Blog 10
“White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey
This poem is written into three stanzas. There are six lines in the first stanza, twelve lines in the second stanza and ten lines in the first stanza. The poem has no rhyme scheme what so ever. In the first stanza the poet uses a lot of color to describe the white lies she was told. She emphasizes the significance of color of the white lies by saying, “light-bright, near-white/ high-yellow, red-boned/in a black place/where just white lies.” The colors may have specific connotations that further describe how the lies were white small lines. The only one that I could guess is “in a black place” means something along the lines of in a bad place or a place she does not like. It could also mean death or even about race. The second stanza she is saying about she could tell her own white lies. She says how she wants to tell the “white folks/that we lived uptown”. Maybe white folks goes along with white lies and those two words have a meaning that is intertwined with meaning in the poem. In the second stanza you can tell that the poet didn’t like the way that she was because she wanted to tell white lies about her background and where she got her clothes from. The third stanza is about how every time she told a white lie her mother found out and washed out her mouth with “ivory soap.” The color “ivory” also goes along with the color theme of white lies and white folks. The last line of the poem is really strong “I swallowed suds/thinking they’d work/from the inside out” meaning that she doesn’t like the way she is and hoping that the soap would purify her insides and thoughts. I really liked this poem a lot.
“The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams
This poem is written into four stanzas with couplets. The first line of each stanza has three words and the second line of each stanza has only one word. This whole poem seems less than a sentence. None of the words in the poem are capitalized and there is no punctuation at all except for the last single word in the poem and it has a period. There is no rhyme scheme in the poem. The line breaks in the poem seem a little bit random. If I wrote this poem I would have broken the lines differently. I think that the tone of this poem is sarcasm because when talking about a red wheel barrow, the author says that that is basically only does good when it is “glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens.” I don’t think I have ever heard of white chickens and I don’t think a wheel barrow does its job when it is filled with rain water. It means that it has just been sitting there collecting rain and therefore I think that the tone of this poem is sarcasm.
“My Life Had Stood- A Loaded Gun” by Emily Dickinson
This poem is written in four stanzas with quatrains. Nothing in this poem rhymes at all. The structure of this poem is very interesting. Certain words are capitalized in the middle of a phrase that grammatically shouldn’t be capitalized. Words like “Life” “Loaded” “Corners” “Day” “Me” “We” “Pillow” and other random words are capitalized in the middle of the poem. Maybe the author wanted to capitalize these words in order to get across to the reader that these words are important and are what make the poem. It is also very interesting that in each line there is a dash or two dashes that separate the words in the line. Even the title has a dash. I am not sure why these dashes are here and in fact I think of them to be a little bit distracting to the context of the poem. Maybe these dashes are here to fill in the blank for words that you want to put in between yourself. I think that the author also uses metaphors. Her title and first like “My Life had stood- a Loaded Gun” is comparing her life to a loaded gun meaning it may take off at any time. She also uses the term “Yellow Eye” which could be metaphor for a cat’s eye or a witches eye. The poem doesn’t really have a refrain but the author uses “And now” in two continuous lines. You can also tell that this poem was written a while ago because
Dickinson uses old English like “Tis” “My Master” and the general tone of the poem sounds like it was written a long time ago.
“Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath
The title of this poem gives a hint to what kind of technique the author uses to write this poem: using metaphors. Each line of this poem could be a metaphor. “I’m a riddle in nine syllables” is a metaphor for the rest of her poem. Each line following sounds like a riddle and each new line has exactly nine syllables. This poem is written in one stanza with nine lines. The poem has nine lines and nine syllables and the word “metaphors” has nine letters. The poem has no specific line scheme and the poet uses punctuation and capitalizes everything that should be capitalized. Although, the line “I’ve eaten a bag of green apples” doesn’t really sound like a metaphor or a riddle but more like a statement. Maybe this requires more background information. Looking for information, I realized that this whole poem could be a metaphor for getting pregnant because the number nine is how many months a baby takes to develop inside of the womb. The rest of the poem is describing how big she is “An elephant, a ponderous house” is referring to how big she is. “A melon strolling on two tendrils” could relate to her large stomach on top of tiny legs and then the line “I’ve eaten a bag of green apples” could relate to cravings and then “Boarded the train there’s no getting off” could relate to that its too late to have an abortion.
