Elegy For My Father Who Is Not Dead

This poem reminded me of "Crossing the Bar". Rather than the speaker being optimistic and ready for death in this poem, it is the speakers father who is waiting to die. In this poem the speaker is hesitant and somewhat fearful about the "world after this world". The first question that came with the poem asked "Why does the speaker eligize his father if he is not dead?" I thought about this question the moment I read the title before I even read the poem. Automatically I assumed that the father was probably mentally unstable or changed in someway that his family did not recognize his personality. This came to my mind first, I think, because one of my friends grandpa had Alzheimer's. My friend hasn't visited him since he was diagnosed with the illness because he is afraid to see what he is like. My friend always says that his grandpa is dead to him. Now, this may be far from the cone of reason, but it's really the only explanation I could really think of to explain why someone would eligize another person who isn't actually dead. Basically, I feel like the speaker wrote this poem to express his fear of death in contrast to his father's calmness.

Delight in Disorder

When I read this I really thought that Shakespeare would enjoy this poem. In a way it sort of reminded me of "My mistress' eyes" because it didn't falsely compare women to flowers or the sun. This poem seems to point out all the flaws in the way this woman is put together (not so much her physical characteristics, but her clothes). The speaker does point out negative things; however it seemed to me that they were sort of mentioned in a more positive light. This poem reminded me of the song "Best I Ever Had" by Drizzy Drake . In the song Drake says: "Chillin' with no make-up on that's when you look the best." I felt like this sort of summed up the speakers thoughts in this poem. ALthough the speaker uses words such as disorder, thrown, here and there, confusedly, and careless when describing the woman, he always pairs these words with more positive ones. Such words include: sweet, fine, enthralls, and deserving. This use of diction helps convey the real tone of the poem- which is that he loves the woman although she isn't perfect. I really liked how the final lines sort of tied the whole poem together- "Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part". Basically the speaker is saying that yes, sometimes she looks like a mess, but he is more attracted to her when she looks sloppy than when she is all put together.

Crossing the Bar

As a small group we decided that this poem was a pretty easy one to interpret. My notes, before the small group discussion changed very little. I mentioned that "put out to sea" and "when I embark" symbolized death and the pilot symbolized God. The whole poem basically says that the speaker is nearing death. In my notes i also said that line two "One clear call for me!" Basically meant that the speaker is ready to die; they know it's their time. In our group we noticed a contradiction to this. Line 10 says "And after that the dark!". We felt like this was a contradiction because this person is supposed to be happy and peaceful "sailing off to heaven" and then out of nowhere they mention the dark. We decided the tone was sort of "accepting" in the sense that the speaker is accepting of the fact that it is their time to die. This idea can also be supported in the fact that the speaker wants their to be "no sadness of farewell" when he dies. Grace mentioned that this mirrors the idea in the song "when I'm Gone" by Eminem. I feel compelled to add a few lyrics from the song: " And when I'm gone, just carry on, don't mourn Rejoice every time you hear the sound of my voice"

My mistress' eyes

I'll admit- when I read this I thought "wow, the speaker in this poem is a jerk." I took the poem and a sort of laundry list pointing out all the negative aspects of the speakers mistress. However, after we discussed the poem in our large group I really started to like it. A lot of the time I don't enjoy poetry. Half of the time I feel like what I am reading makes no sense. I feel like the poet just wrote a bunch of different words that sounded really fancy or cool together but didn't have a real meaning to them. I hate reading lines of poetry where the speaker just goes on and on about how beautiful a woman is by comparing her to unrealistic things. The fact that Shakespeare satirizes this concept is awesome. On the other hand, I feel like there had to be a better way to do so than to make this woman sound ugly. Basically the whole poem felt like one of those statements people make when asked "is she pretty?" - if this person is clearly not cut out for Miss America the typical answer is something along the lines of "well, she has a great personality". Even though I don't think that is quite what Shakespeare was going for, it's hard to get little else from the poem. The first 12 out of 14 lines basically explains everything this girl is not. Oh but then he throws in two lines about how shes rare and there's no one who can compare and that is supposed to make up for it? I love the idea of the poem, but I don't really like how Shakespeare did it. But it's Shakespeare....so 400 and some years late my opinion really doesn't really matter. obviously if we are still reading this poem it must be pretty dang good.

The Apparition

The speaker in this poem is speaking to their love indirectly. This poem is more like the thoughts/ plans of a man who is expecting to be cheated on. I got the image of the movie "ghosts of girlfriends past"stuck in my head after reading this. After talking in our small groups (and with help from you of course) we figured out that the speaker was not actually in a relationship with the woman that he is referring to. This made more sense- especially when looking at certain lines such as lines 2-3 "And thou thinkst thee free From all solicitation from me,". I looked up the definition of solicitation, adn though it had several different entries, the one i felt best fit this poem said "To persistently endeavor to obtain an object, or bring about an event; To woo; to court;" Basically how I understood this was that this guy continues to creep on this girl and she avoids him or refuses him time and time again. The speaker then says that when he dies she is going to think that she doesn't have to worry about him bothering her anymore- but this couldn't be further from the truth because he plans to haunt her. He plans to come to her bedside as a ghost to scare her but because she will be with a man "worse" than him, she will be neglected when she turns to him for comfort. We decided that the tone of the poem was revenge... even though the speaker is planning to get revenge on someone who hasn't even done wrong to him yet.

Getting Out

I really liked this poem. Although in my initial reading I thought the tone of the poem would be more negative, it became clear to me that nostalgic would be a better description. From the title I think I automatically assumed that the "break up" taking place in the poem ended rough. Using the term "getting out" instead of something like "going our separate ways" definitely seems very negative. In the poem however, I think there is much more support to the claim that the speaker and her former lover will miss each other. I think the best example is in line 18 where the speaker says "still I'm startled by men who look like you". Another example that manifests the nostalgia for the love they shared can be found in the final lines where the speaker is describing their last encounter together and how they cried in front of the lawyers holding hands, and then finally let go. This seems so contradictory to the beginning of the poem. In the first stanza the speaker describes their relation as being somewhat forced. She goes as far to say that they are like "inmates". When I read that line I immediately got the image that they felt trapped in the bond of marriage even though they weren't in love. By the end of the poem however it's obvious that they still care for one another- but sometimes just caring about each other isn't enough to make a marriage work. I could really relate to this idea because my parents got divorced when I was in third grade. They still care about each other to this day but they felt that they couldn't make their marriage work. After they separated they started to get along much better- which is what I think the speaker and her husband decided to do.

Sorting Laundry

I liked this poem because it was very simple. At first, reading it I thought Really? someone wrote a whole poem about laundry? But after reading the whole thing it really kind of made sense to me. There were two stanzas that I felt stood out; lines 25-27 and lines 49-51. I liked lines 25-27 because I can relate to what the speaker is saying. "And what's shrunk is tough to discard even for Goodwill." It's funny because no matter how old or small something is, if it holds some sort of emotional value to us we are reluctant to give it away. I thought this was the speakers way of relating her love to her clothes/ laundry. She does this again in the final stanza where she says "a mountain of unsorted wash could not fill the empty side of the bed." Basically, what i understood from this poem was that every little thing reminded this woman of her lover. Something as simple as doing the laundry was difficult to do without thinking about the hopes and dreams and memories they shared. She describes how every article of clothing reminds her of her love- from the towels they bought together to take to the beach, or the sheets they used to cover their bed.