"Daddy" in a Cheeseburger!

In her poem “Daddy”, Silvia Plath uses vivid imagery and metaphors to express her relationship with the men in her life. Using Nazi and Jew imagery as a metaphor, she is able to communicate to her readers the trauma of the oppression of her father and husband. She takes images of concentration camps, prisons, stomping feet, and swastikas and associates them with her father and husband while she compares herself to the Jews, the victim. “You do not do, you do not do any more, black shoe in which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, poor and white, barely daring to breathe or Achoo” (1-5). The many Nazi images that she uses, accompanied by a lot of symbolism incorporated into those metaphors build emotion and sympathy for the reader. The symbolism is important in expressing her ideas because certain symbols she uses are widely recognized and have attached emotions and relations. Using such extreme symbols and images is what allows her to express how traumatic her experience was.


Revised
In her poem “Daddy”, Silvia Plath applies vivid imagery and metaphors to express her relationship with the men in her life—her father and husband. Using Nazi and Jew imagery and symbolism as a metaphor, she is able to communicate to her readers the trauma of the oppression forced upon her by her father and husband. She builds emotion and tension between images of concentration camps, prisons, stomping feet, and swastikas and associates them with her opressive father and husband while she compares herself to the Jews, the tortured victim. “You do not do, you do not do/ Any more, black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, poor and white,/ Barely daring to breathe or Achoo” (1-5). The many Nazi images that she uses, accompanied by a lot of symbolism incorporated into those metaphors build emotion and sympathy for the reader. The symbolism is important in expressing her ideas because certain symbols she uses are widely recognized and have attached emotions and relations. “Not God but a swastika/ So black no sky could squeak through./ Every woman adores a Fascist,/ The boot in the face, the brute/ Brute heart of a brute like you” (46-50). These symbols and imagery such as the Swastika, the idea of the Fascist, a black boot, and the color black are symbols that have a universal and cultural understanding and emotions attached to them. Through the utilization of these symbols and imagery she can transfer her emotions to her writing, and then to her reader. Using such extreme symbols and images are what allow her to fully express how traumatic her life with her father and husband was.

A problem with my first paragraph was that I didn't use enough examples and explanation of those examples to argue the point of the paragraph. Also, I argued in more of a general sense, rather than on close reading. In the revised paragraph, I added more quotes and explanation of those quotes and I tried to delve deaper into how the symbolism effects the close reading and emotion of the poem. I think that the revisions helped to build the argument more, but I felt that I wasn't able to incorporate enough close reading into the broader argument.

Thesis Time

In “Ode to a Nightingale”, Keats uses the nightingale’s song as a metaphor for his desire for transcendence and self expression through poetry and the continuous presence beauty found in life.

"The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"...Huh?

This short story by Marquez has one theme in common with all of the stories I read in my Supernatural and Fantasy comparative literature class—the eruption of the fantastic within the mundane. This theme is found in the works of Poe, Fuentes, Gogol, and Kafka. This leaves the reader guessing and often illustrates a point the author wants to make about the world we live in. Authors use this theme of fantastic elements within the frame of a mundane setting to create ambivalent feelings of both familiarity and uncertainty. In the case of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the setting is very mundane and when this old man appears with wings, the reader then becomes conflicted with the question: is this old man supernatural or is he human?
Throughout the whole story, the old man is described to us as very human. “He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather had taken away any sense of grandeur he might have had(43). His appearance is completely mundane and pitiful all at once, while the existence of his wings confuses our perception of him. We want to associate him with an angel, but he has none of the “accepted” qualities of an angel. He does not appear majestic, immortal, or regal and he doesn’t have the “proud dignity of angels”. The whole neighborhood ends up “…having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal”(44). Despite the torment by the neighborhood, the old man stays very introverted and mysterious and we learn nothing from him about his magical abilities or why he is there.
It was obvious that the narrator in this story, as with most other supernatural tales, is very unreliable. We don’t know if we are getting the truth or perception and we don’t get answers to many of our questions. The author meant to lead us through the story with an unrealiable narrator to add an air of mystery and to keep the reader constantly questioning whether events are real or fantastic. The old man is presented to us through unreliable narration. We don't get answers to any of our questions. Is he really an angel? This unreliable narration is what creates the tension between reality and fantasy. It is sort of like an urbanized fairytale. In this urbanized fairytale, Marquez is using the mundane imagery and combining them with the supernatural to contradict the supernatural stereotypes—and stereotypes in general—that our society uses. Angels aren't necessarily white and majestic as we have learned to accept, but maybe they are old grandfather-like men who sing like a sailor. He is getting us to question conventional religious and social norms. Marquez might want to challenge these social norms because, as an artist, he’s pushing the envelope and maybe he is trying to express how society often will not accept things that aren’t familiar to them.
This story could be a “tale for children” because, like many other fairytales, there is a moral to the story (okay, maybe two). The first and most obvious moral is not to let social norms effect the way you see a person or even a religion. The neighbors along with the parents were making assumptions about the old man based on social norms in that village. The parents of the child were pressing their beliefts on the child when they made sure that the child not go anywhere near the chicken coup. And so the cycle goes. This “tale for children” is saying that we should not be so ready to accept those traditional beliefs and socialized images of beauty because image is not everything. Second moral—listen to your mother and father or you might be smited by god and turned into a giant spider by the stoke of a lightning bolt. Enough said.

Just Another Day?

Just Another Day?

In a station
ever
cold and hard
I wait for

the train
when she suddenly
appears
light in dark

I’m spellbound
bright flecks of color
so sweet
such beauty

Rather than making up my topic for the parody of Williams’ mundane poem, I thought I would take the topic from Pound’s “A Station of the Metro” and incorporate it into the form of Williams’ poem. Pound’s poem is definitely mundane in setting and although the tone is more intense and emotional then Williams’, I thought it would be fun putting the two together. I have taken my interpretation of Pound’s poem and made that the content of my poem while I have taken the form of Williams’ poem and applied that to the content. The stanzas, punctuation/capitalization, and number of syllables in all of the lines and title are the same as those in Williams’.
In Williams’ poem, “This is Just to Say”, the tone is very light and insincere. It wouldn’t have worked well to take the content from Pound’s poem and make it very light and conversational. Although Pound’s poem was very mundane in setting and characters, it was full of emotion and expression. I tried to keep that emotion, using Williams’ form. My parody was meant as a blend of both authors, definitely not mocking.

Urn=Poetry?

One of my favorite poems so far has been “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by Keats. In it is found a common theme—immortality in art. The desire for immortality through art has been found in many of the poems that we have read so far in response to the fear of death and aging. Though not expressed directly, these author’s writings are a way of living on after death. This fear of death and the desire for immortality is found not only in both of Keats’ poems that we read, but also in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73”.

What I thought was interesting about “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was that he is longing to be immortal and happy as the images on the urn are, but he is also immortalizing himself through his poetry. In a way, the urn is a metaphor for poetry in general. Some tell stories of young lovers and peaceful cities whose images live on as long as the poetry still exists. Also, urns are beautiful creations that eventually hold the ashes of the dead. This can also be compared to how a poem expresses the author’s style and point of view even once he dies. A part of that author will always be with the poem, will be found inside the poem.

Imagery in the Metro

While we are spending time on metaphors and imagery, a poem that really well represents both metaphors and imagery is “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound. It’s a poem that is simply two lines long, and one metaphor, but it is a metaphor full of pictures, smells, sights, sounds, and experiences. We never really talked much about this poem, but it is so powerful and so full of imagery that I think it is worth discussing.

“In a Station of the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

I was originally unsure of where to go with this poem. It seemed so simple, almost not enough. This poem, however, is a true modernistic poem. It is set in an urban setting, with few words that all contribute to a meaning or image that the poet wants to express. It expresses a precise visual experience through a very expressive metaphor. It is the use of this metaphor that gives the reader of this poem a very crisp visual of the metro and people he sees while he is at the station. The atmosphere and landscape of the station is visualized in your head and the image of these faces, petals appearing out of the trains during is such an everyday commonplace thing yet something that people wouldn’t necessarily notice as beautiful or striking.

I found three pictures that I feel encompass the visuals and emotions I get from this poem. The first one is a picture of a Paris metro station. This station is full of shadow and harshness, cold and unfriendly. It is a representation of the everyday, the mundane. Metro stations are cold, hard and dirty, a dark place where people travel to and fro.

The next picture is one that represents the apparition of “these faces in the crowd”. These kisses are things that are beautiful that appear in the background of the mundane making the mundane, black background special.

This last picture is one of a beautiful woman walking the streets of Paris with a confident elegant air. I think that this picture represents the time period in which Pound wrote this poem and together with the other pictures expresses the line, “Petals on a wet, black bough”. Pound wrote this poem about the faces in a station of the Paris metro that he saw as petals in a mundane background. It seems that these “petals” must have been faces of women which drew his attention through the crowd in the busy, cold metro.

Looking at this poem as a metaphor, the first line is the tenor and the second line is the vehicle, more abstract. The author uses distinct words on the line that is the vehicle so he can create the image of the faces in the crowd that appear so beautiful to him. The words that he uses create a complicated metaphor yet a vivid image of the beautiful in the mundane. Petals are beautiful and elegant, feminine. Wet, black boughs are hard looking, dark, and slippery. In only two lines, Pound has created a vivid image, yet there is no kind of emotion that I can find. It could be that he wants to write the poem exactly how he experienced the situation. Maybe he was waiting for a train, reading a paper, when these beautiful women stepped off the train and he couldn’t help but noticed how they brightened the station as they walked off with their children or baggage.

Life, Death, and Time in Sonnet 73

I recently finished a book by a famous medium, Concetta Bertoldi, called “Do Dead People Watch You Shower?” The book answered many questions about life and death and in between. I was struck by her explanation that we are indeed reincarnated into different bodies and different situations because we are meant each time to learn a certain “life lesson”. She explains that we are not new souls, but we are the same soul living different lives each time we are sent to earth by God. (And by the way, apparently dead people do watch us shower…those we knew are always with us in spirit.)

This is why upon reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 I was reminded of this book about life beyond death and the pressure of time and aging on all of us. I felt that although the literal reading of this poem would be to conclude that Shakespeare is implying that life ends when you die, there is not necessarily a definitive end to you once you die.

Sonnet 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

All of the metaphors in this poem are nature related—the cycle of fall to winter, the cycle of twilight to night, and of fire to ashes. Looking at these on a less literal level, you can see that these are associated with Mother Nature, Father Time, and the cycle of life. You can either see these cycles as ending at winter or night or ashes, or you can see them as the coming of spring, the coming of dawn, and the rebirth of a phoenix. While the poem is rather pessimistic and there is an impending sense of doom and death, it seems Shakespeare was more concerned with the loss of youth, time, and love than of death itself.

The focus of this poem is time. Time creeps slowly up on us and when we finally realize it, many years have passed and we have lost that youth we once prized. I love the line: “Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest” (8). What is Death’s second self? Could it be a name for the Grimm Reaper? Father Time? Sleep? Night? Quite possibly it means all of those things. We are all fascinated with time and aging and the timeline that is our life. We make plans to do certain things before a certain age because we only live once. But do we really? We are broken harted when we a loved one has passed, but are they entirely gone? Or are they with us in spirit? It’s up to you whether we live once or whether we are reincarnated.
Suppose we did live more than once. Would that make you any less fearful of time and death? Shakespeare’s Sonnet 59 says,

“If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd,
Which labouring for invention bear amissThe second burthen of a former child.”

This sonnet addresses the possibility of reincarnation and the possibility that nothing is entirely new and nothing ever completely dies. This is what makes time so ambiguous.

While it isn’t clear whether Shakespeare really believed in reincarnation or life after death, his Sonnet 73 inspired me to question metaphors for death and time he used in his sonnet. His sonnet included cycles of life and death and the pressure of time on life and love. Depending on how you want to look at it, Shakespeare's sonnet is either a pessimistic view on death, or a realization that love and life are cycles that end in death but starts again in life. Whether or not Shakespeare was actually afraid of dying and of time eventually consuming him, he should not have been because he obviously lives through his timeless writing today and for many years to come.

Form vs. Prose

If a poem was written in the same format as an essay or letter it would not have the same effect as it would in poetic form. A poem is broken up into separate lines to emphasize the drama, emotion, and meaning that the author is trying to express. Without poetic form the author’s imagery and expression is lost. A good example of how poetic form works to produce dramatic and meaningful lines is in Ozymandias by Percy Shelley. The last sestet of this poem reads:

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

(Prose)
On the base were these words:
“My name is Ozymandias, the greatest king of all:
All those rich and powerful, look at what I have created and give up hope!”
Nothing beside the statue remains. Around the decay of the tall statue, vast and bare
The lonely and flat sand stretches far in every direction.

It’s clear that the prose version is not as powerful as the original version and is much more boring! Every word that the author put into this poem was chosen to serve a specific purpose, to cater to a specific emotion or image. That’s what poetry is—the art of creating images and emotion through words.

Authors break poems into separate lines at certain strategic points because people automatically put a break in what they are reading at the end of a line (I do at least). This break can cause people to, in a way, break up their thought process once a line ends. The way that the ending lines of this poem are broken up gives extra emotion and extra emphasis to what is happening. The second and third lines deliver such a strong proclamation that the pause at the end of the third line adds extra contrast to the next line. The sentence, “Nothing beside remains.” is so strong and delivers such a strong visual and dramatic change to the poem. The form at the end of this poem strengthened the impression of the ironic and tragic end to a king that was so vast in power. While clearly the prose simplified the poem into something anyone could understand, the way that the commas, periods, vocabulary, and line breaks are placed in the original poem delivers a much more interesting, dramatic, and thoughtful poem. Clearly, poems aren’t meant to be easy to understand. Where would be the fun in that? : )