blog 11

Reading Buffalo Bills defunct was actually really hard for me and I wasn’t even sure if that was the title or if it didn’t have a title but I did not like the poem at all. I thought the format actually hurt the poem I think a person would have to really be into poetry to understand it because I had a problem just following the poem especially around the fourth lines he starts putting a lot of his words together as if it was one word and it definitely influenced the poem for me and I felt it made the poem harder to understand. I think the poem uses some visual aspects but not a lot and I wasn’t sure if the poem was talking about something else are actually talking about the life and death of buffalo bill, it was kind of dubbing is as more of a hero that he can break a lot of pigeons necks and he was saying he rode a stallion, for me that was the visual in the aspect maybe Cummings sort of idolized him. That’s my opinion but I really didn’t like the poem. As far as the poem Easter wings it was a really good poem and I really liked the way the stanza gave a visual aspect to the poem and it actually reminded me of wings of like an angel and I think the visual aspect in this case really helped the poem out. The I really like this poem because I thought it was uplifting and that's why the stanza Is shaped like wings I think the poem talks about how in life there are going to be times we are up and in a second we can loose everything and that's what the poem reminds me of like in the first stanza the speaker talks about having everything and loosing it all the same and he speaks about being most poor and I think when he says then shall the fall further the flight in me I think he was referencing the fact that when we "fall" or bad stuff happens we should get up and keep fighting and when he mentions flying I think he speaking bout overcoming obstacles but also maybe about god as well, anything that happens in are life we can always have hope and maybe that to is the idea about the wings in the stanza because  like angels and or the idea of flying, overcoming obstacles. And I think the 2nd stanza only provides better details it sounds like he is talking about being sick an aging and growing thin and even with all these combinations and all the affliction he can still overcome and it only makes us stronger, when he repeats shall advance the flight in me.thats what I got from that and I really loved it and I can see how visual aspects can influence a poem.

blog 10

I really loved the poem “My papas waltz” by Roethke. I might have the wrong idea but the first time through the poem I got the feeling that is was more about an abusive father who drinks and waltzing being a type of dance I assumed is describing maybe that this was a common thing for the abuse to happen so it’s more like a routine. The first time around I felt like this was a poem about abuse and they are not actually dancing but the son is really being abused because in the first stanza it talks about the father having noticeable whiskey on his breathe and then “waltzing” with his son while he hung on like death. To me it just didn’t seem right; if I was a father (size of an ordinary man) so drunk I probably shouldn’t be so aggressive like doing the waltz with a small boy (my son), something that he hung on to death for, and that’s another thing the way it was described “But I hung on like death”, and I think he met he hung on REALLY tight but to me if you have to hold on that tight it just doesn’t seem like that would be fun. Then he said “such waltzing” which to me meant it wasn’t really waltzing, but it was a routine of abuse. In the 2^nd stanza, what I got from this was that the father and son were being so rough, lively, that the pans slid from the shelf and the mother was frowning, this stanza is where I kind of started to rethink what the poem was about, but I still leaned towards an abusive father. In this stanza people might say well if it was abuse why didn’t the mother help well in some situations and households the children are abused and there is nothing the mothers can do they too scared are abused , regardless if the mother is right or wrong or if you are me would choose to do it, this kind of stuff happens. Then in stanza 3 he says “the hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle, and every step you missed” obviously if the dad is intoxicated he’d been drinking for a minute so maybe he was in a previous fight with someone or even his wife and that’s why they said knuckle because think about it, he didn’t just batter his knuckle dancing, he didn’t say his hand or his fingers or anything else he said his knuckles, when you ball up your fist and you sock someone usually you damage your knuckles. And the fact that he used battered why couldn’t he use damaged, hurt, pain, we usually associate battered with assault like “battered woman” “battery and assault’ I don’t know that’s what I got out of that, and every step he missed I don’t think was a reference to missing steps of the dance but actually missing steps because he was drunk. In the last stanza I wasn’t too sure about the first two lines but the last lines he said ‘Then waltz me off to bed, still clinging to your shirt”, to me he is clinging on because he is scared, when I cling on to something is because I’m scared or scared to lose something but I don’t ever remember a pleasant time I just didn’t feel a happy poem, That’s how I feel about that. After I read it that was my initial response but I read it two more times and I started to get another meaning out of the poem. Maybe the dad is drunk and comes home to see his family and maybe they really are “waltzing” or playing or whatever but there doing it so rough they knock the pans off the shelf and the mom is mad that’s why she frowns. And maybe his hands were battered from work from early because he hasn’t been home that’s why the father is so excited to see his son, then his father finally goes put him to bed. I think both ways are possible and regardless it was a REALLY good poem.

blog 8

The poem Because I Could Not Stop for death by Dickerson was difficult for me to understand or I just was not into it but either way I really appreciated the poem, and it was definitely my least favorite. At first I thought the poem talked about a death and wasn’t sure what the poem meant when it uses “we” a lot and I was actually really confused. What I got from this was maybe the “we” was the idea of the speaker and death being “We”. But then why say “He kindly stop from me” speaking about death, when I think of poems and death I always feel sad and is more of a negative feeling in poems. This poem I think was about death but maybe in more of a spiritual sense and the journey of death, everybody is born and everyone has to die and we should look at death as part of a circle of life and it becomes more accepted. I think the poem was referring to the phases of life like for example in stanza two the poem talks about school, recess, and sunset the point in life when where children and innocent and talks about how centuries go by and the days feel shorter I think that this was referencing to how time goes by fast. In death we see are whole life over sort of like a circle and that’s what I got from this. Lisel Mueller “Hope” was my favorite poem and what I got from this was it was a poem about Hope and this poem is describing about how hope is in everything from the trees to the angels to earthworms, hope is in the genius that invents the future. I love this poem because I feel it is so true, Hope is important and it is in everything we do and if we didn’t have hope we wouldn’t have anything.