Dream Song 14 (Blog 3)

Dream Song 14 by John Berryman kept me interested throughout the whole poem. The first line, "Life, friends, is boring" caught my attention. He then goes on to, "We must not say so." I liked this line because it's true and he follows it up with talking about how his mother always told him, "Ever to confess you're bored means you have no Inner Resources." This reminded me of when my mother used to tell me only boring people are boring. Berryman employs a line break between "no" and "Inner Resources," which really emphasizes him having no Inner Resources. I liked the sound of "tranquil hills, & gin." It sounds nice when read aloud. I also enjoyed his use of commas,"literature bores me, especially great literature...who loves people and valiant art, which bores me." They make me want to dramatically pause and let what he wrote sink in. At the end, he talks about a dog and the very last line he says, "behind: me, wag." I have no idea what this meant, it really confused me, but I also really liked it and feel like it works.

From Pine Island to West Virginia

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota 

In this poem the words chosen describe the place. When the author writes, “ravine behind the empty house,” I could imagine a small water passage in the woods behind a decrepit wooden house. The narrator mentions cowbells and a “field of sunlight.” All of which resemble a typical farm environment. “Two pines” stuck out to me because the title reveals the place “Pine Island” and that is all the narrator mentioned about pines. Horses and chickens are also brought up throughout the poem and those animals are a distinctive characteristic of a farm. The author guides the viewer through the farm as he is surrounded by it. The title explores he is at a farm, but the writer gives you the details, big and small, that give away his location (he never says farm within the poem). 

In Respond to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned 

The place can be many different things in this poem and it can be described many different ways, but I think in this case West Virginia is the place and it is described and explored through wording. The reader sees an image of a rover reoccurring. “Down the river,” “to the river and in the river.” At first, the poem begins with a typical depiction of a small town. “twenty-third and Water Streets,” “vinegar works,” “doors open early in the evening,” “swinging their purses, the women.” All of these lines are small details that make up a town, specifically Wheeling, West Virginia. There’s a dramatic turn in this poem when the reference to suicide is brought up. At first the author is illustrating a small town in  West Virginia, then he makes a statement about Ohio in the beginning of the poem, but at the end it develops into a bad place. When he writes about the women drowning in the river, he alludes to suicide and the poem takes a turn. Wright states that the two shores of the river, hell and Bridgeport, Ohio…then he says Ohio is basically worse than hell. and why would anyone want to commit suicide by jumping into the Wheeling river in West Virginia? 

Dim, doily, draping

"Filling Station" by Elizabeth Bishop is highly direct from the beginning; the reader can immediately envision the filling station just from the first line ("Oh, but it is dirty!") The first stanza only details an oily, black, dirty setting but as the poem progresses, she introduces homey aspects (such as the porch, the wicker sofa, the dog, etc.) and paints them as being grease covered as well, providing a scene and general feeling of a place that's dirty yet comforting (if that makes sense). The parallel of filthy carelessness with attentiveness, especially the part where she is analyzing the plant and how someone cares for it, depicts a sense of comfort and optimism ("Somebody loves us all.")  The greasiness and oiliness are what come to mind the most when envisioning the setting, mostly from her frequent use of the word "oil" and "grease" but also from incorporating the "oi" sound in other words (doily, embroidered) and the alliteration of the letter "d" (dim, doily, draping) as if to implement the word "dirty" in the reader's mind. I also liked "The automatic garage-door opener" and "The absent tenant's electricity..." because the author goes beyond these homes and into the surroundings they are in, giving the reader a full vision of the home, the town, the weather, everything; it is all encompassing and appeals to various senses.

Trebel in Paradise

Octaves from you
absentmindedly practice
two, no three times a week

Wonder what kind of man Beethoven was
perhaps he took his children to The Nutcracker

Sharp, stern, scary
flat monotone voice
eyes that used to twinkle
now black as the keys

count with me
the number of missed recitals
do not bang or hit
gentle bird cage fingers

a whole note mother
a missing note father

The Blowing Bronze Butterfly

James Wright's poem Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota is quite the descriptive, picturesque poem. The fact that his exact location is in the title already paints a picture in your mind. There is absolutely no debate over where he is and what he is doing in that place. His observations, however, and detail, make for the bells and whistles that accent his state of mind and place. Lying in a Hammock already sounds comforting, but the first line is what truly captured my attention. The alliteration within in the phrase "Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in the green shadow," already gives the reader a beautiful, bouncing, vibe that acts quite like the flight of a butterfly. The butterfly being asleep, yet "blowing like a leaf" reminds me of his own personal state of rocking in a hammock, quiet and observant. His view goes from the trunk of the tree, up to the fields and the cows retreating with their ringing bells, and then finally up into the sky, alluring that although he is being descriptive and observant of his surroundings, he is actually looking around to learn something about himself...which is why the non-descriptive thought of "I have wasted my life" comes at such a surprise. He sees all the beauty around him and then dies back into his own mind. What he means, however, by "I have wasted my life" still confuses me. Overall, Lying in a Hammock relays a beautiful picture to the reader.

Sitting in a chair at the library typing at a desk on the first floor

The poem that stood out the most to me in this pack was James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."  Not only did the title right away give away the place, but the descriptive imagery within the piece was incredibly vivid.  The title sets the scene, and then the poem describes a vivid scene.  The line that especially caught my eye was "The cowbells follow one another into the distances of the afternoon," because you can literally just imagine the long afternoon, maybe in late summer.  Without mentioning the time of year, the reader can imagine that it's a late summer day because of the use of words like "sunlight" "golden" and "blaze."
However, the last line of the poem is "I have wasted my life." I think this is because the author has reflected on the beauty around him and it has made him question his life; sometimes a beautiful scene can make you feel that way.

The Chimera

Yusef uses language that juxtaposes the men to animals as a way of evoking the feeling of dehumanization that was brought on by the Vietnam war to those who served in it. By describing the way that the soldiers were forced to hide throughout the day, allowing themselves to become part of the landscape rather than people it is easy to get a view into the psychology that destroyed men in the Vietnam War. The day light is not the time for them to move about for fear of the enemy finding them and killing them. The title of the poem itself reflects what they became: chimeras. Men had to take on the qualities of animals and landscapes in an attempt to survive.

The Droppings of Last Year's Horses

The picture that James Wright paints in “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” is as soothing as it gets. This is a place where I, too, would just love to take a nap in a hammock. The images of the bronze butterfly and the cowbells following one another are simple details of a beautiful place. The last line, however, could mean a few things. Wright writes, “I have wasted my life.” Could this mean that he has wasted his life lying in this hammock? Or perhaps he wasted it doing things other than lying in the hammock, when all along he should have paid better attention to little beautiful details? Either way this poem does a lovely job of putting the reader in the scene. Here I am sitting in the library, wishing I was at William Duffy's farm. 

Elizabeth Bishop’s "Filling Station" captures what gives are mundane lives meaning. While reading her poem, I believed her to be simply describing a mucky, middle-of-nowhere, ma and pa gas station- which she did beautifully. When I read her final line, "someone loves us all," I audibly gasped in elation. The obvious signs of somebody’s hard work were not necessarily beautiful images; the row of cans spelling ESSO SO-SO-SO or the colorful comic stack of comic books offered little visual pleasure. However, Bishop successfully articulates that any degree of labor and thought a person gives to making another feel more comfortable is an indication of love. Even in a dinky gas station that probably sees few visitors, somebody makes an effort to ensure every wandering driver that stops by has a nicely embroidered doily to admire; somebody cares about the little details that make a positive difference to a stranger’s experience; somebody cares. I think if Bishop had written her entire poem harping on the love and care that someone at a dirty gas station expresses with a taboret and how she felt loved because of it, the tone could be too mushy and therefore not as intriguing. By employing stanzas describing every dirty detail, only including the beautiful parts at the end, Bishop effectively creates not only a unique plot twist, but she also allows her descriptions of the little details that made the place special seem as insignificant and almost unnoticeable in the poem as they did at the actual filling station itself.

"Life Bout: or, the philosophy of a roller derby jammer"

"Life Bout: or, the philosophy of a roller derby jammer" by Marley The jammer never lingers long in loss’s Stagnation./ It’s a whistle,/ Heels up wheels up/ Toe toe toe—Sprint/ Rolling Lightening/ Around the track,/ Looping, legs reach/ Crossing, lift each/ Shedding something,/ Physicality— Until/ A Block. A stop./ A bust. A down/ to the knees, A/ worn wrists breaking,/ The speed onto/ A chalky con-/ crete floor./ A low look at sister skates, still scuttle-/ shiffling ahead, but/ None of this felt—/ For fast without / Single solid/ Thought sticking to/ Padded knees smack smack, pull/ Legs above wheels,/ Then, a lean breathe/ Lift wheels toe toe/ Sprint! Roll on and/ On again, always/ Looking forward/ and back, fast 'round/ the track.

The Town

            One of the poems that really stood out to me was The Absent Tenant’s Electricity written by Joshua Harmon. The title of the poem and the first line make it seem as if the entire poem is going to be about a single household but instead it is about everything around it. From the first description of the tenant’s thawing turkey to the bird’s nest above the mall imagery helps paint the picture of the small town. The imagery of the poem allows the reader to really visualize what the town and its people are like. The reader is able to infer from the details given that the town is quite old and a place of the religious working poor. The line that gives away the age of the town is when the poem describes its mayor turning down his hearing aid in order to stop the loudness of chainsaws. From the sound of the lumberjacks’ chainsaws you can tell that the town is quite secluded since the forest is very close to the neighborhood. Another line that shows the economic status of the town is not only the first, but also when the author states that there are “so many garages for rent.” All of those details alone may paint many different pictures but when put together they represent the town itself. Although the poem may not directly tell the story, the real story is all in the details.

Places you don't want to be

In ‘Camouflaging the Chimera’, Komunyakaa uses the diction we’d associate with nature and camouflage such as ‘twigs’, ‘helmets’ and ‘mud’. We are thwarted into something of a wild war-zone where the speakers find themselves alone with ‘ghosts’ that walk among them. Someone or something has died here. The use of enjambment signifies no break in their collective thoughts; this is a ‘world’ where they are all nervous, where they move fluidly as one. We find a moment of poetic beauty in the middle of the poem when the speaker alliterates ‘station of shadows’. This works like  some kind of milestone in this poem where we feel lost in its magnitude an uncertainty. The idea of the apes ‘throwing stones at the sunset’ sounds crazy but it reminds us that there is a romantic backdrop to this warzone. We can also imagine it is about to get dark for the characters, signifying danger, which is probably more reason for them to move fast. Additionally, we find many ‘s’ sounds in this text, symbolic of the quiet hissing and sliding through the forest atmosphere.

This is very different to the ‘Filling Station’ by Bishop. She strategically uses repetition to create a paranoid tone in the poem at this ‘gray’, ‘dirty’ environment. This repetition gives the poem a song-like voice, even without any end-rhymes, unbefitting of the busy, dull environment. The speaker is adamant about the idea of this place being ‘oily’, which is heavy, uncomfortable and pungent. This fits the idea that the filling station is a place we don’t expect love to spring up but alas it belongs to a happy family who water their plants and embroider their doilies. The use of end-stopping at the last line creates a powerful volta as the speaker comes to the conclusion about the magic of this place.

Above the River

There were two poems written by the same man in our place poems packet that really stood out to me and made me have to read over them more then 4 times each. James Wright is a writer who is obviously well disconnected from his own life and feelings and therefore he employs his trajectories into his own poems. For Example, In his first poem Lying in a Hammock in William Duffy's farm in Pine Island, Minnesota I was completely caught off by the title, seeing as no other poem I've ever read had such a literal image of the place where their small story is taking place. The next thing i noticed was his use of simile to compare the butterfly in the yard on the black trunk to "blowing like a leaf in a green shadow." He then goes on to describe how "the cowbells follow one another into the distances of the afternoon." He delivered such short phrases of descriptive imagery in his writing that it was hard to read between the lines that he seems to be utterly bored with his simple and quiet life that he has had while lying in the hammock in William Duffy's farm. He even went so far as to say that he wasted his life. Revealing to me that he is not satisfied with the simplicity of this life.

The second poem is also written by James Wright and it is also titled explicitly so as to envision the location they are in.
In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia Has Been Condemned, is another poem he wrote with the same simplistic feeling, only this time it had a more lonely feel to it. He described that he would be "alone as he always was alone when he strolled down along" here I saw a little bit of assonance here with the repetition of words that have similar vowel sounds. The next verse went on to describe his creep like ability as he hid in the hobo streams and watched down river as the women swung their purses and poured down the long street in the river, showing a bit of ambiguity to me, and honestly i have no clear understanding for what he meant by this when i read it. Towards the end he ends his poem with the mention of nobody committed suicide, but only found death beyond Bridgeport Ohio, which again, I still don't understand what he means by this. He ended his poem the same as the first with a depressing and somber tone.

Bishop and Komunyakaa

Bishop's Filling Station is both insulting and obvious into one type of lifestyle of what I immediately thought of as the uneducated blue-collar class. Bishop's tone seems to insist that she is in disbelief that people live lives such as this- but upon further inspection, this poem invokes thoughts of a mechanical way of life. These individuals are so encapsulated in their way of life- whether happily or not (though it would seem they are just going about their day as if nothing else quite matters): "Somebody embroidered the doily./Somebody waters the plant,/ or oils it, maybe. Somebody/ arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say:/ ESSO-SO-SO-SO" The last line suggests to me either that these people, though they may be simple and mechanical, have tapped in to some part of the human psyche so as to keep their dingy way of life alive through their business, or that perhaps this arranging of the cans is some intervention of a divinity that even the dirtiest individuals have some sort of sense about them. Or perhaps I am off entirely. Finally, I appreciate the different use of enjambment and the end-stopped lines as they seem to make the imagery come alive more with purposeful pauses and breaks.

Komunyakaa's Camouflaging the Chimera obviously has meaning interconnected with the Vietnam war and gives a totally different tone, for me, than Filling Station (perhaps this is why I like both of these). This poem invokes much more visceral, animal, and instinctual feelings of survival and stealth: "from Saigon to Bangkok/ with women left in doorways/ reaching in from America./ We aimed at dark-hearted songbirds.". You also see the desperation and the need to push on, whether to fulfill the mission, or more seriously, for hatred (or perhaps something else) for the enemy: "But we waited till the moon touched metal, till something almost broke inside us". Finally, I see use of consonance (broke/silk; l-shaped/revolved/eyelid) near the end of the poem which helps to further drive the tone that Komunyakaa is trying to bring forth.

Grace Paley's "Fathers"

Grace Paley's Fathers caught my eye in a way that I found refreshing at first and sometimes somber at others. I like the fact that this is about the "other" parent. I feel as though women often get more poetic justice than men do in any sense, so to see this subject matter is in itself capturing. Secondly, I find instances here of acceptance (though perhaps this is not the correct word) "see fatherings of many colors with their round babies on their laps", and excitedness of a new-found family dynamic and wholeness "these scenes were brand-new/ exciting for an old woman who/ had watched the old fathers/ gathering once again in/familiar Army camps../". As I said, this poem is refreshing as it offers a different take on the distaste for war and the positive effect that the lack of war can have on the family rather than the negative effect that war has on the family. 

I also see different kinds of rhyme within Fathers. At times there are instances of assonance (third stanza) and at others there are instances of end rhyme (lines 18-19). In doing this it seems that Paley keeps her readers interested in that one is not quite aware of what sound the next stanza will have, and in doing so the tone changes slightly within the progress of the piece. There is figurative imagery used in the last stanza of the older generation of fathering men meeting to plan the eradication of more 'motherly' fathers of the new generation. This is quite interesting and speaks not only to the loss of a sense of masculinity some may have felt was lost in the newer generation of fathers, but also the disconnect and impression that those war-like fathers have left on their children who now parent such a contrasting way. 

Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry

With a title like “Meditation at Lagunitas”, I expected Robert Hass’s poem to be a bit more soothing than it is. Though the images represented in his work are beautiful and vivid, they are connected to one of the author’s solemn memories; a past lover he was enamored with. The poem begins with the line, “All the new thinking is about loss.” Hass then delves into this idea in the proceeding lines, using images such as a “clown- / faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk / of that black birch” to extend the tone of tone of grief he feels after losing his lover and, in a way, some sort of natural setting of his childhood. The woodpecker symbolizes his own form of personal sadness, and the black birch is, in a way, his psyche after suffering the losses he has experienced. Hass then begins to describe a scene in which he is sharing a “thin wire of grief” with a “querulous” tone with a friend of his. (Querulous, by the way, means ‘in a petulant manner’, and it might be my new favorite word) This scene is also depicted to be late at night, so it gives the reader an idea of a dark, gray setting in which two friends are sharing their woes. It’s almost as if the air around you turns just as somber as you continue to read from Hass’s experiences. He begins to describe of a woman he had intimate relations with, and how being with her reminded him of his childhood home. This portion of the work is written so beautifully and seamlessly that the audience can sense his “thirst for salt”, see the “island willows”, and hear the “silly music from the pleasure boat”. At this point, just with his vivid imagery, Hass manages to make the reader feel both longing for a lost lover and a childhood home which they have never had. Hass then returns to the image of the woman, saying how he remembers “the way her hands dismantled bread, / the thing her father said that hurt her, / what she dreamed.” Here Hass has managed to take the reader from a somber scene in the middle of the night, to a bright memory of his childhood, and then back to images of the woman he is lamenting in the first place. Through his vivid words it’s almost impossible not to see each one of the things he describes, and to feel sorrow that they are gone. At the close of the poem, I felt as if I should have been saying “blackberry” with Hass to grieve with him. 

Black Gold and the Countryside

Although I enjoyed several pieces from the selection of place poems we are supposed to read for the upcoming lesson on Friday, there are two I particularly liked.

The first one is by Elizabeth Bishop and bears the title "Filling Station". The idea of a place which is evoked only by the first stanza is nothing but incredible – although the filling station in my imagination pretty soon turns into something darker, more industrialized, colossal; an oil rig out on the grey sea with engineers covered in black slime. "oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency." Are we still at a "little filling station"? To contrast the word "little" with the industrial monstrosity evoked by the repeated dark vowels has a strong effect. The consonances in the second stanza add an additional notion of danger: "and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him". It is daily work, sons helping out at the filling station, but Bishop's sharp s-sounds make it feel like a dangerous task (which it is – "Be careful with that match!"). What follows is a more accurate description of the place with balances out the over-the-top description of oil and greasy nature from the first stanzas and gives more shape to the actual place: "It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease-impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy." One can see the place now.

The other poem which struck me was "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota", which keeps exactly what the title promises. Everyone who rested in the countryside before knows the described feeling of standstill, silence and how time can follow different rules outside of the city. Time is also what the last line of the poem is concerning with: "I have wasted my life" strikes with a unexpected heaviness into the described idyll. A sharp cut with makes you immediately want to reread the whole poem. And again you encounter pleasant and light alliterations like in "bronze butterfly" and rhythmically ringing "cowbells follow[ing] one another" (assonance). You lean back like the lyrical I – and the final line strikes again.    

Annus Mirabilis Means Wonderful Year

Philip Larkin's "Annus Mirabilis" caught my attention because it is rhythmically pleasing. This poem enforces rhyme as much as possible. It uses a simple ABBAB pattern. The author uses an array of poetic techniques as seen here in the first stanza:

Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(Which was rather late for me) -

Between the end of the Chatterly ban

And the Beatles' first LP. 

It is clear that there is end rhymes. There is also assonance with the repetition of the hard ee sound within nineteen, three, me, between, Beatles and LP. There is also internal rhyme that coincides with the assonance that is seen within the stanza. 

What immediately caught my attention to the poem was first the title "Annus Mirabilis".  I had no idea what it meant so I looked up the meaning. Annus Mirabilis is a Latin phrase that means wonderful year. After getting past the title the first line caught my attention. It interested me why the author would use the term sexual intercourse rather than something less scientific or formal. There is an obvious denotation that comes with the term sexual intercourse, but the connotation is what gets me. The connotation of sexual intercourse really gets the author's point across. It's awkward, it feels awkward to say it and it leaves almost an unsettling feeling within you, but that's the point. The author is discussing having sex for the first time which he conveys his own experience as being awkward by the connotation of a single phrase. This just goes to show the complexity that poetry truly has. 

Steve Kowit Taught Me Well

Imaginative Writing is such a technique to learn from. In our book, there is a poem called The Grammar Lesson written by Steve Kowit that taught me real well about the basics of learning correct and precise grammar. What really interested me with this poem is that it was not boring for me. In fact i found it to be actually pretty funny and an entertaining read. Personally, I will just say that i am not a big fan of poetry, however, Steve Kowit's ability to keep me focused and slightly amused whilst reading his words were quite surprising for me. The first line reads:

A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does. 

An adjective is what describes the noun. 

In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

Steve then began to break down the use of correct grammar in this sentence word by word and explaining why we use a preposition, followed by a noun, which is then followed by a verb. He employs quite a few poetic techniques that allow him to get his lesson across the paper to us. He uses a lot of consonance and assonance in his last verse such as:

See? There's nothing to it. Just

 memorize these rules...or write them down!

A noun's a thing,  verb's the thing it does.

The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.

There really wasn't much that I did not understand about this poem other than why he chose the example he did, I mean he thinks about a can of beets anyway? It has purple fuzz in it. Gross. 

Anything but a Grammar Lesson

Steve Kowit's "The Grammar Lesson" flawlessly paints the impossibility of the english language. We learn foundational grammar rules to only have them destroyed in the continuation of our education. Grammar seems like a faulty, damaging circle of lies if you ask me. However, it would be challenging to teach a first grader the difference between to, two, and too or maybe plough and plow, or how about who and whom? Regardless, english grammar contradicts itself repeatedly. Steve Kowit presents a "simple" set of rules you only have to memorize. Kowit lacks to mention that for every rule there are 100 exceptions. Make sure to memorize those too.

After reading the poem several times, my head spinning, the grammar lesson being taught was almost impossible to interpret.

The poem begins with an oversimplified definition.

"A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does."

This line repeats throughout the poem, drilling into the audience's head meaningless words unsuccessfully defining a noun and a verb. When you think you understand, the nouns and verbs become interchangeable.

"A can can roll - or not"

Along with his dizzy language, Kowit purposefully uses poetic techniques like assonance and alliteration. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. While alliteration is the repetition of words with the same beginning consonant.

"is filled with"
"filled with purple fuzz"

Steve Kowit's rambling, repeating poem felt like the carnival's spinning cups that should have ended when the first kid puked his digested cotton candy. Overall, the poem was entertaining and nonsensical in the same way we use language.

The Mathematics of Life

“The One Girl at the Boy’s Party” by Sharon Olds uses mathematics to discuss puberty. This poem intrigued me particularly because it is the one that I understand the least out of all of the poems shown. It uses mathematical terms in an attempt to explain puberty in a new way. I understand that this is an attempt at the use of conceit, but because of my lacking in mathematical knowledge I feel like I’m missing something. I do not doubt that math I capable of commenting on life in some valuable way. After all a good number of very influential philosophers have been well versed and notable mathematicians. There is a definite link in mathematical thought and thought concerning life’s grander mysteries.

The mystery of puberty is being explored here in mathematical terms that don’t entirely make sense to me. As a conceit it makes sense that it uses terms that are so far apart that it is necessary for the writer to help the reader to make the logical jump that they have discovered. This jump just isn’t happening for me. What do all the terms reflect exactly? The best I can understand is that the girl as an unknown power over the boys at the party because she has begun to enter her womanhood. 

 

The cold directness of Sylvia Plath’s opening line of "Stillborn" is unaffectionate and distant, though the rest of the poem is very emotional and sympathetic. "These poems do not live: it is a sad diagnosis," uniquely introduces the poem’s theme of death, particularly inexplicable infant death. Plath opens her emotional questioning of why some mothers must endure the labor of a perfectly healthy infant only to have the child born deceased rather bluntly. Though she goes on to exclaim "O I cannot explain what happened to them!" and fills the rest of her poem with more lines harping on the senseless tragedy of stillbirths, her poem concludes just as coldly as it begins: "And they stupidly stare and do not speak at her." Plath’s poem is actually very similar to the short life of a stillborn baby. She describes how a baby develops perfectly healthy in the womb, and then the poem abruptly ends with an image of a lifeless infant. The conclusion also conjures the same feelings of unexpected and irreversible loss that a mother of a stillborn baby would feel. I also find the line "And they smile and smile and smile and smile at me" very interesting as well. The phrase "smile and smile" is almost cliché, but Plath’s addition of a second "smile and smile" makes the smiles seem haunting and never ending; I can feel the emptiness of a deceased infant’s expressionless face by the end of this line. Plath’s poem effectively elicits empty, confused emotions.

A Noun's a Thing. A Verb's the Thing it Does.

“The Grammar Lesson” by Steve Kowit is interesting because it was supposedly teaching a simple lesson on grammar, which is “A noun’s a thing. A verb’s the thing it does.” But in the poem, nouns and verbs start to be used interchangeably like, “A can can roll- or not.” The word “can” is used as both a noun and a verb in one sentence. The same thing happens with “Is is a helping verb.” And then we are supposed to have gotten it by the end of the poem, but really it is just a confusing mess.

Stillborn - Sylvia Plath

The first time I read it and paid attention solely to the subject matter, it became evident that Plath details the growth of a fetus and birth of a stillborn child as an allegory for her sentiments on her own writing. In the way that a fetus develops suitably for life ("They grew their toes and fingers well enough, / Their little foreheads bulged with concentration") so do her poems, yet the finished product is lifeless and she feels like a bereaved mother. I definitely relate (as do all writers really); sometimes we'll create something that seemed right and promising, except when we're done we'll  realize that it's not compelling or it doesn't achieve what we want it to, and we don't know why. Plath is confessing the frustration and despair of failing at her passion (like a singer that has lost their voice) yet structurally, the poem is composed and organized and does not directly reflect the anguish she feels with choppy stanzas or cacophony for instance, except for the last stanza where she uses enjambment to isolate the words that explicitly depict her hopelessness. The tone this structure produces when read, especially out loud, is melancholic as well.

The Fuzz in the can of Beats

Steve Kowit's "The Grammar Lesson" uses villanelle form to mimic the sound of a grammar lesson to a young learner. The repetition of the lines in the villanelle form create this confusing circular pattern of speech that hardly explains how "a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does" at all, despite the poem's being called a "lesson." The first line and the last line of the first stanza repeat in calculated places throughout the poem; however, the repetition of these same lines in other contexts in the poem creates this overcomplicated jumble of a "grammar lesson" within the poem. In this way, the poem itself rolls like a can. Adding to this garbled effect are the puns and sound play working within the poem. The speaker defines "a can" as a noun but then says "A can can roll," switching the form of the word can to a verb rather than a noun. Another pun is that "filled isn't a full verb," which sounds counterintuitive until one realizes that "filled" must follow a helping verb. These puns mark all of inconsistancies at work within the language that make saying, "Just memorize these rules," seem totally ridiculous. The speaker also uses sound devices to give the poem its dizzying rolling effect. In "'Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz,'" Kowit uses assonance sounds in "is filled with" and in "purple fuzz." Kowit also uses alliteration with "filled" and "fuzz." All of these repeating sounds within this line roll together like fizz together as if they did fill a rolling can. A "can of beets" could also be a pun playing on "beats," referring to the poem lesson as a can of beats that results from the mixing of all of these sounds. In this way, the poem expresses all of the linguistic complications left misrepresented in simply saying, "A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does."

The poem ward

In Plath’s ‘Stillborn’ she compares the dead, specifically dead babies, to failed poems. It is ironic since it is not the typical romantic image we would associate with poetry. I approached this piece with a solemn outlook, expecting something bloody and tragic about an experience I wouldn’t understand, but instead this funny imagery of the poem that reeks really struck me as a writer. I almost know what feeling she is talking about.

 The act of writing poetry is a common topic for poems historically but it is usually to reminisce about how easy and natural it feels, or about the presence of a muse. It’s refreshing how she humanly owns up to her ‘failure’. A lot of the genius of the poem comes from its subversion of  these poetic stereotypes. It is also beautiful that being a competent writer is compared to being a mother since it reclaims poetry from its traditional misconception as a patriarchal art form.

On the other hand, the poem does not use the narrative of the mother. Instead, it is the distant doctor looking down on the dead body he just delivered, or the little boy annoyed at his dead goldfish. Maybe Plath can’t appreciate her poetry from her own view point? The writer is the harshest critic of their work in this piece. The repetition adds to this sense of failure by emphasising ‘dead’ in the last stanza and ‘smile’ in the second one, almost to a comedic effect. The writer starts to see shame in their own work as the poem looks at them mockingly.

Though ‘Stillborn’ is not as musical as Plath’s other poems, it creates a disjointed voice through enjambement and endstopping of the lines. In some ways she references to this technique herself when she says ‘they are proper in shape and number and every part’, as if any poetic technique she uses won't make the poem sound good. The lines cut like starting and stopping the car engine that won’t budge. The feeling of miscarriage is brought back at the end since we sense the subject matter shift due to this variation in line length and the affirmation that 'they were' once 'alive'. This volta makes us really question whether we are still taking about writing, or 'they' who 'do not speak of her'.