Elizabeth\’s Blog

“The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks

            This poem’s rhyme scheme is generally a, a, b, b with many rhyming couplets but a few lines are in there without rhyme. The title of the poem is somewhat ironic because it is about abortion and the title is “The Mother”. The first line shows personification of the word abortion. “Voices of the wind” is a metaphor for the unborn children. It sounds like this is coming from a woman who has just had an abortion (maybe multiple abortions) and now she is in a way scolding herself for her mistakes. Once I read the last line, “Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you all”, it sounded like this was coming from a doctor who makes a living by performing abortions.

“Anorexic” by Eavan Boland

            This poem has 15 stanzas with 3 lines in each stanza. The imagery Boland uses in this is very violent – “My body is a witch. I am burning it.”, “Now the bitch is burning.”, “Caged so I will grow”. The sentences in the poem are very brief and brutal. It sounds as if the author is referring to her body as its own person when she says “Yes I am torching her curves and paps and whiles”. This shows how in her experience with anorexia her body and mind were completely different people. She uses simile to describe her body like, “Thin as a rib”.

“Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall

            This poem has eight stanzas and four lines in each stanza making it a quatrain. What makes this poem interesting is how each stanza is in quotations because the author makes it a conversation between a child and mother. The poem is about the bombing of a Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, however, just by reading the poem it is not hard to figure that out. There is an interesting rhyme scheme because only two of the lines end in rhyme; it is an a,b,c,b scheme which I haven’t seen a lot of before. I like this poem because it puts a historical tragedy into a different perspective. It has a very personal take on the whole event. It is ironic because the child is asking his mother to go march the streets of Birmingham, and the mother is telling him he cannot go because it is too dangerous, but she is unknowingly sending him to the most dangerous place. The imagery used in the fifth stanza is also somewhat ironic when Randall describes the “white gloves on her small brown hands, And white shoes on her feet” because she is about to go to church and discover her son has died, which usually calls for a person to wear black. I think the last stanza is the strongest stanza because the actions in it are so painful, “She clawed through the bits of glass and brick…”

“A Different Image” by Dudley Randall

            This poem by Randall has a different set up than the last one. It has two stanzas with six lines in each stanza. This poem also has an interesting rhyme scheme: a, b, c, a, c, b. The line breaks are very significant because they put emphasis on the most powerful words in the poem like “create, reanimate, and replace”. Again, Randall is talking about slavery in a influential way that is different from the last poem of his I read. Words like “shatter the icons of slavery and fear” are prominent. The metaphors I found were “re-animate the mask” because he is obviously not talking about a real mask, I think he is probably referring to “the mask” as being the face of society at the time during slavery. Also, “the minstrel’s burnt-cork face” refers to the dark color of his skin.

1. The world is being compared to a stage- the people are players so maybe comparing the word to a sport played in a stadium

2. Winter is being compared to a race and Spring is coming nearer to winning the race

 3. The sun is being compared to a dog, gnawing is being compared to the sunlight beating down on the earth

 4. Hearts our being compared to a set of drums- both beating

 5. Hope is compared to a perched bird

 6. Authors life is being compared to a toad squatting on it, his wit is being compared to a pitchfork – device used to drive something away

 7. Comparing patience to a thin dress

 8. Laughing is being compared with glasses

 9. Electric fence wires are compared to a banjo

 10. Spring and a spoon are being compared   

 11. Headlights being compared to flashing – both lights and a sort of “warning” to others

 12. Life compared to a western song

• line breaks in a poem show punctuation
• they can determine the mood of a poem
• a poem can sound completely different by the way it is read and poems are read in coordination with their line breaks
• makes certain lines and phrases stand out
• can make the reader focus on something that may otherwise not be noticed as much

“Weary with Toil, I Haste Me to My Bed” by William Shakespeare 

This is a one stanza poem with 14 lines in the stanza. There is an a,b,a,b rhyme scheme with a rhyming couplet at the end. Shakespeare gives an accurate description of a person, maybe even an insomniac, tired and trying to go to sleep but having a restless mind. The poem shows the contrast of how restless the mind can be even with an exhausted body when Shakespeare writes, “The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head”. I think Shakespeare is saying that the mind and body are two very different aspects of individuals and the uses of each are very different, “To work my mind when body’s work’s expired”. The ending, or last three lines, kind of lost me with the language he uses and it was hard for me to interpret but I will go back and keep re-reading it.

“Running on Empty” by Robert Phillips

Eleven stanzas with two lines in each. No rhyme scheme, has prosaic elements. Phillips has written this poem as if he is telling it as a story. It is in the past tense but also using present tense (The fuel gauge dipping, dipping toward Empty, hitting Empty…). I don’t completely understand the use of the line breaks here. From what I can tell, the line breaks could represent pauses he takes in the story as if he were telling it orally. The last line breaks away from the rest of the poem and becomes more personal (Father, I am running on empty (empty is no longer capitalized?) still). He is obviously not referring to the car so it leaves the reader curios to find out why he is so empty.

“Miniver Cheevy” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

            Eight stanzas with four lines (quatrain) in each stanza. The rhyme scheme is a,b,a,b. It is very clear that this is about a boy, Miniver, who was born in an era long after Camelot. This is apparent in the third to last line of the last stanza when he says “Miniver cursed the commonplace and eyed a khaki suit with loathing”, because if he were actually living in medieval times, he would not be looking at a khaki suit. Although Robinson talks about how depressed and sad Miniver is about the time period he lives in, the poem comes off as playful to me. I think it comes off as playful because Miniver is a child who is fantasizing about living in another world.

“To Waken an Old Lady” by William Carlos Williams

            There is one stanza in this poem and it could be an example of enjambment. This poem stuck out to me because of the line breaks. After each line there was a question that needed to be asked:

First line- Old age is (What?)

Second line- A flight of small (flight of small what?)

Third line- cheeping birds (what are the cheeping birds doing?)

Fourth line- skimming (skimming what?)

And so on…

I’m not sure how the title of the poem relates to the text of the poem. Without the line breaks I don’t think this poem would be as interesting and it wouldn’t be read as well.

“The Donkey” by G.K. Chesterton

Four stanzas with four lines (quatrain) in each stanza. The second and fourth lines of each stanza are rhyming. I thought it might be an a,b,a,b rhyme scheme with the a’s being slant rhymes, but once I looked closer I didn’t find the words to similar enough to be slant rhymes. Confusing at first, but once I incorporated the title into the poem, I figured out it was the donkey speaking. The first stanza is confusing to me, all I can gather from it is that he is talking about a time where the impossible happened, he was born  I think he describes a donkey in a very interesting way by using the similes like “ears like errant wings”. Other than that I don’t see a lot of imagery until the last couple of lines, when “There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet”. It seems as if he is saying someone, a human, has just died before him, maybe when he says “One far fierce hour and sweet:”, he was attacking a person?

“Care and Feeding” by Billy Collins

Five stanzas with four lines in each stanza (quatrain). There is no rhyme scheme. This poem almost seems prosaic because it is like a story being told. Collins does a very interesting thing with this poem because it is from the point of view of both a dog and a human. I think it really shows a close relationship between a man and his dog. I really liked this poem because there is a distinct difference between the point of views, but they are blended together so well. I found a ton of imagery in the poem because most people know exactly what it feels like when I dog jumps up and licks your nose and ears and eyelids while you tell them to get down. It captures the stereotypes of a dog’s behavior (making three circles then lying down on the wood floor, hold a biscuit gingerly in teeth) and human’s reactions to their behaviors (telling them to get down, giving them a biscuit out of the jar, checking every once and a while to make sure they’re still there).

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

Two stanzas with five lines in each stanza (cinquain). The mood of this poem is very cold  and dark which relates to the “winter” part of the title. It is obviously about his father working very hard, on Sundays as well, to provide for his family. The labor he was doing seems to be very grueling and done under harsh conditions (“put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached”). Hayden makes it easy to see the state of mind he was in as a boy seeing his father live a exhausting and bitter life. I get the feeling like Hayden is regretting never thanking his father for the things he did for him.

The Three Ravens – Anonymous Terminal refrain- “with a down”. Reads like lyrics to a song. Six stanzas but varying amount of lines in each stanza; the first stanza has 4 lines the middle stanzas have 7 lines and the last stanza has 3 lines. Some rhyming couplets and slant rhymes – rhyme scheme continually changes. I don’t exactly understand all of the “downs” and “derry downs”, to me they seem unnecessary in the poem. The use of the lines “Down a down, hey down, hey down” and “With a down, derry, derry, derry down, down” seem like they would be more appropriate in a song because it doesn’t seem very poetic. This poem was hard to understand, I wasn’t sure if the ravens and hawks were references to people or not.

Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy

Rhyme scheme of a, b, b, a. Four stanzas with four lines in each stanza. Similes – “And the sun was white, as though chidden of God” and “And a grin of bitterness swept thereby Like an ominous bird a-wing”. Very metaphoric writing like “And a grin of bitterness swept thereby”. God is referenced a couple times- could be showing some background of the authors religious upbringing. Begins and ends talking about a pond. The “white sun”, “winter day”, “leaves on the starving sod” are all references to neutral tones- relates to the title.

The Man with Night Sweats – Thom Gunn

There are 8 stanzas, the stanzas switch off from being 4 lines to 2 lines. In the stanzas with 4 lines, there is an a,b,a,b rhyme scheme. The stanzas with 2 lines in them have and a,a rhyme scheme making them rhyming couplets. Slant rhymes are used in a few of the stanzas. I liked this poem because there is a good rhythm to it when you read it aloud. I think the title is very interesting and plays a huge part in the poem. If I had not read the title before, I would think the poem could be about any number of things. But since I knew it was about night sweats I found the title very fitting to the poem.

I think God gets lonely being the almighty one in charge with no one else like him. Nobody loves a master, because no one likes getting bossed around, no matter who it is. The hymns and praises show reverence of those who attend church on Sunday. Try picturing God, being so powerful, walking through a hallway and all the people coming from different places, trying to serve him. But, is there anyone who would walk with him? Anyone who would see themselves as an equal? Would anyone try and treat God like they would any other human, by buying him a coke or a beer or questioning his opinions? He is tired of looking down on everyone. He doesn’t have anyone that is as great as him, therefore he gets tired of being so great and just wants to be like everyone else because he is the one and only.

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