Poems- Brooks "We Real Cool", Murray "We Old Dudes", Pastan "Marks", Robinson "Richard Cory", Robert Morgan "Mountain Bride"

 Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool” and Joan Murray’s poem “We Old Dudes” are almost the exact same. Both are only 4 stanzas long with 2 lines in each stanza. Each poem is a constant refrain (we... something). There is no apparent setting or audience for each of these poems. If I had to guess on the audience I would say they are speaking to each other, almost like a chant. In “We Real Cool” the author changes her attitude toward the players. At first it seems they are living a great life, and are really cool. At the end it seems they might not have such a cool life after all, as the last line is “We Die Soon”. In “We Old Dudes” I believe they are a bunch of rich old men, who are enjoying the last bit of their life, as they know soon they will die. This poem is different than “We Real Cool”, because of things like “We Soak teeth”, and “We Old Dudes” make it humorous.

I really liked the poem “Marks” by Linda Pastan. When I first read the title I thought it might be about the marks that is on a person, and in a way it is. It is about the grade members of her family gives the speaker. It seems everyone is overall satisfied with her performance and gives her high “marks”. At the end she says “Wait ‘til they learn I’m dropping out”. I find this to be the best part of this poem, because the reader knows there is no way to simply drop out of being a mother/wife.

The Poem “Richard Cory” by Edwin Robinson is about what outsiders think of Richard’s like. The speaker is a member of the town he is from, who think very highly of Richard. Words like “gentleman”, “fluttered pulses”, and “thought he was everything” sets the overall tone of this poem. The turning point of this poem is the last line, “Went home and put a bullet though his head”! I believe the theme of this story is not to judge others and things are not always as they seem. As I was reading this story Richard Cory was being built up in my mind as this perfect man, who women loved and men were jealous over. All that went away when the speaker said he killed himself. I believe most people do this in their daily lives. We judge people based on what we see, and never get to know the person.

From the title of “Mountain Bride” I thought this poem was going to be one about love. In a way it is, the husband dies protecting his new bride, a sign of love. This poem is divided into 4 line stanzas. It also has some irony in it, like “Richard Cory”. The couple is spending their first night together and the husband winds up dyeing from snake bites. The setting is the couple’s new home in the mountains. The speaker is an outside person looking in.

Poems- Piercy's "The Secretary Chant", Bishop's "The Fish", Morgan's "Mountain Graveyard", Cofer's "Common Ground", Slavitt's "Titanic"

Week 7 Poetry

The Secretary Chant by Marge Piercy is a secretary saying what she feels like. It seems she feels under appreciated and her worth as a person is no more than the work she produces. This poem is filled with metaphors, as she compares certain parts of her body to items a secretary uses. I believe the audience of this poem is anyone that will listen; she just wants someone to hear how she feels. At the end of the poem she says “I wonce was a woman” this is the whole theme of this poem. In this poem Piercy also uses onomatopoeia, (“Buzz. Click”). The setting is left out; I believe this was done so the audience could not be defined.

John Updike’s poem Dog’s Death is one I like least. Not because I didn’t understand it, but because of what it was about. A family’s dog had died and some parts are a little gruesome. At the end the last words are “Good Dog”, which are to imply that even though this dog had become sick and left a streak of feces across the floor he had tried to make it to the newspapers he was trained to use.  There is rhyme though out this poem but there isn’t a particular form to it.

The poem Mountain Graveyard by Robert Morgan is just twelve words long. It is written in two columns. When I first looked at this poem I didn’t even recognize it as the poem. I thought it was part of something else. The poem is titled as Mountain Graveyard, which makes me automatically think of death or dying. The words in the poem all tie into death. If the title had been anything else this poem would not make sense, and leave the reader puzzled. As the book pointed out all the words that are used are a series of anagrams.

Just by reading the title Common Ground by Judith Ortiz Cofer, I thought of two people meeting in the middle on something. Similar to what I thought, this poem is about a woman who is starting to find certain aspects of her appearance similar to her parents. The first stanza is about ageing; the second is more personal and describes what the speaker feels she has in common with each parent. It was hard for me to distinguish a setting, or audience in this poem. I believe they have been left out, because they are not need to make this poem work.

I found Titanic by David R. Slavitt to be amusing, especially compared to Hardy’s poem about the Titanic. Instead of being sad about dying the speaker is almost comforted, because most everyone else is also going to die and he will not have to go alone, and their death will be fairly quick. The speaker is certainly a person that dies on the titanic, and from the line “We all go: only a few, first class” I believe he is probably from 2^nd or 3^rd class.

Poetry- Country Lover, Preacher Don't Send Me, Memory, My Grandfather Gets Doused, My Father Washes His Hands

Out of all the poems for this week’s reading I enjoyed Maya Angelou’s work the best. The collections of her poems all have similar structure and form, and include rhymes. You can definitely tell from her writing that she is from the south and African American.

In Country Lover by Angelou the speaker is someone who is telling about a boy at a dance, who will dance with anybody’s daughter. I believe this is a poem where the speaker is mediating and the reader is listening in. Words like “Saddy” and “Red soda water” are what I consider southern dialect. In this poem Angelou uses couplet rhyming, blues-shoes, pants-dance, and water-daughter. The title sums up with this poem is about.

Another poem by Angelou is Preacher Don’t Send Me. This poem is directed toward the preacher of the speaker. She is telling the preacher what she wants to hear heaven is like. She wants there to be jazz music, nice people, and the season to be fall. Once again the words the author uses give a strong reference to the south (“grits”, “jazz music” and “season is fall”). The setting is probably in a church. This poem contains rhyming words on lines 2&4 and 6&8 of each stanza; also each stanza is eight lines, carrying on the structure and form of Angelou’s work.

The Memory is slightly different than Angelou’s previous poems. Memory as the title implies, is a memory. This poem is like Country Lover, as there is no true audience, just the reader able to overhear what the speaker is thinking. Cotton and sugar cane help develop the setting. This poem makes me think that the speaker was a slave working his life away. The rhyme scheme for this poem is line 2 and 4 of each stanza, and each stanza consists of 4 lines. Angelou also uses a refrain in this poem, every other line starts with And.

 In My Grandfather Gets Doused by Fred Chappell the speaker is the grandson of the man getting baptized. The title gives the reader an idea of what is to come but calls it getting doused instead of baptized, which gives an idea of the Grandfathers final feelings about being baptized. This poem is made up of tercets with rhyming words on every 1^st and 3^rd line. The setting is clearly at the Pigeon River. I believe the theme of this poem is that it is ok to be different, and you shouldn’t do something just because others think you should.

My Father Washes His Hands by Fred Chappell tells how a man (the father) feels about farm life. The setting of this poem is on the family’s farm. The Speaker of this poem is the son; the audience would be the father. This poem gives classic examples of how a son looks to his father for answers. You can tell the father has had a hard time recently farming and is thinking about quitting. This poem doesn’t have very much structure, instead it is more open-form poetry.

Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” seems to be a very short happy life. It is about a man, Francis and his wife whom he calls Margot. They go on a safari to kill animals. While there Francis feels like lees than a man, and his wife doesn’t help matters. He feels like a coward because he winds up running from a lion which he was supposed to finish killing. Later he gets a chance to redeem himself. His wife, the tour guide Wilson, and Francis go on another adventure to kill buffalo. While there he gets over his feeling over fear, which I believe, has something to do with the fact that his wife cheated on him the night before with Wilson. He shots the buffalo but doesn’t kill one of them.  Then his wife Margot draws her gun and winds up killing her husband! It seems to me this is done on purpose, and there may have even been a plan between her and Wilson because of the way they act afterward.

The title of this story sums up Francis Macomber’s life. For most of it he was miserable. He was constantly ridiculed by his wife and he had little confidence. Towards the end of the story he gets to experience a short moment of Happiness before he is killed.

Had Francis life not ended prematurely by his wife shortly after gaining his new found confidence, I believe his life would have been a lot different than before. He probably would have left his wife, which I believe she knew and that was one of the reasons she killed him. He also would have been able to put the buffalo to its final death, which he was not able to do with the lion. But mainly he would have been a true man something he had not been before.

Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado"

I did not enjoy “The Cask of Amontillado” the first time I read it; it was a little too dark and twisted for me, after rereading it I began to grasp other parts I had previously missed and found the story to be rather good but still dark and twisted. This story is about a man Montresor who seeks revenge on Fortunato for insulting him. Montresor asks Fortunato to check out a wine that he bought and make sure it was the real deal. Fortunato fell for his trick because of his arrogance, thinking he was the only one that could do the job. Montresor leads Fortunato into a trap and seals him up in a cave type place.

There are several examples of reverse psychology throughout this story.   Montresor uses it to lure Fortunato away from his previous engagement to his vaults. There are also several examples of irony. The names of the characters, the title (made me think of death before even reading the story), reference to being a mason, which is what Montresor winds up being to enclose Fortunato.

This story is told in first person, from Montresor’s point of view. I believe this to be significant because we do not get to see Fortunato’s side of the story only Montresor’s, which could possibly be totally different than what happened.

I believe it is possible that Montresor’s crimes could soon be discovered. While the reader gets a sense that he has killed many times and never caught from the following sentence, “Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat”, he has just enclosed a man that what on his way to a prior engagement, also I believe he is a little cocky about the situation which leads me to think he might get caught this time.