Poem #8: Response to, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" by Herrick

Poem:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 
    Old time is still a-flying : 
And this same flower that smiles to-day 
    To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 
    The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run, 
    And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first, 
    When youth and blood are warmer ; 
But being spent, the worse, and worst 
    Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time, 
    And while ye may go marry : 
For having lost but once your prime 
    You may for ever tarry.

Response:

Going through the completed TPCASTT of this poem, the theme seems to be this idea of the beauty of youth, marrying young, and living life to the fullest. All three themes come full circle when representing this idea of youth and what it means to the speaker of the poem. In the poem, the author uses a variety of metaphors and personifications to interpret this message of seizing the day and not wasting any opportunities that may come someone's way. For example, the author states, "Gather ye rosebuds...dying" in the first stanza. This symbolization represents romance and sensuality. Considering the author uses a rose to depict the wasting of time indicates that the speaker is most likely speaking to someone he is romantically concerned with. The rose could also represent youth and freshness, like a new bloomed flower, which represents an opportunity that can still be seized. The author also uses personification in the first stanza that only a person can smile and not a flower. This depicts the image of the beauty of life. Although you may be beautiful and alive now, tomorrow can bring aging and growing up. 

In the second stanza, the sun is described as it moves across the sky during the day. Putting this into consideration, the sun is progressing across the sky into the horizon. This could mean the woman is closer to death each new day adding to this theme of seizing your opportunities as soon as you can. 

In the last stanza of the poem, the speaker urges all who are virgins to marry before it is too late. This portrays the religious aspect of the poem, convincing someone to seize the romantic opportunity by stating that they should marry. This implies that the speaker is speaking of the proper Christian way of pleasure and sexuality (it can only be experienced after marriage). 

Putting all of this connotation into consideration, it's easy to determine the theme of this poem to be this idea of marrying young, living life to the fullest, and not wasting your own youth when you have fantastic opportunities in front of you. The author also makes the speaker have a didactic tone of voice because he/she is trying to tell the readers to how to live their young lives before it's too late. 

Looking back at the title, the theme is confirmed. The title portrays the real feeling of seizing the day. The speaker reveals that time passing will only prevent women from seizing opportunities while they can. The title confirms the speaker's true intentions of the beauty of life and what may happen if one doesn't seize the day. 

Poem #7: Response to "The World Is Too Much With Us" by Wordsworth

Poem:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Response:

When reading the title of the poem and skimming through the poem the first time, I was actually misguided by what the poem was about. I thought the poem was about the failed loved of a relationship. However, when I completed the TPCASTT for the poem and read through the poem a second time, I realized that there was no connection to a positive relationship at all. My whole paraphrase section of my TPCASTT was completely off.

Throughout the poem, the author used words such as "sordid" or "creed" to demonstrate the heavy, dark feeling as the tone of the poem. From using first person as a point of view, Wordsworth was able to communicate his opinion of this idea of beauty destroyed and ignored in nature. By looking at the last two lines of the poem, "Have sight...horn", the author relates to allusions of three Gods: Proteas, Triton, and our God. Proteas and Triton have a unique significance of the sea and God represents mankind. Putting those together (the sea and mankind), as a reader I was able to realize the theme of this poem had to deal with nature.

This theme that humanity has lost its respect for nature represents a broader topic in society. Wordsworth implicates his own opinion but when looking at the lines of the poem, as a society, we read this poem and feel the need to conform to a different society.

"Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" Wordsworth wants us to realize that the beauty of nature has been destructed. Looking at society today, we keep our hands glued to our phones. Society says, "why go out in the world and explore nature when we can explore it through our phones?" But, this poem says, "why not?" 

Beauty in nature is ignored by the ignorance of our generation. This theme not only references this but tries to make us realize what has happened to the world. We, as a society, are literally ignoring our own ignorance to the beauty of nature.

Poem #6: Response to "This Is Just To Say" by William Carlos Williams

Poem:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Response:

When I first read this poem, I realized how simple it was. As I finished reading the poem though, it seems to me that the poem is actually a written message on the refrigerator to someone. Overall, I believe the message of the poem is definitely giving into your temptations. 

Everyone falls to temptation once in their lives. For instance, you might eat that cake you have been dieting without, but, your temptations become urges to actually eat the cake. However, that is not the only theme I caught in the poem. As I dug more deeper into the poem, I caught allusions to Adam and Eve. Like Adam and Eve who ate the forbidden fruit, the speaker of the poem took plums without asking. It's weird linking this allusion to the poem because the poem is quite simple, but it's the allusion that makes this poem seem more complex. The poem is quite ironic too. When we look at poems, we often look for meanings and start to think complex. However, for this poem, there really is no way to think complex and maybe that was the author's purpose all along. I looked up who William Carlos Williams is and it states, "Often domestic in focus and "remarkable for its empathy, sympathy, its muscular and emotional identification with its subjects," Williams's poetry is also characteristically honest: "There is no optimistic blindness in Williams," wrote Randall Jarrell, "though there is a fresh gaiety, a stubborn or invincible joyousness." When I looked at this review on the author, the word "honest" struck me the most. "This Is Just To Say" is blatantly honest and kind of funny also. When we look at the tone of the poem, we also get the tone of the author or the author's personality. William Carlos Williams is a sarcastic and truthful man (maybe that's why he didn't blame someone else for eating the plums).

In my TPCASTT I wrote that the speaker seems to sound like he/she doesn't care about eating the plums but wants the person who was saving them to forgive him/her. On the other hand, the author seems to think the idea of stealing someone else's breakfast is quite funny and something to laugh about (which is the personality of the author after all). The author also doesn't use diction to get his poem to form a reaction of the reader. The poem is quite simple and gets its' point across. 

Ending this blog post, the themes I came up with were forgiveness(maybe), resistance, urges, giving into temptations, and influences from external forces. Giving into temptations is a huge part of life and often characterizes who a person is. When we look at who the author is, giving into temptations is something to laugh about, almost as though the author and speaker of the poem live a carefree way of life. Therefore, I came to the conclusion that although people always characterize giving into temptations as a bad thing, maybe that isn't always the case. 

Poem #5: Response to "The Youngest Daughter" by Cathy Song

Poem:

The sky has been dark

for many years.

My skin has become as damp

and pale as rice paper

and feels the way

mother’s used to before the drying sun   

parched it out there in the fields.

Lately, when I touch my eyelids,

my hands react as if

I had just touched something

hot enough to burn.

My skin, aspirin colored,   

tingles with migraine. Mother

has been massaging the left side of my face   

especially in the evenings   

when the pain flares up.

This morning

her breathing was graveled,

her voice gruff with affection   

when I wheeled her into the bath.   

She was in a good humor,

making jokes about her great breasts,   

floating in the milky water

like two walruses,

flaccid and whiskered around the nipples.   

I scrubbed them with a sour taste   

in my mouth, thinking:

six children and an old man

have sucked from these brown nipples.

I was almost tender

when I came to the blue bruises

that freckle her body,

places where she has been injecting insulin   

for thirty years. I soaped her slowly,

she sighed deeply, her eyes closed.

It seems it has always

been like this: the two of us

in this sunless room,

the splashing of the bathwater.

In the afternoons

when she has rested,

she prepares our ritual of tea and rice,   

garnished with a shred of gingered fish,

a slice of pickled turnip,

a token for my white body.   

We eat in the familiar silence.

She knows I am not to be trusted,   

even now planning my escape.   

As I toast to her health

with the tea she has poured,

a thousand cranes curtain the window,

fly up in a sudden breeze.

Response:

As soon I started reading this poem, the first idea that popped into my head was this idea of sickness and what comes with old age. The three theme topics that came into my mind were youth, growing old, and dependency. Through the details the author uses, it's easy to see that the mother is very sick and has been sick for many years, "I was almost tender when I came to the blue bruises that freckle her body, places where she has been injecting insulin for thirty years". The author also distributes a lot of imagery which helps us capture the setting of the entire poem and this also helps to tell us the tone and mood of the poem: sympathetic and almost relaxing and comforting. It's quite odd to note that the mood of the entire poem seems to be comforting because the mother is suffering through a sickness. However, when we look through the eyes of first person(the narrator), we don't actually know how the mother is feeling through all of this. Is she relaxed just like the daughter or is she discomforted by the idea that her daughter has to take care of her because she cannot take care of herself?

I noted that we, as readers, don't know where the other five other children went as the mother nursed six children total. However, we do know that the daughter taking care of the mother now is the youngest daughter, hence the title. By the end of the poem, the narrator mentions, "She knows I am not to be trusted, even now planning my escape". Maybe the youngest daughter was the only one not able to move on with her life yet because she was the only one left to take care of her mother. 

Overall, I feel as though the theme of this entire poem has to deal with the idea that the mother has turned out to be the "young one" because she is incapable of taking care of herself. The mother represents this dependency she has on her youngest daughter and it foreshadows her ultimate fate of death when her daughter has to "escape". When we put this into consideration, "The Youngest Daughter" represents the growth of a young adult preparing for adulthood whereas the mother represents what happens when a person grows old and their youth is taken from them. 

Poem #4: Response to "In Just--" by E.E. Cummings

Poem:

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee

Response:

The "little lame balloonman" is one of the most unique symbols in this poem. As the balloon man is the main figure in the poem, we see him transform from, "lame" to "queer" and "old" to "goat-footed" by the end of the poem. The poem offers a variety of characteristics of setting, imagery, and uses the tone of the poem to contribute to the greater theme. The two theme categories I fit this poem into was innocence and youth. Throughout the entire poem, the author represents the poem in a vibrant tone of voice from the speaker and also uses diction to make us believe the characters in the poem are really enjoying themselves. Using words such as, "puddle-wonderful", made me realize that the speaker and author themselves have a positive mindset towards the setting of the spring weather. However, spring is not the main theme of the poem.

Throughout the poem, the author states young childrens' names as, "eddieandbill" or "bettyanddisbel" to show the importance of youth and innocence in the poem. Although I am not entirely sure why the names are combined into one whole word, I do realize that the children have a significant purpose in the poem: they represent the innocence and youth of the world. Spring represents this season of vibrancy and positivity, much like the children of the poem whom dance and play hopscotch in the sun. What becomes interesting is noting the old and boring figure of the poem, which is the balloon man. This balloon man represents this contrast of characters: the children represent youth and innocence where the balloon man represents growing up and aging. Where as the children are active and enjoying life, the balloon man seems less and less interesting as we get towards the end of the poem.

Overall, we don't know if the balloon man is another innocent being or if he is trying to warn the young children that their time of maturing and growing up is coming up soon. The balloon man symbolizes this innocent life coming to an end. By the end of the poem, there seems to be an ending of positivity. The balloon man is still whistling, and continues to whistle as the kids play as if he is trying to tell them something. While the poem covers this theme of youth and innocence, the poem could also represent the ending of one's childhood and growing up and maturing before it is too late.

Poem #3: Response to "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Jarrell

Poem:

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Response:

Although I am not entirely sure what this poem is completely about, I know that the theme revolves around the topic of war and death. The speaker introduces this topic of death in the beginning of the poem when the speaker states, "Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life..." As a reader, I could tell here that the speaker is already dead, in fact he is already "six miles from earth". Taking into consideration the line, "I woke to black flak and nightmare fighters", I could tell that the speaker has been involved in war and has been killed while in battle. Therefore, this is where I came up with the theme of war and death. It's also very interesting to note that the speaker is already dead as he is narrating this poem. I noted in my TPCASTT the diction the author uses such as the words, "hunched, froze, and washed" as a way to describe the inevitable death of the speaker. Using these types of words helps to come to the conclusion of what the theme is because by using these three words, the speaker is pictured as someone who was never able to get out of the war by being "frozen" inside of battle. Also, the author uses imagery to get us readers to picture how awful the war must of been for the speaker. For instance in one of the lines, the speaker says, "...they washed me out of the turret with a hose." This image contributes to the tone and setting of the poem: the aftermath of the war and what happened to him after the war ended. This also helps me put into consideration what happens to most soldiers when they are killed in battle: nothing. Most soldiers get no recognition for dying for their country and often times no one hears about what they actually go through in the war, thus the line, "...they washed me out of the turret with a hose". This is interesting to think about because this could also serve as the author's purpose of the poem: giving recognition and opening people's eyes about how soldiers' lives aren't praised and treasured when they die for our country. If this is the main purpose or theme then I definitely like the poem a lot more better after analyzing it so thoroughly.

Poem #2: Response to "We Real Cool" by Brooks

Poem:

The Pool Players.
        Seven at the Golden Shovel.

            We real cool. We   

            Left school. We

            Lurk late. We

            Strike straight. We

            Sing sin. We   

            Thin gin. We

            Jazz June. We   

            Die soon.

Response: 

The most noteworthy aspect of this poem is the diction the author uses. In the second stanza, the author states, "We Lurk late. We Strike straight." The author uses the words, "lurk" and "strike", to describe the characters intentions of being carefree and not being worried about anything. This poem seems to revolve around this idea of childhood and growing up into adulthood: something of which the characters in this poem are not aware of. Beginning this poem, I actually thought the words in the poem might symbolize something more deeper than the details provided. However, as I continued reading, I realized that the author uses these specific details such as, "We Left school...We Sing sin", to describe the recklessness of these children who are still too young to realize what they're doing. From the beginning of the poem, the speaker seemed very confident in what he/she does with his/her friends because the speaker used a positive tone of voice. However, by the very end of the poem, the speaker says, "We Die soon". I thought this was important to note in conclusion to the overall theme of the poem because as a child, most people are unaware of the outside influences on themselves and how that will affect them when they grow older. Like the kids or teens in this poem, they are influenced by external forces such as their other friends, drinking, and committing sins. When the speaker states, "We Die soon", it is almost as if their childhood is dying instead of themselves altogether. The tone of the entire poem changes from positive to negative, much like the emotions one feels when they have to or are forced to grow up. I think the line, "We Die soon", is the most important line in the poem because it concludes the end of their childhood they once had: their reckless and carefree attitudes have to end and they have to grow up in order to mature and become successful. I didn't quite catch this theme till now. At first I thought the poem literally signified one's death by acting reckless and carefree but now I come to realize that that's actually not the case at all. The poem's overall theme is, "In order for one to mature from their childhood, the reckless and carefree days must be concluded."

It's interesting to realize I didn't catch this actual significance of the poem until the third time reading it. I didn't like the poem at first but now that I realized its' significance, I kind of enjoy it. 

Poem #1: Response to "To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Bradstreet

Poem:

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay;

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Response:

Bradstreet states in line five, "I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold". Coming from the point of view of a woman in love with her husband, I first thought this poem was going to end in tragedy. We are greeted in the beginning of the poem with this woman who confesses her love headstrong. However, most poems usually transition into something like good to bad or bad to good. I thought it was interesting to note this because this poem didn't transition at all. Reading the title, "To My Dear and Loving Husband", I thought this would be some sort of breakup poem written to her husband. However, the poem seemed to stay consistent with how the woman felt from beginning to end.


The poem definitely revolves around the theme topic of love, dependency, and selflessness. For my theme statement, I actually wrote, "When a woman who stays committed to her endless love for her husband, the result may be an everlasting love that lasts for a lifetime". In the poem, the speaker confesses this love and seems so dependent on this love that her husband gives her by stating, "Thy love is such I can no way repay" (line 9). The speaker seems to have all her attention on her husband, which can sometimes be a good and bad thing. I noted how the poem is only in the point of view of the wife and not the husband. Looking back on all of the other past novels and poems we read, they were always about the woman loving the man and not the other way around. This poem can then focus on feminism and how woman are portrayed to be more involved in their relationship then men are. It's also interesting to note that the man's feelings towards the woman are never mentioned either, yet again creating a feminist tone to the poem. Overall, the poem's theme seems to revolve around this idea of women depending on their husbands to take care of them thus creating this feminist poem.

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden Reflection

When I read the poem the first time it was pretty easy understanding what was going on in the poem itself. I understood that the poem was about the speaker's father who never gets the thanks he deserves for helping out the people around him. However, I didn't catch something the first time reading the poem: the father's occupation. After reading the poem the second time, and completing the paraphrasing section of the TPCASTT assignment, I realized that the poem revolved around the father being a lumberjack and going out on these cold winter Sundays and warming up everyone's homes. Also what I didn't realize the first time reading the poem was that his father is definitely taken advantage of for it. The speaker's father seems to contribute all of his time to committing himself to warm up people's homes but never being thanked for his good deed. The author seems to describe the speaker's father as someone who is old and worn out by describing his hands as "cracked" and "aching". Putting this into consideration the second time around made me think about the world today. Often times the elderly are taken advantage of and thus never get respected for what they did do or still do. This poem revolves around generosity being taken advantage of and what happens when people are too generous.

Doing the TPCASTT assignment is definitely helpful in a lot of ways because it helps me understand the overall meaning or the bigger picture in the poem the second time around. Although understanding the author's feelings in retrospect to the speaker's feelings is the most hardest aspect for me to cover, the TPCASTT definitely helps me understand what is going on in the poem and what the overall theme of the poem is meant to be, even if I may be a little off.

Task One Reflection

The first time reading Othello, Act I, Scene 3, I honestly didn't think much about what the actual poem was about. When I first read the poem, it confused me how the speaker went from talking about the father to the girl and I didn't actually understand what was going on. In my annotations, I just put generalizations about the text and didn't actually expand and consider complex thinking because I honestly had no idea what was going on.

After reading through the poem a second time, paraphrasing, and doing the TPCASTT assignment, it became easier to understand what was going on in the text and understanding the meaning behind the poem. After going through the TPCASTT assignment and doing the paraphrasing stage, I was able to grasp what was actually going on. From the beginning of the poem, the speaker was referring to the father's daughter and how he always asks about the speaker's past and what he has done. Then, the speaker transitions into speaking of the daughter whom he loves for not judging him on his past. I came to the sense that the overall meaning of this poem was the idea of prosperity. Othello's origin of his name comes from the meaning, "prosperity", and that's what the whole idea of the poem seems to be: Othello reflecting on his life and what he has done.

The questions were what I struggled on the most. I had a hard time with questions referring around the idea of the structure of the poem. For example, for question 43, the question asks about the passage's iambic rhythm. I don't know what an iambic rhythm is and how it is used in a poem. Another question I really struggled on was question 37 where it asks how I would best paraphrase the lines. I'm really bad at paraphrasing and understanding what a poem or passage is really about. Therefore, it took some time for me to answer the question and I guessed at the end. I need more instruction on the structure and paraphrasing questions because those are the ones I typically guess on. For the questions I'm perfectly fine with and barely need help with, are the questions which asks about what a certain word means. Those questions are typically more easier for me to deal with and I usually don't guess because I can easily refer to other words in the poem.

Overall, I feel as though the TPCASTT helps me to better understand the poems we have gotten to read and also makes me use complex thinking.