3 more anthology blogs
7.”Ice” by Gail Mazur
The first thing that I notice about this poem is that each stanza has couplets. There are tweleve stanzas. I would think that since each stanza had couplets that it would have a very specific rhyme scheme but it doesnt. This poem has a lot of enjambment like in lines like “aching. Outside, the hockey players keep/ playing, slamming the black round puck/until its dark until supper. At night”. I like this poem because the imagery is really clear and you do not have to dig around for it: “In the warming house, children lace their skates/ bending, choked, over their thick jackets.” You know exactly what the kids are doing and you can relate to the kids in what they are doing. I also like the title of this poem because the author uses “ice” to not only describe a setting but to represent how a girl feels good about herself. The last couple of stanzas describe a girl who feels flawless on the ice with her father:until it’s dark, until supper. At night, /a shy girl comes to the cove with her father. /Although there isn’t music, they glide /arm in arm onto the blurred surface together, braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never /be so happy, for who else will find her graceful, /find her perfect, skate with her /in circles outside the emptied rink forever?” I really like the last couple of stanzas because the ice acts as a gateway for this year to feel free and to be wit her father.
98. “Snow Rise” by Robert Pack
This poem is written in one single stanza with fifteen lines with in it. The poem does have a rhyme scheme: a bb a b c b c d e d f e f a a which is a little bit un orthodox yet orignial. I really like the winter imagery in this poem like “red cheeks radiant against the wind”, “each risen flake”, “watch drowned snow lift from the lake” and ”gloved hands”. All of these things help the reader to visualize winter. I think the first line is really interesting: “dreaming time has reversed”. Even though it is pretty, I am not sure what it is: a metaphor or what. Maybe it is remembering a dream from a while ago when the author was happy. I think that the poem follows a structure of a stressed syallable followed by an unstressed syallable and then a stressed and so forth. There is some possible evidence that this poem was influenced like a dream: “Are gliding toward me on the ice onto/ A frame of glided twilight”. This sounds like heaven-like and sounds like the imagery that would be in a dream. Also the line “again awakened” also hints that the poem was influenced by a dream. The context in this poem such as that previous line could also be a hyperbole. The author might have loved the girl in the poem and used hyperboles to describe exactly how much he liked her. I do think that the author and the girl in the poem broke up or maybe she died but the last line “As if your absence now concluded long ago” hints that the girl is gone. Maybe the author is talking about winter being gone. I like this poem a lot.
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9. “Be off!’ Say Winter’s snows…” by Victor Hugo
This poem has five stanzas and there are quadtrains in each stanza. This poem does have a rhyme scheme and it follows: a b b a c d d c e f f e g h h g i j j i. This poem has a little bit of dialoge ” Be off!’ say winter’s snows/ ‘now its my turn to sing”. It also has parenthesis: (Our fortune grows dim in/ The face of a Qous Ego).” The poem kind of tells a story through the winter’s point of view meaning as if winter were a person like “Not daring to oppose” which is a human characteristic. “Away my songs we must go” meaning the winter is talking and its songs are snow. A really pretty image that the author paints is “And off the white smoke swims/ across the heavens’ grey” That line is a image for all the snow across the land and I like how the author uses “white smoke” to describe the snow. I do not think that this poem has a particular structure of stressed syallables and unstressed syallables. Because of the dialouge I think that you could make it stressed and unstressed as you wanted. “Quos Ego” means violence for disobedience. I am unsure to how this fits to snow. Maybe it means that the snow will be violent snow if the fall doesnt go away? ‘Before those virile women” is an interesting line because well actually I am not sure what the signifigance of it is. The last stanza connects the author to the poem because “onto my frozen fingers” indicates how he fits into the poem. “A pallid yellow lingers” which is very interesting because I can not think of anything that is pallid and yellow that would be around in the snow except for maybe a key because the author mentions a key later on in the poem. I like this poem because I like the way it sounds.
