laissez les bons temps rouler

      “Quinceanera” by Judith Ortiz Cofer
      This poem is written all in one stanza but with about 25 lines in it. The line breaks are random and enjambarment. The poet uses grammar and it looks to be correct. It is interesting because some words rhyme like “marry” and “carry” and some of the last words are repeated like “as if” but besides that there is no refrain or specific rhyme scheme. Quinceranera is a party that girls have in Mexico when they turn 15. It is equivlent to Sweet 16’s in America. You can tell by the word choice that this poem is definatley about growing up and not being able to be a child anymore and you can tell with the first couple of words in the poem, “My dolls have been put away like dead children…” This shows that the author is sad about becoming an adult. She also indicates or foreshadows the life she is to have from now on with words like “From this day on…” She is actually really dramatic and her word choice to describe how she has to wash her sheets is a hyperbole. She uses the words “blood”, “shameful” and “poison” to describe how she feels to have to have adult chores and growing up. To describe how she is growing physically she uses imagery like “skin stretched tight over my bones”. I actually really like this poem because it uses really pretty language to describe something that she is obviously not happy about. I think the last line is really signifigant because it ties the whole poem together and it really expresses how she feels. The last line is so strong “I am wound like the guts of a clocl, waiting for each hour to release me.” I have read poems or short stories by Judith Ortiz Cofer and I really like her style and tone of writing.
     “Learning to Love America” by Shirley Geok-lin Lim
     This poem has nine stanzas. Some are tercets, doublets, quardets and some are single lined. There is no specific rhyme scheme but what is interesting about this poem is that every line starts with “because” except for 4 lines out of 21. Everything that should be capitolized is but there is no punctuation. I don’t really like this poem because it sounds like anyone could have written it. It also reminds me how when you ask someone a question and their answer is always because. It kind of annoys me that every line starts with “because”. It also reminds me of a list than a poem. It is like she is listing all the reasons why she likes to live in America. I think some of the time she is being sarcastic (one reason she likes america is because they have “no pure products) and other times I think she is being serious of her reasons why she likes living in America like “I walk barefoot in my house”. I think that some of the meaning is taken out of this poem because all of the emphasis is on the word “because” and that word is so streched out and I think that it makes the poem unable to flow and makes the poem sound so awkward. I actually do not think this woman does not like living in America because her last line is “because it is late and too late to change my mind” which maybe means that its soo late to move to some other country. I just dont like this poem very much at all because the “because” is overbearing and obnoxious.
     “The Tyger” by William Blake
     This poem is actually one of my favorites because it is read in one of my favorite movies, Dangerous Lives of the Altar Boys, at a funeral of a boy’s best friend. This poem is written in six stanzas with four lines in each of them. There is a distinct rhyme scheme of every other word like “skies” and “eyes” and then “aspire” and “fire”. This poem is interesting because it asks a lot of questions, and I think they are aimed toward God because the author refers to “he” a lot. I think the most obvious part that indicates that he is talking about God are the last two lines: “Did he smile his work to see?/ Did he who make the lamb make thee?”. I think the poet’s language use is really beautiful like “sinews of thy heart” and “watered heaven with their tears” ahh its so pretty! I think the reader can tell that this poem was written a long time ago because it is written in old English. The poet uses words like “thy” and ”thee” and I have never read a poem written by someone in the twenteeth century who uses language like that. The author uses punctuation because he uses a lot of commas and question marks but he doesnt capitolize everything he should. After he asks a question he doesnt capitolize the sentence or phrase after it although he does capitolize every new word after a line break. I think this is the best poem I have read all year!
      “The Sick Rose” by William Blake
     This poem is very short: it is written in only two stanzas with four lines in each. It is written in old English because the author uses words like “thou” and “thy”. Some words rhyme but not all of them so the ryhme scheme is kind of random. I dont understand this poem at all. But I think the author uses “a rose” as a metaphor for love or a woman actually. He tells the rose (or the woman) that she is sick and is an “invisible worm”. The line “Does thy life destory” also indicates to the reader that the “rose” may be a metaphor for a woman. Or maybe the author himself is the “worm” and his lover is “the rose”. The poet uses a lot of punctuations but the line breaks seem kind of random and I think that this poem, if it were prosaic could have been written in less than three or four lines. The author also uses a metaphor of “crimson joy” and I dont know if that is referring to the rose or to a different meaning like blood or wine or something else. The poetry book says to compare this poem with “The Man with Night Sweats” which I have evaluated but I do not see how these two poems have anything in common at all. Maybe they are just about going through a rough time?

    “Looking for Judas” by Adrian Louis
    This poem is so sad but it has beautiful language that I believe makes it more sad yet inspiring. I think this poem is about hunting and killing deer. Because the author uses words like “sparking blood” and “moonlight” and “shimmering in eternal nakedness”. I just think that imagery like this makes the poem sound so beautiful even though it is talking about something that is generally so unhappy and inhumane. There is also imagery that makes the poem sound really nature-esk like the ”old barn in the bright sparkling” I also like this poem because the author notes an excuse that people say to ensure themselves that it is okay to kill deer. They say that the spirit of the deer “would live in our flesh”. I also like the last line “Or something like that” because that sums up the poet’s believes of how he thinks deer killing is wrong. On structure, the poem is all in one stanza with numerous lines. There is no specific rhyme scheme yet the poem still flows with the overall tone of the poem. This poem has correct grammar usage but the line breaks are random which is maybe so that the lines will not seem as long.
     “To the Stone-Cutters”
     This poem is also one stanza with about ten lines in it total. Some of the lines are short while the other ones are rather long. Nothing in this poem rhymes at all. Each new line is capitolized and the line breaks are not complete sentences. Before I looked at the year the poem was created, I could tell that it was written not recently because of the tone and the language usage in the poem with words like “foredefeated” and “thaws”. I actually think that I like this poem a lot because I think it is about monument builders or tomb stone builders. I really like the last line even though I am unsure about it what may mean: “The honey peace in old poems”. I like it only because it sounds cool.
      “Counting the Mad” by Donald Justice 
       This particular poem has three stanzas with six lines in each. This poem also does not have anything in it that indicates a rhyme scheme. This poem is one of the first poems that I have seen that have a refrain: “And this one cried No No No No/All day long”. That line repeats in all three of the stanzas. I like this poem a lot because it is obviously about a man who is crazy and they put him in a straight jacket and send him to a home but he doesnt eat anything and sees things that are not really there. Sometimes he thinks things that hes not like a dog or a fish. I actually think this poem is really sad because it shows the reality of the life of someone who is crazy. The line breaks in this poem do not seem to be random but instead separate thoughts. If the line breaks where any different, I think that it would take away from the intensity of the poem and maybe the full idea of what the author is trying to get across. 
      “Poetry” by Marianne Moore
      This poem is really interesting because it is broken into six stanzas but the line breaks within the stanzas are so weird and unproportional. I have never seen a poem that looks like this. it sort of reminds me of an outline for a study guide. I think that since the poem is called “Poetry” the author may be poking fun at how line breaks in poems are so random and how she may not truly understand why they are there. I dont think that there is a particular rhyme scheme but it would be hard to find since the line breaks are so weird. You are more focused on the line breaks than the context or anything else. Aside from the line breaks, this poem is really interesting because it has a fun imagery like “a wild horse taking a roll”. This poem actually I think tries to define poetry in a poem. I do not like it though just because I think it is too distracting.
      “A Strange Beautiful Woman” by Marilyn Nelson
       I think that this poem is so cute. It is only one stanza but with seven lines. If it werent for the line breaks I think this poem would only be one to three lines. It is very short and but the line breaks seem e appropriate. They divide thoughts from each other and dwell on each line because it has its own importance. I like it because it is so succinct but I also like it because of the context. It is just a simple poem about how a woman looks in the mirror, asks who the pretty woman is and then the mirror asks the same thing back. I just think that it is really cute. It doesnt rhyme or have any refrains yet it just sounds so adorable.

     “American Primitive” by William Jay Smith
     This poem is really sad. I read it and I think it is about how the author’s dad is really old fashioned in the way that he cares more about his money than he does his own son. And maybe it is called “American Primitive” because Americans are so fixiated on becoming rich. This poem has three stanzas and it also has tercets in each one. There sort of a refrain that the author says in two of the three stanzas and I think it is what gives the poem the most emphasis because its “And I love my Daddy like he loves his Dollar”. Actually maybe the poem is about George Washington because of the title and then it talks a lot about a dollar. This poem also has a definate rhyme scheme of every other which makes the poem flow fairly easy. There is punctuation but things like Dollar and Daddy are capitolized perhaps to give more emphasis on those two words. There were some words that I had to look up like the word cravat which is a cloth that men wore around their necks. I think that, that makes the poet’s dad sound primitive because a cravat, according to the dictionary, is something that men wore mostly in the 17th century. Maybe the poet’s father is a civil war re-enactor.
     “Titanic” by David R. Slavitt
     This poem is obviously about the ship Titanic that sank in 1912. I like this poem a lot because I am really interested in Titanic. The first thing I notice that the lines in the poem do not really make sense and they are enjambment. There are five stanzas but some of them are tercets, some are quadrains and some are single lined. Even though I know what this poem is about, I am unsure about what some of the lines mean. I like the poet’s use of word choice like “The cold/water is anaesthetic and very quick.” I think that enables the reader to imagine exactly what he is talking about when describing how cold that water really was. “To go down….We all go down, mostly alone.” I think means that we all die but we usually all die by ourselves unlike the people on the famous ship who all died together. I think the last line of the poem is really signifigant even though I am not clear on what it may mean: “We all go:only a few, first-class.” I think that leaves the reader left to decipher the meaning of life maybe or maybe how rich people get the upper hand in every situation.
     “American Poetry” by Louis Simpson
     This poem is very short and only has two stanzas: one a tercet and one a quadrain. I like it because a. I have no idea what it means and b. because it is really succinct and c. because I think it is about how hard poetry is to decipher or understand. The poem starts out with “Whatever it is” which is referring to the title. I really like the imagery that the author uses to try and describe what is American Poetry is about and what it is. It does not have a distinct rhyme scheme but it does have correct grammar and punctuation. I think this poem is weird because it says “Like the shark, it has a shoe.” What? sharks don’t have shoes. Maybe the author uses this as a joke to say that poems don’t make sense so his poem isnt going to make sense since he is writing a poem. This is probably the shortest poem that I have ever encountered. I think I have had text messages that are longer than this poem. I wonder why the author made the poem so short because it seems like he could have gone on talking and using imagery to make fun of or try and explain what American poetry is like. 
     “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” by William
      Shakespeare
      I think this poem is rather funny. It is about how Shakespeare has a mistress but she is not pretty and how he basically doesnt love her. Actually this poem makes it sound like he hates her. The poem is one stanza with muliple lines although the last two lines are indented. There is a specific rhyme scheme with every other word rhyming. I think that this poem is interesting because each line is kind of long. Most of the poems I have been reading lately have had relativley short lines but this one has full sentences as lines. The poet also uses a lot of imagery to describe how un-pretty his mistress is. He compares hair to black wires and how music is a lot more delightful than her voice. He is actually really mean to her in this poem. He talks about how bad her breath smells and how her breasts suck, how her eyes dont glow and how her cheeks are not red. You have to wonder why this woman is even his mistress. I find this poem kind of ironic though because even though Shakespear is saying all of this really bad stuff about his mistress and basically how gross she is, the poem still sounds really beautiful. I think it is because the poet uses words like “roses” and “perfumes” and he just has that old english language going on which makes the poem sound a lot more romantic than it actually is.

     “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats
Before reading this poem, I notice that there are no line breaks but line intendations. Some of the lines are indented and others are not. This may be the other’s unique way of looking for alternatives to line breaking which is really interesting. I also notice that there is a definite rhyme scheme but its a little bit random because it isnt every other word or every line rhyming but a it goes “gold”, “seen”, “been”, “hold”, “told” two other words and then “bold”. I think since the rhyme scheme doesnt have a pattern that it doesnt make the poem flow as easily as it would if the poem had a specific ryhming pattern. On reading this poem, I am sure that this poem as something to do with the Odyessey because it talks about Homer and Apollo but I don’t know which story this follows. I also have no idea who Homer is. I would not know any of the other names in the poem but they are recognized and explained in the footnotes. There are only fourteen lines in this poem but the line indentations do not make any sense and I think they make the poem sound and look ugly. The title explains that this is a specific story in the Odyessey but how he felt when he first read poems about the Odyessey which I think is a cool poem to write about.
     “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell
I like this poem A LOT! Even though I really have no idea what is means it just sounds pretty because it uses really pretty word structure. He uses images like “till my wet fur froze” and “nightmare fighters”–I am not sure why but all the metaphors and imagery is just really beautiful. The poem is really short because it only has four lines but I like how the poem is succinct and you can tell there is so much emotion in it even though I have no idea what it is really about. There are only two words that rhyme in the entire poem but I think the way that the author does it, makes the poem flow very well. The title of this poem doesnt really make sense to me either because I have no earthly idea what a “Ball Turret Gunner” is. Reading it again several times, I think it could be able being born out of the mother’s womb because he says things like “hunched in its belly” and “six miles from earth” and “from my mother’s sleep I fell into the State” so I guess it has some indication that it is about childbirth.
     “The Man with Night Sweats” by Thom Gunn
      Looking at this poem is interesting because the stanzas are either two lines or four lines. The four lined stanzas have rhyme schemes of every other word rhyming and the two lined stanzas both of the end words rhyme so there is an obvious rhyme scheme to this poem. There is also a lot of grammar and punctuation in this poem which is one of the first poems I have read with distinctive punctuation. On context, I have never had night sweats but if I did, he describes perfectly what I would expect for them to be like. His use of imagery makes them sound beautiful: “A world of wonders in/ Each challenge to the skin” and even though this poem is about night sweats, something undesirable, it still sounds really beautiful and well-written. All of the line breaks make sense meaning they aren’t random. The line breaks end phrases and make the poem flow easy. Another line that I thought flowed really well and sounded really pretty was “Hugging my body to me/As to shield it from/The pains that will go through me”. I just think the author did a really job using imagery and word choice to create this poem. I enjoyed it a lot.
      “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” Hart Crane
      The context of this poem is only okay. I am not in love with it because the poem does not seem to flow. There are seven stanzas but the line breaks are so random and some of the stanzas only have one line in them. There is no rhyme scheme which makes the poem seem less like a poem. Actually some words do ryheme but because the whole poem doesnt rhyme it sounds really werid and off. The poet does use some imagery like “Old keys that are but echoes”. I think that line sounds really pretty and there are other lines just like that, that make the poem sound beautiful and give it it’s poetic touch. The poem though kind of sounds like a story because it has the “and I ask myself” and quotations and everything so even though it isnt exactly dialouge it still sounds a little story like. It also reminds me of a story because the poet introduces characters, “my mother’s mother,/Elizabeth”. Not that I am an expert on poems, but I would think that most poems just state the name of a person instead of introducing one. There is a little bit of imagery in this poem with phrases like “liable to melt as snow” and “It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air”.
     “Merciless Beauty” by Geoffrey Chaucer
     This poem was written in the late 14th Century so the language is really werid and I would have no idea what the words meant if it wasnt for the footnotes on the side. I think the meaning is lost in the translation into new English though because I dont get a lot out of the poem when I read it. I like that it is really old-fashioned though and it kind of reminds me of Pride and Prejudice. It is interesting to see how much language has changed over the decades. There is a specific rhyme scheme and there are line breaks. This poem also has some intendations of a couple of the phrases in the stanzas. I think I would like it a lot if I knew what the language translated into and what it really meant. I think even if the language is hard to decipher, you can still tell that it is a poem about love because of words like “beautee” and “quene”.  

    “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways” by Louise Erdrich
    Glancing at this poem before reading it, it looks like a normal structured poem with three line breaks and a lot of lines in each stanza. Reading the poem over once, I notice that it does not have a rhyme scheme at all but it flows in a way that still makes it sounds like a poem. When I read the poem again over for it’s context, I realized that I really liked it because you can relate to the poem but then again there is a certain aspect of it that you know only the poet really understands. Its relative but personal at the same time. The poem is about a boarding school and people trying to escape. The first stanza talks about home and how a person relishes its home and how special of a place it is. The line “Home’s the place we head for in our sleep” makes me think that the poet means that even though she is at boarding school, she dreams of going home. I can relate to that because I went to boarding school during Katrina. The second stanza talks about how the people trying to escape are plotting to escape. This is clear when the poet states, “We watch through cracks and boards” and then they are comtemplating whether or not they should go when she states, “The worn down welts of ancient punishments lead back and forth”. I really like that line a lot because she uses word phrasing so well to say something like ‘they were nervous to go because of previous punishments’. The third stanza talks about the runaways from the boarding school. My favorite line from this stanza is “All the runaways wear long dresses, long green ones/ the color you think shame was” because she says “you think” but because they dont like boarding school it really isnt shameful to runaway I guess so maybe the green represents freedom. I liked this poem a lot because I think it has deeper meaning that I am unable to interpret because its a personal poem.
    “Care and Feeding” by Billy Collins
     I think this poem first jumps out at me because the poet says that he is turning 420 years old tomorrow and then he goes on to say that he means in dog years. This poem is about getting older and the poet obviously doesnt really like getting older. In this poem he compares himself as a dog saying things like “and lick my nose and ears and eyelids/ while I tell myself to get down.” I think that line is really weird because I dont really know why he is comparing himself to a dog. Its actually a really strange poem because the whole thing is about describing himself as a dog and I dont really like or understand why he does that. Maybe it is symbolic because a dog is unreliable and doesnt really understand things like humans do and then when you get older you tend to be more unreliable? I’m not really sure. This is a poem that I would want taught to me because each time I read it, it makes me more frustrated. This poem doesnt have any type of a ryhme scheme but it is broken into five stanzas with four lines in each.
    “The Donkey” by G.K. Chesteron
    This is a really short poem and it has four stanzas with four short lines in each. Every other word rhymes so it has a specific rhyme scheme. “When fishes flew and forests walked/ And figs grew upon thorn/ Some moment when the moon was blood/ Then surely I was born”– I think this stanza is really interesting because it obviously means that he was born at a strange/ bad time because the moon was blood and fishes flew, its really strange. The second stanza talks about how things were bad and it mentions the devil. The third stanza, well I am actually not really sure what it is saying except the poet says “I keep my secret still”. What secret is that? I have no idea what he is talking about now. The third stanza is about how he turns into a donkey but he had one hour of power. Maybe he worked for the devil and did something bad so God or someone turned him into a donkey. There is probably a background story about this that I would like to read to have a better understanding. Even without knowing what it means, I like this poem because I like the way it flows together.
    “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” by Elizabeth
     Barrett Browning
     This poem does not look like your ordinary poem because it is only one stanza with 14 lines in it. There is a rhyme scheme but it is sort of random and not in a generally specific order. Reading the poem, I learn that the poem is all about love and all the ways that this woman loves this man. It is actually really beautiful because she uses words like “passion” and “freely” and “purely” to describe how much she loves this man. She says that she loves him more than her old griefs and her childhood and to the “level or every days” I think the last two lines are the most beautiful and symbolic because she says “Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose/ I shall but love thee better after death” and I thought that meant that she loved him so much that she was willing to die for him or means that she would love him always. I just think it gives so much emphasis to the power of love. This poem was written in 1850 but I think if it were written today, people might think this girl was really obsessive or stalkerish because she loves this man so much she makes it seem like she is obessed with him. Today people dont really express their love in poems like this because I think they would think that it would make them seem weird or crazy. 
    ”The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks
     This poem jumps right out at you with the first line “Abortions will not let you forget” I think that is a very strong line to start a poem off with. Reading through this poem, I think that it is about a woman who had abortions but states that just because she had them, it doesnt mean she forgets about her potential babies like it was no big thing. The poem represents her thought behind the abortion and why maybe she would think about not going through it. The last line is also really strong: “Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you all”. That line states I guess that she had more than one abortion but that she loved all her fetuses and stresses that it was hard for her to do but she had reasoning to go through with it. Maybe it is about regretting her abortions. This poem though is so strong because it says things like “You will never wing up the sucking thumb” and things like that which represent the things babies do, but are unable to do because their mothers have abortions. I think this poem would make people who are contemplating abortion look at all the perks of being a mother and the significance of a live and realize that it is a really hard thing to do. This poem is actually really depressing because it is all about the things mothers think about that their babies will never be able to do because they go through with abortions. I think the overall morale of this story is either regret or that women think about abortions before they have them and realize all the aspects to it and know it is a difficult decision. I liked this poem a lot even though it made me really depressed.

    “Home is so Sad” by Philip Larkin
    This poem is structured because it follows an obvious ryhme scheme of every other line like “go” and “so” and then “left”, “bereft” and “theft”. There are only two line breaks so there are only two stanzas with five lines in each. This poem is interesting because there is random grammar structer because the poet puts periods in the lines even though they are not full sentences. Every thing that should be capitalized is. This poem, I think, is about how the author feels that his home is not a very happy place, hense the title of the poem. The poet does illustrate that his home used to be a happy place by using words like “joyous” and creating happy settings like “the music in the piano stool”. I am not sure I understand the full meaning of the poem but I think that it sounds pretty yet depressing at the same time. In a way it kind of reminds me and relates to post-katrina New Orleans. Even though I may not have gotten the full interpretation of the poem, I still liked it.
      “The Convergence of the Twain” by Thomas Hardy
       The first thing that i noticed about this poem was that it’s line breaks were broken up into roman numerals. I thought that was interesting but a little unorthodox of poem structure. The last word in each stanza but after the line break in the next stanza the rhyme changes and then those last words all rhyme. I thought this poem was a little strange because there were some words that were capitalized that usually are not like words like “Ice” and “Will”. I like this poem a lot though because I understand it and I really dont have to kill myself to try and interpret something that could mean 10000 things. This poem is about the Titanic that sank in 1912. I think so far this is the best poem I have read just because it sounds so beautiful. The word choice just makes the poem sound so pretty. I think the last stanza though is a little bit sad since we all know the fate of the Titanic but it also sounds really beautiful: “And as the smart ship grew/ In stature, grace and hue/ In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.”
      “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg
       I think this poem is really weird. There aren’t really any line breaks and the stanzas look more like paragraphs. Each stanza includes Walt Whitman and I have no idea who that is. Each stanza also asks a series of questions but they are all really strange questions like “Which way does your beard point tonight?” or “What price bananas?” and “Are you my Angel?” Maybe this poem is was a dream that the poet had because each time I read it, I become more and more confused to what the poet is trying to get across or what this poem means at all. This poem doesn’t feel like a normal structured poem because the stanzas could be paragraphs, the line breaks are random, and nothing rhymes at all. The word choice isn’t even that beautiful and it doesn’t necessarily make the poem really romantic or interesting but it feels like I am reading a dream instead. This man actually seems like he is crazy or on crack. Maybe Ginsberg actually knows Walt Whitman and this poem is more like a story that only the two of them understand. I think there could be many interpretations to this poem because everything written in it is so random. I on the other hand have absolutely no idea what it means and reading it over and over just makes me mad because I don’t understand it one bit. 
     “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
     The first thing I notice about this poem is that it is a poem about nature and about how the poet wants to stay enwrapped in nature’s beauty but he has things to do before he has to go to sleep at night. You can tell by the gorgeous language flow that he thinks highly of nature because he uses words like “Of easy wind and downy flake” which is really pretty word choice and flows easily. There are four stanzas and each different stanza rhymes differently. Although the poet mentions a “He” in the poem and I wonder to whom that he could be. Maybe it is someone trying to take him away from nature. This poem is really short but I think that the main interpretation of the book is that people don’t have enough time to enjoy nature and that is what the poet means when he says he doesn’t have enough time to bond with nature because he has a million things to do before he has to go to bed at night. This poem means that people today do not have enough time to enjoy the beautiful things in life because they are being pulled away by their busy lives.

            “On My First Son” by Ben Jonson

            Reading the footnotes under this poem, I learned that his first son had died on his seventh birthday. When I read through it without having known that I kind of thought that the poem was about his son getting older and not being a kid anymore and Jonson was just sad about that. When I read the poem a second time, knowing the background information, I thought the poem was very sad and depressing. I had to look up the word ‘lament’ which meant to mourn for or over and that word itself made the poem a lot more meaningful yet depressing. The beginning of the poem starts of with him saying how much he loved his son and saying goodbye to him. The middle of the poem is talking about how his son died so early and it’s clear when he says, “To have so soon ‘scaped world’s flesh’s rage” I also think that sentence though is talking about maybe, in a way, how lucky he is that he was unable to see all of the bad things in the world. I thought it was interesting because the poem is written all in one stanza. Overall, I think I liked this poem but it also kind of depressed me because child-death is the worst thing that can happen to a parent so I feel bad for the poet.

            “To Waken an Old Lady” by William Carlos Williams

            This poem is obviously about old age but it is hard to relate to it because I am only 17. The poet uses imagery to describe what it is like to be old like “Old age is/ a flight of small/ cheeping birds/ skimming/ bare trees/ above a snow glaze” I am not really sure what that means but it sounds pretty. The rest of the poem talks about how the weather is really bad and snowy so I guess that means that the birds are having a hard time with the cold weather which I guess means that old age is hard. I also thought this poem was interesting because some of the line breaks only have one word on them or two but the most is four. I don’t really understand why the line breaks are so frequent in between phrases and I don’t really see what point he is trying to make by doing so. I don’t really know if this poem was written by the heart because the poet wrote it when he was only 38. I don’t think you really get a sense of what old is until you are considered a senior citizen. Maybe Williams had someone very close to him who was really old but I don’t think he could of experienced the full affect of being old and being able to write a poem about until he actually was old.

Sarah Witt

English IV

Waddington

4 September 2006

“Anorexic” by Eavan Boland

pp. 455

Flesh is heretic meaning fat. My body is a witch and its taking control. I am burning because the anorexia is taking over. She is burning her hunger by starving her self denials. The anorexic is poisoning her head with lies or her being overweight until she met anorexia by not eating and starving herself or eating milk nor honey. She threw up until she was no longer hungry—now the bitch anorexia is burning and alive. She is starved and curveless but not happy. She is skin and bone and the anorexia has taken full control and affect. She’s so thin and her disorder is making her dreams enclosed with unhappiness and pressure to lose more weight. She is anorexic because she is pressured by her boyfriend and soon she will go back to being normal weight.