A Dream Deferred

So, out of all the poems in this unit I would have to say this was my favorite one... And that's not just because it was the shortest and easiest to understand (or so I think), but because when I read it I immediately got the impression that it was written for anyone. To me, the message of the poem was simple "Go for a dream you have as soon as you can. If you wait it could be too late and you will miss out on your opportunity". What I thought was really interesting about this poem was the fact that it was written by Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance so he most likely wrote this for the African American community. Either way, I thought it was a really versatile poem in the way that anyone could apply it to their life. Another thing i liked about the poem was Hughes use of similes to get his point across. Instead of saying something like "you will regret not going for a dream" or "it will always bother you to know that you didn't take that chance" Hughes says "[Does it].. fester like a sore- and then run?" I thought that was a really strong image.

Spring

I thought this poem was almost the easiest one to understand. Obviously it takes place during the springtime (question 5). Everyone knows that spring represents new life- that's when all the flowers are blooming and you get the image of bunnies and ducklings and all sorts of happy things. the author conveys this idea with different words such as "beautiful, blooms, richness, lambs, joy, Eden". The poem therefore is about the innocence of spring. It represents unmarked and pure life. The author is comparing Spring to children because they both posses the innocence of youth. One line that really supports this idea is, "Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning" The author is basically saying that yes everything in springtime (as in youth) is beautiful and pure- but that's only at first. Soon it will "cloud" or become tarnished by sin. I can;t really think of a word to describe the overall tone of the poem, however I would say that the overarching theme of this poem is the idea that springtime is just like youth- beautiful and pure.

I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain

Not gonna lie, this one was kinda creepy. When I first read it I immediately picked up on the idea- this girl is dead and she's talking about what it is like inside the coffin. Weird. But after our large group discussion someone pointed out another way to interpret this poem which i think fits. They said it's almost as if the speaker is going crazy- the mourners then would be the people around her trying to help her and bring her back to reality. One line that really struck me was "My Mind was going numb-" I think the author is trying to tell the reader that she really is losing her train of thought. I think the poem says a lot about who the speaker is: a woman who is slowly becoming delusional and she doesn't realize it until it's too late (question 2). The last stanza, I believe, really supports this thought. it says, "And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down- And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing then". This to me seems like the speaker finally realized (plank of reason) "okay, I'm crazy" but this realization is too much for her to handle and she snaps "broke, And I dropped down, and down.." And that's when her state becomes basically irreversible.

After Apple Picking

So I'm not completely sure if I fully understood what this poem meant. I thought the poem was about a person who has died. Their life therefore is being described as apple-picking. The first line, "My long two-pointed ladder's sticking thorough a tree Toward heaven still And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough". I thought this meant that the speaker was going up to heaven- like walking up the ladder. He stops and thinks about his life and how it is incomplete: "barrel that i didn't fill". And the next part "and there may be two or three Apples..." I took to mean that there were still a few people he hadn't forgiven in his life that he wanted to before he died. More support I found within the poem are the phrases "Long sleep" and "But I am done with apple-picking now." I thought both of these symbolized death. (question 12) I thought the whole poem was an allegory- the speaker is dead and on his way to heaven. He is looking back and his life at all the things he didn't get the chance to make right or finish. The title "After Apple-Picking" I feel could be interpreted as "After Living" because essentially the poem is about how one feels about their life once they are dead.

"Those Winter Sundays"

I thought that the overall tone of this poem was regret. A lot of people disagree and said that it was sort of like suppressed anger that the author had about his father. I don't think this is true because of the first stanza. He says "...then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze." I thought the fact that the author took the time to say that his fathers hands were cracked and he was in physical pain from his labor showed that the author noticed and wanted the reader to visualize the amount of work the father did. Also, the author ends the first stanza with the sentence "No one ever thanked him." To me it's like he's saying "My dad worked so hard all these years and we never took the time to notice or appreciate it." The last stanza especially solidified my thought because he says "What did i know, what did i know of love's austere and lonely offices?" (I looked up austere just to make sure and it means strict) Therefore I took this poem to be almost a reflection. This man has grown up and finally realized and appreciated his fathers strictness and his hard work that as a child he really couldn't relate to- he was "indifferent" as he says. I liked this poem just because I think a lot of people can apply it to their lives. They don't appreciate what their parents do for them now because they think they are being annoying or overprotective but when they get older they will be thankful that their parents cared so much for them. The central theme of the poem is that as one grows older they learn to appreciate things they didn't notice while they were young.

"The Widows Lament"

The overall tone of this poem seems negative (question8) . Obviously the widow is upset over the loss of her husband. In our small groups a lot of people talked about the flowers symbolizing a funeral. I don't think that is true. When i read this poem it kind of reminded me of my dad. Recently my dad found his best friend dead in his home. Although my dad was very upset over this loss, he distanced himself from the situation. My dad never shows emotion. This reminded me of the poem because the woman lost her husband- someone who was obviously very close to her. It seemed like both my dad and the widow (and anyone else who loses someone close to them) is torn between two thoughts - she wants to run from the pain and the memories (which i thought represented her mind because she says "sorry is my own yard" her yard is her mind because its where she is confined to and she wants to leave because it reminds her of her husband) - but at the same time I think she would feel bad and that is why she says she wants to sink in the marsh and fall in the flowers. She wants to move on and be happy but she doesn't to be happy because she feels bad about losing him and doesn't want to forget him.

I'm Always Right.... Or Am I?

I actually enjoyed reading this article because it brought up a question that a lot of people have "How do you know what is right/wrong when interpreting poetry?" I think a lot of times people just assume that you really can't be wrong about how you interpret a poem. I don't agree with this assumption. If a poem is all about flowers and someone decides its really about nuclear warfare, that is clearly wrong. However, I did like the comparison Perrine made in his paper. He compared poems to inkblots - in the fact that it is really up to the reader to decide what they believe the poem is about. Another thing I found interesting in this article was the way in which the poets seemed to react towards the topic of interpretation. Perrine says, "No poet, however likes to be caught in the predicament of having to explain his own poems. He cannot say, 'What I really meant was. . .' without admitting failure, or without saying something different (and usually much less) than what his poem said." This part really stuck out to me, maybe because it reminded me of the ending of The Sun Also Rises in the way that the author uses ambiguity to create more of an effect. After reading this it seemed to me that Perrine says Poets don't want to be too clear on the meanings of their poems so that readers may interpret them however they really want.
In his paper, Perrine lists the two criteria used for interpretation: that the interpretation is not contradicted by any other details within the poem and that if there are multiple interpretations then the most accurate one is the one that "relies on fewest assumptions not grounded in the poem itself." At first i really had no clue what the second one meant. However, after reading the example listed by Thomas Huxley the idea seemed to register. Any interpretation can make sense but the one that is most accurate is the one that is most likely to happen- which almost seems like common sense. After reading these criteria though i wondered how many people really use them when they are reading a poem? I think most people just use word association to determine the subject of a poem. For example, the poem we received in class "THE NIGHT - MARCH" By Herman Melville can be interpreted using just that. When I read it i assumed, because of all the military words, that it was actually about an army: army, salute, ranks.. etc. But, after listening to other people's interpretations- using the same method as I, other people thought that it was about the stars: night, beaming, bright, gleam, twinkling. I really don't believe it is necessary to use the "criteria" Perrine suggests. I think that, as the authors said, whatever way the reader interprets a poem is okay. As long as what you think makes sense and is possible, it may be a correct interpretation. And who is to say it is wrong? As Perrine stated, a poet in unlikely to admit what they really meant in the poem anyways.