Well breakfast cereal is my second love so I couldn't NOT analyze this one. Right off the bat, looking at the title, we know this one mentions cereal without having to read it, with the allusion of "Breakfast of Champions". Demeter is the greek goddess of the harvest, and more importantly for this poem, of the wheat harvest. Cereal is kind of her thing. I mean, Demeter's roman name is 'Ceres,' which sounds an awful lot like cereal. This immediately links the poem to Demeter.
The link to Demeter is continued in the octave. The Greeks explained winter by saying those were the six months Demeter's daughter had to spend in the Underworld, making Demeter so upset she froze the planet and stopped the growth of crops. 'Breakfast of Champions' begins with: "Finally, overcast skies. I've crossed a hemisphere,/ worked my way through petals and sunlight/ to find a place fit for mourning,/ a little dust on the laurel branch" (lines 1-4). Demeter is so set with grief that she has left behind sunshine and beauty for a somber place fit to grieve the annual loss of her daughter.
So we know we're talking about Demeter, that this is Demeter's perspective. Then what do the last two lines of the sestet mean? Earlier having referenced looking for cereal and raisins in the pantry, lines 13-14 say "Though I pour myself the recommended bowlful,/ stones are what I sprinkle among the chaff." Chaff is the fluffy part of wheat that is cast away and unusable, while the seed is harvested (ever heard the saying "separate the wheat from the chaff?"). You don't even use the chaff to make cereal. So why does Dove make a point to say "chaff" as opposed to words like "flakes" or "grain" that would make more sense? Simply put, it's because she isn't just talking about cereal. Instead of Demeter allowing crops to grow again, "stones are what I sprinkle among the chaff." After the harvest, among the discarded chaff isn't new growth,it's stones and rocks-inorganic objects able to survive winter because they aren't alive. The line before it, saying "Though I pour myself the recommended bowlful," references the fact that Demeter still must eat and make use of her wheat, she is too distressed about the loss of her daughter to care.
I liked your analysis, as well as your connection to your own life. Adding on to your perspective I see this in a different way. When reading this poem I focused more on the first stanza. Where its saying that she traveled a great distance just to mourn. And it seems to me that cereal is her way of mourning. She has lost her daughter and she wants cereal. But what does the cereal represent? I saw this as health. She is trying to regain her health after this tragic thing happens to her. And the stones are used to show that she will ever be satisfied with her health and it will never come back without her daughter, so in a was her daughter in cereal.
I really like the last paragraph of your analysis of this poem, it save me from having to do any actual research, so yay; I definitely agree on that. What I find interesting about Rita Dove, if not a bit dry is how that kind of historical research and analysis can be applied to pretty much every single line of this poem. What I like best about this poem was what Jacob mentioned, I really like- and so do most people, I’d assume- the relatability and the sort of empathetic reality check this poem provides, it reminds me of specific times in my relationship with my mom. The dual perspective poems like this provide (in the context of all the other Mother Love poems) are endlessly valuable, they inspire love and understanding where there might otherwise only exist a cold and tacit recognition of each other.
When looking through the poems one stood out to me in particular, Ẅiederkehr. The main reason this poem stood out to me at first was because of the name. Using google translate I learned that it means repeating in German. So when analyzing the poem I knew that the name has to hold some significance. Dove’s repetition of the word “rain” shows the reader that the person in this story wants to feel rain; this could have two meanings. One of the meanings could be that this person wants to physically feel the rain, meaning in this case that hades wants to get out of the underworld and experience life for what it is. Another meaning for this could be that hades wants a new beginning. Rain can be seen as washing away the past, so it's possible that Hades wants his past to be erased and to be able to start over again. However in this statement “I sat to hold the rain untouched inside me” (Dove), which shows that the narrator of the story (Persephone) is the “rain”. For Hades Persephone is a new beginning. However all of this is just for greed, Hades wants only personal gain from this, shown when dove writes “He only wanted me for happiness”. Hades wanted himself to be happy, and couldn't care less about Persephone, he just saw her as a way to get that new beginning. It is important to note that this poem is written from Persephone’s perspective so her portrayal of what Hades wants may be shifted towards the side of selfishness.
I really enjoyed your analysis, it made me think a lot more about the importance of titles. The title is what really caught my eye also. Isn’t funny how translated words can have many different meanings? When I translated the title, I got the word “return”, which made a lot of sense to me. The last three lines of the poem state “ Which is why / when the choice appeared, / I reached for it” (Dove). Which I believe refers to Persephone eating the six pomegranate seeds which would force her to return to the underworld six months of the year. When I first heard this myth, I was so shocked and couldn’t believe why Persephone would eat the pomegranate, but with poem, Dove has enlightened me.
The first poem that really grabbed my attention was “The Narcissus Flower”. The poem is actually a sonnet filled with couplets, triplets, and new lines starting in what seems like random places. The second line ends with “...not the earth unzipped”(Dove) and the third line begins with “but the way I could see my own fingers” (Dove). This ‘random’ break adds to the tone of the section while drawing attention to the details that give this poem it’s intense emotion. The tone in beginning of the poem is very frightened. This is shown by words like, frightened, frivolous, incinerated, and chasten. These words show Persephone looking back at her terror. As the poem shifts from memory to present, the lines get shorter and diction becomes simpler. This adds to the kind-of “calm so pure, it was hate” (Dove) feeling, or a numb feeling. In the first line, details are mentioned more than the big event. This also gives the myth it’s lifelikeness. In real life, hardly anyone remembers only the big things, sometimes it’s the shoes you were wearing or what you were drinking. When you hear about the myth of Persephone, you never really hear about Persephone. You hear about her mother, Zeus or even Hades. This is what keeps it a story, what keeps it unaccesable, unrelatable. Dove’s emphasis on details, and changes in diction takes a myth and brings it to life, takes a character and creates a real person.
I was also taken by this poem, specifically the word choice, I hadn’t yet looked up the word chasten, but your mention of it prompted me to look it up. So in an archaic usage, it means to discipline, with strong connotations of divine punishment, and this fits very well with my current (very rough) thinking about the poem and the metaphor it seems to draw between a mother-daughter relationship and Demeter’s relationship to Persephone, and the related judgements it seems to me to imply about the structure that sexism (speaking broadly) imposes on relationships between those who are in (or are confined to) the feminine role in society. I disagree with you your judgement on the “calm so pure, it was hate” line, I don’t think that this is only a feeling of numbness in the eyes of the narrator, they claim that “you can eat fear before fear eats you” and “you can live beyond dying”. I’m, however, still undecided on what the subtext of the final stanzas mean, they seem like they could either be a poetic way of telling a rape victim to “just get over it”, a continuation of the sexist environment the narrator grew up in, or a victory symbol of the narrator’s newfound and specifically feminine empowerment in that hatred, that calm.
TW- brief discussion of rape The poem that stuck out most to me was, like Lydia, The Narcissus Flower. However, unlike Lydia, I found different merits to it. Maybe not merits, I don’t think I’m quite on board with Rita Dove’s poetry in general yet, it feels much too straightforward to me. Even though it recalls very strong and common experiences of the advice a mother gives a daughter, but it hasn’t really been all that effective in striking chord that resonates powerfully within me. It discusses history and Hellenist stories, both of which I enjoy independently, but it can’t really grab me in the way that other works have. Works like Night by Wiesel or Hour of the Star have some kind of magical, gripping hold on me with no obvious reasons for why. I think a major part of it is just very effective word choice and intentional structuring, that I don’t fully understand. But, back to Rita Dove, I’ve found a poem that really does hold me like some of my favorite works do, the Narcissus Flower. I’m sure that it uses plenty techniques well- supported by the subject and tone of the piece, but just glancing at the word “hate” in line 9 drew me in inexorably. Maybe it’s just because of some ill-fitting combination of very little sleep and Regina Spektor’s new album (It’s like so great, really- Remember Us to Life- it’s on Youtube), but this poem is double-rainbow level emotionally impactful. Upon looking upon it a little further than just fixating on the single “hate” the rest of the poem is massively impactful. It seems obvious to me that the text is about being raped by some faceless man, evidenced by connotative language and and reference to colloquialisms: “Unzipped…“ “the blossom incinerated” “This man adamant as a knife easing into the humblest crevice,” This poem describes an event that both fits into the most common interpretation of the story of Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and a (sadly) widely relatable experience. This poem reminds me of my relationship with my own mother and other women; It just makes all of the other poems and their modern-voiced advice “Keep your eyes down” poignant in a way I wasn’t expecting (Persephone, Falling). I’m a bit ambivalent on the poem’s ending, I keep going between thinking of it as a statement of empowerment in spite of oppression and as a pretty way of saying toughen-up.
Golden Oldie caught my eye because out of all of the Mother Love poems it’s one of the few that isn’t apparently morbid. The tone is sad while still being soft and gentle. Rita Dove accomplishes this through her use of mellow diction such as swaying, crooned, and sentiment. The title Golden Oldie refers to an old song that was very popular, which sets the poem up to have a wistful, longing tone. It’s as if Rita Dove is referring to the old days, and yet the poem talks about someone who appears to have never experienced love and is longing for it. This creates an interesting juxtaposition and suggests that there is deeper meaning to the poem than one might originally think. It’s almost as if she’s talking about an old love that she lost, however the last line contradicts this when she writes, “....without a clue who my lover might be, or where to start looking.” This gives the poem a naive feeling and suggests that the narrator is longing to experience love.
I really enjoyed this poem while reading it, and one of the best things about it, in my opinion, is the fact that we're not totally sure of who the poem is describing. At the beginning, I thought it would be Demeter, who was missing her daughter, because the poems are describing the mother-daughter relationship, but towards the end, with the use of words and phrases such as "lover," and "Baby, where did our love go?"I started to believe that this may perhaps also be taken as from the point of view of Hades. This poem could easily be describing Hades in his life prior to finding Persephone, where he is looking for someone "without a clue who my lover might be, or where to start looking." When he finally found her, he was able to take her with him and finally be somewhat happy. We also see this sentiment echoed in "Wiederkehr," which describes that, from the point of view of Persephone, that "he only wanted me for happiness: to walk in air/ and not think so much,/ to watch the smile/begun in his eyes/end on his lips..." (Wiederkehr, lines 1-6). This upholds the idea that Hades simply wanted love and happiness, and he found it in Persephone. On the other hand, though, the use of "lover" and "baby, where did our love go?" could also be taken in a way that is not romantic at all, just that of a mother addressing her daughter, searching the world in order to find her.
I agree that this poem is starkly different when it is compared to the other poems in this Mother Love set. While the other poems are leaning on the aggressive sides, this one sways to appeal to the younger viewpoint of love and the experiences love comes to intimate love. When looking at the poem as a whole it really does stand out in terms of its tone that you were talking about. I didn’t know that the title was in reference to a song, so I will definitely be looking the song up to find further connections to this poem, thanks for pointing that out!
When you first read the poem Demeter’s Waiting, it can seem rather straightforward. It is from the perspective of Demeter who is the mother of phosphine who is forced to remain in the underworld during 9 months of the year with Hades. Demeter talks about how she will induce the world into a cold winter until she is able to see her daughter again. I found that the tone in the first part or first stanza to have a very contrasting tone to the second stanza. The tone and context of the first stanza is really sorrowful and almost regretful with the use of words such as “war-bound soldier” and “who can bear it” which are both phrases that can induce empathy. The second stanza becomes much more aggressive like the anger attributed to the anger of a mother bear whose club has just been stolen. Demeter reverts to profanity in the 5th and 7th line of the second stanza, profanity is something that is used for emphasis or to alert the urgency of a situation, despite how common it is in modern rhetoric. By raising the cold and causing winter Demeter is abandoning her own role as the goddess of agriculture, harvest, and fertility. By putting aside her main function as a goddess in the name of grief for her daughter, one can really see though the tone of this poem the juxtaposition. Going from a mother and goddess of harvest to being so furious that she reverts to profanity for empathizes her anger and that fact that she is the one that causes winter is ironic, and should be taken note of in “Demeter, Waiting” by Rita Dove.
A poem that I enjoyed was “Mother Love,” due to the strong allusion used within the poem. In the myth of Demophon, where Demeter decides to give a family a “gift” as she travels the world, looking for her daughter. During her journey, Demeter meets the family of King Celeus, where she is asked to nurse the two sons. In return, Demeter decides to turn one of the sons into a god, by burning him in a fire to burn the human spirit out of him. We see a reference to this in “Mother Love,” where Demeter is describing her journey to find her daughter, Persephone.
“I decided to save him. Each night/ I laid him on the smoldering embers,/ sealing his juices in slowly so he might/be cured to perfection./ Oh, I know it looked damning:at the hearth muttering crone/ bent over a baby sizzling on a spit/ as neat as a Virginia ham. Poor human-/ to scream like that, to make me remember.”
In the poem, we see that Demeter is suffering. By suggesting that she “decided to save him,” I believe she is implying saving him from his humanity, as well as from suffering itself. By becoming a god, Demophon would no longer have to suffer like the other humans. To Demeter, this seemed like a gift; By turning the child into a god, she would be saving him from pain and from human suffering, which is all she ever wanted to do for her daughter. In my opinion, Demeter tries to “save” Demophon because she could not save her own daughter. All she wishes to do is to be able to save a child, even if it is not her own.
This is somewhat of a piggyback off of Julia's entry, but I also go off on tangents so it isn't at the same time. In mother love,Demeter sees 'saving' Demophon from humanity and suffering is motivated mainly by her inability to save her own daughter, but the meaning of save is different in the two senses. Demeter saving Demophon is salvation according to her own past failures and her inability to save her daughter from Hades. Demeter isn't saving Demophon out of the warmth in her heart, but for for nostalgic purposes. Especially in writing 'to scream like that, to make me remember', Dove is implying that Demeter sees Persephone in the innocent child that she has the second chance to save. The irony in this poem also struck me. Demeter is almost on a side quest nursing the two boys when she 'saves' Demophon from human suffering and grief. Her main goal is to get her daughter back, and the nursing of these two boys reminds her of times when she had her daughter and when she had the ability to keep her safe. The significance of Demeter nursing King Celeus' two children is the paternalistic and caring nature of a mother's love. Personally, I wouldn't want to be burned of my spirit, but Demeter sees this as a caring act of salvation. The irony further increases as Demeter, and all Greek gods for that matter, see human life as a pointless and suffering existence. By making Demophon a god, Demeter is delivering him away from suffering. But suffering is not solely a human experience- Demeter suffers from the loss of her daughter as well. A theme Dove explores throughout her mother love poems are themes that aren't applicable to only one group or demographic. Excluding gods and such, suffering isn't particular to a group of people, or certain areas; suffering is universal. But so is love, especially paternalistic love, and the desire to save others where you have failed before. I find these two themes very interesting, as they are directly applied to Greek mythology but are allegorically(?) applied to all life.
When looking at the poems, my eye was immediately drawn to canary. But one this that really stood out to me within the poem was the last line, in it Dove write “If you can't be free, be a mystery”. This stood out to me and I wanted to explore the idea further. The poem itself is about how when you're a women you are only good for love and more specifically love making. But the idea of freedom and then mystery is very interesting and I took it to mean two things. The first thing that is could mean is that marriage is a trap for a women, so, so if you can't be free to do the things you want to be mysterious and it'll give the illusion of freedom. One of the best things about freedom is the idea that no one knows where you are, and with mystery know one may know Anything about you, thus mimicking the idea of freedom and the feeling that it gives you. So Dove is saying that if you cannot be free then mystery is the next option because it will gIve you similar feelings. The second thing that this statement could mean is that if you feel trapped become a mystery so you will have things that only you know. This wild cause the illusion of space inside your head, thus mimicking freedom. I think that it is important to have this freedom in a relationship or else you will begin to feel trapped, but then couldn't you just behind a mystery? In theory yes but the issue with mystery is it gives you the illusion of freedom for a short period of time, but you will never fully feel free. Then you will get stuck in a state of mystery and fake freedom that, in the end, will make you feel more closed than you originally did.
I like the approach you took on this poem by focusing on the last line. I agree with your reasoning when it comes to being a mystery can simulate freedom, but only for a short time because you aren't actually free. The thing that stuck out to me from this poem, however, is not the last line but the first. A canary in literature is a symbol of light and illumination and I was wondering if you noticed the first line beginning with, "Billie Holiday's burned voice had as many shadows as light". When I think of the word "burned" I think of a fire, which is used to illuminate dark places, but Dove also uses the word "shadows" which is a stark contrast. Do you think the contrast of light and dark Dove uses in the line could be a comparison of freedom and mystery because Dove inputs this contrast only to compare Billie Holiday's voice back to light at the end of the sentence? Therefore, like you stated, "You will get stuck in a state of mystery (shadows) and take freedom (burned, light) that, in the end, will make you feel more closed than you originally did." My explanation makes more sense in my head than it probably does in this post, so I'm sorry if this is confusing.
I appreciate the attention that you paid to the last line of this poem, as well as your open views on its meaning! I agree with your statement on how the poem reflects a view that a woman is only good for her body, and I found it interesting that the topic of the poem was Billie Holiday, as her life echoed a fair share of that idea, as well. As I was reading the poem, I decided to look up Billie Holiday, as I know her mostly through her music instead of her life. While going through a few websites, I found that Billie (born Eleanora, though she hated the name) had been the subject of attempted rape when she was eleven years old, and later became a prostitute alongside her mother to earn money. I apologize if this is a touchy subject to discuss, but I thought it tied into what you were saying about how women were valued for their body, and how in order to get away from that label, they had to maintain some air of mystery, almost as if to become someone else entirely. Billie Holiday, like many women of the time, could not escape that idea that women were sources of bodily pleasure instead of equals, and so she became something else, by becoming one of the most influential jazz singers, something that was uncommon at the time.
I think of this as the other more accessible poem (along with Sonnet in Primary Colors) in the assigned amount as the other ones are focused on ancient subjects or ones removed from the typical Western narrative of history that we are exposed to in school. I’m also very interested in the line: “If you can’t be free, be a mystery.” However, I disagree with the notion that this is somehow a simulation of freedom, it reminds me of that quote from The Great Gatsby, where Daisy is says that she hopes her daughter will be a beautiful fool, as that’s the best thing a woman can be in this world, it seems like both quotes are suggesting at one theme that women need to deceive in order to survive in within a system of institutionalized and individual sexism, that values them not as people, but as objects whose values are to be determined by other perspectives.
For those of you who haven't done the research, before I get into analysis, let me explain who Catherine of Alexandria was. She is a martyr of Christianity and a virgin and a patron saint of a lot of things (including knife-sharpeners, hat makers, and the Philippines). She was martyred at 18 for converting to Christianity (and converting lots of others, also martyred) and refusing to renounce her beliefs in the face of torture and death. The king tried a lot of things to get her to stop, eventually beheading her, but for the sake of this poem, the most important was that the king offered her to marry him. Catherine refuses, saying she was espoused to Jesus Christ and she had consecrated her virginity to him (if you don't know, to consecrate something is to set something aside for a sacred reason).
Reading through this poem for the first time, without knowledge on Catherine, it was definitely strange. It had an oddly sexual tone, which made me uncomfortable. I mean, “...sainthood/ came as a voice/ in your bed-/ and what went on/ each night was fit/ for nobody's ears/ but Jesus’” (lines 3-9)? “...Each morning/ the nightshirt bunched/ above your waist-/ a kept promise,/ a ring of milk” (lines 12-16)? It is VERY CLEARLY hinting at something sexual, but what and why?
Well Catherine said she was married to Jesus, and was saving her virginity for him. “What went on/each night was fit/ for nobody's ears/ but Jesus’.” As strange and uncomfortable as it sounds, this implies that she is nightly having sex with Jesus (that is a really uncomfortable sentence to write). This is reinforced with the lines “each morning/ the nightshirt bunched/ above your waist.” The third stanza mentions a lily (“His/ breath of a lily. [lines 9-10]). Christ is connected with lilies; he was born “in the beauty of the lilies.” The lily is also a flower symbolizing motherhood and sexuality, Greek myth stating that it was grown from the breast milk of Hera. The final line of the poem, “a ring of milk,” is possibly a reference to that myth. The motherhood and sexuality connects with the connotation of sex in the poem, and the possibility of sex with Jesus (I need me some holy water or something now).
I liked your analysis and how you added in the background information to help clarify your points. While reading this I too became extremely uncomfortable with the extreme sexual undertone, but after reading your analysis it makes a lot more sense now. I had never thought of the role Christianity played in this poem. See this is the part where I would say what I thought about the poem but honestly I felt very uncomfortable and very confused (kinda like high school). I couldn't really form an opinion of it due to the fact that I didn't know the back story and it made me so uneasy that I tried to rid my thoughts of it. But now I understand what its saying and it makes me slightly less uncomfortable. Now for a question, what do you think the purpose of having two poems next to each other that had similar names was? I don't know if this was Ballards doing but if not I think it was to juxtapose the two different lives. It shows the reader that thought people may seem similar on the outside, on the inside they may be completely different. However that's a good thing because we can learn different things from each.
I have to say, your analysis was just as entertaining as it was uncomfortable. When I was reading through the poem, I definitely caught the sexual undertone as well, especially with the line "the nightshirt bunched above your waist" bit. I agree with your analysis, and it makes a lot of things clearer in the poem. It's really different from my initial analysis of the poem, which makes me glad to have read yours. Initially, I thought the poem was almost describing rape (or at least something somewhat forced). It's kind of hard to describe my thought processes because it was honestly just a guess as to what the poem could mean (I did the same thing as Jacob and just tried to stay away from the obvious sexual tone haha). If I had to try, it was because the lines "and what went on/ each night was fit/ for nobody's ears/ but Jesus'" made me think that it was a dark secret of some sort, and that nobody else could bear the burden of knowing the sins that went on except Jesus. "His spiraling/ pain" made me think that maybe he was pained that he couldn't stop it, while the lines "a kept promise,/ a ring of milk" made me think that she had to keep her promise of marriage and children. I searched up "a ring of milk" after reading your analysis and I got something about how mammals feed their young. So yeah, my initial analysis was stupid but OH WELL WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT. The background definitely cleared things up for me, so thanks for including that!
I really thought, like Jacob said, that it was super interesting that Catherine of Siena was next to Catherine of Alexandria. Catherine of Siena also devoted her life to Jesus, and when asked how she knew she was married to Jesus, they say she basically said the ring wasn’t gold or silver, it was his foreskin. Which is super uncomfortable but also kinda eery that it’s right next to Catherine of Alexandria, which as has been said, has a really sexual tone. My question is what is Dove trying to express by sexualizing the women who have devoted their lives to Jesus? I would think that you would do the exact opposite, wouldn’t they be seen as holy and almost except from sexualistion? I just think it’s really interesting that Catherine of Alexandria almost denied herself from being seen as a sex object by not marrying the king when she knew it would save her life, and Catherine of Siena cut her long beautiful when she was sixteen so she wouldn’t have to get married to a regular Siena man. So is Dove sexualising them to almost draw attention to the fact that in their lives they fought, maybe subconsciously, to not be see as sex objects or baby makers?
First off, with the name. Soprano singers in jazz are referred to as canaries, due to their high range as well as the delicate and bright tones they produced as a result of their high pitches. Canaries are used for another purpose, albeit a much darker and literal one. Canaries in the past were taken into coal mines, and if they were to perish, the mine would be deemed unsafe to work in ascribed to poisonous gas. With the two distinct uses of canary defined, the first of a soprano singer is obviously implied in the context of "Billie Holiday's burned voice", who is a jazz singer with tremendous skill and a raspy tone due to drug and alcohol problems. Interestingly enough, Holiday was not a soprano singer but a contralto one; the deepest voice for women. The juxtaposition between the implied subject of a soprano singer based off of the title and Holiday's contralto voice is used to show the mystery Holiday invoked. Her musical skills were lacking, but she excelled in the realm of improvisation- an integral fixture to jazz, and influenced artists including Frank Sinatra. But Holiday's career was short lived, and she died when she was 44 in 1959. Her life as a symbol of light and hope coming from a troubled childhood, but ending as an early tragedy mirrors the life of an actual canary that perished in the lines. Dove keeps this metaphor from being too similar by contrasting Holiday's deep contralto voice with the delicate soprano of canaries. The second line, 'had as many shadows as lights/ shows the contrast between the brilliance of the spotlight that shone on Holiday and her dark drug habits. The following two lines again use contrasting imagery in 'mournful', dark and gloomy, and 'candelabra', which is a large branched candlestick, alongside 'the gardenia her signature', in which a gardenia symbolizes purity as a traditional wedding flower to show the stark contrast between Holiday's talent as an artist and her troubled life. Holiday also often wore a gardenia in her hair for performances. Thus is the tragic theme of many great jazz artists. Some of the best, including Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk, shone brightly and were extinguished young. This motif appears often in Dove's poems, especially American Smooth, as she is a product of the jazz culture. In the second stanza, Dove uses the term 'cooking' as slang to show the 'food' musicians concock that feeds the soul. 'Magic spoon, magic needle'/ are used satirical in terms of the cooking theme presented in the 5th line as references to heroin, which Holiday was addicted to. In the 8th line, Dove uses a favorite motif of hers- mirrors, possibly in terms of mirrors inabilities to see past the superficial. To the naked eye, Holiday was a success, but with further glances, she was a flawed and troubled woman. The final two stanzas are the shortest, done so in part at least to draw the eye towards them. Until this point, there isn’t much fluidity between previous stanzas, other than their application to Billie Holiday and jazz culture. These final words focus on women’s assumed roles in society, as well as possibly historical black oppression. ‘To sharpen love in the service of myth’ is used ironically as Dove writes often about myths, while also criticizing other’s accounts of the mythical Billie Holiday. Dove’s poem does not glorify her, but focuses on both her skills of her art as well as her shortcomings in her personal life. The final line, ‘If you can’t be free, be a mystery’/ illustrates Holliday’s inability to break away from her past that is constantly labelling her, and then her ascension to mythical status when she cannot escape her faults. ‘Be a mystery’ brings to my mind the image of a mask, a shroud to hide faults from judging eyes to protect one's own freedom from others’ labels.
While I particularly enjoyed Jacob’s analysis of “Canary,” I found the meaning to be a bit different, although also steeped with the influence of the time period in which Billie Holiday lived. After reading into the life of Billie Holiday, I found the first stanza quite interesting, as both the gardenia and words such as “burning” tell the story of how Billie Holiday’s hair once caught fire, and to mask it, Holiday used gardenia flowers in place of the hair that burned off. I believe this first stanza refers to the importance of the physical appearance of a woman, which is then highlighted by the last line, “the gardenia signature under that ruined face” (line 4). Even though the gardenia flower is a sign of beauty and a known symbol for Holiday herself, the fact that the last line mentions her “ruined face” remarks on how much impact beauty had (and still has) on the image of a woman. In addition to that, the remainder of the poem refers to words and phrases that remind me of the traditional view of a woman in society, such as “now you’re cooking,” “magic spoon,” “magic needle,” and “your mirror and your bracelet of song.” These phrases, referring to cooking, sewing, admiring yourself in the mirror, and jewelry, give this poem a very feminine edge, relating to the view that a woman needs to remain at home, to keep after her own physical appearance, and be happy with trinkets, a view that was (and sometimes even now remains) popular.
Researching a little bit about Billie Holiday really helped me in a way so that I could understand this poem. I love how you included the story of how Billie’s hair once caught on fire and how that might relate to something in the poem. You said how this could be referring to her physical appearance and how it was ruined. But in the poem, the first line begins with the phrase, “Billie Holiday’s burned voice”. What else do you think could have been destroyed, besides Billie’s physical appearance? From reading this, I saw this “voice” of Billie, not as her singing/musical voice, but instead her voice and power as a person. Could Billie’s power to stand up and speak for herself, be burned out because society viewed her differently or judged her? Her physical appearance, and her power to speak could have been burned out. In the second stanza, we can see that the rest of the poem refers to words and phrases that are used to explain the traditional view of women in society. But what I found interesting, is how there are parenthesis around this whole stanza. What reasoning do you think Dove had behind this? Overall, you did a wonderful job of incorporating in how Billie Holiday’s life experience fit into this poem by Rita Dove. This opened up to me, the many different ways this poem can be interpreted.
The poem that stood out to me most in this section of assigned reading was the Sonnet in Primary Colours. I was initially drawn to it because Ballard analyzed it as an example in my Lit class last year, and I know quite a lot about Frida Kahlo, the subject of the poem, both meaning that I don’t have to do much, if any research. Which is good. Anyway, my first impressions of this poem, back in last school year was that it was dryly interesting in the way that a history book is, or any other kind of art or literature that doesn’t really draw you in by makes you feel clever when you can recognize and understand all of the allusions. I, having in good bit of background- because Frida Kahlo’s really cool- in Frida Kahlo’s life, art, and viewpoints, can recognize the the mentions of the “one black wing perched over her eyes”, or the “plaster corset” and so on. The narrator does write about Kalho quite tenderly, like an admirer, a fan, using loving, not necessarily in a romantic sense, diction to describe her: lovely, erect, present, wildflowers, romance of mirrors, butterflies, love. However, this poem fails to really draw me in, given its matter-of-fact tone. Or at least, that’s how I saw it when I first skimmed the poem upon starting to read the poems assigned. What really changed my mind about the poem was the title, I thought, its called a sonnet in the title, it should fit the definition of one of the types we wrote notes on in class. So I looked at my notes and looked at the poem, it has the wrong number of lines altogether, only thirteen. That sort of turns the expectations set in the title on their heads, the connotations of a sonnet, as being about love, fawning over (typically) a woman. It draws attention to the fact that poem would look much more square (a common visual qualifier for a poem being a sonnet) if the one word were removed or moved: Diego. It brings attention to a passage within the poem which seems to soil the adoring tone of the first parts of the poem: “Like children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego’s Love a skull in the circular window Of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow.” This method used by Dove to bring focus to a point in the poem, specifically in a visual way, transcends the restrictive medium of words- even at their most distilled and powerful in poetry- and accesses a much more visceral, instinctual, personal medium, visual art.
I really liked your analysis on this poem. I read through it, but didn't have time to look into all the things that were referenced about Frida Kahlo so it's cool that you already knew so much about her. Like you I had thought that it was a sonnet and didn't even think to count the lines until you mentioned it only had 13 which makes me curious as to why she would include that word in the title. Also the tone and word choice she used when talking about Freda Kahlo was definitely one of admiration which added another level to the meaning in this poem.
“Sonnet in Primary Colors” really interested me. First we have the title tells the reader that this will be a sonnet, but in reality, the poem only has thirteen lines. When I researched more about Frida, I learned a lot more about how many illnesses and medical( I wanna say tragedies, but that doesn’t sound right). When she was five, she contracted Polio. When she was twenty, a bus crash changed her life forever as a rail went through her hip, severely injuring her spine. Frida died at forty-seven. Back to the thirteen lines, I believe Dove structured the poem this way to comment on the short, almost incomplete life of Frida. I also really liked this poem because of all the allusions in it. Dove mentions “the stern petticoats of the peasant”, “ Lenin and Marx and Stalin”, “ Diego’s love a skull” , and Frida’s brow twice. These allusions could enlighten the reader on Frida’s spine injury, the fact that she was a devoted communist, and her love life with Diego Rivera. The reader has to look beyond the surface to really get a full sense of the poem, but yet at the same time Dove so openly gives us the information, almost spoon-feeding us the information. I also wanted to analysis the line “ Diego’s love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow” (11-12) . If you didn’t already know, searing is an extremely hot or intense, and immutable means unchangeable over time. I found Frida and Diego’s life really interesting. They met first back in what I believe was Frida’s school while Diego was painting a mural there. They met again after Friday's accident and were married within a year, but were often separated or in affairs throughout most of the marriage, divorce and then marriage again. When Dove refers to Diego’s love as a skull is feels to me that she is calling his love a memory, something that did exist but now doesn’t, but it still stays to haunt you. Overall, this poem was really neat because it taught me a lot about Frida Kahlo, or at least motivated me to learn more about her.
I love your analysis, especially regarding the reason for the thirteen line "sonnet". I, as well, was really interested in this poem. You brought up the last line about the immutable brow, and I think that can be compared with the first line, "This is for the woman with one black wing" (1). Because her eyebrows looked as if they were one, they are considered one "wing". By comparing her eyebrow to a wing, she is implying that Frida wants to fly, but a bird with one wing can't fly. I think this is representative of the spinal injuries you mentioned Frida encountered in her life.
I also really liked Sonnet in Primary Colors, but I had a slightly different take (it’s just above if you want to read it) on it. I saw the poem in a much broader, more abstract sense altogether, and kind of ignored the history behind it. I was going to mention the implication of a sonnet that’s a line too short, but then I was tired and I’d already met the word count requirement. But I really like the idea of a single wing unable to fly, I think it relates very well to the symbol I see in the poem, a sort of stunted ability to love. I think this because of the implications of a sonnet in literary history, and because of how Diego’s name was so out of place, and how his love was compared to a skull using metaphor. The most potent section, though, I feel was the last line- “[Diego’s] thumbprint seared her immutable brow”, this is because it seems to me to call to the fact that Kahlo was burned by his touch, but not changed at all. It holds to a kind of inner strength, and could be interpreted as either a powerful source of individuality and strength or as a sign that she’s too hard and removed from others ( which in itself is a statement loaded with sexist implications).
Catherine of Alexandria was a really compelling poem. When I read it without having any knowledge of Saint Catherine, I was confused and led to believe that it was about a woman giving herself away for sex that wanted to be saved by Christ. However, after my research I learned she was a martyred Christian saint. She was imprisoned for her beliefs by the pagan emperor of Egypt, and in prison, she gained many followers, all of whom where executed for converting. The emperor proposed to Catherine as a way to escape her imprisonment and execution but she believed that she was married to Jesus (through Mother Mary) and that he was the only one she could be with. The first quatrain struck me as odd because Rita writes, "Deprived of learning" (Line 1) when St. Catherine spent her early years devoting herself to learning about Christianity. Therefore, I wondered if Rita could be referring to a different kind of knowledge: experience. In the lines, "no wonder sainthood/came as a voice/in your bed -" (Lines 3-5) it appears that Rita is saying that part of Christianity appealed to Catherine in the form of chastity, and that by keeping her chastity even through the temptation of the emperor, she was able to prove her devotion to her religion. The next part of the poem leads me to believe that it is being told from the point of view of someone scornful, like the pagan emperor, when Rita writes, "...what went on/each night was fit/for nobody's ears/but Jesus'" (Lines 6-9) because it is told with a jealous, almost mocking tone. This tone makes the reader want to stand by Catherine because her devotion is so inspiring. The last quatrain is very interesting. The "nightshirt bunched above your waist" also carries a mocking tone, as if the emperor is shaming her for saving her chastity for Jesus. The kept promise refers to her promise to stay pure for Jesus, and I think the ring signifies her devotion to him. Additionally, I think milk was used because it is white, and white is seen as a pure color, whereas gold could imply greed.
Wow! There's so much to say about this one I don't even know where to begin. Starting with the title, even though the poem's called a "sonnet" it only has thirteen lines, as opposed to the fourteen one would expect. Because this poem is about the loss of a loved one, it could be that the absence of a fourteenth line in the sonnet represents the missing love this woman must now live without. The "primary colors" could honestly mean a lot! The three primary colors are blue, yellow, and red; they are called primary colors because they are the only colors one cannot create by mixing together other colors. This could imply a few things. The fact that the sonnet is written in "primary colors" means that it will be representing the truest nature of whatever it is written about (lost love). It also lets the reader know that they should keep their eyes open for colorful diction as it will assuredly be very meaningful.
To start off the sonnet, the very first two lines mention a "woman with one black wing perched over her eyes..." So the first thing that I noticed was the color black (which ties back into the title of the poem!) The only way to make the color black is to mix all three of the primary colors together. If one were to think about the three primary colors in terms of emotions (yellow, blue, and red) they would probably imagine happiness, sadness, and anger. Referring to the woman as having a black wing perched over her eyes implies that she is experiencing all of those emotions at the same time (due to the loss of her love probably). The fact that the black object covering her eyes is a wing represents a freedom that is now associated with her (flight is freedom maxim), although, because the wing is black (which is notoriously a bad and naturally dark color) and the poem specifically mentions that there is only "one wing," I'd say there is irony at foot here. Birds need two wings to fly, and because she now only has one wing, (the missing one probably symbolizes her lost lover) she can no longer fly. That's only the first of many other allusions to freedom in this poem.
In line two it is written that the woman's name is "Frida," which is about as close to "freedom" as a name can get. It then goes on to say, in the third line, that Frida is "erect among parrots, in the stern petticoats of the peasant" I took this to mean that she stands out against the numerous followers that surround her, and that she's of a poorer background (peasant). The poem continues by explaining how Frida "painted herself a present-- wildflowers entwining the plaster corset her spine resides in the romance of mirrors." The wildflowers mentioned in her painting is another ironic reference to freedom. Freedom because flowers growing in the wild are iconic of an escape from burden, and ironic because their immediately followed by the word entwining (wrapping around, or entangling). The "romance of mirrors" part I'm sure has a lot of depth to it, but all I could think of was that it was just reinforcing the idea that this poem was reflecting the truth of her love.
(part 2) "Each night she lay down in pain and rose to her celluloid butterflies of her beloved dead." In these next two lines it's pretty apparent there's a lot of juxtaposition going on: "Pain and rose," "beloved and dead." The celluloid butterflies part is actually pretty cool. So celluloid was a type of plastic that people used to make cinematographic film out of. If one were to reread these two lines knowing that, it pretty much implies that Frida's been watching old home videos of her lost love (which puts the time frame of this poem into perspective). Everything after that gets pretty weird.
"Lenin and Marx and Stalin arrayed at the footstead. And rose to her easel, the hundred dogs panting like children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego's love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow. Lenin, Marx, and Stalin all represent communism. Perhaps them appearing at the foot of Frida's bed represents her past yearning for a more equal role in her relationship. So what are the hundred dogs? Their obviously not actual dogs. Dogs represent blind loyalty and companionship, comparing them to children reinforces that blind part especially (because children will often listen to their parents without second thought as to whether they're right). The "dogs" are standing along the graveled walks of a garden. Perhaps the garden is a funeral location, and the dogs are the family and friends of Diego (Frida's lost love)? In the next line we see another ironic use of love: "love a skull in the circular window..." That metaphor reinforces the idea that something was off about this love.
All of the elements discussed above cement one conclusion in my mind. Frida had an abusive love, and she feels very mixed about his death. The title "sonnet in primary colors" tells us that this is a love poem meant to show the truest nature of said love. The ironic usage of freedom throughout the poem shows us that even though she is now free, part of Frida still feels ironically dragged down by her abusive love's death (with the black color of her wing reinforcing her mixed emotions). The constant juxtaposition reminds us that something is not as it seems. The blind loyalty of the many "dogs like children" that praise Diego at his funeral without knowing what he's really been up to. Even the thirteen lines of the sonnet could be seen as juxtaposition between the loving nature of a sonnet and the unlucky nature of the number thirteen. And finally on the final two lines, "love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow" the metaphorical comparison of love to a skull, as well as love's searing her brow as unchanging, shows us that Frida is not crying over Diego’s death; this being another clue that her losing Diego may not have been as sad as one would expect (because it was an abusive relationship).
It took me so long to figure what this poem was about. Talking about teeth and paying to keep him happy and allusions to Little Red Riding Hood? What?
I, however, have used my patented Abbi Super-Sleuth Skills™ and figured out what the heck Climbing In is talking about. Buckle up folks, here we go.
If you’ve read all of the civil rights poems, you’ve probably realized that they all have something in common; buses. The book that these poems are pulled from is On the bus with Rosa Parks. With that in mind, let’s look at Climbing In. Other than the theme of the civil rights poems, this one indirectly references getting on a bus: “as I clutch the silver pole/ to step up, up” (lines 6-7). I think the metallic teeth are in reference to the stairs of the bus, or maybe the door of the bus when it opens like a mouth.
The narrator also mentions holding a dime, which would be her bus fare. But this isn’t any old dime; the dime in the narrator’s hand is a Mercury dime. A Mercury dime was a style of dime minted 1916-1945. They’re called Mercury dimes because the “heads” face of the coin has the profile of Lady Liberty wearing a winged cap, which made people confuse her for the Roman God Mercury. Line 8-9, “(sweat gliding down the dear lady’s/ cheek)” keys us into this fact, as well as displays to the reader the narrator’s emotion: fear. The narrator, with sweating palms, faced with a bus that has been personified into some freakish hungry monster, is holding onto this lady liberty dime for comfort. They are afraid of this bus, this situation, and this bus driver. The bus driver is likened unto the ravenous wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, with “-these are big teeth,/ teeth of a wolf/ under Grandmother’s cap./ Not quite a grin./ Pay him to keep smiling” (lines 9-13).
In order to keep this terrifying creature from attacking, you must pay him. Dove used the Mercury dime on purpose for this poem, which gives this greater meaning. On the Mercury dime is lady liberty. Back when segregated bus seats were allowed, riders of color were forced to give up their basic freedoms and sit in the back. To ride the bus was to sell your liberty and freedom. The last stanza refers to paying the fare, with the use of “head over tail” (line 15) reminding the reader of the dime. The woman on the dime is swallowed by the monstrous bus.
I read the same poem, however I did not see the similarities with the buses. It makes a lot more sense to me know. However do you think that its odd that Dove wrote about little red riding hood?
Oh! I didn’t even look to see that you’d already deconstructed this poem in a very similar way to how I did. I agree with your characterization of the bus as a monster, I totally saw it the same way, but I see it, in a broader sense, how the monster represents a wide experience among black Americans before desegregation in the South (though desegregation wasn’t really enacted in the North, like ever, even when it was definitely necessary), like the personification of a justified expectation of intimidation.
Out of the Civil Rights poem section, one poem really caught my eye. “The Abduction” tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free African-American man kidnapped and sold into slavery. The poem is filled with intense emotion, even though it was told in past tense. “The Abduction” is eerily similar to “12 Years a Slave”, not just the story and tense but exact phrases. It was the first two lines really interested me. I was curious who “the great Harrison”( Line 2) was. With a little research and my apush background knowledge, I realized that it was President Harrison. 1841 was when Harrison died, the time that Solomon was kidnapped, so my conclusion made sense. The next thing that really interested me was “pigs squealed invisibly from the bleachers” (Line 9). At first I thought this was the author commenting on the audience, but after reading Chapter 2 of “12 Years A Slave”, I found it was actually just a trick that Brown and Hamilton played in their show. In the third stanza Dove mentions Northup “I was lifted- the sky swivelled, clicked into place” (Line 12). I believe this line is commenting on how Hamilton and Brown got Northup drunk and then drugged him. Northup’s guard was lifted, his world flipped upside down and then everything happened exactly like his kidnappers wanted it to. This whole poem really makes you think, I still can’t figure out why Dove would almost copy exact words and phrases to write this poem. Although I think that’s what makes it a good poem, it makes you think.
When reading the poems from this book one stood out to me in particular, “Climbing In”. It doesn't fit the form that the meanings of the rest of the poems fit, which is following a specific famous person. “Climbing in” is about the red riding hood fairy tail. It talks about the appearance of her grandmother, which is a wolf in disguise, and how she can tell that it is not her grandmother. I found the imagery in this poem to be very interesting. For example in one instance it describes the wolf's teeth as “lie-gapped”. This shows the perspective that Dove is writing this from. In this the wolf is bad and Dove wants you to see the wolf's actions as bad. This makes it so that throughout the poem a tone of uneasiness is conveyed. This tone is portrayed throughout the entirety of the poem and makes you feel that the wolf is a bad guy. Considering the wolf ate the grandmother i think that the world should be the bad guy. Even though this poem is not the same as the others it still gives you a similar feel, which allows it to fit in well.
I also found this poem very compelling, also in part because it doesn’t really make sense in the context that it’s been put in. Why I initially found it to be so compelling is because of the title (Climbing) and the couple of words that stick out in the second stanza: “silver pole”. Now, this obviously has quite a few connotations, but the one that came to mind was the image (and a lot of the art that followed) of Bree Newsome, the activist that climbed the flagpole on top of a South Carolina statehouse to take down the Confederate flag. The silver, pole seems to be implied to be the railing of the the entry to a bus, the the bus is framed as a metal monster’s mouth, the retroactive intimidation that the narrator expected upon entry, like a preface to Rosa’s or Claudette’s or one of the many others’ challenge to power.
The first thing that stood out to me about this poem was that each stanza was a tercet. The number 3 can mean a few different things, the most prominent of which (especially in western culture) is its correlation with the holy trinity. In Eastern culture, especially china, however, the number three is viewed as 'the perfect number' because of geometry and triangles and stuff. In the fourth stanza, as the narrator recalls her sister's experiences being whipped, another reference to Christianity is made when the narrator's sister cries out "'Oh! Pray...Oh! Pray!'" Along with the number 3, the number 2 is also heavily represented in this poem. The strongest example would be the number of horn calls the narrator hears during their day: "The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass...At the second horn, the whip curls across the backs of the laggards..." Another use of the number 2 is the amount of tones conveyed in this poem. It begins with a soft, peaceful tone made by words such as "dew-lit grass, rustling, children, bundled, aprons, cornbread, water gourds, and breakfast." The tone then becomes disheartening and hopeless at the third stanza after the second horn call; this new tone is showed by words such as "whip, laggards, cries, shivering, fat, and weep," along with the fact that the narrator's sister is getting whipped. In Christianity, which is most likely the religion taken on by the narrator as that's what their sister follows and back then children didn't normally stray from their religious backgrounds, the number 3 represents the holy spirit and the number two represents the son of god. The use of the number one is missing from this poem and it seems Dove did that on purpose to show the absence of the last member of the trinity: God. The holy spirit is thought to be inside everyone, including the narrator, and the son of god can mean many other things besides Jesus (such as the descendants of Atom, represented by the people enslaving the narrator). The absence of God adds to the hopelessness reflected by the last three stanzas.
The Poem that stood out most to me in the assigned reading was the poem, Lady Freedom Among Us because it conjured such vivid and and emotionally pertinent images when I read it. It doesn’t seem to me to have all that much so far as allusions to the Civil Rights Movement, I can imagine, however, a second interpretation more specifically about the American Movement for black Civil Rights which came to fruition (at least in its legislative goals) during the 1960s. The poem can be read as a narrator with empathy for those without the privilege of feeling ignored, out of what is implied to be guilt. The interpretation that first stood out to me was that it was a description of the life of Lady Freedom as a homeless woman. Supporting this literarily is how Dove doesn’t use any punctuation or capitalize anything in the poem, it stand out to me as support for the theme of Freedom blending into the town’s non-living objects, enough so to be ignored by passersby. The only other literary device-esque thing is the use of italics on the thoughts of passersby, all cruel and too-familiar, sentiments that I hear expressed far too often. Otherwise, this interpretation was mostly rooted in personal memories and feelings, and developed not so much by literary devices or tones as small, strongly evocative phrases. One of those phrases was “heaped up trinkets” and the opening stanza telling the reader not to “lower your eyes…” reminded me of walking to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and sparked a little rant about gentrification (which I will will spare you of) and for me to stew in my own anger for a very unproductive hour. This then brings us to the universally applicable question of how much agency and personal interpretation should a reader be allowed in analysing a work of poetry or literature. What role does the author’s intent even have in determining the value of a work? As these poems concern the civil rights struggle, should I as a well-off white person co-opt these words, or is that just a necessary step in building an empathic connection to an issue I have no experience in? Should the author’s life even be taken into account when trying to understand a poem, or should the focus instead fall on a reader’s relationship to the work as though it were completely sourceless? My opinion lies somewhere in the middle of these extremes. I certainly feel that though words are a flawed and muddy medium with which to communicate, but it is the best way to proliferate an important message like the one, it is also necessary to take ownership of another’s words to best understand the actual feeling behind them. By taking ownership like that, there is chance for misuse and misinterpretation, but- and especially in the case of less politically important subjects, and more for emotional and personal, though there is more complexity to this that I’m glossing over in the interest of going to sleep soon- it is the best way for an outsider to understand a pervading and deeply personal, though also systemic and institutional, issues. For example, reading (or listening) to poetry or other media about the many black experiences in America is a way for me to better understand an experience I can’t have as a white person, or how there are life-long experiences I have that others cannot possibly understand intricacies or all-touching of.
I liked how you commented on the (lack of) punctuation in the poem and how the represents blending into the town. For me when I read this poem I felt like it also had a call to action. The lines "don't lower your eyes" and "don't mutter oh no" seemed like they were reprimanding the reader. It is telling you to not take the freedom you have for granted and also to not look down on those who are new to the country because they have a right to that freedom too. The poem obviously referenced the statue of liberty and in doing that I think it brought in an element of pride in the diversity of the United States.
One of my favorite poems from this selection was “The Transport of Slaves from Maryland to Mississippi,” because to me, it symbolized something that some members of current society still struggle with understanding today: That we are all equal. The poem starts with something unique; For the first time, Rita Dove includes an introduction to her poem that discusses the background knowledge, as opposed assuming that the audience has the knowledge already. The introduction deals describes how in 1839, a wagon of slaves escapes and killed two white men, but one slave woman was able to stop them. This event is described in the first stanza, which includes the lines, “his eyelids came apart--his eyes were my eyes in a yellower face,” as well as, “I am no brute. I got feelings. He might have been a son of mine” (lines 11-14), discusses how the slave woman feels that we are all equal, the only difference being status and race, which are put into place by society. I do not mean to sound sappy, but these are the lines that I love to see in poetry, and in the world. In current times of political and social distress, we tend to create divisions, with a definite “us” and a definite “them.” Unfortunately, we tend to jump to those conclusions quicker than we do to options of listening and understanding other people, which only furthers the issue. Even though this poem is about slavery, which is an important issue to discuss, I found that those two lines, the ones that spoke of how we are the same when we put our race aside, are something that all of us should take the time to remember, especially in the next couple of weeks as we reach the culmination of the election process.
To me, the most striking poem was "The situation is intolerable". In the second line, Dove writes, "Aren't we civilized, too?" (Line2). I kind of heard this line as being spoken two different ways. In the first way, it could be angry, as if someone was trying to point out that someone else was in the wrong. The other way I heard it was as the subject in the poem questioning themselves, which is something that I think probably happened back then. Those fighting for civil rights probably questioned themselves because the oppressors were so persistent in shoving their agendas down the throats of those they were attacking. My other favorite part of this poem was the second stanza. Dove uses light and dark imagery and juxtaposition when she says, "...all around us dark/and the perimeter in flames/but the stars-/tiny missionary stars" (Lines 9-12). The darkness represents the oppression they were facing, and the flames show how they were trapped in a society that hated them and wanted to run them into the ground, if you will. The stars, however, portray glimmers of hope, and I think that represents the tone of the poem. Even though they are facing oppression, they need to stand up to the injustices and look to the hope in the situation to get out of dark times.
I like both of your interpretations of the "Aren't we civilized, too?" however I saw it more as a rhetorical question from the perspective of the narrator and a direct question to those who held prejudices in their hearts. From the perspective of the narrator, the answer is obvious, I think, that they are civilized, as that is part of what it means to be human. I don't think that in the great majority, people felt themselves to be lesser although people thought the slaves to be lesser. I think that because of this this question is far more rhetorical and satirical, saying that “obviously we are civilized, so why shouldn’t we be treated as such. I really liked reading your analysis on the second stanza!
I liked both of your answers on what you thought the question "Aren't we civilized?", however one way I think you didn't see it was in a pleading sort of way. It seems to me that the narrator is almost pleading the audience to see that they are civilized, and that they aren't as different as they seem to be. When reading the question I can imagine a person crying, feeling like they are trapped in a box, and they are crying out the question, trying to make people see that what is happening is wrong and it needs to change.
I enjoyed reading the poem entitled “The House Slave” obviously by Rita Dove. The reason that I liked this poem was because of the word choice Dove uses to create a feeling of encapsulant and restriction. In the first stanza, the phrase I noticed was “childern bundled into aprons”, in reference to what goes on in the slave quarters. Not only does the imagery of squished children sleeping in the slave quarters is created, but the word bundled remind me of the way slaves were stored on the slave ships, in bundles. As if they were product to be stored in a way to maximize the space they had, which was definitely the case. The phrase “water gourds grabbed” has the word “grabbed” which reminded me of how slaves were captured, just taken out of their society, homes, and communities. This bring me to the last phrase which was “ a salt pork breakfast taken” again the word choice of “taken” creating that sense of loss of control, which is very indignant to the slaves as human beings. These words tie in to the sense of helplessness that slaves faced while being captured to be bought and sold. I thought that was interesting in terms of word choice.
I really like your analysis of the "The House Slave," and I like how you compared some of the words from the poem to the history of slavery. As we've seen from the past, Rita Dove relies quite a lot on her audience having some background knowledge on the topic that she is discussing. Do you think leaving background information is a good decision on her part, or not? Do you think it confuses the reader, or inspires them to look into the situation and discuss it more?
All though all the poems in the slavery were interesting, one poem in particular caught my eye. That poem was “Belinda’s Petition”. This poem is about a girl who was born in Africa and transported to america to be a slave. After her master died, in the will it said that she could become free if she so chose to. Obviously she chose to become free. She sent a letter to the US government and was allowed to become free.
Now onto the actual poem itself. One of the main reasons this poem stood out to me was because it seemed, at least to me, that there was random words throughout the poem that were capitalized even though they didn't have to be or should not be. I've looked at trying to find a pattern to the capitalized words and cannot seem to find one. They seem to be random except for emphasis. When reading the poem without adding emphasis to the capitalized words, the poem has a calm but firm tone. I know it sounds weird but go with it. However when you read the poem adding extreme emphasis to the randomly capitalized words the tone of the poem changes dramatically. Now the poem seems angry. It seems as if she is accusing the government for everything that is wrong within the country as well as everything that is wrong with her life. Then Dove writes “The only Travelers were the Dead returning…” (Dove) which adds to the angry tone, ,in addition to showing how horrifying slaves thought there life was and how bad they though the conditions of life were in the country. It makes you feel trapped like many slaves felt, and that the only way out was death.
Hoo boy. This poem right here is a doozy. There’s so much to it, I won’t bother trying to explain lots of it, just a small portion. I also won’t give you the history on this because if you’re reading this you’ve probably done your research and don’t need to read more on the Parsley Massacre (but for those of you who haven’t, and I figure there are probably a few of you, here’s a nice little link to a website explaining it if you can’t be bothered to look it up yourself http://www.ibtimes.com/parsley-massacre-genocide-still-haunts-haiti-dominican-relations-846773).
What I really noticed about Dove’s poem was all the death. Death imagery, words with connotations and denotations of death, and death symbolism are all present in Parsley. Much more pronounced in the second part of the poem, The Palace. I will be skipping over a lot of stuff as there is so much to cover, so feel free to talk about the stuff I missed. We begin by talking about how “It is fall, when thoughts turn/to love and death” (lines 2-3 of The Palace). Other than stating that Trujillo is thinking about death, fall is associated with death. Leaves die, plants wither, the sun appears less, it gets colder, and most importantly, Day of the Dead is celebrated (I’m sure you all know what Day of the Dead is so I won’t bother explaining it). In the second stanza, it says “As he paces he wonders/Who can I kill today. And for a moment/the little knot of screams/is still” (12-14). Reading on the reader learns the knot of screams refers to a knot in his throat which I assume is painful. It creates a strange tone to talk about about killing people and then have screaming go still. After a stanza about the parrot and the death of his mother, the reader continues on to see a PTSD-esque flashback (I say PTSD because of the tense of the words, making it sound as if he is having this experience over again) of Trujillo’s first time in battle; “The knot in his throat starts to twitch;/he sees his boots the first day in battle/splashed with mud and urine/as a soldier falls at his feet amazed-/how stupid he looked!- at the sound/of artillery. I never thought it would sing/the soldier said, and died”(24-30). Notice the mention of the knot in the throat again. It was silenced by the thought of inflicting pain and death upon others. Now, the knot starts to ache again as he relives the deaths he did not cause or couldn’t stop. This includes his mother’s death; the poem mentions that Trujillo is thinking about his mother before it mentions the knot being still. To me, this knot could be Trujillo’s desire for revenge- the world has taken people he has loved, he has watched men die in wars, and now he wants the world to pay. He doesn’t want to feel powerless again, or feel that knot twitch; by killing others, it relieves the pain or the uncomfort. It, for lack of a better terms, scratches an itch. And in a way, It makes the reader feel a strange sympathy for Trujillo. All the mentions of death, the symbolism, connotations, denotations, all show that Trujillo, haunted by death, can only cure himself by causing more death. Which is totally unhealthy and would suck.
I really loved your analysis! Another part that I found to support your interpretation of Trujiillo desiring revenge on the world is the lines “He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth / gnawed to arrowheads” (Dove 52-53). If you noticed earlier in the poem, Dove states how, “The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads” (11). These lines are the same! The similar use suggests that Trujillo wishes to inflict the same pain on the world that the world had done on his mother. I can’t find anything on the Internet about his mother’s death, but the poem states how “the general sees the fields of sugar / cane, lashed by rain and streaming” (50-51). So his mother most likely experienced a death similar to the first part of the poem, illustrating how Trujillo wishes to kill others much in the same fashion that his mother was killed.
I really like your analysis of this poem, and I find it very interesting that you compare Trujillo's desire to kill to an itch that he is just trying to scratch. While I did not know much about the Parsley Massacre prior to reading this poem, I found it interesting to compare Trujillo to the many other leaders who led the world to similar events, and how they all found killing and "cleansing" the area as not just a desire, but an overwhelming need. Do you think there is anything we can do to make sure that these types of people do not rise to power again? I know we live in a very privileged world in which this is not as prevalent as in years prior, but in the case that it happens, how do we make sure that people who kill to "scratch an itch" are not given the chance to do so?
In “Parsley” by Rita Dove many things stood out to me. Along with the basic things like the repetition of the word “patriot” as well as the repetition of certain phrases; Doves use of a second language stood out to me. I couldn't find a direct translation, but just off some rough guesses I assume it means something along the lines of “... my heart goes out to the dead”. So the quote itself goes along with the ideas of the poem, which are death and suffering The literal meaning aside, I wanted to talk about the effect it has on the flow of the poem. Having a line of the poem be in a different language does multiple things to the poem. One thing it does is it causes for a short pause or break in the flow of the poem. Due to the fact that most of us don't speak the language it's written in it takes us longer to read it, further isolating itself, hightning the meaning. Another thing that the line does is it changes the tone of the poem. Before it the tone is very lackluster and boring, but after the tone changes into a dark and sad tone. This change happens because of the use of the language regardless of the actual meaning of the quote. However in this instance the quote is used to heighten the change in tone.
Regarding the part where Dove writes “mi madle, mi amol en muelte” is really just a phonetic transcript of how an Afro-Hatian would pronounce the Spanish phrase “mi madre, mi amor en muerte” which does translate to (says the white Portlander who’s in Spanish 3) “my mother, my love in death”, and highlights the narrator’s love for his mother, his motivation for the massacre. More interestingly, though is that the ‘l’s are in the place of all the ‘r’s, how an Afro-Hatian would pronounce the phrase, but in the voice of Trujillo, who will murder thousands for not pronouncing Spanish words in the way that he does. This juxtaposition shows the unity in the entire situation, people killing people, based on superficial divisions.
Parsley is very puzzling but at the same time very interesting. The words and main idea only became clear to me after intensive research. I focused on the first part “The Cane Field”. It is filled with repetition. The lines “Parrot imitating spring” and “Out of the swamp the cane appears” is repeated every 5 lines. I found this interesting because the Parsley Massacre was spread over five days. I believe Dove did this intentionally to bring our attention to it. The title of part one “The Cane Field” also lets the reader know that this section is in the people’s perspective. There were a lot of details in this poem that made me think. The first was “a parrot imitating spring”. A parrot is know for repeating, or mimicking. The word even has two R’s in it! Also, in “The Palace” it says “even a parrot could roll an R”. This with the idea of “imitating spring” is very interesting. Spring represents life, it is also the opposite time of year when the President’s mother died. I believe this line is meant to show that if you can minick, you can live. Or at least that is what you hope. Part One of Parsley shows the fear and horror that the people must have felt so clearly to the reader, it is almost overwhelming.
I didn't make the connection to the five lines to five days thing but that's really cool. I'm curious if you think the cane in part one connects to the sugar cane or the cane that the general put on his mother's grave and the importance of that?
I also noticed the repetition, even if I didn’t address or explain my opinion on it quite as coherently as you did, I didn’t notice the repetition specifically connnoting to the canes, but I did notice the ‘r’s, which I think is one of the the most important motifs of the poem, as the ability to roll an ‘r’ was the gauge that would determine the people’s ability to go on living. What I’m most interested in the the repeated color imagery, the freshness and vitality of green and how it can maybe serve as irony, but I really don’t know.
I really doubt that I have anything even marginally original to add to this topic. But, here we go. Qlwgaviebfv;ebfv;ianvjia;ijfihovaiuiq;98r What like best about Dove’s poetry, literarily or whatever, is how she uses spacing and grouping and repetition of lines and words to emphasize particularly impactful parts of the poem. The best, most succinct example I can think of is the last line of the poem, “that beautiful word” or something like that. It relates circuitously back to the very title, Parsley, the repeated “Perejil”, the green of the parrot’s feathers, the chewed green spat out, bitter and impossible like word perejil in the mouths of the Afro-Haitians that couldn’t pronounce the word “properly”. As for the whatever part, the other aspect of Rita Dove’s poetry that I like the best is the common motif among all of her poetry (or at least the very limited collection that I’ve read in class) of empathy building. In Parsley, specifically in part 2, The Palace, Rita Dove really delves into the motivations and the life of El General, Trujillo (the guy that orchestrates the massacre, someone else did research). I think that this sort of characterization is a very important one, especially in retellings of real-life people otherwise characterized as villains. Emphasizing traits that people more often see as “human” or empathic or admirable or whatever, helps bring such people down to the level of regular human flawedness (I don’t think that’s a word but I can’t think of another non-sweary way to say it). It stops, or tries to stop, us, collectively, from making excuses for our despicable actions (i.e. “Yeah, I [whatever] but at least I’m not Hitler”). Yeah. People are equal, even in the capacity to monumentally suck or like commit genocide or whatever is my point. There are perhaps more eloquent or better explained ways to say that, but, you know. This wasn’t great. Oopsie.
If I were to be completely honest, “Parsley” did not ignite the same feelings as some of the other poems had. Therefore, I would like to comment on one thing. Rita Dove is an excellent writer, but while her works do inspire some to look into the history of the topic, many will be turned off by their own confusion. As students in an IB English class, I trust that we all looked into the different meanings of the words and into the topic itself, but it is for this reason that I found much more interest in reading the excerpt from The Farming of Bones than in reading the poem itself, and I shall from there pull the main meat of this particular blog post. The line that struck me from the excerpt was “We used parsley for our food, our teas, our baths, to cleanse our insides and outsides. Perhaps the Generalissimo in some larger order was trying to do the same for his country.” As you read both the excerpt and the poem, I urge you to remember history; to remember those times where we used this logic of “cleansing” to justify cruel and evil deeds. It happened with the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and dozens of other times in our history. How many times can we make the same mistake? How many more genocides does the world have to live through before we end it? We believe that every time is the last; That we are too civilized for it to happen again. Which is why I feel the need to remind you that YOU are the future leaders, scientists, thinkers, and workers of this nation and this world. The only way to ensure that history will not be repeated is to create our own future, and while there is change in the world, I urge you all to be the leaders of that movement, rather than be bystanders.
"Fox Trot Fridays" was my favorite poems from the American Smooth section. One of the first things I noticed about the poem was that every stanza (except for the last one) was written in couplets. This reminded me of the actual Fox Trot dance, where most of the steps are done in 2's. Additionally, I was intrigued by the fact that she uses steps seen in the dance such as "stride brush stride" (Line 4) and "quick-quick with a/heel-ball-toe" (Lines 5-6). Dove most likely wanted these words to have an auditory effect on the reader to make them feel the rhythm of the poem as well as distract them. By distracting the reader from the rest of the poem, Dove could be making a comparison to the fact that the purpose of this dance is to push away your sorrows, as seen in the quote, "...tuck in/your grief, lift your pearls" (Lines 2-3). Another significant part of this poem is Dove's use of alliteration in the quote, "slow satin smile" (Line 8) when referring to Nat King Cole. Nat King Cole was a famous African American jazz singer and pianist, and also worked as a TV show host. With that in mind, the alliteration was likely used to imitate the feeling of jazz, which is smooth while being elegant (hence the use of "slow" and "satin"). Finally, Dove uses anaphora in the lines, "one day at a time:/one man and/one woman," (Lines 11-13). Not only does the auditory effect add rhythm to the poem, but it also symbolizes the bond that forms during dance, which Dove describes through her tone as love in the art form. The use of time in this quote helps the reader to acknowledge the fragility of moments as well as the importance of living in the moment. By talking about the man and women in conjunction with each other and as a separate couplet, she conveys the message that when two people are dancing or in tune with each other, the rest of the world gets tuned out. The use of the word "one" in the anaphora makes it seem like that is all there is when two people are dancing: themselves and the moment.
I was looking at the foxtrot and it said that the foxtrot was used at society events for people who might not know each other well, do you think this showed in this poem? I think that might connect to how you go out to avoid problems, and where better to go out than somewhere where people don't know you well enough to notice?
One important thing that you mentioned was how Dove uses auditory imagery from the actual dance to distract the reader. Do you think that if she had not tried to distract the reader the poem would have had the same effect? I think that the success of the poem was due to the distraction. While the reader is distracted they will get lost in the rhythm of the poem.
I loved your analysis of this poem! I also had very similar ideas and thoughts, but one thing that I didn't notice was how the poem is written in couplets expect the last stanza. I find this very interesting. Because like you said, most of the foxtrot steps are done in 2’s. But I wonder why the last stanza, is not a couplet. Any ideas about this? I also found your interpretation of the lines, “one day at a time:/one man/and one woman” interesting. I think this does add a closeness between people, and how fragile this moment is. It definitely adds a tone of love, but why else do you think dove would include a theme/tone of love in this poem?
I didn’t really like Fox Trot Fridays as much as some of the other poems in American Smooth, however, after the class discussion, I feel like I have something (if only very little and unoriginal) to say, or write, whatever. I didn’t really think of some of the facets of the poem in the same way as you, what you called auditory imagery I felt in more of a rhythmic way. I know that sounds like very nitpicky but, I think its also really interesting though, because even if the choice of the word “auditory” as opposed to “rhythmic” (though you do say “rhythm”, just later in the same sentence), I think that says something very lovely about the unique nature of how everyone can gutturally understand a piece of poetry. That’s it.
The poem “Ta Ta Cha Cha” immediately struck me as interesting just from the title. The title isn't even words, like what. But the title sets the reader up perfectly for what is to come throughout the poem. Next the beginnings of the stanzas are kind off odd. They are italicized and are just kind of weird. But when connected to the poem, they allow the reader to easily see that the poem is about two people dancing, and there journey of getting lost in the dance. In this poem Dove uses bird diction, she does this by saying things like “wingtips/coo/wing” (2, 4, 14). The use of bird diction explains to the reader that the two dancers feel like they are flying. This gives the poem a go with the flow feel. While reading you almost feel as if the poem is guiding you through the dance of these 2 people. I know that while I read it I felt like I was part of the dance. In addition to bird diction, Dove also uses childlike diction, like the word “Buffoon” (27) to make the reader understand that this dance is not complex. This dance is easy and almost childlike which makes it all the more fun when doing it. This gives the poem an easy going tone. In the beginning of the poem Dove writes that the narrator is from America but is in Venice. This gives the narrator a out of place appearance, however it intensifies the connection that is being created by this dance, because even though the narrator isn't from Italy he/she still feels like a perfect fit.
I really did not catch you analysis of the two people dancing when I read this poem. I saw and agree with your analysis of the bird diction, but with the idea of the two people dancing, it really enhances this idea of smooth and tranquil vibes that Dove seems to be exploring in this American Smooth section. I really did like the use of “Buffoon” it really does give it a child-like tone. I found it rather intrusive on the smooth feeling of the overall poem. For me the word seems to be more trying to be comedic than easygoing. Just another perspective! Overall I liked reading your analysis.
I really enjoyed Dove’s Poem “Fox”. Let’s start with the title, by itself it’s an animal, but when read with the poem, I thought it to be ‘Fox’, as in the slang rude term for women. If a woman is a ‘fox’, she is hot, attractive, sexy. (Side-note- please everyone out there never call anyone a fox. Honestly it’s super rude to compare people to animals like this, it’s very dehumanizing!) So we know that the women in this poem is thought of as a ‘fox’ but when looked at closer, so is so much more. There is a lot of repetition used in this poem. “She” is repeated 6 times which lets us know that the character is a women. Words like ‘Love’ and “imagine” are also repeated which contrasts to the fierce tone of the poem. “Fox” flows very well. I believe Dove did this to show us how the character is confident and can work with whatever happens. I really liked the line, “She knew what/ she was and so/ was capable/ of anything/anyone/ could imagine” (Dove). Because the character knew what her potential and actual value, she could do whatever she needed to. I think this is a very powerful line to many people. The last line, “:which was more/ than any man/ could handle” (Dove). Also was really powerful to me. This is a very feminist poem and this line drives home the idea that women can deal with more things than men can. Take menstruation for example. I’m still really curious about the line “She loved what/she was, there/ for the taking” (dove). It reminded me of this movie, “It Happened One Night”, where the main female character flags down a car by lifting her dress to expose her leg. This line feels like embracing the sexualization of your body and using it to your advantage. This poem also really feels like a mantra to me, like something you say when all hell is breaking loose. Sorry that this blog post is a little all over the place, it’s election night.
I really like your analysis of this poem! A lot of what you mentioned hadn't even occurred to me. For example, I didn't even think of the title as being used as a slang term for the woman in question, though I think it had a strong effect on the reader's view on the woman. Something else that I noticed was Dove's varying length in phrases. At first, this poem struck me as being unstructured, but when I looked closer it made me think that the woman is dancing by herself to express her individuality. Can you think of any other connections to dance that might cause this poem to fit into the American Smooth section?
I also really liked Fox, yay feminist poetry! I wrote about it a little in my somewhat late blogpost, and I read and processed that poem in a very similar way to how you did. The repetition of “she” didn’t originally stand out to me, but your description and other analyses really made it apparent and impactful to me. Also, I agree on how it seems very amorphous in structure, I wrote a little more on a slightly related note (to other American Smooth dance-connections) on that in my blogpost, once again.
Well Jacob already posted about Ta Ta Cha Cha but I love pigeons so much I have to look at this one.
What I thought was clever about this poem was that it simultaneously tells of a scene in Venice with a couple of pigeons, as well a beautifully executed dance. Doves (which are literally the same kind of bird as pigeons), in a city setting, are thought of as dirty sky rats. Rita Dove challenges this perspective, personifying these birds into elegant dancers. For example, finding a feather at the speaker's feet is made to sound very majestic: "But here,/ lost from a wing, drifts/ one pale, italicized/answer" (lines 13-16). These words (at least in my head) translate to an interesting and pretty image. Dita (I don't want to call her Dove because that's confusing) continues this personification and elegance, saying "and the nearest scavenger/skips three times/ to the side, bobs to pluck/ his crackerjack prize, a child's/ dropped gelato cone" (20-24). That sounds a lot nicer than saying "a pigeon hopped over to an ice cream cone a kid dropped." On a more personal note, I feel like the use of crackerjack prize gives an old-times feel, and gelato makes it sound fancier. There are many more examples but I'm tired and I want to go to bed so I'll wrap this up. In contrast with the personification of the doves, Dita uses animalification (whatever the opposite of personification is) to make juxtapose this man hurrying through this scene with what the speaker sees as beautiful dancers. "...the path of a man/who, because he knows/ where he's headed, walks/ without seeing, face hidden/ by a dirty wingspan/ of the daily newspaper" (31-36). Other than creating contrast by setting up an elaborate scene and then having some man just walk through it, Dita describes the newspaper he's burying his face in as a dirty wingspan. This hearkens to the classification of doves as dirty Sky rats. This highlights the seemingly unnoticed beauty of the pigeons and the ignorance of passerbyers.
Abbi, I loved your analysis! I really enjoyed your comparison of the birds to the dancers, and I think it is really important to note the similarities of the descriptions. I did want to ask a question, though; As I was reading this poem, I thought that it was about feeling lonely and as if you do not fit, but I was not sure how the birds fit into that idea? I guessed it had to do with the narrator's inability to relate to the birds, as they are free to move and have a place, whereas the narrator is not.
Interesting, I didn't get that. I was caught up in the exciting words and all the movement and action that I didn't get any of the loneliness. I felt like the speaker was able to relate to the birds, which is shown by all the personification of the birds. I also feel like the narrator is free in a way because i believe they're on vacation, and vacation is a time you can cut loose and feel free? Sort of?
Because I enjoy poems that are written about real things and matching what line or sentence or stanza refers to what (I like researching. Yes, I know it’s weird. So sue me.), I wanted to pick apart this poem and point out lots of the references made. It’s your lucky day if you haven’t done a lot of research on David Walker, cause buckle up, you’re aboard the Learning Train now.
David Walker, as the title says, was alive from 1785-1830, however, historians are not sure about this. Some sources say he was born in 1796 or 1767. The city records of Boston say that he was 33 when he died, but this is still up for debate. Anyway, Walker’s father was a slave, but his mother was free, and as such he inherited her status. He lived in the South for a good amount of his life as a free black, able to see firsthand the cruelties of slavery. This experience shaped him into a fiery, unabashed abolitionist. He moved to Boston in 1825 and died in 1830 for unclear reasons (we’ll get to that later).
Onto the poem. The first stanza talks of his free status (“Free to travel, he still couldn’t be shown how lucky/ he was”[1-2].), as well as the used clothing store he opened in Boston (“All day at the counter-/ white caps, ale-stained pea coats”[4-5].). Lines 5-6, “Compass needles,/ eloquent as tuning forks, shivered, pointing north.” has to many levels to it, but one interpretation could be about Walker’s moral compass, so against slavery, pointing himself North where freedom was. Another interpretation could be that these compasses refer to other abolitionist writers, eloquent and elegant, but are unwilling to face the issue of slavery the way Walker does, with his passion and calls to immediate action.
Skipping around some literary analysis because this is already getting really long, the second stanza is about what Walker is most famous for. In 1829, he wrote An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a pamphlet calling to attention the abuse and mistreatment of blacks, actions slaves and blacks should take to gain equality, and what the role of white people should be in fixing this issue. Allegedly, Walker sewed some of these pamphlets into some of his clothes in his used clothing store, in hope that they would reach blacks in the South. “...pamphlets were stuffed/into trouser pockets. Pamphlets transported/in the coat linings of itinerant seamen, jackets/ringwormed with salt traded drunkenly to pursuers” (9-12) is a reference to this. The stanza continues, talking about how whites “ripped out” the pamphlets and were very angry.
The last part I want to talk about is the ending. Lines 25-26 (the 4th stanza) are about Walker continuing to make more editions of these pamphlets (3 were made in total), even when abolitionists were like “dude chill you can’t say that stuff, it’s too violent, things need to be peaceful.” Even William Lloyd Garrison denounced his works. A month after his last pamphlet, Walker is found dead (“A month-/his person (is that all?) found face-down/in the doorway at Brattle Street,/his frame slighter than his friends remembered”[28-31].). The cause of his death is undetermined. Most sources claim it was tuberculosis, but some say there was a chance he was poisoned. His writing had made a lot of enemies, so it’s not out the question. I think Dove was hinting at this by saying that his body was “slighter” than they remember.
I really enjoyed your analysis! I hadn’t thought that much about the compass aspect. I was wondering about the third stanza. That one really stood out to me. Do you think “the jewelled canaries” are white people or more specific? Also who is “the man on the corner”? Is he an example of an African-American man who doesn’t know just how bad the situation is, kinda like Macebea? I’m sorry that this response is literally just asking you questions, but I really like the way you saw this poem and wanted to see your perspective on these.
Yes, congrats to me (I skimmed it). The part the stuck out to me most was the third stanza, the juxtaposition of the bitter expression of misery in italics with the weightlessly-stepping, dark-handed man who proclaims “I’m happy’ and so happily shines shoes. What I think that this is supposed to represent is a minstrel show in blackface. Instead of reading “dark skin”, the poem reads “dark hand”, this to me, can represent 2 things, a hand that’s been dirtied with smut off the bottom of people’s shoes, or, more likely, a hand painted dark with the rest of the man’s body covered. I say that it’s more likely because of the monologue at the end of the stanza, proclaiming that he’s happy just to clean shoes, with no mention of recompense, this reminds me of a common justification for slavery back then (and today, if you watch the O'Reilly Factor), that African Americans were happier and better off to work for white Americans. In this interpretation, the italicized portion of the stanza can be seen as the actual perspective of the slaves on their condition while the story of the happy shoe-shiner is the agenda white Americans tried to push.
Okay, I accidently already did a Slavery Blog Post, so I’m just going to write about the Civil Rights Poems because I haven’t done them yet.
I really enjoyed the poem “Claudette Colvin Goes to Work”. There is so much in this poem, but I’m just gonna focus on a few points. If you don’t know, Claudette Colvin was a teenager in 1955. She sat on a bus in the colored section and was asked to move because the white section was overcrowded. Next to her was a pregnant women. They both refused. The pregnant women was reseated further back, but Colvin won’t move and shouted “This is my constitutional right!”. She was arrested 9 months before Rosa Parks. Claudette Colvin was also one of the four women taken to the Supreme Court that overturned segregation. The NAACP is said to have used Rosa as the face of the movement because Claudette was just a teenager, pregnant with a married man’s, and know to be feisty. Colvin lived the rest of her life as a normal women, without being remembered for her aid to the Civil Rights Movement.
The whole poem gives off a feeling of invisibility. What I mean by this is the feeling of observing but not interacting. When you are there but not really. The first two stanzas discusses the “Menial twilight” that covers everything. Twilight is an inbetween time, it is not day but not night. I believe Dove used very finite(this isn’t the right word but I can’t right now) diction in the first stanza such as, “scourge” “fickle” “narrow” “golden” and “bleak”. This gives the first stanza a much more dreamlike feeling. The second stanza has a much more straightforward feeling. The diction is straight to the point for the first few lines, as if the character is trying to keep herself on track, but soon the words go back to their dreamlike state. The end of the second stanza “Sometimes I wait until / it’s dark enough for my body to disappear;” exhibits such a strong emotion, I can’t read it without feeling it also. Overall, even in only the first two stanzas I understand that this poem gives a voice to Claudette Colvin after the Bus Incident, in a time where she is forgotten. I’m so sorry there is so much more I would love to write, but I’ll save that for another day(maybe).
Yay for Claudette Colvin, I mean sad for how she ended up within the Civil Rights movement and generally in life. This necessity to compromise for equality just makes me a little mad, and a little sad, there are examples of people being passed up as voices of the movement because they don’t fit the proper mould exactly, because they can’t be an activist in a way that is tasteful to their oppressors (those words are from someone else’s poem, I don’t remember whose though), the model of compromise, though I do realize is necessary to avoid violence, is always disappointing. And, its evident in pretty much all pushes for “equality”, like Bayard Rustin or Communist Civil Rights Activists, or in the beginning of the second wave, Betty Friedan’s “Lavender Menace”, how the entire first wave was pretty much uniformly racist, etc… the list goes on.
AMERICAN SMOOTH (So I didn’t do this for a multitude of reasons *cough*cough*ELECTION*cough* and I’m also not sure if I should make it up now… I’m going to do it anyways) The poem that drew me most in this assignment was Quick, mostly because elements of it seemed to tie very strongly to some of the other poems. It seems tied to Fox Trot Fridays and Fox, both in imagery and diction, and the poem’s structure. The poem is structured the same (more or less) visually as Fox Trot Fridays, with 8 2-line stanzas, no apparent rhyme scheme, and even similar with the line connecting the ends of line curved slightly out at the top and then in nearing the end. I realize that this is a bit a of a stretch, but it reminds me a little of the idealized image of an hourglass figure (it’s more apparent in Fox Trot than in Quick). The shape of the poem, combined with the subject matter and connotative diction and the prior knowledge of Dove’s poems that we studied earlier creates a sort of undertone of escaping the sexism that forces “women” into a box, all “vacant eye[s]” and “sleek curve[s]’. What I’m trying to say really is that it feels very heavily linked to Dove’s other poems, the context that I’m experiencing the poem in is best expressed by another of Dove’s poems, the last line of Canary: “If you can’t be free, be a mystery”. The other poem in the American Smooth assignment that Quick reminded me of is Fox. Like, Fox, Quick contains a lot of very strong visual imagery of foxes, a baby fox for that (by the way, viral fox video, its soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtP7au_Q9w). The themes of Quick seem also very similar to Quick, but much more ready to announce itself, the poem discusses how “She knew what// she was and so// was capable// of anything… She loved what// she was…”. This blatantly expressed self love and passion is similar to that expressed in the last stanzas of Quick. The poem is also less figurative in discussing what it means to be a “woman”, to be seen as, in many ways, only a collection of body parts, the worth of those only to be determined by a man. Fox is an expression, Dove’s dance of defiance and of unashamed self confidence and identity, “more// than any man// could handle”. That being said, the end of the poem, “...love- pure purpose// poured into flight” brings to mind the story of why Dove loves ballroom dance (or at least my very limited knowledge of how she feels, on my speculative knowledge filtered through many potentially faulty sources, but for the reasons of whatever), how it created for her a whole new passion to fall back on when her work in another art form had been destroyed. Dancing the fox-trot is pure purpose// poured into flight”.
The poem that really impacted me the most, drew me in was “The Transport of Slaves// From Maryland to Mississippi”. The first thing that drew me in was the simile on line 21 (I think, I may have miscounted): “trees, improbable as broccoli,” I just thought, like, how charming, how lovely. I like broccoli. Then there’s also “burst open like baked yams”, but that simile compares the baked yams to “The skin across his cheekbones”. That kind of threw me for a loop, and it made me look somewhat deeper into the poem. The descriptions or insinuations of color are very common and rooted deeply within many, and are therefore very potent as ways to draw a reader into the poem. What I focused on after that was the line: “Death and Salvation- one accommodates the other”, I don’t know if I have anything coherent to say about that yet. I read through it once, and was just very moved, the tone of the poem seems so confused and gutted, hysterical but only quietly, in the most animalistic and visceral way. After thinking that, I realized I was just projecting (like, oh boy, *ELECTION*) how I felt onto a few, barely significant words, at least in relation to the overall poem, after that, I did read through the poem again, more holistically. It seems to me, from the first italicized stanza, the one that relates the narrator’s thoughts. As she helps the driver moving her and the other slaves to Mississippi, she is damning herself to a life of slavery. The thing about this this is that, though I understand what the main idea was, and am really powerfully struck by the language and the literary devices. I just don’t really know how to pick that all up and synthesize that into any kind of intelligible words of my own, I don’t know, I’d just like to discuss this in class.
I really liked your analysis and comments about the poem! I thought your commentary about the importance of color was noted very well, and it is definitely something that I think plays a large part in the creation of the poem, and the meaning. This relates to my blog post about this very same poem, but I did have a question for you. Rita Dove is not exactly known for giving all of the information before the poem; Instead, she opts for introducing the topic in the poem itself, to promote the idea that the audience needs to research the background info beforehand. Why do you think Rita Dove adds background info in this particular poem? If I am not mistaken, this is the only poem in our packet that has some type of description, not including "Parsley."
Okay, so as a note before I get into the blog post, I’m pretty sure I mixed something up earlier in the unit, because I have already analyzed and blogged about a poem from the “Slavery” category, so I will do my analysis of a poem from “Civil Rights” now. I apologize in advance for any confusion.
The poem that I found the most interesting from this topic was “Climbing In,” which had an interesting comparison of the bus to a monster, or even that of the wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood.” One of the most interesting aspects of the poem is the fact that Rita Dove takes a situation that we are currently unfamiliar with: That of not having the right to what we see today as basic transportation, or not having that right to the same extent as the next person, and compares it to a fairytale, something that we all can connect to.
In my opinion, by comparing the monstrous view of the bus in the poem within the lines “Teeth./ Metallic. Lie-gapped./ Not a friendly shine/” to the antagonistic feeling we have for the wolf in the story, Dove is able to connect with an audience that may not have been acquainted with the idea before. Dove does this because, for many of us in the United States, we are privileged to live in a world where we have these basic rights of transportation and free speech, and we never had to fear that someone would hurt us if we got on the Max or the bus. In other words, it would be hard for us to imagine the inescapable fear that African Americans faced as they rode on the busses, which could, at any moment, erupt in violence. In order to still connect to the modern audience, Dove compares this fear to the fear that we all shared as children: One that stemmed from the mention of the evil or harmful characters within a story. “Little Red Riding Hood” is the perfect choice, because it is a simple story, and one that spans throughout several cultures. For instance, while reading this poem, I remembered that as a child, I would read this story in Russian or in Ukrainian, and this, in my mind, upheld the fact that by comparing this large issue of the civil rights movement to something as simple and approachable as a story, Dove was able to educate the audience not through telling them what to feel, but through giving them a comparison so they could apply it first hand.
I have been all over the place, so I am just going to do the analysis for a poem in the American Smooth section as I already did the Slavery poem early on messing it up.
I want to discuss the poem entitled “Fox Trot Fridays” each section of the poem conveys different portion so the foxtrot dance form what I can tell or at the very least a dance. The first two stanzas have some form of alliteration that makes it very satisfying to read like the beginning of a gradual song about to kick it into overdrive. The alliterations are such like “Thank the stars there's a day each week to tuck in” with the constant click of the “T” / “K”. Also “...lift your pearls” with the soothing “L” sound right before “stride brush stride” feels very fluid like the dance steps to the beginning of a song. In the foxtrot, the dance is very bouncey right off the bat after a brief introduction, which with that knowledge makes the next stanzas make even more sense to me at least., When you read the poem the second or third time the stanzas each have their own sort of jump to them, making specific words stand out such as “Nat King Cole’s” or “Paradise” which both do not appear to fit in terms of language. And keeping along the same idea of a smooth yet jumpy style of swing dance. But these odd word make sense when you think of it in terms of a dance. Specifically the foxtrot and swing dance style with all of the swinging of people and hard clicks and clacks of shoes.
Going away from the feel of the poem in terms of dance, I want to talk about the connotations that came into my mind and how they changed the poem for me. Specifically I want to look at “rib to rib, / with no heartbreak in sight-” At the first reading I just image a couple dancing close together and having the time of their lives, but then I started to think about the notion of “dancing the night away” or “dance till you drop”. I remembered there was a myth, I am not aware of the name, but somewhere in the tale, someone was banished to dance forever. The person loved dance, but their immense love turned to immense hate after just hours of dancing and physically unable to stop. During this era, dance was so engraved in their culture, i am sure that there were people who despised dancing. With the whole “rib to rib” line, I thought of dancing till the point where you feel raw in your bones.
Hi guys! Feel free to post comments before 3am! :)
ReplyDeleteMs. Ballard
Poem: Breakfast of Champions
ReplyDeleteWell breakfast cereal is my second love so I couldn't NOT analyze this one. Right off the bat, looking at the title, we know this one mentions cereal without having to read it, with the allusion of "Breakfast of Champions". Demeter is the greek goddess of the harvest, and more importantly for this poem, of the wheat harvest. Cereal is kind of her thing. I mean, Demeter's roman name is 'Ceres,' which sounds an awful lot like cereal. This immediately links the poem to Demeter.
The link to Demeter is continued in the octave. The Greeks explained winter by saying those were the six months Demeter's daughter had to spend in the Underworld, making Demeter so upset she froze the planet and stopped the growth of crops. 'Breakfast of Champions' begins with: "Finally, overcast skies. I've crossed a hemisphere,/ worked my way through petals and sunlight/ to find a place fit for mourning,/ a little dust on the laurel branch" (lines 1-4). Demeter is so set with grief that she has left behind sunshine and beauty for a somber place fit to grieve the annual loss of her daughter.
So we know we're talking about Demeter, that this is Demeter's perspective. Then what do the last two lines of the sestet mean? Earlier having referenced looking for cereal and raisins in the pantry, lines 13-14 say "Though I pour myself the recommended bowlful,/ stones are what I sprinkle among the chaff." Chaff is the fluffy part of wheat that is cast away and unusable, while the seed is harvested (ever heard the saying "separate the wheat from the chaff?"). You don't even use the chaff to make cereal. So why does Dove make a point to say "chaff" as opposed to words like "flakes" or "grain" that would make more sense? Simply put, it's because she isn't just talking about cereal. Instead of Demeter allowing crops to grow again, "stones are what I sprinkle among the chaff." After the harvest, among the discarded chaff isn't new growth,it's stones and rocks-inorganic objects able to survive winter because they aren't alive. The line before it, saying "Though I pour myself the recommended bowlful," references the fact that Demeter still must eat and make use of her wheat, she is too distressed about the loss of her daughter to care.
I liked your analysis, as well as your connection to your own life. Adding on to your perspective I see this in a different way. When reading this poem I focused more on the first stanza. Where its saying that she traveled a great distance just to mourn. And it seems to me that cereal is her way of mourning. She has lost her daughter and she wants cereal. But what does the cereal represent? I saw this as health. She is trying to regain her health after this tragic thing happens to her. And the stones are used to show that she will ever be satisfied with her health and it will never come back without her daughter, so in a was her daughter in cereal.
DeleteI really like the last paragraph of your analysis of this poem, it save me from having to do any actual research, so yay; I definitely agree on that. What I find interesting about Rita Dove, if not a bit dry is how that kind of historical research and analysis can be applied to pretty much every single line of this poem. What I like best about this poem was what Jacob mentioned, I really like- and so do most people, I’d assume- the relatability and the sort of empathetic reality check this poem provides, it reminds me of specific times in my relationship with my mom. The dual perspective poems like this provide (in the context of all the other Mother Love poems) are endlessly valuable, they inspire love and understanding where there might otherwise only exist a cold and tacit recognition of each other.
DeleteWhen looking through the poems one stood out to me in particular, Ẅiederkehr. The main reason this poem stood out to me at first was because of the name. Using google translate I learned that it means repeating in German. So when analyzing the poem I knew that the name has to hold some significance. Dove’s repetition of the word “rain” shows the reader that the person in this story wants to feel rain; this could have two meanings. One of the meanings could be that this person wants to physically feel the rain, meaning in this case that hades wants to get out of the underworld and experience life for what it is. Another meaning for this could be that hades wants a new beginning. Rain can be seen as washing away the past, so it's possible that Hades wants his past to be erased and to be able to start over again. However in this statement “I sat to hold the rain untouched inside me” (Dove), which shows that the narrator of the story (Persephone) is the “rain”. For Hades Persephone is a new beginning. However all of this is just for greed, Hades wants only personal gain from this, shown when dove writes “He only wanted me for happiness”. Hades wanted himself to be happy, and couldn't care less about Persephone, he just saw her as a way to get that new beginning. It is important to note that this poem is written from Persephone’s perspective so her portrayal of what Hades wants may be shifted towards the side of selfishness.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your analysis, it made me think a lot more about the importance of titles. The title is what really caught my eye also. Isn’t funny how translated words can have many different meanings? When I translated the title, I got the word “return”, which made a lot of sense to me. The last three lines of the poem state “ Which is why / when the choice appeared, / I reached for it” (Dove). Which I believe refers to Persephone eating the six pomegranate seeds which would force her to return to the underworld six months of the year. When I first heard this myth, I was so shocked and couldn’t believe why Persephone would eat the pomegranate, but with poem, Dove has enlightened me.
DeleteThe first poem that really grabbed my attention was “The Narcissus Flower”. The poem is actually a sonnet filled with couplets, triplets, and new lines starting in what seems like random places. The second line ends with “...not the earth unzipped”(Dove) and the third line begins with “but the way I could see my own fingers” (Dove). This ‘random’ break adds to the tone of the section while drawing attention to the details that give this poem it’s intense emotion. The tone in beginning of the poem is very frightened. This is shown by words like, frightened, frivolous, incinerated, and chasten. These words show Persephone looking back at her terror. As the poem shifts from memory to present, the lines get shorter and diction becomes simpler. This adds to the kind-of “calm so pure, it was hate” (Dove) feeling, or a numb feeling. In the first line, details are mentioned more than the big event. This also gives the myth it’s lifelikeness. In real life, hardly anyone remembers only the big things, sometimes it’s the shoes you were wearing or what you were drinking. When you hear about the myth of Persephone, you never really hear about Persephone. You hear about her mother, Zeus or even Hades. This is what keeps it a story, what keeps it unaccesable, unrelatable. Dove’s emphasis on details, and changes in diction takes a myth and brings it to life, takes a character and creates a real person.
ReplyDeleteI was also taken by this poem, specifically the word choice, I hadn’t yet looked up the word chasten, but your mention of it prompted me to look it up. So in an archaic usage, it means to discipline, with strong connotations of divine punishment, and this fits very well with my current (very rough) thinking about the poem and the metaphor it seems to draw between a mother-daughter relationship and Demeter’s relationship to Persephone, and the related judgements it seems to me to imply about the structure that sexism (speaking broadly) imposes on relationships between those who are in (or are confined to) the feminine role in society. I disagree with you your judgement on the “calm so pure, it was hate” line, I don’t think that this is only a feeling of numbness in the eyes of the narrator, they claim that “you can eat fear before fear eats you” and “you can live beyond dying”. I’m, however, still undecided on what the subtext of the final stanzas mean, they seem like they could either be a poetic way of telling a rape victim to “just get over it”, a continuation of the sexist environment the narrator grew up in, or a victory symbol of the narrator’s newfound and specifically feminine empowerment in that hatred, that calm.
DeleteTW- brief discussion of rape
ReplyDeleteThe poem that stuck out most to me was, like Lydia, The Narcissus Flower. However, unlike Lydia, I found different merits to it. Maybe not merits, I don’t think I’m quite on board with Rita Dove’s poetry in general yet, it feels much too straightforward to me. Even though it recalls very strong and common experiences of the advice a mother gives a daughter, but it hasn’t really been all that effective in striking chord that resonates powerfully within me. It discusses history and Hellenist stories, both of which I enjoy independently, but it can’t really grab me in the way that other works have. Works like Night by Wiesel or Hour of the Star have some kind of magical, gripping hold on me with no obvious reasons for why. I think a major part of it is just very effective word choice and intentional structuring, that I don’t fully understand. But, back to Rita Dove, I’ve found a poem that really does hold me like some of my favorite works do, the Narcissus Flower. I’m sure that it uses plenty techniques well- supported by the subject and tone of the piece, but just glancing at the word “hate” in line 9 drew me in inexorably. Maybe it’s just because of some ill-fitting combination of very little sleep and Regina Spektor’s new album (It’s like so great, really- Remember Us to Life- it’s on Youtube), but this poem is double-rainbow level emotionally impactful. Upon looking upon it a little further than just fixating on the single “hate” the rest of the poem is massively impactful. It seems obvious to me that the text is about being raped by some faceless man, evidenced by connotative language and and reference to colloquialisms:
“Unzipped…“
“the blossom incinerated”
“This man adamant as a knife easing into the humblest crevice,”
This poem describes an event that both fits into the most common interpretation of the story of Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and a (sadly) widely relatable experience. This poem reminds me of my relationship with my own mother and other women; It just makes all of the other poems and their modern-voiced advice “Keep your eyes down” poignant in a way I wasn’t expecting (Persephone, Falling). I’m a bit ambivalent on the poem’s ending, I keep going between thinking of it as a statement of empowerment in spite of oppression and as a pretty way of saying toughen-up.
Golden Oldie caught my eye because out of all of the Mother Love poems it’s one of the few that isn’t apparently morbid. The tone is sad while still being soft and gentle. Rita Dove accomplishes this through her use of mellow diction such as swaying, crooned, and sentiment. The title Golden Oldie refers to an old song that was very popular, which sets the poem up to have a wistful, longing tone. It’s as if Rita Dove is referring to the old days, and yet the poem talks about someone who appears to have never experienced love and is longing for it. This creates an interesting juxtaposition and suggests that there is deeper meaning to the poem than one might originally think. It’s almost as if she’s talking about an old love that she lost, however the last line contradicts this when she writes, “....without a clue who my lover might be, or where to start looking.” This gives the poem a naive feeling and suggests that the narrator is longing to experience love.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this poem while reading it, and one of the best things about it, in my opinion, is the fact that we're not totally sure of who the poem is describing. At the beginning, I thought it would be Demeter, who was missing her daughter, because the poems are describing the mother-daughter relationship, but towards the end, with the use of words and phrases such as "lover," and "Baby, where did our love go?"I started to believe that this may perhaps also be taken as from the point of view of Hades. This poem could easily be describing Hades in his life prior to finding Persephone, where he is looking for someone "without a clue who my lover might be, or where to start looking." When he finally found her, he was able to take her with him and finally be somewhat happy. We also see this sentiment echoed in "Wiederkehr," which describes that, from the point of view of Persephone, that "he only wanted me for happiness: to walk in air/ and not think so much,/ to watch the smile/begun in his eyes/end on his lips..." (Wiederkehr, lines 1-6). This upholds the idea that Hades simply wanted love and happiness, and he found it in Persephone. On the other hand, though, the use of "lover" and "baby, where did our love go?" could also be taken in a way that is not romantic at all, just that of a mother addressing her daughter, searching the world in order to find her.
DeleteI agree that this poem is starkly different when it is compared to the other poems in this Mother Love set. While the other poems are leaning on the aggressive sides, this one sways to appeal to the younger viewpoint of love and the experiences love comes to intimate love. When looking at the poem as a whole it really does stand out in terms of its tone that you were talking about. I didn’t know that the title was in reference to a song, so I will definitely be looking the song up to find further connections to this poem, thanks for pointing that out!
DeleteWhen you first read the poem Demeter’s Waiting, it can seem rather straightforward. It is from the perspective of Demeter who is the mother of phosphine who is forced to remain in the underworld during 9 months of the year with Hades. Demeter talks about how she will induce the world into a cold winter until she is able to see her daughter again. I found that the tone in the first part or first stanza to have a very contrasting tone to the second stanza. The tone and context of the first stanza is really sorrowful and almost regretful with the use of words such as “war-bound soldier” and “who can bear it” which are both phrases that can induce empathy. The second stanza becomes much more aggressive like the anger attributed to the anger of a mother bear whose club has just been stolen. Demeter reverts to profanity in the 5th and 7th line of the second stanza, profanity is something that is used for emphasis or to alert the urgency of a situation, despite how common it is in modern rhetoric. By raising the cold and causing winter Demeter is abandoning her own role as the goddess of agriculture, harvest, and fertility. By putting aside her main function as a goddess in the name of grief for her daughter, one can really see though the tone of this poem the juxtaposition. Going from a mother and goddess of harvest to being so furious that she reverts to profanity for empathizes her anger and that fact that she is the one that causes winter is ironic, and should be taken note of in “Demeter, Waiting” by Rita Dove.
ReplyDeleteA poem that I enjoyed was “Mother Love,” due to the strong allusion used within the poem. In the myth of Demophon, where Demeter decides to give a family a “gift” as she travels the world, looking for her daughter. During her journey, Demeter meets the family of King Celeus, where she is asked to nurse the two sons. In return, Demeter decides to turn one of the sons into a god, by burning him in a fire to burn the human spirit out of him. We see a reference to this in “Mother Love,” where Demeter is describing her journey to find her daughter, Persephone.
ReplyDelete“I decided to save him. Each night/
I laid him on the smoldering embers,/
sealing his juices in slowly so he might/be cured to perfection./
Oh, I know it looked damning:at the hearth muttering crone/
bent over a baby sizzling on a spit/
as neat as a Virginia ham. Poor human-/
to scream like that, to make me remember.”
In the poem, we see that Demeter is suffering. By suggesting that she “decided to save him,” I believe she is implying saving him from his humanity, as well as from suffering itself. By becoming a god, Demophon would no longer have to suffer like the other humans. To Demeter, this seemed like a gift; By turning the child into a god, she would be saving him from pain and from human suffering, which is all she ever wanted to do for her daughter. In my opinion, Demeter tries to “save” Demophon because she could not save her own daughter. All she wishes to do is to be able to save a child, even if it is not her own.
This is somewhat of a piggyback off of Julia's entry, but I also go off on tangents so it isn't at the same time. In mother love,Demeter sees 'saving' Demophon from humanity and suffering is motivated mainly by her inability to save her own daughter, but the meaning of save is different in the two senses. Demeter saving Demophon is salvation according to her own past failures and her inability to save her daughter from Hades. Demeter isn't saving Demophon out of the warmth in her heart, but for for nostalgic purposes. Especially in writing 'to scream like that, to make me remember', Dove is implying that Demeter sees Persephone in the innocent child that she has the second chance to save. The irony in this poem also struck me. Demeter is almost on a side quest nursing the two boys when she 'saves' Demophon from human suffering and grief. Her main goal is to get her daughter back, and the nursing of these two boys reminds her of times when she had her daughter and when she had the ability to keep her safe. The significance of Demeter nursing King Celeus' two children is the paternalistic and caring nature of a mother's love. Personally, I wouldn't want to be burned of my spirit, but Demeter sees this as a caring act of salvation. The irony further increases as Demeter, and all Greek gods for that matter, see human life as a pointless and suffering existence. By making Demophon a god, Demeter is delivering him away from suffering. But suffering is not solely a human experience- Demeter suffers from the loss of her daughter as well. A theme Dove explores throughout her mother love poems are themes that aren't applicable to only one group or demographic. Excluding gods and such, suffering isn't particular to a group of people, or certain areas; suffering is universal. But so is love, especially paternalistic love, and the desire to save others where you have failed before. I find these two themes very interesting, as they are directly applied to Greek mythology but are allegorically(?) applied to all life.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking at the poems, my eye was immediately drawn to canary. But one this that really stood out to me within the poem was the last line, in it Dove write “If you can't be free, be a mystery”. This stood out to me and I wanted to explore the idea further. The poem itself is about how when you're a women you are only good for love and more specifically love making. But the idea of freedom and then mystery is very interesting and I took it to mean two things. The first thing that is could mean is that marriage is a trap for a women, so, so if you can't be free to do the things you want to be mysterious and it'll give the illusion of freedom. One of the best things about freedom is the idea that no one knows where you are, and with mystery know one may know Anything about you, thus mimicking the idea of freedom and the feeling that it gives you. So Dove is saying that if you cannot be free then mystery is the next option because it will gIve you similar feelings. The second thing that this statement could mean is that if you feel trapped become a mystery so you will have things that only you know. This wild cause the illusion of space inside your head, thus mimicking freedom. I think that it is important to have this freedom in a relationship or else you will begin to feel trapped, but then couldn't you just behind a mystery? In theory yes but the issue with mystery is it gives you the illusion of freedom for a short period of time, but you will never fully feel free. Then you will get stuck in a state of mystery and fake freedom that, in the end, will make you feel more closed than you originally did.
ReplyDeleteI like the approach you took on this poem by focusing on the last line. I agree with your reasoning when it comes to being a mystery can simulate freedom, but only for a short time because you aren't actually free. The thing that stuck out to me from this poem, however, is not the last line but the first. A canary in literature is a symbol of light and illumination and I was wondering if you noticed the first line beginning with, "Billie Holiday's burned voice had as many shadows as light". When I think of the word "burned" I think of a fire, which is used to illuminate dark places, but Dove also uses the word "shadows" which is a stark contrast. Do you think the contrast of light and dark Dove uses in the line could be a comparison of freedom and mystery because Dove inputs this contrast only to compare Billie Holiday's voice back to light at the end of the sentence? Therefore, like you stated, "You will get stuck in a state of mystery (shadows) and take freedom (burned, light) that, in the end, will make you feel more closed than you originally did." My explanation makes more sense in my head than it probably does in this post, so I'm sorry if this is confusing.
DeleteI appreciate the attention that you paid to the last line of this poem, as well as your open views on its meaning! I agree with your statement on how the poem reflects a view that a woman is only good for her body, and I found it interesting that the topic of the poem was Billie Holiday, as her life echoed a fair share of that idea, as well. As I was reading the poem, I decided to look up Billie Holiday, as I know her mostly through her music instead of her life. While going through a few websites, I found that Billie (born Eleanora, though she hated the name) had been the subject of attempted rape when she was eleven years old, and later became a prostitute alongside her mother to earn money. I apologize if this is a touchy subject to discuss, but I thought it tied into what you were saying about how women were valued for their body, and how in order to get away from that label, they had to maintain some air of mystery, almost as if to become someone else entirely. Billie Holiday, like many women of the time, could not escape that idea that women were sources of bodily pleasure instead of equals, and so she became something else, by becoming one of the most influential jazz singers, something that was uncommon at the time.
DeleteI think of this as the other more accessible poem (along with Sonnet in Primary Colors) in the assigned amount as the other ones are focused on ancient subjects or ones removed from the typical Western narrative of history that we are exposed to in school. I’m also very interested in the line: “If you can’t be free, be a mystery.” However, I disagree with the notion that this is somehow a simulation of freedom, it reminds me of that quote from The Great Gatsby, where Daisy is says that she hopes her daughter will be a beautiful fool, as that’s the best thing a woman can be in this world, it seems like both quotes are suggesting at one theme that women need to deceive in order to survive in within a system of institutionalized and individual sexism, that values them not as people, but as objects whose values are to be determined by other perspectives.
DeletePoem: Catherine of Alexandria
ReplyDeleteFor those of you who haven't done the research, before I get into analysis, let me explain who Catherine of Alexandria was. She is a martyr of Christianity and a virgin and a patron saint of a lot of things (including knife-sharpeners, hat makers, and the Philippines). She was martyred at 18 for converting to Christianity (and converting lots of others, also martyred) and refusing to renounce her beliefs in the face of torture and death. The king tried a lot of things to get her to stop, eventually beheading her, but for the sake of this poem, the most important was that the king offered her to marry him. Catherine refuses, saying she was espoused to Jesus Christ and she had consecrated her virginity to him (if you don't know, to consecrate something is to set something aside for a sacred reason).
Reading through this poem for the first time, without knowledge on Catherine, it was definitely strange. It had an oddly sexual tone, which made me uncomfortable. I mean, “...sainthood/ came as a voice/ in your bed-/ and what went on/ each night was fit/ for nobody's ears/ but Jesus’” (lines 3-9)? “...Each morning/ the nightshirt bunched/ above your waist-/ a kept promise,/ a ring of milk” (lines 12-16)? It is VERY CLEARLY hinting at something sexual, but what and why?
Well Catherine said she was married to Jesus, and was saving her virginity for him. “What went on/each night was fit/ for nobody's ears/ but Jesus’.” As strange and uncomfortable as it sounds, this implies that she is nightly having sex with Jesus (that is a really uncomfortable sentence to write). This is reinforced with the lines “each morning/ the nightshirt bunched/ above your waist.”
The third stanza mentions a lily (“His/ breath of a lily. [lines 9-10]). Christ is connected with lilies; he was born “in the beauty of the lilies.” The lily is also a flower symbolizing motherhood and sexuality, Greek myth stating that it was grown from the breast milk of Hera. The final line of the poem, “a ring of milk,” is possibly a reference to that myth. The motherhood and sexuality connects with the connotation of sex in the poem, and the possibility of sex with Jesus (I need me some holy water or something now).
I liked your analysis and how you added in the background information to help clarify your points. While reading this I too became extremely uncomfortable with the extreme sexual undertone, but after reading your analysis it makes a lot more sense now. I had never thought of the role Christianity played in this poem. See this is the part where I would say what I thought about the poem but honestly I felt very uncomfortable and very confused (kinda like high school). I couldn't really form an opinion of it due to the fact that I didn't know the back story and it made me so uneasy that I tried to rid my thoughts of it. But now I understand what its saying and it makes me slightly less uncomfortable. Now for a question, what do you think the purpose of having two poems next to each other that had similar names was? I don't know if this was Ballards doing but if not I think it was to juxtapose the two different lives. It shows the reader that thought people may seem similar on the outside, on the inside they may be completely different. However that's a good thing because we can learn different things from each.
DeleteI have to say, your analysis was just as entertaining as it was uncomfortable. When I was reading through the poem, I definitely caught the sexual undertone as well, especially with the line "the nightshirt bunched above your waist" bit. I agree with your analysis, and it makes a lot of things clearer in the poem. It's really different from my initial analysis of the poem, which makes me glad to have read yours. Initially, I thought the poem was almost describing rape (or at least something somewhat forced). It's kind of hard to describe my thought processes because it was honestly just a guess as to what the poem could mean (I did the same thing as Jacob and just tried to stay away from the obvious sexual tone haha). If I had to try, it was because the lines "and what went on/ each night was fit/ for nobody's ears/ but Jesus'" made me think that it was a dark secret of some sort, and that nobody else could bear the burden of knowing the sins that went on except Jesus. "His spiraling/ pain" made me think that maybe he was pained that he couldn't stop it, while the lines "a kept promise,/ a ring of milk" made me think that she had to keep her promise of marriage and children. I searched up "a ring of milk" after reading your analysis and I got something about how mammals feed their young. So yeah, my initial analysis was stupid but OH WELL WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT. The background definitely cleared things up for me, so thanks for including that!
DeleteI really thought, like Jacob said, that it was super interesting that Catherine of Siena was next to Catherine of Alexandria. Catherine of Siena also devoted her life to Jesus, and when asked how she knew she was married to Jesus, they say she basically said the ring wasn’t gold or silver, it was his foreskin. Which is super uncomfortable but also kinda eery that it’s right next to Catherine of Alexandria, which as has been said, has a really sexual tone. My question is what is Dove trying to express by sexualizing the women who have devoted their lives to Jesus? I would think that you would do the exact opposite, wouldn’t they be seen as holy and almost except from sexualistion? I just think it’s really interesting that Catherine of Alexandria almost denied herself from being seen as a sex object by not marrying the king when she knew it would save her life, and Catherine of Siena cut her long beautiful when she was sixteen so she wouldn’t have to get married to a regular Siena man. So is Dove sexualising them to almost draw attention to the fact that in their lives they fought, maybe subconsciously, to not be see as sex objects or baby makers?
DeleteFirst off, with the name. Soprano singers in jazz are referred to as canaries, due to their high range as well as the delicate and bright tones they produced as a result of their high pitches. Canaries are used for another purpose, albeit a much darker and literal one. Canaries in the past were taken into coal mines, and if they were to perish, the mine would be deemed unsafe to work in ascribed to poisonous gas. With the two distinct uses of canary defined, the first of a soprano singer is obviously implied in the context of "Billie Holiday's burned voice", who is a jazz singer with tremendous skill and a raspy tone due to drug and alcohol problems. Interestingly enough, Holiday was not a soprano singer but a contralto one; the deepest voice for women. The juxtaposition between the implied subject of a soprano singer based off of the title and Holiday's contralto voice is used to show the mystery Holiday invoked. Her musical skills were lacking, but she excelled in the realm of improvisation- an integral fixture to jazz, and influenced artists including Frank Sinatra. But Holiday's career was short lived, and she died when she was 44 in 1959. Her life as a symbol of light and hope coming from a troubled childhood, but ending as an early tragedy mirrors the life of an actual canary that perished in the lines. Dove keeps this metaphor from being too similar by contrasting Holiday's deep contralto voice with the delicate soprano of canaries. The second line, 'had as many shadows as lights/ shows the contrast between the brilliance of the spotlight that shone on Holiday and her dark drug habits. The following two lines again use contrasting imagery in 'mournful', dark and gloomy, and 'candelabra', which is a large branched candlestick, alongside 'the gardenia her signature', in which a gardenia symbolizes purity as a traditional wedding flower to show the stark contrast between Holiday's talent as an artist and her troubled life. Holiday also often wore a gardenia in her hair for performances. Thus is the tragic theme of many great jazz artists. Some of the best, including Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk, shone brightly and were extinguished young. This motif appears often in Dove's poems, especially American Smooth, as she is a product of the jazz culture. In the second stanza, Dove uses the term 'cooking' as slang to show the 'food' musicians concock that feeds the soul. 'Magic spoon, magic needle'/ are used satirical in terms of the cooking theme presented in the 5th line as references to heroin, which Holiday was addicted to. In the 8th line, Dove uses a favorite motif of hers- mirrors, possibly in terms of mirrors inabilities to see past the superficial. To the naked eye, Holiday was a success, but with further glances, she was a flawed and troubled woman. The final two stanzas are the shortest, done so in part at least to draw the eye towards them. Until this point, there isn’t much fluidity between previous stanzas, other than their application to Billie Holiday and jazz culture. These final words focus on women’s assumed roles in society, as well as possibly historical black oppression. ‘To sharpen love in the service of myth’ is used ironically as Dove writes often about myths, while also criticizing other’s accounts of the mythical Billie Holiday. Dove’s poem does not glorify her, but focuses on both her skills of her art as well as her shortcomings in her personal life. The final line, ‘If you can’t be free, be a mystery’/ illustrates Holliday’s inability to break away from her past that is constantly labelling her, and then her ascension to mythical status when she cannot escape her faults. ‘Be a mystery’ brings to my mind the image of a mask, a shroud to hide faults from judging eyes to protect one's own freedom from others’ labels.
ReplyDeleteWhile I particularly enjoyed Jacob’s analysis of “Canary,” I found the meaning to be a bit different, although also steeped with the influence of the time period in which Billie Holiday lived. After reading into the life of Billie Holiday, I found the first stanza quite interesting, as both the gardenia and words such as “burning” tell the story of how Billie Holiday’s hair once caught fire, and to mask it, Holiday used gardenia flowers in place of the hair that burned off. I believe this first stanza refers to the importance of the physical appearance of a woman, which is then highlighted by the last line, “the gardenia signature under that ruined face” (line 4). Even though the gardenia flower is a sign of beauty and a known symbol for Holiday herself, the fact that the last line mentions her “ruined face” remarks on how much impact beauty had (and still has) on the image of a woman. In addition to that, the remainder of the poem refers to words and phrases that remind me of the traditional view of a woman in society, such as “now you’re cooking,” “magic spoon,” “magic needle,” and “your mirror and your bracelet of song.” These phrases, referring to cooking, sewing, admiring yourself in the mirror, and jewelry, give this poem a very feminine edge, relating to the view that a woman needs to remain at home, to keep after her own physical appearance, and be happy with trinkets, a view that was (and sometimes even now remains) popular.
ReplyDeleteResearching a little bit about Billie Holiday really helped me in a way so that I could understand this poem. I love how you included the story of how Billie’s hair once caught on fire and how that might relate to something in the poem. You said how this could be referring to her physical appearance and how it was ruined. But in the poem, the first line begins with the phrase, “Billie Holiday’s burned voice”. What else do you think could have been destroyed, besides Billie’s physical appearance? From reading this, I saw this “voice” of Billie, not as her singing/musical voice, but instead her voice and power as a person. Could Billie’s power to stand up and speak for herself, be burned out because society viewed her differently or judged her? Her physical appearance, and her power to speak could have been burned out. In the second stanza, we can see that the rest of the poem refers to words and phrases that are used to explain the traditional view of women in society. But what I found interesting, is how there are parenthesis around this whole stanza. What reasoning do you think Dove had behind this? Overall, you did a wonderful job of incorporating in how Billie Holiday’s life experience fit into this poem by Rita Dove. This opened up to me, the many different ways this poem can be interpreted.
DeleteThe poem that stood out to me most in this section of assigned reading was the Sonnet in Primary Colours. I was initially drawn to it because Ballard analyzed it as an example in my Lit class last year, and I know quite a lot about Frida Kahlo, the subject of the poem, both meaning that I don’t have to do much, if any research. Which is good. Anyway, my first impressions of this poem, back in last school year was that it was dryly interesting in the way that a history book is, or any other kind of art or literature that doesn’t really draw you in by makes you feel clever when you can recognize and understand all of the allusions. I, having in good bit of background- because Frida Kahlo’s really cool- in Frida Kahlo’s life, art, and viewpoints, can recognize the the mentions of the “one black wing perched over her eyes”, or the “plaster corset” and so on. The narrator does write about Kalho quite tenderly, like an admirer, a fan, using loving, not necessarily in a romantic sense, diction to describe her: lovely, erect, present, wildflowers, romance of mirrors, butterflies, love.
ReplyDeleteHowever, this poem fails to really draw me in, given its matter-of-fact tone. Or at least, that’s how I saw it when I first skimmed the poem upon starting to read the poems assigned. What really changed my mind about the poem was the title, I thought, its called a sonnet in the title, it should fit the definition of one of the types we wrote notes on in class. So I looked at my notes and looked at the poem, it has the wrong number of lines altogether, only thirteen. That sort of turns the expectations set in the title on their heads, the connotations of a sonnet, as being about love, fawning over (typically) a woman. It draws attention to the fact that poem would look much more square (a common visual qualifier for a poem being a sonnet) if the one word were removed or moved: Diego. It brings attention to a passage within the poem which seems to soil the adoring tone of the first parts of the poem:
“Like children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego’s
Love a skull in the circular window
Of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow.”
This method used by Dove to bring focus to a point in the poem, specifically in a visual way, transcends the restrictive medium of words- even at their most distilled and powerful in poetry- and accesses a much more visceral, instinctual, personal medium, visual art.
I meant to underline the words: "love a skull" and "thumbprint searing her immutable brow".
DeleteI really liked your analysis on this poem. I read through it, but didn't have time to look into all the things that were referenced about Frida Kahlo so it's cool that you already knew so much about her. Like you I had thought that it was a sonnet and didn't even think to count the lines until you mentioned it only had 13 which makes me curious as to why she would include that word in the title. Also the tone and word choice she used when talking about Freda Kahlo was definitely one of admiration which added another level to the meaning in this poem.
Delete“Sonnet in Primary Colors” really interested me. First we have the title tells the reader that this will be a sonnet, but in reality, the poem only has thirteen lines. When I researched more about Frida, I learned a lot more about how many illnesses and medical( I wanna say tragedies, but that doesn’t sound right). When she was five, she contracted Polio. When she was twenty, a bus crash changed her life forever as a rail went through her hip, severely injuring her spine. Frida died at forty-seven. Back to the thirteen lines, I believe Dove structured the poem this way to comment on the short, almost incomplete life of Frida.
ReplyDeleteI also really liked this poem because of all the allusions in it. Dove mentions “the stern petticoats of the peasant”, “ Lenin and Marx and Stalin”, “ Diego’s love a skull” , and Frida’s brow twice. These allusions could enlighten the reader on Frida’s spine injury, the fact that she was a devoted communist, and her love life with Diego Rivera. The reader has to look beyond the surface to really get a full sense of the poem, but yet at the same time Dove so openly gives us the information, almost spoon-feeding us the information.
I also wanted to analysis the line “ Diego’s love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow” (11-12) . If you didn’t already know, searing is an extremely hot or intense, and immutable means unchangeable over time. I found Frida and Diego’s life really interesting. They met first back in what I believe was Frida’s school while Diego was painting a mural there. They met again after Friday's accident and were married within a year, but were often separated or in affairs throughout most of the marriage, divorce and then marriage again. When Dove refers to Diego’s love as a skull is feels to me that she is calling his love a memory, something that did exist but now doesn’t, but it still stays to haunt you. Overall, this poem was really neat because it taught me a lot about Frida Kahlo, or at least motivated me to learn more about her.
I love your analysis, especially regarding the reason for the thirteen line "sonnet". I, as well, was really interested in this poem. You brought up the last line about the immutable brow, and I think that can be compared with the first line, "This is for the woman with one black wing" (1). Because her eyebrows looked as if they were one, they are considered one "wing". By comparing her eyebrow to a wing, she is implying that Frida wants to fly, but a bird with one wing can't fly. I think this is representative of the spinal injuries you mentioned Frida encountered in her life.
DeleteI also really liked Sonnet in Primary Colors, but I had a slightly different take (it’s just above if you want to read it) on it. I saw the poem in a much broader, more abstract sense altogether, and kind of ignored the history behind it. I was going to mention the implication of a sonnet that’s a line too short, but then I was tired and I’d already met the word count requirement. But I really like the idea of a single wing unable to fly, I think it relates very well to the symbol I see in the poem, a sort of stunted ability to love. I think this because of the implications of a sonnet in literary history, and because of how Diego’s name was so out of place, and how his love was compared to a skull using metaphor. The most potent section, though, I feel was the last line- “[Diego’s] thumbprint seared her immutable brow”, this is because it seems to me to call to the fact that Kahlo was burned by his touch, but not changed at all. It holds to a kind of inner strength, and could be interpreted as either a powerful source of individuality and strength or as a sign that she’s too hard and removed from others ( which in itself is a statement loaded with sexist implications).
DeleteCatherine of Alexandria was a really compelling poem. When I read it without having any knowledge of Saint Catherine, I was confused and led to believe that it was about a woman giving herself away for sex that wanted to be saved by Christ. However, after my research I learned she was a martyred Christian saint. She was imprisoned for her beliefs by the pagan emperor of Egypt, and in prison, she gained many followers, all of whom where executed for converting. The emperor proposed to Catherine as a way to escape her imprisonment and execution but she believed that she was married to Jesus (through Mother Mary) and that he was the only one she could be with.
ReplyDeleteThe first quatrain struck me as odd because Rita writes, "Deprived of learning" (Line 1) when St. Catherine spent her early years devoting herself to learning about Christianity. Therefore, I wondered if Rita could be referring to a different kind of knowledge: experience.
In the lines, "no wonder sainthood/came as a voice/in your bed -" (Lines 3-5) it appears that Rita is saying that part of Christianity appealed to Catherine in the form of chastity, and that by keeping her chastity even through the temptation of the emperor, she was able to prove her devotion to her religion.
The next part of the poem leads me to believe that it is being told from the point of view of someone scornful, like the pagan emperor, when Rita writes, "...what went on/each night was fit/for nobody's ears/but Jesus'" (Lines 6-9) because it is told with a jealous, almost mocking tone. This tone makes the reader want to stand by Catherine because her devotion is so inspiring.
The last quatrain is very interesting. The "nightshirt bunched above your waist" also carries a mocking tone, as if the emperor is shaming her for saving her chastity for Jesus. The kept promise refers to her promise to stay pure for Jesus, and I think the ring signifies her devotion to him. Additionally, I think milk was used because it is white, and white is seen as a pure color, whereas gold could imply greed.
(part 1) Poem: Sonnet in Primary Colors
ReplyDeleteWow! There's so much to say about this one I don't even know where to begin. Starting with the title, even though the poem's called a "sonnet" it only has thirteen lines, as opposed to the fourteen one would expect. Because this poem is about the loss of a loved one, it could be that the absence of a fourteenth line in the sonnet represents the missing love this woman must now live without. The "primary colors" could honestly mean a lot! The three primary colors are blue, yellow, and red; they are called primary colors because they are the only colors one cannot create by mixing together other colors. This could imply a few things. The fact that the sonnet is written in "primary colors" means that it will be representing the truest nature of whatever it is written about (lost love). It also lets the reader know that they should keep their eyes open for colorful diction as it will assuredly be very meaningful.
To start off the sonnet, the very first two lines mention a "woman with one black wing perched over her eyes..." So the first thing that I noticed was the color black (which ties back into the title of the poem!) The only way to make the color black is to mix all three of the primary colors together. If one were to think about the three primary colors in terms of emotions (yellow, blue, and red) they would probably imagine happiness, sadness, and anger. Referring to the woman as having a black wing perched over her eyes implies that she is experiencing all of those emotions at the same time (due to the loss of her love probably). The fact that the black object covering her eyes is a wing represents a freedom that is now associated with her (flight is freedom maxim), although, because the wing is black (which is notoriously a bad and naturally dark color) and the poem specifically mentions that there is only "one wing," I'd say there is irony at foot here. Birds need two wings to fly, and because she now only has one wing, (the missing one probably symbolizes her lost lover) she can no longer fly. That's only the first of many other allusions to freedom in this poem.
In line two it is written that the woman's name is "Frida," which is about as close to "freedom" as a name can get. It then goes on to say, in the third line, that Frida is "erect among parrots, in the stern petticoats of the peasant" I took this to mean that she stands out against the numerous followers that surround her, and that she's of a poorer background (peasant). The poem continues by explaining how Frida "painted herself a present-- wildflowers entwining the plaster corset her spine resides in the romance of mirrors." The wildflowers mentioned in her painting is another ironic reference to freedom. Freedom because flowers growing in the wild are iconic of an escape from burden, and ironic because their immediately followed by the word entwining (wrapping around, or entangling). The "romance of mirrors" part I'm sure has a lot of depth to it, but all I could think of was that it was just reinforcing the idea that this poem was reflecting the truth of her love.
(part 2) "Each night she lay down in pain and rose to her celluloid butterflies of her beloved dead." In these next two lines it's pretty apparent there's a lot of juxtaposition going on: "Pain and rose," "beloved and dead." The celluloid butterflies part is actually pretty cool. So celluloid was a type of plastic that people used to make cinematographic film out of. If one were to reread these two lines knowing that, it pretty much implies that Frida's been watching old home videos of her lost love (which puts the time frame of this poem into perspective). Everything after that gets pretty weird.
ReplyDelete"Lenin and Marx and Stalin arrayed at the footstead. And rose to her easel, the hundred dogs panting like children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego's love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow. Lenin, Marx, and Stalin all represent communism. Perhaps them appearing at the foot of Frida's bed represents her past yearning for a more equal role in her relationship. So what are the hundred dogs? Their obviously not actual dogs. Dogs represent blind loyalty and companionship, comparing them to children reinforces that blind part especially (because children will often listen to their parents without second thought as to whether they're right). The "dogs" are standing along the graveled walks of a garden. Perhaps the garden is a funeral location, and the dogs are the family and friends of Diego (Frida's lost love)? In the next line we see another ironic use of love: "love a skull in the circular window..." That metaphor reinforces the idea that something was off about this love.
All of the elements discussed above cement one conclusion in my mind. Frida had an abusive love, and she feels very mixed about his death. The title "sonnet in primary colors" tells us that this is a love poem meant to show the truest nature of said love. The ironic usage of freedom throughout the poem shows us that even though she is now free, part of Frida still feels ironically dragged down by her abusive love's death (with the black color of her wing reinforcing her mixed emotions). The constant juxtaposition reminds us that something is not as it seems. The blind loyalty of the many "dogs like children" that praise Diego at his funeral without knowing what he's really been up to. Even the thirteen lines of the sonnet could be seen as juxtaposition between the loving nature of a sonnet and the unlucky nature of the number thirteen. And finally on the final two lines, "love a skull in the circular window of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow" the metaphorical comparison of love to a skull, as well as love's searing her brow as unchanging, shows us that Frida is not crying over Diego’s death; this being another clue that her losing Diego may not have been as sad as one would expect (because it was an abusive relationship).
Poem: Climbing In
ReplyDeleteIt took me so long to figure what this poem was about. Talking about teeth and paying to keep him happy and allusions to Little Red Riding Hood? What?
I, however, have used my patented Abbi Super-Sleuth Skills™ and figured out what the heck Climbing In is talking about. Buckle up folks, here we go.
If you’ve read all of the civil rights poems, you’ve probably realized that they all have something in common; buses. The book that these poems are pulled from is On the bus with Rosa Parks. With that in mind, let’s look at Climbing In. Other than the theme of the civil rights poems, this one indirectly references getting on a bus: “as I clutch the silver pole/ to step up, up” (lines 6-7). I think the metallic teeth are in reference to the stairs of the bus, or maybe the door of the bus when it opens like a mouth.
The narrator also mentions holding a dime, which would be her bus fare. But this isn’t any old dime; the dime in the narrator’s hand is a Mercury dime. A Mercury dime was a style of dime minted 1916-1945. They’re called Mercury dimes because the “heads” face of the coin has the profile of Lady Liberty wearing a winged cap, which made people confuse her for the Roman God Mercury. Line 8-9, “(sweat gliding down the dear lady’s/ cheek)” keys us into this fact, as well as displays to the reader the narrator’s emotion: fear. The narrator, with sweating palms, faced with a bus that has been personified into some freakish hungry monster, is holding onto this lady liberty dime for comfort. They are afraid of this bus, this situation, and this bus driver. The bus driver is likened unto the ravenous wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, with “-these are big teeth,/ teeth of a wolf/ under Grandmother’s cap./ Not quite a grin./ Pay him to keep smiling” (lines 9-13).
In order to keep this terrifying creature from attacking, you must pay him. Dove used the Mercury dime on purpose for this poem, which gives this greater meaning. On the Mercury dime is lady liberty. Back when segregated bus seats were allowed, riders of color were forced to give up their basic freedoms and sit in the back. To ride the bus was to sell your liberty and freedom. The last stanza refers to paying the fare, with the use of “head over tail” (line 15) reminding the reader of the dime. The woman on the dime is swallowed by the monstrous bus.
I read the same poem, however I did not see the similarities with the buses. It makes a lot more sense to me know. However do you think that its odd that Dove wrote about little red riding hood?
DeleteOh! I didn’t even look to see that you’d already deconstructed this poem in a very similar way to how I did. I agree with your characterization of the bus as a monster, I totally saw it the same way, but I see it, in a broader sense, how the monster represents a wide experience among black Americans before desegregation in the South (though desegregation wasn’t really enacted in the North, like ever, even when it was definitely necessary), like the personification of a justified expectation of intimidation.
DeleteOut of the Civil Rights poem section, one poem really caught my eye. “The Abduction” tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free African-American man kidnapped and sold into slavery. The poem is filled with intense emotion, even though it was told in past tense. “The Abduction” is eerily similar to “12 Years a Slave”, not just the story and tense but exact phrases. It was the first two lines really interested me. I was curious who “the great Harrison”( Line 2) was. With a little research and my apush background knowledge, I realized that it was President Harrison. 1841 was when Harrison died, the time that Solomon was kidnapped, so my conclusion made sense. The next thing that really interested me was “pigs squealed invisibly from the bleachers” (Line 9). At first I thought this was the author commenting on the audience, but after reading Chapter 2 of “12 Years A Slave”, I found it was actually just a trick that Brown and Hamilton played in their show. In the third stanza Dove mentions Northup “I was lifted- the sky swivelled, clicked into place” (Line 12). I believe this line is commenting on how Hamilton and Brown got Northup drunk and then drugged him. Northup’s guard was lifted, his world flipped upside down and then everything happened exactly like his kidnappers wanted it to. This whole poem really makes you think, I still can’t figure out why Dove would almost copy exact words and phrases to write this poem. Although I think that’s what makes it a good poem, it makes you think.
ReplyDeleteGood job, ladies! I like the "super-sleuth skills" employed by both of you! :)
ReplyDeleteWhen reading the poems from this book one stood out to me in particular, “Climbing In”. It doesn't fit the form that the meanings of the rest of the poems fit, which is following a specific famous person. “Climbing in” is about the red riding hood fairy tail. It talks about the appearance of her grandmother, which is a wolf in disguise, and how she can tell that it is not her grandmother. I found the imagery in this poem to be very interesting. For example in one instance it describes the wolf's teeth as “lie-gapped”. This shows the perspective that Dove is writing this from. In this the wolf is bad and Dove wants you to see the wolf's actions as bad. This makes it so that throughout the poem a tone of uneasiness is conveyed. This tone is portrayed throughout the entirety of the poem and makes you feel that the wolf is a bad guy. Considering the wolf ate the grandmother i think that the world should be the bad guy. Even though this poem is not the same as the others it still gives you a similar feel, which allows it to fit in well.
ReplyDeleteI also found this poem very compelling, also in part because it doesn’t really make sense in the context that it’s been put in. Why I initially found it to be so compelling is because of the title (Climbing) and the couple of words that stick out in the second stanza: “silver pole”. Now, this obviously has quite a few connotations, but the one that came to mind was the image (and a lot of the art that followed) of Bree Newsome, the activist that climbed the flagpole on top of a South Carolina statehouse to take down the Confederate flag. The silver, pole seems to be implied to be the railing of the the entry to a bus, the the bus is framed as a metal monster’s mouth, the retroactive intimidation that the narrator expected upon entry, like a preface to Rosa’s or Claudette’s or one of the many others’ challenge to power.
Deletepoem: The House Slave
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that stood out to me about this poem was that each stanza was a tercet. The number 3 can mean a few different things, the most prominent of which (especially in western culture) is its correlation with the holy trinity. In Eastern culture, especially china, however, the number three is viewed as 'the perfect number' because of geometry and triangles and stuff. In the fourth stanza, as the narrator recalls her sister's experiences being whipped, another reference to Christianity is made when the narrator's sister cries out "'Oh! Pray...Oh! Pray!'" Along with the number 3, the number 2 is also heavily represented in this poem. The strongest example would be the number of horn calls the narrator hears during their day: "The first horn lifts its arm over the dew-lit grass...At the second horn, the whip curls across the backs of the laggards..." Another use of the number 2 is the amount of tones conveyed in this poem. It begins with a soft, peaceful tone made by words such as "dew-lit grass, rustling, children, bundled, aprons, cornbread, water gourds, and breakfast." The tone then becomes disheartening and hopeless at the third stanza after the second horn call; this new tone is showed by words such as "whip, laggards, cries, shivering, fat, and weep," along with the fact that the narrator's sister is getting whipped. In Christianity, which is most likely the religion taken on by the narrator as that's what their sister follows and back then children didn't normally stray from their religious backgrounds, the number 3 represents the holy spirit and the number two represents the son of god. The use of the number one is missing from this poem and it seems Dove did that on purpose to show the absence of the last member of the trinity: God. The holy spirit is thought to be inside everyone, including the narrator, and the son of god can mean many other things besides Jesus (such as the descendants of Atom, represented by the people enslaving the narrator). The absence of God adds to the hopelessness reflected by the last three stanzas.
The Poem that stood out most to me in the assigned reading was the poem, Lady Freedom Among Us because it conjured such vivid and and emotionally pertinent images when I read it. It doesn’t seem to me to have all that much so far as allusions to the Civil Rights Movement, I can imagine, however, a second interpretation more specifically about the American Movement for black Civil Rights which came to fruition (at least in its legislative goals) during the 1960s. The poem can be read as a narrator with empathy for those without the privilege of feeling ignored, out of what is implied to be guilt.
ReplyDeleteThe interpretation that first stood out to me was that it was a description of the life of Lady Freedom as a homeless woman. Supporting this literarily is how Dove doesn’t use any punctuation or capitalize anything in the poem, it stand out to me as support for the theme of Freedom blending into the town’s non-living objects, enough so to be ignored by passersby. The only other literary device-esque thing is the use of italics on the thoughts of passersby, all cruel and too-familiar, sentiments that I hear expressed far too often. Otherwise, this interpretation was mostly rooted in personal memories and feelings, and developed not so much by literary devices or tones as small, strongly evocative phrases. One of those phrases was “heaped up trinkets” and the opening stanza telling the reader not to “lower your eyes…” reminded me of walking to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and sparked a little rant about gentrification (which I will will spare you of) and for me to stew in my own anger for a very unproductive hour.
This then brings us to the universally applicable question of how much agency and personal interpretation should a reader be allowed in analysing a work of poetry or literature. What role does the author’s intent even have in determining the value of a work? As these poems concern the civil rights struggle, should I as a well-off white person co-opt these words, or is that just a necessary step in building an empathic connection to an issue I have no experience in? Should the author’s life even be taken into account when trying to understand a poem, or should the focus instead fall on a reader’s relationship to the work as though it were completely sourceless?
My opinion lies somewhere in the middle of these extremes. I certainly feel that though words are a flawed and muddy medium with which to communicate, but it is the best way to proliferate an important message like the one, it is also necessary to take ownership of another’s words to best understand the actual feeling behind them. By taking ownership like that, there is chance for misuse and misinterpretation, but- and especially in the case of less politically important subjects, and more for emotional and personal, though there is more complexity to this that I’m glossing over in the interest of going to sleep soon- it is the best way for an outsider to understand a pervading and deeply personal, though also systemic and institutional, issues. For example, reading (or listening) to poetry or other media about the many black experiences in America is a way for me to better understand an experience I can’t have as a white person, or how there are life-long experiences I have that others cannot possibly understand intricacies or all-touching of.
I liked how you commented on the (lack of) punctuation in the poem and how the represents blending into the town. For me when I read this poem I felt like it also had a call to action. The lines "don't lower your eyes" and "don't mutter oh no" seemed like they were reprimanding the reader. It is telling you to not take the freedom you have for granted and also to not look down on those who are new to the country because they have a right to that freedom too. The poem obviously referenced the statue of liberty and in doing that I think it brought in an element of pride in the diversity of the United States.
DeleteOne of my favorite poems from this selection was “The Transport of Slaves from Maryland to Mississippi,” because to me, it symbolized something that some members of current society still struggle with understanding today: That we are all equal. The poem starts with something unique; For the first time, Rita Dove includes an introduction to her poem that discusses the background knowledge, as opposed assuming that the audience has the knowledge already. The introduction deals describes how in 1839, a wagon of slaves escapes and killed two white men, but one slave woman was able to stop them. This event is described in the first stanza, which includes the lines, “his eyelids came apart--his eyes were my eyes in a yellower face,” as well as, “I am no brute. I got feelings. He might have been a son of mine” (lines 11-14), discusses how the slave woman feels that we are all equal, the only difference being status and race, which are put into place by society. I do not mean to sound sappy, but these are the lines that I love to see in poetry, and in the world. In current times of political and social distress, we tend to create divisions, with a definite “us” and a definite “them.” Unfortunately, we tend to jump to those conclusions quicker than we do to options of listening and understanding other people, which only furthers the issue. Even though this poem is about slavery, which is an important issue to discuss, I found that those two lines, the ones that spoke of how we are the same when we put our race aside, are something that all of us should take the time to remember, especially in the next couple of weeks as we reach the culmination of the election process.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the most striking poem was "The situation is intolerable". In the second line, Dove writes, "Aren't we civilized, too?" (Line2). I kind of heard this line as being spoken two different ways. In the first way, it could be angry, as if someone was trying to point out that someone else was in the wrong. The other way I heard it was as the subject in the poem questioning themselves, which is something that I think probably happened back then. Those fighting for civil rights probably questioned themselves because the oppressors were so persistent in shoving their agendas down the throats of those they were attacking.
ReplyDeleteMy other favorite part of this poem was the second stanza. Dove uses light and dark imagery and juxtaposition when she says, "...all around us dark/and the perimeter in flames/but the stars-/tiny missionary stars" (Lines 9-12). The darkness represents the oppression they were facing, and the flames show how they were trapped in a society that hated them and wanted to run them into the ground, if you will. The stars, however, portray glimmers of hope, and I think that represents the tone of the poem. Even though they are facing oppression, they need to stand up to the injustices and look to the hope in the situation to get out of dark times.
I like both of your interpretations of the "Aren't we civilized, too?" however I saw it more as a rhetorical question from the perspective of the narrator and a direct question to those who held prejudices in their hearts. From the perspective of the narrator, the answer is obvious, I think, that they are civilized, as that is part of what it means to be human. I don't think that in the great majority, people felt themselves to be lesser although people thought the slaves to be lesser. I think that because of this this question is far more rhetorical and satirical, saying that “obviously we are civilized, so why shouldn’t we be treated as such. I really liked reading your analysis on the second stanza!
DeleteI liked both of your answers on what you thought the question "Aren't we civilized?", however one way I think you didn't see it was in a pleading sort of way. It seems to me that the narrator is almost pleading the audience to see that they are civilized, and that they aren't as different as they seem to be. When reading the question I can imagine a person crying, feeling like they are trapped in a box, and they are crying out the question, trying to make people see that what is happening is wrong and it needs to change.
DeleteI enjoyed reading the poem entitled “The House Slave” obviously by Rita Dove. The reason that I liked this poem was because of the word choice Dove uses to create a feeling of encapsulant and restriction. In the first stanza, the phrase I noticed was “childern bundled into aprons”, in reference to what goes on in the slave quarters. Not only does the imagery of squished children sleeping in the slave quarters is created, but the word bundled remind me of the way slaves were stored on the slave ships, in bundles. As if they were product to be stored in a way to maximize the space they had, which was definitely the case. The phrase “water gourds grabbed” has the word “grabbed” which reminded me of how slaves were captured, just taken out of their society, homes, and communities. This bring me to the last phrase which was “ a salt pork breakfast taken” again the word choice of “taken” creating that sense of loss of control, which is very indignant to the slaves as human beings. These words tie in to the sense of helplessness that slaves faced while being captured to be bought and sold. I thought that was interesting in terms of word choice.
ReplyDeleteI really like your analysis of the "The House Slave," and I like how you compared some of the words from the poem to the history of slavery. As we've seen from the past, Rita Dove relies quite a lot on her audience having some background knowledge on the topic that she is discussing. Do you think leaving background information is a good decision on her part, or not? Do you think it confuses the reader, or inspires them to look into the situation and discuss it more?
ReplyDeleteAll though all the poems in the slavery were interesting, one poem in particular caught my eye. That poem was “Belinda’s Petition”. This poem is about a girl who was born in Africa and transported to america to be a slave. After her master died, in the will it said that she could become free if she so chose to. Obviously she chose to become free. She sent a letter to the US government and was allowed to become free.
ReplyDeleteNow onto the actual poem itself. One of the main reasons this poem stood out to me was because it seemed, at least to me, that there was random words throughout the poem that were capitalized even though they didn't have to be or should not be. I've looked at trying to find a pattern to the capitalized words and cannot seem to find one. They seem to be random except for emphasis. When reading the poem without adding emphasis to the capitalized words, the poem has a calm but firm tone. I know it sounds weird but go with it. However when you read the poem adding extreme emphasis to the randomly capitalized words the tone of the poem changes dramatically. Now the poem seems angry. It seems as if she is accusing the government for everything that is wrong within the country as well as everything that is wrong with her life. Then Dove writes “The only Travelers were the Dead returning…” (Dove) which adds to the angry tone, ,in addition to showing how horrifying slaves thought there life was and how bad they though the conditions of life were in the country. It makes you feel trapped like many slaves felt, and that the only way out was death.
Oi fyi we're blogging and responding on the Politics of History section, not Slavery. That's what the calendar says, I think. Time for some Parsley!
ReplyDeleteYeah i know. I missed class though so I didnt know at the time
DeletePoem: Parsley
ReplyDeleteHoo boy. This poem right here is a doozy. There’s so much to it, I won’t bother trying to explain lots of it, just a small portion. I also won’t give you the history on this because if you’re reading this you’ve probably done your research and don’t need to read more on the Parsley Massacre (but for those of you who haven’t, and I figure there are probably a few of you, here’s a nice little link to a website explaining it if you can’t be bothered to look it up yourself http://www.ibtimes.com/parsley-massacre-genocide-still-haunts-haiti-dominican-relations-846773).
What I really noticed about Dove’s poem was all the death. Death imagery, words with connotations and denotations of death, and death symbolism are all present in Parsley. Much more pronounced in the second part of the poem, The Palace. I will be skipping over a lot of stuff as there is so much to cover, so feel free to talk about the stuff I missed. We begin by talking about how “It is fall, when thoughts turn/to love and death” (lines 2-3 of The Palace). Other than stating that Trujillo is thinking about death, fall is associated with death. Leaves die, plants wither, the sun appears less, it gets colder, and most importantly, Day of the Dead is celebrated (I’m sure you all know what Day of the Dead is so I won’t bother explaining it). In the second stanza, it says “As he paces he wonders/Who can I kill today. And for a moment/the little knot of screams/is still” (12-14). Reading on the reader learns the knot of screams refers to a knot in his throat which I assume is painful. It creates a strange tone to talk about about killing people and then have screaming go still. After a stanza about the parrot and the death of his mother, the reader continues on to see a PTSD-esque flashback (I say PTSD because of the tense of the words, making it sound as if he is having this experience over again) of Trujillo’s first time in battle; “The knot in his throat starts to twitch;/he sees his boots the first day in battle/splashed with mud and urine/as a soldier falls at his feet amazed-/how stupid he looked!- at the sound/of artillery. I never thought it would sing/the soldier said, and died”(24-30). Notice the mention of the knot in the throat again. It was silenced by the thought of inflicting pain and death upon others. Now, the knot starts to ache again as he relives the deaths he did not cause or couldn’t stop. This includes his mother’s death; the poem mentions that Trujillo is thinking about his mother before it mentions the knot being still. To me, this knot could be Trujillo’s desire for revenge- the world has taken people he has loved, he has watched men die in wars, and now he wants the world to pay. He doesn’t want to feel powerless again, or feel that knot twitch; by killing others, it relieves the pain or the uncomfort. It, for lack of a better terms, scratches an itch. And in a way, It makes the reader feel a strange sympathy for Trujillo. All the mentions of death, the symbolism, connotations, denotations, all show that Trujillo, haunted by death, can only cure himself by causing more death. Which is totally unhealthy and would suck.
I really loved your analysis! Another part that I found to support your interpretation of Trujiillo desiring revenge on the world is the lines “He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth / gnawed to arrowheads” (Dove 52-53). If you noticed earlier in the poem, Dove states how, “The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads” (11). These lines are the same! The similar use suggests that Trujillo wishes to inflict the same pain on the world that the world had done on his mother. I can’t find anything on the Internet about his mother’s death, but the poem states how “the general sees the fields of sugar / cane, lashed by rain and streaming” (50-51). So his mother most likely experienced a death similar to the first part of the poem, illustrating how Trujillo wishes to kill others much in the same fashion that his mother was killed.
DeleteI really like your analysis of this poem, and I find it very interesting that you compare Trujillo's desire to kill to an itch that he is just trying to scratch. While I did not know much about the Parsley Massacre prior to reading this poem, I found it interesting to compare Trujillo to the many other leaders who led the world to similar events, and how they all found killing and "cleansing" the area as not just a desire, but an overwhelming need. Do you think there is anything we can do to make sure that these types of people do not rise to power again? I know we live in a very privileged world in which this is not as prevalent as in years prior, but in the case that it happens, how do we make sure that people who kill to "scratch an itch" are not given the chance to do so?
DeleteIn “Parsley” by Rita Dove many things stood out to me. Along with the basic things like the repetition of the word “patriot” as well as the repetition of certain phrases; Doves use of a second language stood out to me. I couldn't find a direct translation, but just off some rough guesses I assume it means something along the lines of “... my heart goes out to the dead”. So the quote itself goes along with the ideas of the poem, which are death and suffering The literal meaning aside, I wanted to talk about the effect it has on the flow of the poem. Having a line of the poem be in a different language does multiple things to the poem. One thing it does is it causes for a short pause or break in the flow of the poem. Due to the fact that most of us don't speak the language it's written in it takes us longer to read it, further isolating itself, hightning the meaning. Another thing that the line does is it changes the tone of the poem. Before it the tone is very lackluster and boring, but after the tone changes into a dark and sad tone. This change happens because of the use of the language regardless of the actual meaning of the quote. However in this instance the quote is used to heighten the change in tone.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the part where Dove writes “mi madle, mi amol en muelte” is really just a phonetic transcript of how an Afro-Hatian would pronounce the Spanish phrase “mi madre, mi amor en muerte” which does translate to (says the white Portlander who’s in Spanish 3) “my mother, my love in death”, and highlights the narrator’s love for his mother, his motivation for the massacre. More interestingly, though is that the ‘l’s are in the place of all the ‘r’s, how an Afro-Hatian would pronounce the phrase, but in the voice of Trujillo, who will murder thousands for not pronouncing Spanish words in the way that he does. This juxtaposition shows the unity in the entire situation, people killing people, based on superficial divisions.
DeleteParsley is very puzzling but at the same time very interesting. The words and main idea only became clear to me after intensive research. I focused on the first part “The Cane Field”. It is filled with repetition. The lines “Parrot imitating spring” and “Out of the swamp the cane appears” is repeated every 5 lines. I found this interesting because the Parsley Massacre was spread over five days. I believe Dove did this intentionally to bring our attention to it. The title of part one “The Cane Field” also lets the reader know that this section is in the people’s perspective. There were a lot of details in this poem that made me think. The first was “a parrot imitating spring”. A parrot is know for repeating, or mimicking. The word even has two R’s in it! Also, in “The Palace” it says “even a parrot could roll an R”. This with the idea of “imitating spring” is very interesting. Spring represents life, it is also the opposite time of year when the President’s mother died. I believe this line is meant to show that if you can minick, you can live. Or at least that is what you hope. Part One of Parsley shows the fear and horror that the people must have felt so clearly to the reader, it is almost overwhelming.
ReplyDeleteI didn't make the connection to the five lines to five days thing but that's really cool. I'm curious if you think the cane in part one connects to the sugar cane or the cane that the general put on his mother's grave and the importance of that?
DeleteI also noticed the repetition, even if I didn’t address or explain my opinion on it quite as coherently as you did, I didn’t notice the repetition specifically connnoting to the canes, but I did notice the ‘r’s, which I think is one of the the most important motifs of the poem, as the ability to roll an ‘r’ was the gauge that would determine the people’s ability to go on living. What I’m most interested in the the repeated color imagery, the freshness and vitality of green and how it can maybe serve as irony, but I really don’t know.
DeleteI really doubt that I have anything even marginally original to add to this topic. But, here we go. Qlwgaviebfv;ebfv;ianvjia;ijfihovaiuiq;98r
ReplyDeleteWhat like best about Dove’s poetry, literarily or whatever, is how she uses spacing and grouping and repetition of lines and words to emphasize particularly impactful parts of the poem. The best, most succinct example I can think of is the last line of the poem, “that beautiful word” or something like that. It relates circuitously back to the very title, Parsley, the repeated “Perejil”, the green of the parrot’s feathers, the chewed green spat out, bitter and impossible like word perejil in the mouths of the Afro-Haitians that couldn’t pronounce the word “properly”.
As for the whatever part, the other aspect of Rita Dove’s poetry that I like the best is the common motif among all of her poetry (or at least the very limited collection that I’ve read in class) of empathy building. In Parsley, specifically in part 2, The Palace, Rita Dove really delves into the motivations and the life of El General, Trujillo (the guy that orchestrates the massacre, someone else did research). I think that this sort of characterization is a very important one, especially in retellings of real-life people otherwise characterized as villains. Emphasizing traits that people more often see as “human” or empathic or admirable or whatever, helps bring such people down to the level of regular human flawedness (I don’t think that’s a word but I can’t think of another non-sweary way to say it). It stops, or tries to stop, us, collectively, from making excuses for our despicable actions (i.e. “Yeah, I [whatever] but at least I’m not Hitler”). Yeah. People are equal, even in the capacity to monumentally suck or like commit genocide or whatever is my point. There are perhaps more eloquent or better explained ways to say that, but, you know.
This wasn’t great. Oopsie.
If I were to be completely honest, “Parsley” did not ignite the same feelings as some of the other poems had. Therefore, I would like to comment on one thing. Rita Dove is an excellent writer, but while her works do inspire some to look into the history of the topic, many will be turned off by their own confusion. As students in an IB English class, I trust that we all looked into the different meanings of the words and into the topic itself, but it is for this reason that I found much more interest in reading the excerpt from The Farming of Bones than in reading the poem itself, and I shall from there pull the main meat of this particular blog post. The line that struck me from the excerpt was “We used parsley for our food, our teas, our baths, to cleanse our insides and outsides. Perhaps the Generalissimo in some larger order was trying to do the same for his country.” As you read both the excerpt and the poem, I urge you to remember history; to remember those times where we used this logic of “cleansing” to justify cruel and evil deeds. It happened with the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and dozens of other times in our history. How many times can we make the same mistake? How many more genocides does the world have to live through before we end it? We believe that every time is the last; That we are too civilized for it to happen again. Which is why I feel the need to remind you that YOU are the future leaders, scientists, thinkers, and workers of this nation and this world. The only way to ensure that history will not be repeated is to create our own future, and while there is change in the world, I urge you all to be the leaders of that movement, rather than be bystanders.
ReplyDelete"Fox Trot Fridays" was my favorite poems from the American Smooth section. One of the first things I noticed about the poem was that every stanza (except for the last one) was written in couplets. This reminded me of the actual Fox Trot dance, where most of the steps are done in 2's. Additionally, I was intrigued by the fact that she uses steps seen in the dance such as "stride brush stride" (Line 4) and "quick-quick with a/heel-ball-toe" (Lines 5-6). Dove most likely wanted these words to have an auditory effect on the reader to make them feel the rhythm of the poem as well as distract them. By distracting the reader from the rest of the poem, Dove could be making a comparison to the fact that the purpose of this dance is to push away your sorrows, as seen in the quote, "...tuck in/your grief, lift your pearls" (Lines 2-3). Another significant part of this poem is Dove's use of alliteration in the quote, "slow satin smile" (Line 8) when referring to Nat King Cole. Nat King Cole was a famous African American jazz singer and pianist, and also worked as a TV show host. With that in mind, the alliteration was likely used to imitate the feeling of jazz, which is smooth while being elegant (hence the use of "slow" and "satin"). Finally, Dove uses anaphora in the lines, "one day at a time:/one man and/one woman," (Lines 11-13). Not only does the auditory effect add rhythm to the poem, but it also symbolizes the bond that forms during dance, which Dove describes through her tone as love in the art form. The use of time in this quote helps the reader to acknowledge the fragility of moments as well as the importance of living in the moment. By talking about the man and women in conjunction with each other and as a separate couplet, she conveys the message that when two people are dancing or in tune with each other, the rest of the world gets tuned out. The use of the word "one" in the anaphora makes it seem like that is all there is when two people are dancing: themselves and the moment.
ReplyDeleteI was looking at the foxtrot and it said that the foxtrot was used at society events for people who might not know each other well, do you think this showed in this poem? I think that might connect to how you go out to avoid problems, and where better to go out than somewhere where people don't know you well enough to notice?
DeleteOne important thing that you mentioned was how Dove uses auditory imagery from the actual dance to distract the reader. Do you think that if she had not tried to distract the reader the poem would have had the same effect? I think that the success of the poem was due to the distraction. While the reader is distracted they will get lost in the rhythm of the poem.
DeleteI loved your analysis of this poem! I also had very similar ideas and thoughts, but one thing that I didn't notice was how the poem is written in couplets expect the last stanza. I find this very interesting. Because like you said, most of the foxtrot steps are done in 2’s. But I wonder why the last stanza, is not a couplet. Any ideas about this? I also found your interpretation of the lines, “one day at a time:/one man/and one woman” interesting. I think this does add a closeness between people, and how fragile this moment is. It definitely adds a tone of love, but why else do you think dove would include a theme/tone of love in this poem?
DeleteI didn’t really like Fox Trot Fridays as much as some of the other poems in American Smooth, however, after the class discussion, I feel like I have something (if only very little and unoriginal) to say, or write, whatever. I didn’t really think of some of the facets of the poem in the same way as you, what you called auditory imagery I felt in more of a rhythmic way. I know that sounds like very nitpicky but, I think its also really interesting though, because even if the choice of the word “auditory” as opposed to “rhythmic” (though you do say “rhythm”, just later in the same sentence), I think that says something very lovely about the unique nature of how everyone can gutturally understand a piece of poetry. That’s it.
DeleteThe poem “Ta Ta Cha Cha” immediately struck me as interesting just from the title. The title isn't even words, like what. But the title sets the reader up perfectly for what is to come throughout the poem. Next the beginnings of the stanzas are kind off odd. They are italicized and are just kind of weird. But when connected to the poem, they allow the reader to easily see that the poem is about two people dancing, and there journey of getting lost in the dance.
ReplyDeleteIn this poem Dove uses bird diction, she does this by saying things like “wingtips/coo/wing” (2, 4, 14). The use of bird diction explains to the reader that the two dancers feel like they are flying. This gives the poem a go with the flow feel. While reading you almost feel as if the poem is guiding you through the dance of these 2 people. I know that while I read it I felt like I was part of the dance. In addition to bird diction, Dove also uses childlike diction, like the word “Buffoon” (27) to make the reader understand that this dance is not complex. This dance is easy and almost childlike which makes it all the more fun when doing it. This gives the poem an easy going tone.
In the beginning of the poem Dove writes that the narrator is from America but is in Venice. This gives the narrator a out of place appearance, however it intensifies the connection that is being created by this dance, because even though the narrator isn't from Italy he/she still feels like a perfect fit.
I really did not catch you analysis of the two people dancing when I read this poem. I saw and agree with your analysis of the bird diction, but with the idea of the two people dancing, it really enhances this idea of smooth and tranquil vibes that Dove seems to be exploring in this American Smooth section. I really did like the use of “Buffoon” it really does give it a child-like tone. I found it rather intrusive on the smooth feeling of the overall poem. For me the word seems to be more trying to be comedic than easygoing. Just another perspective! Overall I liked reading your analysis.
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ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Dove’s Poem “Fox”. Let’s start with the title, by itself it’s an animal, but when read with the poem, I thought it to be ‘Fox’, as in the slang rude term for women. If a woman is a ‘fox’, she is hot, attractive, sexy. (Side-note- please everyone out there never call anyone a fox. Honestly it’s super rude to compare people to animals like this, it’s very dehumanizing!) So we know that the women in this poem is thought of as a ‘fox’ but when looked at closer, so is so much more. There is a lot of repetition used in this poem. “She” is repeated 6 times which lets us know that the character is a women. Words like ‘Love’ and “imagine” are also repeated which contrasts to the fierce tone of the poem. “Fox” flows very well. I believe Dove did this to show us how the character is confident and can work with whatever happens. I really liked the line, “She knew what/ she was and so/ was capable/ of anything/anyone/ could imagine” (Dove). Because the character knew what her potential and actual value, she could do whatever she needed to. I think this is a very powerful line to many people. The last line, “:which was more/ than any man/ could handle” (Dove). Also was really powerful to me. This is a very feminist poem and this line drives home the idea that women can deal with more things than men can. Take menstruation for example. I’m still really curious about the line “She loved what/she was, there/ for the taking” (dove). It reminded me of this movie, “It Happened One Night”, where the main female character flags down a car by lifting her dress to expose her leg. This line feels like embracing the sexualization of your body and using it to your advantage. This poem also really feels like a mantra to me, like something you say when all hell is breaking loose. Sorry that this blog post is a little all over the place, it’s election night.
I really like your analysis of this poem! A lot of what you mentioned hadn't even occurred to me. For example, I didn't even think of the title as being used as a slang term for the woman in question, though I think it had a strong effect on the reader's view on the woman. Something else that I noticed was Dove's varying length in phrases. At first, this poem struck me as being unstructured, but when I looked closer it made me think that the woman is dancing by herself to express her individuality. Can you think of any other connections to dance that might cause this poem to fit into the American Smooth section?
DeleteI also really liked Fox, yay feminist poetry! I wrote about it a little in my somewhat late blogpost, and I read and processed that poem in a very similar way to how you did. The repetition of “she” didn’t originally stand out to me, but your description and other analyses really made it apparent and impactful to me. Also, I agree on how it seems very amorphous in structure, I wrote a little more on a slightly related note (to other American Smooth dance-connections) on that in my blogpost, once again.
DeleteWell Jacob already posted about Ta Ta Cha Cha but I love pigeons so much I have to look at this one.
ReplyDeleteWhat I thought was clever about this poem was that it simultaneously tells of a scene in Venice with a couple of pigeons, as well a beautifully executed dance. Doves (which are literally the same kind of bird as pigeons), in a city setting, are thought of as dirty sky rats. Rita Dove challenges this perspective, personifying these birds into elegant dancers. For example, finding a feather at the speaker's feet is made to sound very majestic: "But here,/ lost from a wing, drifts/ one pale, italicized/answer" (lines 13-16). These words (at least in my head) translate to an interesting and pretty image. Dita (I don't want to call her Dove because that's confusing) continues this personification and elegance, saying "and the nearest scavenger/skips three times/ to the side, bobs to pluck/ his crackerjack prize, a child's/ dropped gelato cone" (20-24). That sounds a lot nicer than saying "a pigeon hopped over to an ice cream cone a kid dropped." On a more personal note, I feel like the use of crackerjack prize gives an old-times feel, and gelato makes it sound fancier. There are many more examples but I'm tired and I want to go to bed so I'll wrap this up. In contrast with the personification of the doves, Dita uses animalification (whatever the opposite of personification is) to make juxtapose this man hurrying through this scene with what the speaker sees as beautiful dancers. "...the path of a man/who, because he knows/ where he's headed, walks/ without seeing, face hidden/ by a dirty wingspan/ of the daily newspaper" (31-36). Other than creating contrast by setting up an elaborate scene and then having some man just walk through it, Dita describes the newspaper he's burying his face in as a dirty wingspan. This hearkens to the classification of doves as dirty Sky rats. This highlights the seemingly unnoticed beauty of the pigeons and the ignorance of passerbyers.
Abbi, I loved your analysis! I really enjoyed your comparison of the birds to the dancers, and I think it is really important to note the similarities of the descriptions. I did want to ask a question, though; As I was reading this poem, I thought that it was about feeling lonely and as if you do not fit, but I was not sure how the birds fit into that idea? I guessed it had to do with the narrator's inability to relate to the birds, as they are free to move and have a place, whereas the narrator is not.
DeleteInteresting, I didn't get that. I was caught up in the exciting words and all the movement and action that I didn't get any of the loneliness. I felt like the speaker was able to relate to the birds, which is shown by all the personification of the birds. I also feel like the narrator is free in a way because i believe they're on vacation, and vacation is a time you can cut loose and feel free? Sort of?
DeletePoem: David Walker (1785-1830)
ReplyDeleteBecause I enjoy poems that are written about real things and matching what line or sentence or stanza refers to what (I like researching. Yes, I know it’s weird. So sue me.), I wanted to pick apart this poem and point out lots of the references made. It’s your lucky day if you haven’t done a lot of research on David Walker, cause buckle up, you’re aboard the Learning Train now.
David Walker, as the title says, was alive from 1785-1830, however, historians are not sure about this. Some sources say he was born in 1796 or 1767. The city records of Boston say that he was 33 when he died, but this is still up for debate. Anyway, Walker’s father was a slave, but his mother was free, and as such he inherited her status. He lived in the South for a good amount of his life as a free black, able to see firsthand the cruelties of slavery. This experience shaped him into a fiery, unabashed abolitionist. He moved to Boston in 1825 and died in 1830 for unclear reasons (we’ll get to that later).
Onto the poem.
The first stanza talks of his free status (“Free to travel, he still couldn’t be shown how lucky/ he was”[1-2].), as well as the used clothing store he opened in Boston (“All day at the counter-/ white caps, ale-stained pea coats”[4-5].). Lines 5-6, “Compass needles,/ eloquent as tuning forks, shivered, pointing north.” has to many levels to it, but one interpretation could be about Walker’s moral compass, so against slavery, pointing himself North where freedom was. Another interpretation could be that these compasses refer to other abolitionist writers, eloquent and elegant, but are unwilling to face the issue of slavery the way Walker does, with his passion and calls to immediate action.
Skipping around some literary analysis because this is already getting really long, the second stanza is about what Walker is most famous for. In 1829, he wrote An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a pamphlet calling to attention the abuse and mistreatment of blacks, actions slaves and blacks should take to gain equality, and what the role of white people should be in fixing this issue. Allegedly, Walker sewed some of these pamphlets into some of his clothes in his used clothing store, in hope that they would reach blacks in the South. “...pamphlets were stuffed/into trouser pockets. Pamphlets transported/in the coat linings of itinerant seamen, jackets/ringwormed with salt traded drunkenly to pursuers” (9-12) is a reference to this. The stanza continues, talking about how whites “ripped out” the pamphlets and were very angry.
The last part I want to talk about is the ending. Lines 25-26 (the 4th stanza) are about Walker continuing to make more editions of these pamphlets (3 were made in total), even when abolitionists were like “dude chill you can’t say that stuff, it’s too violent, things need to be peaceful.” Even William Lloyd Garrison denounced his works. A month after his last pamphlet, Walker is found dead (“A month-/his person (is that all?) found face-down/in the doorway at Brattle Street,/his frame slighter than his friends remembered”[28-31].). The cause of his death is undetermined. Most sources claim it was tuberculosis, but some say there was a chance he was poisoned. His writing had made a lot of enemies, so it’s not out the question. I think Dove was hinting at this by saying that his body was “slighter” than they remember.
So yeah. Congrats if you read all this!
I really enjoyed your analysis! I hadn’t thought that much about the compass aspect. I was wondering about the third stanza. That one really stood out to me. Do you think “the jewelled canaries” are white people or more specific? Also who is “the man on the corner”? Is he an example of an African-American man who doesn’t know just how bad the situation is, kinda like Macebea? I’m sorry that this response is literally just asking you questions, but I really like the way you saw this poem and wanted to see your perspective on these.
DeleteYes, congrats to me (I skimmed it). The part the stuck out to me most was the third stanza, the juxtaposition of the bitter expression of misery in italics with the weightlessly-stepping, dark-handed man who proclaims “I’m happy’ and so happily shines shoes. What I think that this is supposed to represent is a minstrel show in blackface. Instead of reading “dark skin”, the poem reads “dark hand”, this to me, can represent 2 things, a hand that’s been dirtied with smut off the bottom of people’s shoes, or, more likely, a hand painted dark with the rest of the man’s body covered. I say that it’s more likely because of the monologue at the end of the stanza, proclaiming that he’s happy just to clean shoes, with no mention of recompense, this reminds me of a common justification for slavery back then (and today, if you watch the O'Reilly Factor), that African Americans were happier and better off to work for white Americans. In this interpretation, the italicized portion of the stanza can be seen as the actual perspective of the slaves on their condition while the story of the happy shoe-shiner is the agenda white Americans tried to push.
DeleteI love it, Abbi! :)
DeleteOkay, I accidently already did a Slavery Blog Post, so I’m just going to write about the Civil Rights Poems because I haven’t done them yet.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the poem “Claudette Colvin Goes to Work”. There is so much in this poem, but I’m just gonna focus on a few points. If you don’t know, Claudette Colvin was a teenager in 1955. She sat on a bus in the colored section and was asked to move because the white section was overcrowded. Next to her was a pregnant women. They both refused. The pregnant women was reseated further back, but Colvin won’t move and shouted “This is my constitutional right!”. She was arrested 9 months before Rosa Parks. Claudette Colvin was also one of the four women taken to the Supreme Court that overturned segregation. The NAACP is said to have used Rosa as the face of the movement because Claudette was just a teenager, pregnant with a married man’s, and know to be feisty. Colvin lived the rest of her life as a normal women, without being remembered for her aid to the Civil Rights Movement.
The whole poem gives off a feeling of invisibility. What I mean by this is the feeling of observing but not interacting. When you are there but not really. The first two stanzas discusses the “Menial twilight” that covers everything. Twilight is an inbetween time, it is not day but not night. I believe Dove used very finite(this isn’t the right word but I can’t right now) diction in the first stanza such as, “scourge” “fickle” “narrow” “golden” and “bleak”. This gives the first stanza a much more dreamlike feeling. The second stanza has a much more straightforward feeling. The diction is straight to the point for the first few lines, as if the character is trying to keep herself on track, but soon the words go back to their dreamlike state. The end of the second stanza “Sometimes I wait until / it’s dark enough for my body to disappear;” exhibits such a strong emotion, I can’t read it without feeling it also. Overall, even in only the first two stanzas I understand that this poem gives a voice to Claudette Colvin after the Bus Incident, in a time where she is forgotten.
I’m so sorry there is so much more I would love to write, but I’ll save that for another day(maybe).
Yay for Claudette Colvin, I mean sad for how she ended up within the Civil Rights movement and generally in life. This necessity to compromise for equality just makes me a little mad, and a little sad, there are examples of people being passed up as voices of the movement because they don’t fit the proper mould exactly, because they can’t be an activist in a way that is tasteful to their oppressors (those words are from someone else’s poem, I don’t remember whose though), the model of compromise, though I do realize is necessary to avoid violence, is always disappointing. And, its evident in pretty much all pushes for “equality”, like Bayard Rustin or Communist Civil Rights Activists, or in the beginning of the second wave, Betty Friedan’s “Lavender Menace”, how the entire first wave was pretty much uniformly racist, etc… the list goes on.
DeleteAMERICAN SMOOTH
ReplyDelete(So I didn’t do this for a multitude of reasons *cough*cough*ELECTION*cough* and I’m also not sure if I should make it up now… I’m going to do it anyways)
The poem that drew me most in this assignment was Quick, mostly because elements of it seemed to tie very strongly to some of the other poems. It seems tied to Fox Trot Fridays and Fox, both in imagery and diction, and the poem’s structure.
The poem is structured the same (more or less) visually as Fox Trot Fridays, with 8 2-line stanzas, no apparent rhyme scheme, and even similar with the line connecting the ends of line curved slightly out at the top and then in nearing the end. I realize that this is a bit a of a stretch, but it reminds me a little of the idealized image of an hourglass figure (it’s more apparent in Fox Trot than in Quick). The shape of the poem, combined with the subject matter and connotative diction and the prior knowledge of Dove’s poems that we studied earlier creates a sort of undertone of escaping the sexism that forces “women” into a box, all “vacant eye[s]” and “sleek curve[s]’. What I’m trying to say really is that it feels very heavily linked to Dove’s other poems, the context that I’m experiencing the poem in is best expressed by another of Dove’s poems, the last line of Canary: “If you can’t be free, be a mystery”.
The other poem in the American Smooth assignment that Quick reminded me of is Fox. Like, Fox, Quick contains a lot of very strong visual imagery of foxes, a baby fox for that (by the way, viral fox video, its soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtP7au_Q9w). The themes of Quick seem also very similar to Quick, but much more ready to announce itself, the poem discusses how “She knew what// she was and so// was capable// of anything… She loved what// she was…”. This blatantly expressed self love and passion is similar to that expressed in the last stanzas of Quick. The poem is also less figurative in discussing what it means to be a “woman”, to be seen as, in many ways, only a collection of body parts, the worth of those only to be determined by a man. Fox is an expression, Dove’s dance of defiance and of unashamed self confidence and identity, “more// than any man// could handle”.
That being said, the end of the poem, “...love- pure purpose// poured into flight” brings to mind the story of why Dove loves ballroom dance (or at least my very limited knowledge of how she feels, on my speculative knowledge filtered through many potentially faulty sources, but for the reasons of whatever), how it created for her a whole new passion to fall back on when her work in another art form had been destroyed. Dancing the fox-trot is pure purpose// poured into flight”.
The poem that really impacted me the most, drew me in was “The Transport of Slaves// From Maryland to Mississippi”. The first thing that drew me in was the simile on line 21 (I think, I may have miscounted): “trees, improbable as broccoli,” I just thought, like, how charming, how lovely. I like broccoli. Then there’s also “burst open like baked yams”, but that simile compares the baked yams to “The skin across his cheekbones”. That kind of threw me for a loop, and it made me look somewhat deeper into the poem. The descriptions or insinuations of color are very common and rooted deeply within many, and are therefore very potent as ways to draw a reader into the poem. What I focused on after that was the line: “Death and Salvation- one accommodates the other”, I don’t know if I have anything coherent to say about that yet.
ReplyDeleteI read through it once, and was just very moved, the tone of the poem seems so confused and gutted, hysterical but only quietly, in the most animalistic and visceral way. After thinking that, I realized I was just projecting (like, oh boy, *ELECTION*) how I felt onto a few, barely significant words, at least in relation to the overall poem, after that, I did read through the poem again, more holistically. It seems to me, from the first italicized stanza, the one that relates the narrator’s thoughts. As she helps the driver moving her and the other slaves to Mississippi, she is damning herself to a life of slavery. The thing about this this is that, though I understand what the main idea was, and am really powerfully struck by the language and the literary devices. I just don’t really know how to pick that all up and synthesize that into any kind of intelligible words of my own, I don’t know, I’d just like to discuss this in class.
I really liked your analysis and comments about the poem! I thought your commentary about the importance of color was noted very well, and it is definitely something that I think plays a large part in the creation of the poem, and the meaning. This relates to my blog post about this very same poem, but I did have a question for you. Rita Dove is not exactly known for giving all of the information before the poem; Instead, she opts for introducing the topic in the poem itself, to promote the idea that the audience needs to research the background info beforehand. Why do you think Rita Dove adds background info in this particular poem? If I am not mistaken, this is the only poem in our packet that has some type of description, not including "Parsley."
DeleteOkay, so as a note before I get into the blog post, I’m pretty sure I mixed something up earlier in the unit, because I have already analyzed and blogged about a poem from the “Slavery” category, so I will do my analysis of a poem from “Civil Rights” now. I apologize in advance for any confusion.
ReplyDeleteThe poem that I found the most interesting from this topic was “Climbing In,” which had an interesting comparison of the bus to a monster, or even that of the wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood.” One of the most interesting aspects of the poem is the fact that Rita Dove takes a situation that we are currently unfamiliar with: That of not having the right to what we see today as basic transportation, or not having that right to the same extent as the next person, and compares it to a fairytale, something that we all can connect to.
In my opinion, by comparing the monstrous view of the bus in the poem within the lines “Teeth./ Metallic. Lie-gapped./ Not a friendly shine/” to the antagonistic feeling we have for the wolf in the story, Dove is able to connect with an audience that may not have been acquainted with the idea before. Dove does this because, for many of us in the United States, we are privileged to live in a world where we have these basic rights of transportation and free speech, and we never had to fear that someone would hurt us if we got on the Max or the bus. In other words, it would be hard for us to imagine the inescapable fear that African Americans faced as they rode on the busses, which could, at any moment, erupt in violence. In order to still connect to the modern audience, Dove compares this fear to the fear that we all shared as children: One that stemmed from the mention of the evil or harmful characters within a story. “Little Red Riding Hood” is the perfect choice, because it is a simple story, and one that spans throughout several cultures. For instance, while reading this poem, I remembered that as a child, I would read this story in Russian or in Ukrainian, and this, in my mind, upheld the fact that by comparing this large issue of the civil rights movement to something as simple and approachable as a story, Dove was able to educate the audience not through telling them what to feel, but through giving them a comparison so they could apply it first hand.
I have been all over the place, so I am just going to do the analysis for a poem in the American Smooth section as I already did the Slavery poem early on messing it up.
ReplyDeleteI want to discuss the poem entitled “Fox Trot Fridays” each section of the poem conveys different portion so the foxtrot dance form what I can tell or at the very least a dance. The first two stanzas have some form of alliteration that makes it very satisfying to read like the beginning of a gradual song about to kick it into overdrive. The alliterations are such like “Thank the stars there's a day each week to tuck in” with the constant click of the “T” / “K”. Also “...lift your pearls” with the soothing “L” sound right before “stride brush stride” feels very fluid like the dance steps to the beginning of a song. In the foxtrot, the dance is very bouncey right off the bat after a brief introduction, which with that knowledge makes the next stanzas make even more sense to me at least., When you read the poem the second or third time the stanzas each have their own sort of jump to them, making specific words stand out such as “Nat King Cole’s” or “Paradise” which both do not appear to fit in terms of language. And keeping along the same idea of a smooth yet jumpy style of swing dance. But these odd word make sense when you think of it in terms of a dance. Specifically the foxtrot and swing dance style with all of the swinging of people and hard clicks and clacks of shoes.
Going away from the feel of the poem in terms of dance, I want to talk about the connotations that came into my mind and how they changed the poem for me. Specifically I want to look at “rib to rib, / with no heartbreak in sight-” At the first reading I just image a couple dancing close together and having the time of their lives, but then I started to think about the notion of “dancing the night away” or “dance till you drop”. I remembered there was a myth, I am not aware of the name, but somewhere in the tale, someone was banished to dance forever. The person loved dance, but their immense love turned to immense hate after just hours of dancing and physically unable to stop. During this era, dance was so engraved in their culture, i am sure that there were people who despised dancing. With the whole “rib to rib” line, I thought of dancing till the point where you feel raw in your bones.
I was also gone, I just wanted to mention that
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