To his coy mistress

In the poem, To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell, it talks of a man trying to win over a girl. The classic story of man falls in love with girl, and the girl doesn't feel the same back. He tries to swoon and flirt with her by saying corny things like, "I would love you ten years before the flood" and A hundred years would go to praise you. He is chasing this woman and she is not giving him the time of day in my interpretation of this poem. Maybe if he uses more of these corny phrases, she will either tell him to get lost or will finally recognize him.

Finally, a simile

Finally!  A good simile that i enjoyed is in the poem, Getting out, by Cleopatra Mathis. The simile is: "That year we hardly slept, waking like inmates who beat the walls." We can all relate to this because we have all laid in bed for hours trying to fall asleep, but to no avail. This poem is talking abpout a couple breaking up and where to place blame. THe radio is playing songs of you are going to miss me when I am gone. This is good imagery because we all have songs to express every emotion, especially heartbreak and loss.

Elegy of Dover

In the poem, Dover Beach by John Donne, the author is making observations.  It is an elegy because it is somber and addresses the dead. I think it is more of a figurative death. I wouild think elegys would describe literal death, but this could work. Or maybe, it could address the lives of the waves hitting the cliffs over and over again. Towards the end of the poem, it is talking about innocence. This innocence happens in love and he is pleading to remain innocent and have nothing ruin that thought or feeling.

The Apparition

This poem confused me. I think that he is talking about a former lover. This lover left him with feelings and he blames her for many things. "And since my love is spent, I'd rather thou shouldst painfully repent". He is wanting to move on, but again, she left him with feelings for her. An idea that I read in other peoples' blogs is that this is a sort of ghost visiting a former lover. This idea sounds much more on point than mine does, but then again, it is poetry and there can be many different meanings.

Crossing the Bar

In crossing the bar, by Alfred Tennyson, the speaker is talking about accepting death. And my there be no sadness when I embark. He is not wanting to leave behind feelings of sadness after he embarks on his journey of death. I feel like the mention of the Pilot is Jesus. He guides us through life, like a pilot guides a plane. After he dies, he wants to meet the person that has guided him throughout his life.

APO 96225

In this poem it talks about a controversial topic, if you may. Many people want to know the truth but when faced with it, they don't want to really understand it. The man is sending home letters to his folks to mask the horrors of war. However, like most moms do, she wants to know what really is wrong with the  man. The man finally sends her the real letters and the dad yells at him for bumming the mom out. This happens alot with our society, and we need to learn to face the truth and not turn our backs to it.

Sorting Laundry

This poem is home to my favorite simile in any poem that we have read so far. The author is comparing pairs of clothes to "Paired like creatures in the Ark." Also, by using first person point of view, she is letting us sympathize and relate to her because we have all been stuck doing laundry by ourselves. We shouldn't be stuck doing everyone's laundry but unfortunately, this girl is and she gets a poem written about her. Another good simile made is "like tablecloths for the banquets of giants". She must have a big bed for king size sheets...

Much Madness

To quote Alice in Wonderland, Alice tells the Mad Hatter, "You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are." This poem is talking about the edge of insanity. Is insanity a good thing or bad thing? "Assent and you are sane, demur and you're straightaway dangerous." We all have a little bit of madness inside of all of us, that's what makes us unique. The poem is saying we shouldn't cross over that line of reason though. The poem makes it seem like insanity can be a good thing, however.

Barbie Doll

This Third person point of view makes it look like we are looking into this girl's life. The author makes us feel bad for the girl as she is being judged later in life. SHe is the same as everyone when she is born, just like a Barbie doll is the same as every other Barbie doll when it is made. This poem talks about conforming to the norm. Becuase she was different, people made fun of her. She was told to change to make others happy. This girl takes a turn for the worse when it mentions her laying in the casket. She couldn't take everyone else's opinon so she killed herself rather than turn into one of them.

Batter My Heart

This poem is directly addressing God. Therefore, it is an apostrophe. A cpuple times it references verbs in groups of three. These verbs ciuld be used to be describing the trinity. They "knock, breathe, shine" and "break, blow, burn". The speaker in this poem is addressing himself as an usurped town. He is asking God to save him from evil and make him a follower. In order for him to be saved, he needs to pray to God and hope for forgiveness.

Emily Confusing Dickinson

Ok, normally I don't understand the poems we read until we have gone over them, but seriously, what is "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed" about? I mean, I normally get a crude idea of a poem (as seen in my other blog posts), but I honestly have no clue what this poem could mean. Is it actually for once a poem that literally means what she is saying? "I taste a liquor never brewed, from Tankards scooped in Pearl". Is tankards and pearl capitalized for a specific reason? Or, is it just there to make us overthink this poem? And this poem also goes as far to mentioning angels. "Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats, and Saints, to windows run". This poem has gone from scooping alcohol with pearl, to inebriation off of air, to angels. I need help with this poem more than any we have read so far.

Metaphor

In the poem, Toads, a toad is used as a metaphor to describe work. Now everyone one of us that work have reasons to not like it, but would you compare it to a toad? Why would you go as far to comparing a job to an amphibious animal? A good comparison that I liked is : "Six days of the week it soils, with its sickening poison, just for paying a few bills!" Many times we go to work just for the money. And the toad(work) is poisining our lives. This poem is definitely full of comparisons, and I probably have missed a lot of them while reading it.

Apostrophe Stars

This poem is really confusing to me. It says he is talking straight to the stars, hence the apostrophe literary term, but is it really stars? If not stars, then what could it be even? Could it be talking about an idea or dream? This is stated when it says: "Yet still steadfast, still unchangeable". Many of our thoughts and feelings don't change in life. Or, it could just be referring to the stars up in the sky that show up during night.

Dream Deferred

Throughout our lives, we all have many dream that etiher get achieved, or tossed to the side. I really enjoyed this poem because it is talking about things that we all go through. We have an idea in our head, and it turns into a dream. We sometimes get to fulfill that dream, but mostly the dream just fades away eventually. Or, like this poem suggests, they "dry up like a raisin in the sun." There are many good comparisons such as this one, also: "fester like a sore, and then run." This previous simile talks about how a dream gets washed up. Our dreams that don't work out for us usually leave us as fast as they came into our mind.

First Simile of the Poems

In the poem: "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", there is talk of either going on a journey or a man about to die. Phrases such as: "Whisper to their souls to go, and the breath goes now" make it seem like it is about death. Phrases such as: "Though I must go, endure not yet. and Like th' other foot, obliquely run" make it seem as just a journey. But here is my proposition, the author is trying to say death is another journey on its own. We leave our body and our souls go on a journey unlike any we have ever taken so far. The simile example in this poem is "Like gold to airy thinnes beat."

First Person Point of View

Wow, I must really have had a mind blank of all the literary terms to have to resort to the use of first person point of view. Nevertheless, it counts. In the poem, " I felt a Funeral, in my Brain", the character is telling the story herself. My thoughts on this poem is that she is in her coffin. She, unfortunately, is seeing her own funeral. There are clues that reveal this in the poem. These clues include: "And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down." She refers to the boots of lead as people walking past her casket at a wake before the funeral. She is witnessing people walk by at her own funeral, and can do nothing about it. Kind of a scary thought, huh?

Sad, Sad, London

I was never one to think that Europe was such a depressing place. That was of course before I read the poem "London", written by William Blake. This talks of people giving up, giving into darkness and depression. People such as: "the hapless Soldier's sigh" and "the Chimney-sweeper's cry". I feel like this poem also talks about the ending of an innocent time. Something must have happened in London's history to completely change the thoughts and lifestyles of these London locals. Hopefully the town will cheer up in the future and there will be happy poems about London. Spoiler alert: London does indeed cheer up, and there is no more "blood running down Palace walls" (literally or figuratively).

The Allegorical Poem

In the poem, "Spring", we find an allegory. Not just one sentence, however; a whole poem."Nothing is so beautiful as spring." "A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning." This poem, in my opinion, is referencing the Garden of Eden. It talks about the innocence in the beginning. Now this poem is only talkikng about the Garden of Eden in its early days, the innocent, non-controversy days of Eden. The ending of the poem also talks about the ending of the Garden of Eden and ending of innocence. The line that references this is: "Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning".

Allusions Galore

I feel like the poem "Convergence of Twain" was a big allusion itself. It told the story of The Titanic hitting that fateful iceberg. But was this iceberg collison just a stroke of bad luck or a plan conjured by God? In the poem, there are many references to God. Some of these include: Pride of Life, Immanent Will, and Spinner of the Years. The way the poem worded it, it came across as almost a wedding of the ship and iceberg. A line that helps reach this conclusion is: "The intimate welding of their later history", and "And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres." From what I've heard, most weddings are planned. So with the question I posed earlier in this blog post, I think the author is telling us that the collision was planned. Sorry Leonardo DiCaprio, your character's fate was sealed before he even boarded the ship.

Longshot

OK, so with most poems come outlandish interpretations. None of these are more correct than others, but we all seem to side with that one that sounds the most right. In the poem "Those Winter Sundays", I created a longshot of an interpretation. My interpretation comes in the form of a courthouse. I thought the poem talked about a person deciding whether or not to send another person, more than likely his father, to jail. The "austere and lonely offices" mentioned in the poem came across to me as jail cells. Another person in my group found that to them, the poem meant a middle aged man that no one appreciated enough. Neither of these two interpretations are more right, just one is more of a longshot than the other.