Poetry Response 5: "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

The narrator's father never rests because the poem starts out by saying that "Sundays too my father got up early."  So even on Sundays, a day of rest,  the narrator's father still continues to wake up early.   Also from the title it is revealed that it is winter which must mean that the early mornings are still very dark.  In the next line of the poem it proves that the winter mornings are dark, "blueblack cold," and very cold.  So it must be hard to get out of bed, but the narrator's father still gets up despite the cold weather and dark weather.  His father is a hardworking man because his hands are cracked and aching from the labor of the week.  He wakes up every morning to start a warm fire but the narrator notices that no one ever thanked him for doing so.

In the next stanza, the narrator recalls how his father would call for him to wake up after the rooms warmed up and he would get up slowly afraid of the cold still lurking in the house.  Then he would speak to his father, who had gotten up early to make sure the house was warm before he got up, without any feelings or gratitude.  His father did so much for him; besides preparing the fire, he shined his shoes.  But the narrator was ignorant to everything that his father had done for him which is why he says, "What did I know."  The narrator claims that he had no idea of the love that his father bestowed upon him, the love that was unnoticeable to him.  Making his father's love lonely by not seeing it in the things that he had done for him, "love's austere and lonely offices."

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Poetry Response 4: "Death, be not proud" by John Donne

Death should not be proud of himself even though many see him as so because he seems almighty and fearful.  But he is not everything that people say he is and the people who do think of him as weak, he kills.  Death is pitiful because I'm not going to die yet and death can not die either.  Only in sleep can death find pleasure because that is where he can meet with his victims and then take their lives.  Not only does death take their life, their bones and soul go as well.  But Death is a victim as well.  He is a slave to fate and chance because those events many bring Death closer.  Kings and desperate men bring death as well and death is forced to do his job.  Poison, war, and sickness all bring death.   Poppy and charms are better than letting Death take my life.  But once death takes my life, we become immortal.  Then death will die and be no more.  Meaning when human kind dies off, death will then be released from his duty and finally be able to die himself.  So death can’t be proud of himself because of his job.  He shouldn’t be feared because he is only doing what he is appointed to do.  Death, although he is not completely a person, he needs to rest as well.  Death has no choice and he is controlled by humankind, but humankind sees him as the powerful one.  The title, “Death, be not proud,” makes the poem seem like a letter to death letting him know that the narrator realizes what he goes through and declaring that he should not be proud of his job.  Make death realize what his job means and that in actuality he is pitiful.

Poetry Response 3: "Pass/Fail" by Linda Pastan

From the title I thought the poem would be about taking a college course "pass/fail," where if you have above a C you pass the class and otherwise you would fail.  It's almost like taking the "safe" way because you don't know how well you've done.

The poem starts out by saying that we will never complete and achieve our dream of higher education, "blue books."  It doesn't matter if you are successful in waking life because when you are asleep your doubts are waiting to haunt you.  When you dream, it calls to you with two pencils that are not sharpened, meaning that from the beginning you are not prepared for success, but failure.  Then it says that you haven't even taken the class yet.  That shows the anticipation of starting something new but not knowing how and what to prepare.  The next sentence means that opportunity is not available to you, "the book closes in your face when you reach for it." Everything that is happening is wrong and nothing is going well.  When you wake up, you realize its a dream but your doubts still haunt you and you continue to drown in all the things you still need to learn and do.  Applying the title now, I think it means that in life you will both fail and pass at the same time by overcoming your fears.  You will believe that you have failed, but in actuality you have passed but not as spectacularly as you have hoped, wished, and prepared for.  The theme of this poem is to continue to strive and learn because you never stop learning in life which is why at the end of the poem it says that, "you will still smother in all of the feathers that have to be learned by."

Poetry Response 2: "To my dear and loving husband" by Anne Bradstreet

From the title it can be inferred that the narrator loves her husband very much and she cherishes the things he has done for her because it says “loving.”  The narrator, the wife of the man, claims in the beginning that if "two were one," that would be them.  Which means that she believes they are a great couple, they are meant to be together.  She is telling her husband that if any man were loved by their wife , it's him and if there was a wife that was happy with their husband, it's her.  She is no comparison to any other woman because she prizes his love more than riches and gold.  Even the rivers are not enough to satisfy her need, nothing but love from him can compensate.  She believes her husband's love is something she can not repay.  She prays that the heavens will reward him a lot.   So while they live in love, they should continue to work hard to be together so that even after death, their love could still live forever.  I think the narrator’s husband is dead because the title begins like a letter and the poem was in past tense.  Also towards the end the narrator mentions about heaven rewarding her husband for what he has done for her, so maybe she hopes that in his death he will be treated kindly because of his actions toward her when he was living.   The narrator also mentions that she could never repay him, maybe because it was too late which is why she is writing this letter to let him know of the feelings she couldn't convey to him earlier.  I think the theme of this poem is love takes effort from both sides, it is something that does not die even if the people who have created has passed on.  

Poetry Response 1: "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche

 I thought this poem was interesting because of the ears that were still alive, that were able to still hear but not be able to talk about what they hear with others.  From my analysis I found that the poem was a memory the narrator was recalling and telling someone about.  As if it was a miracle that she survived such an event.  The memory started out as if everything was normal, the daughter was filing her nails, and his wife was preparing tea.  But then when the narrator states that the walls in the house had glass embedded in the walls, it started to shed the Colonel's true personality because when I first looked at the title I thought it meant a man who is dependable and trustworthy; someone who protects others for good.  But my initial thought of the Colonel changed after I read the poem.  When the narrator said that the glass was there to "scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace," the Colonel's image changed to a tyrannical man who is after power and is someone who does not care about anyone.  The image that the narrator describes about the glass is so grotesque which makes the Colonel seem like a monster.  But then the Colonel provides the narrator with a lavish dinner which I thought contradicted his character because he's so ruthless.  When the Colonel brought out the sack of ears after dinner, I was really surprised because it was unexpected especially after such a lovely meal.  But then what was even more bizarre was the fact that the ears were still alive and were listening to his voice.  I think that represents how the "dead are listening."  Meaning no secret will go untold, what the Colonel did to those people will be heard some way.  I think the theme of the poem is that death is not deaf, murder and unfair treatment will be heard.

"The Colonel"

1)      Reading this poem for the first time was fascinating.  All I remember are the ears at the end, especially the part where the colonel dropped one into a glass of water and it came alive, I wonder what the author is suggesting.  At first the colonel didn't seem like a bad man, but towards the end when he brought the sack of ears out he seemed like a monster.  I don't understand what the colonel meant regarding the rights of the narrator's "people."

2)      After reading the poem for a second time I'm still unsure about the meaning of the poem.  I know that the Colonel is not a good man and is someone who is feared because the narrator was warned to not say anything in response to his actions, his dangerous home that has glass shards embedded in the walls, and the sack of ears.  I think the author is trying to suggest something through the sack of ears because ears can't carry life by themselves.  The ears could be a representation of the people in the narrator's country where some ignore what is going on and others want to face it.

TP-CASTT Reflection: Mirror

1)       When I first read the poem I thought it was easy to follow along because of the language used.  But I didn't really understand what was going on with mirror and how it connected to humans and it's reflection.  I had thought that the mirror was telling a story of it's own, explaining it's part of the story.  After reading the poem a second time using the TP-CASTT, I started to pick up on more details about the mirror, such as it's claim that it only reflects the truth.  But I was still confused about the second part of the poem where the mirror became a lake and always looked forward to seeing the woman that always looked in.  At the end it revealed that the woman had drowned a young girl which I think is her and the mirror said that it could see her age day by day.

2)      Most of the questions were really confusing but mostly because of the way they were worded.  The questions that I understood asked about the tone of certain lines in the poem, what a word means based on the context, and what a certain line suggests.  Anything that asked about the relationship between two lines, purpose of repetition, or addressing the structure of the poem, I was unsure about.  I definitely need help on understanding the language used in poetry and similar problems that address the purpose of repetition and structure.