew sympathy from me over an event that I had no idea about, the bombing of an Alabama church. The fact that the first four stanzas are dialogue are between a mother and her young daughter give the poem a warm feel. The narrator in the next four stanzas distances the reader from the events, but the emotional attachment to the little girl is still present. The repitition of "No baby,no, you may not go" forebodes the fact that something awful is about to happen. It is also ironic that the girl was instructed to go to church because the streets of Birmingham are "fierce and wild", and she ended up dying. Randall's descriptive diction allowed me to feel like I was on the scene. The description of the mother "clawing through bits of glass and brick" put a clear image in my head of a frantic daughter searching for any hope of her daughter still being alive. All in all, I enjoyed this poem because it was easy to read but still drew emotions from me.

External Structure --> "Here I Am" by Roger McGough

"Here I Am" is found on page 1046 of the Norton.

The brevity of the line "Here I am" at the beginning of the poem voices McGough's unhappiness with the emptiness of his life. The messiness of the first eight lines of the poem show that McGough is confused and has a lot of thoughts regarded his inaction in life. Lines 9-14 in line with each other shows all he wished he had accomplished. On line 15, he repeats the line "Here I am." It shows that after all the oppurtunities he has missed, his is accepting of the life he has chosen. The two separate lines of "here I am" act as a belt to the bulging thoughts of his missed oppurtunities. At the end of the poem, McGough admits his life is "pretty dull" with a humorous tone. This shows that although he was not able to live his life to the fullest, he is still happy with himself. Although he may not have been able to do everything, he can still dream it.

External Structure --> Composed in the Composing Room

This poem can be found on page 1043 of the Norton.

After spending some time on this poem, I began to understand the symbols and formulate them into words. The first four lines of the poem were easy to decipher and I therefore did not spend a lot of time on them. In my opinion, Adams purposely made this stanza easy to understand in order to warm the reader up. My guess is backed up by the ending quote which translates "I don't care at all." However, the second stanza was harder to understand. I interpreted it as Adams trying to run away from his problems, because of his "running" and the "Fleeting Hour". I was not able to grasp the full meaning of the third stanza, although the line "all fear of deadly parallels" struck me as extreme. Adams is saying that he doesn't want his writing to parallel with any others, which explains his use of symbols instead of words.
Furthermore, because of these symbols I noticed pauses and understood changes of voice easier. As said in the Norton, I definitely noticed a "musical score for reading". This poem was like a puzzle and I felt accomplished after figuring out the symbols. As also said in the Norton, this poem is for "puzzle-solving pleasure rather than emotional effect."

External Structure --> "In the Park" by Gwen Harwood

"In the Park" can be found on pages 1031-1032 of the Norton.

This sonnet is a Petrarchan Sonnet, and follows the 8-6 form and the abba,abba cdecde rhyme scheme. This type of sonnet is usually used for the author to make one point in the first eight lines, and then illustrate it in the following six.
In the first eight lines, the lady is introduced as "out of date" and is tied down by her children. When "someone she loved once" passes by, she is not able to "feign indifference". This shows that she still cares for this man and loves him. The balloon that rises from his head not only represents what he is thinking, but also that Harwood sees him as an escape. She wishes to become involved with this man and leave her old life behind.
In the following six lines, Harwood illustrates the extent to which the woman feels trapped. After the man leaves, she sits "staring at her feet." This shows that she is embaressed of her life and regrets the decisions she made. Her comment to the wind shows the absolute dread the character feels towards her own life. The fact that her children have eaten her alive shows that she is done with her responsibilities. However, the only person she can tell is the wind and therefore is forced to keep her emotions inside.

Internal Structure --> "The Daughter Goes to Camp" by Sharon Olds

In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone.
My palm keptcreeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning—
nothing, nothing, waves of bawling
hitting me in hot flashes like some
change of life, some boiling wave
rising in me toward your body, toward
where it should have been on the seat, your
brow curved like a cereal bowl, your
eyes dark with massed crystals like the
magnified scales of a butterfly's wing, the
delicate feelers of your limp hair,
floods of blood rising in my face as I
tried to reassemble the hot
gritty molecules in the car, to
make you appear like a holograph
on the back seat, pull you out of nothing
as I once did—but you were really gone,
the cab glossy as a slit caul out of
which you had slipped, the air glittering
electric with escape as it does in the room at a birth.

This poem is written in simple narrative structure, which is based on the gradual unfolding of Olds' emotions. First, she is alone in the taxi after dropping her daughter off for camp. Then, she slowly realizes everything that she will miss about her daugher, including her "meaty little hand" and "narrow thigh". She then starts to compare her daughter to other events in life, including her dark eyes like "magnified scales of a butterfly's wing." The image of a butterfly shows the mother's acceptance of the daugher growing up. Also, her leaving compared to "the air glittering electric with escape as it does in the room at birth" shows the mother's want to keep her as a baby, but understanding that she must move on.

Internal Strucure --> "The Dance" by William Carlos Williams

"The Dance" can be found on page 1009 of the Norton.

The structure of the poem is very much like the dance that it tells about. The poem starts with "In Brueghel's great picture, the Kermess", and ends with the same line. Most structured dances begin and end with the same movement, which ties the whole poem together. The middle of the poem is messy, with no distinct pattern for the lines. This reflects the style of dance, with the "squeal and blare and tweedle of bagpipes". The structure of the poem portrays the spastic motions of the dance. The "swinging butts" of the dancers also paints a picture for the reader. The structure of the poem, including the repition of a line at the beginning and end, as well as the disorganized middle, illuminates the style of dance portrayed in the painting.