Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz”

“My Papa’s Waltz” compares a child’s rollercoaster of a relationship with his father to a three step dance. The dance is not a pleasant one for the narrator, who must cope with his father’s alcoholism and abusive behavior. This metaphor is extended through the entire poem. The poem is also written in a triple meter, mimicking the rhythm of a waltz. The narrator offers a tender reference to his past as a glimpse into his private life. Amazingly, despite all of the father’s attempts to push his son away, the narrator fights to stay with his father. Even though his father lashes out at him, the narrator still possesses an undying love and admiration for his father. The narrator also mentions his mother who shows through her countenance that she did not agree with his father’s behavior. The use of the word “countenance” and the absence of any other reference to the mother suggests that she was also subjected to the father’s violent outbursts.
The poem experiences the moment of disequilibrium in the two concluding lines. The narrator explains that he still stuck with his father after using the last fourteen lines to show his darker side. The ending brings the poem back into a brighter light, indicating a positive influence from the narrator’s father. Although his father was not the ideal figure for his child, his son undoubtedly loves him and still appreciates him. Roethke’s decision to use memories from childhood shows how influential his father was on his maturation into an adult. He could not have achieved such a powerful message from any other point in his life.

Kimberly Welch on "The Sick Rose" by William Blake

William Blake's poem "The Sick Rose" is short, concise, and pleasing to the ear. It has a certain lyrical lit, which makes it naturally pleasant to read, and contains just enough content to savor and chew upon. Firstly, one can take note of the structure of the poem. It is two stanzas of four lines, each following an abcb rhyme scheme. The reader is naturally lead to ask why the author chose to use this format. To answer this question I needs look to the content of the poem. Upon inspecting the title, and reading through rapidly, one may assume that Blake is meditating on the death of a rose brought on by a worm that is devouring it, and thereby killing it; however, upon closer inspection, the poem seems not so much about a thing as it could be about a person. Firstly, the word rose is capitalized in the first line, indicating it's a proper noun, and thereby a person. So we know by the first line that it is a person by the name of Rose who is sick. The second line is an allegory coinciding with the idea of an infected flower. So what could make Rose sick that could be compared to a worm? The two other words, 'night' and 'howling', along with 'worm' invoke a sexual bent, which is supported by the next stanzas reference to a bed and 'crimson joy'. Crimson is the color of passion, which is also associated with roses. It is generally thought that one gives red or 'crimson' roses to a lover. The fist line of the final couplet summarizes what we have already gathered from the earlier lines, that it is a man who comes secretly in the night for sexual romances. And it is this 'worm' of a human being who had infected this woman, Rose, with a deadly disease. Blake's poem seems darkly satirical now, this lover who should be giving his beloved lovely red roses has instead given her sickness and death; the gift of physical love has been perverted. The paradox of the poem reveals itself in the rhyme of 'joy' and 'destroy' in the final stanza. Back to the structure of the poem, one can now surmise that the poem is divided into the description of the man who is responsible for this crime, the first stanza, followed by a description of this man's actions, the second stanza. This theme of the horrors and pain of sexually transmitted diseases seems to be a theme in William Blake's poems, as it is the final horror found in the poem "London", and is perhaps indicative of a personal or public struggle with maladies of this kind.

The Dance

William Carlos Williams’ poem The Dance is notable for its structure and its interesting use of grammar.  The poem itself consists of two sentences.  The first sentence begins “In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess”, and the last sentence ends with the same phrase.  This phrase, which establishes the setting at the beginning and closes out the scene at the end of the poem, gives the poem a circular quality.  This circular structure is reminiscent of the medieval dance that Breughel represented in his painting.  The peasants in The Kermess drink beer and dance around in circles, circulating around and around just like the poem does.  This is an example of the poem’s form imitating real life, with the correlating circular motions of reading the poem several times and being able to envision the medieval dancers as they “go round, they go round and around.” 

The poem’s use of language is also patterned after the reality of the painting.  The syntax is unconventional, and the grammar is often wrong.  The repetition of words in quick succession creates the impression that perhaps a drunk peasant at this medieval dance is uttering them.  The fragment “the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them” is somewhat jarring because of its grammatically incorrect appearance, but accurately portrays the speech and thought process of someone happily and drunkenly dancing the day away. 

Both the structure and the grammar of The Dance are artificial poetic structures that serve to imitate real life.  The circular nature of the poem, and its curious, almost scatterbrained grammar adds an extra dimension of truth and reality to the poem.  The external patterns in the text emphasize the internal themes in the poem.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Snake”

The “Snake” by D.H. Lawrence is both a private and public poem which explores his personal versus societal ideas. Superficially, the poem presents a natural scene near a water trough where a snake drinks slowly and silently. The snake has arrived at the water-trough before the poet who observes the snake as he waits to approach the water with his pitcher. However, the poem is truly about how the poet feels toward homosexuality; although he has learned from society that such a matter is wrong, he wants to accept the community without feeling anger. Through the events in this poem, I believe that Lawrence describes his own evolution of thoughts toward homosexuality.

Initially, the poet merely observes the snake without describing any personal thoughts. He sees the scenario as any other person may and describes the obvious physicality and actions of the snake; however he often notes the snake’s origin of darkness. In society, the snake is seen as a symbol of evil which carries from what we learn of stories in The Bible. Lawrence takes this idea of learned evil and compares it to his initial response to homosexuality. Before truly thinking about accepting the matter, he denounces homosexuality as all others do. In fact, he denounces such ideas without allowing his mind to wander. He forms no personal opinions on the matter, and he merely acknowledges that homosexuality exits with sinful connotations. Lawrence describes, the snake, as he does the idea of homosexuality, as coming from “the burning bowels of the earth.”

The next stage in the poem presents Lawrence’s inner conflict between his personal thoughts about the snake versus what the “inner voices” believe. He confesses how he likes the snake and how he is glad it has visited him. He also describes the snake as “peaceful [and] pacified” and feels sorry the snake must “put his head into that dreadful hole.” These lines represent his sorrow for the homosexual community who often feel they must live in shame although they do nothing to harm society. On the other hand, he ponders whether or not he is a coward for not wanting to kill the snake. As his unsure thoughts build, he decides to throw a log at the snake. This part of the poem represents how society overtakes him and his thoughts. At this point, although he wanted to accept the snake, as he does homosexuals, his “voice of education” causes him to act in an angered way.

Once Lawrence throws the log at the snake, he feels upset with himself as he does with his denouncement of homosexuality. In fact, he calls his actions “vulgar,” and “mean.” Furthermore, he states, “I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.” These lines represent how he is upset with himself for not accepting the snake and homosexuality as natural and beautiful. Also, Lawrence is angry at society for forcing homosexuals into a world of darkness among most people’s views.

Blog Post over "Nineteen"

The poem that I would like to talk about is Nineteen by Elizabeth Alexander. This poem has many hidden details and elements to it that I did not realize until after I re read it about 3 times. One of the things that I did not understand at first was why this young nineteen year old girl was falling for an older Vietnam veteran at a campsite. “I snuck around with an older man who didn’t tell me he was married…At nineteen it was my first summer away from home.” Throughout my lifetime I have experienced a lot of different things and I have found that when young girls are never allowed to go out, they tend to become ‘wild’ when they finally get a chance to get out. Her new freedom that she has gain, has led to her falling for a guy so quickly. Most fathers do not let their daughters have the freedom they deserve because they are afraid of the men that they will encounter. In this case, her non-freedom has led her to an older, married man.
Another element of this poem that interested me was the mystery of the older Vietnam veteran. It is common for soldiers to not talk about their experiences from war or oversea jobs. Their experiences may have been traumatizing and something that they would rather forget than live with daily. After the young lady had asked many times about his experiences in the war, the soldier never gave a true answer that reflected on his experiences in Vietnam. It is clear to see that he did not want to live with his past and wanted it to be forgotten. At the end of the poem it is storming hard and he makes a comment that lets us see into him. I understood his comment as if the rain falling onto the van sounding like gun shots in Vietnam, which caused him to jump up in the van. It was as if he was re-living his traumatizing time in Vietnam.

Unit 1 Questions from the Vendler Book

As I noted on the first day of class, in Unit 1 we'll be compiling a list of questions that can offer us a way "in" to poetry that seems difficult or complex. I've gathered a few of these questions here and I offer them as help as many of you write your first blog posts next week:

• What piece of life, private or public, is the poem concerned with? Where and when is this life being lived?
• How does the author avoid cliché? How does he or she bring originality to this moment?
• Where is the moment of disequilibrium in the poem? How is the status quo disturbed?
• What patterns (phonetic, grammatical, syntactic, psychological, temporal, spatial, etc.) appear in the poem? How do these patterns impact the sense of the experience depicted?
• How does the structure of the poem reinforce (or work against) the central contrast or comparison being made in the poem?
• Does the poem have a plot or a narrative? Does it begin at the beginning, in the middle, at the end, or somewhere else entirely? How does the author’s decision to begin at this point affect your interpretation of the action?

We'll continue to add to this list as we develop questions through our reading of the Vendler book and our in-class discussions.

Class Discussion for Wednesday, January 13

As I noted on the first day, in Unit 1 we'll be working to develop a set of questions that will prompt you to think about poems more deeply. Vendler actually proposes a few of these questions in chapter 1, namely:

• What piece of life, private or public, is the poem concerned with? Where and when is this life being lived?
• How does the author avoid cliché? How does he or she bring originality to this moment?
• Where is the moment of disequilibrium in the poem? How is the status quo disturbed?

These questions can be very useful as you try to determine what is unique about a poem, or what specific piece of information the author is attempting to communicate to you. Here are some examples of how these questions might be applied to some of the poems in chapter 1:

• Describe the disequilibrium between perception and reality in Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing It." How does Komunyakaa depict this disequilibrium? What does the poem, and this sense of disequilibrium in particular, have to say to us about the nature of "memory" and "memorial" in general?
• How does Rita Dove use setting to create a sense of disequilibrium in "Flash Cards?" How does the speaker fit into the poem's two different settings?
  
• Vendler noted that in "The School Children," Louise Glück subverts cliche by making the tradtionally quaint image of children bringing an apple to their teacher into something more sinister. What are some of the other key images in the poem? Do they also fit this pattern of moving from quaint/cliche to more complex and sinister?

These are just some questions to get you thinking if you're stuck. We can talk about any or all of the poems in class on Wednesday. See you then!