Blog 11
“Hands” by Robinson Jeffers 137
This poem is written in five stanzas with tercets, quadtrains, couples and some with single lines. What is interesting about this poem is that instead of line breaks, the author uses the indentation of the last line. All of the last lines in each stanza only have one or two words in them. I think by uses indents instead of line breaks, the poet is trying to be unique and different. This poem has no rhyme scheme what so ever. The poem also has enjamberment where a phrase ends in a line a period is placed and a new phrase begins creating two thoughts all in one line. This poem is about cave paintings and the similarities between humans now and humans a long time ago. This poem uses punctuation like commas, periods, colons, quotation marks, semi colons, and apostrophes. The poet does use a similie in his poem: “Signs-manual are now like a sealed message.” I like this similie and I think it is comparing the cave art to a sealed message that some people are unable to decode.
“Oh, My Love is like a Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns
This poem is written into four stanzas with quadrains within them. The second and fourth line of the poem is indented. I think the poet does that to emphaize the rhyme scheme. The rhyming scheme follows an x a x a pattern. Some of the stanzas have two words that repeat themself instead of rhyming. All the lines start basically the same. They either start with “Oh” “My Love” “Tis” “So” or “And”. Maybe the author did this to get an effective flow to it. You can definatley tell that this poem was written a long time ago because the poet refers to a girl as “a bonnie lass”. He also uses other old vocabulary like “thou” “art” “thee”. This poem is good because it is about love in comparison to a rose. This poem was probably one of the first poems to refer to love to something as pretty as a rose. Now when people talk about love in comparison to a flower, people will believe that it is really boring because it isnt orginial. Frost is a good poet because he took something that everyone wants to copy or base their poetry off of. This poem uses a lot of punctuation especially exclamation points. I think that the author uses so many exclamation points to emphazise how much he loves his “bonny lass” and that hes just really excited about her and it helps him to show emotion. He also uses a lot of commas, periods, colons, semi colons and apostrophes. I like this poem a lot because I like the emotion that the author tries to illustrate by using the similie of love to a rose.
“Love That I Bear” by Hilda Doolittle
This poem is written all in one stanza with nine lines within it. It has no obvious rhyme scheme. I think this poem is interesting because I think it compares love to animals and nature. The word “bear” in the title is supposed to mean “bare” I believe. The poet also uses other animals in the poem like “serpent spotted shell” and “soft owl”. I am not sure what kind of message it brings up to compare her love to animals. Maybe she is writing to express her love for animals. I do not believe however that to write about animals is an effective way to express love. I do think that the author does use beautiful imagery like “eye-lides of great bird eyes” I think that sounds really cool. If these poem were a sentence it would be a long run on sentence. It has numerous commas throughout it. The line breaks are actually very random and if I could change anything about this poem I would change the line breaks. I think this poem is okay. I think refering to love using animal metaphors is unique but I dont think the message is strong enough to show that she is in love. Animals and love dont seem to go together at all so that is why I am hesitant to say that I like it.
“The Secret Sits” by Robert Frost
This poem is only written in one stanza with couplets. The poem follows an aa rhyme scheme because the words “suppose” and “knows” rhymes. If the line breaks were not there this poem would be the same length as a sentence. It is interesting because the word “Secret” is capitalized and no other word is except for the words in the beginning phrases. The word “Secret” must want special emphasis since it is capitalized. The tone of this poem could be many things. It could be a pun although I am not sure for what. It could also be a metaphor for the secret knowing itself and being right in front of the people dancing around it and trying to figure it out. Maybe they are mocking the secret by dancing around and teasing it. This poem definatley sounds like some sort of children’s metaphor like a ring around the rosey type thing but I have a feeling that it comes from a specific story. I also think it is signifigant that the secret is sitting in the middle and not standing or waiting. Sitting makes it sound like the secret is a problem or a big deal. The fact that it is in the middle makes it seem like everyone is involved or sits on everyones should. I also think that it is interesting that the secret “knows”. Of course, the secret its self knows that it is but a secret isnt capable of thinking so maybe the secret is a person that has a secret and everyone is dancing around the person trying to figure it out.
