laissez les bons temps rouler

     “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”.