Dissillusionment at Ten O'Clock- Poetry Response 10

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

In continuing reading poems that fit my mood, I picked one where the first line said the word "haunted," for the sole reason that it is Halloween. The poem, however, is not about Halloween, or ghost haunting. This poem is about dreams. The way I interpreted it was that it was from a drunk sailor's view point. Tangent: Why in the world do sailors always have to be either crazy or drunk in all these readings?! Ok, sorry. Anyway... The poem is about dreams. It is about imagination. Dreams are the essence of imagination in the sense that only in dreams can people actually live what they could only imagine. Like catching tigers in red weather. WHAT??!!

I found it really interesting that Stevens said that people are not going to dream if baboons and periwinkles. Maybe because these things are to simple. Stevens also toys with the idea of color. How any color you can imagine will be alive in a dream. This poem is really really ghoul! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

The Snow Man- Poetry Responce 9

First off, I picked this poem because I am freezing, and I judged it by its title, to be fitting of my mood. Then I read it, and realized that the poem was about winter. It was about how the snow man needs to think very highly of winter to view all the wonderful things that happen during it. This is poem explains how fully immersed in the scene the Snow Man is, that he gets to observe the nothingness of the environment, with out himself bringing anything to it. The later is the difficult part for me.

I followed Stevens very well while his figurative language described the scene vividly, but once the last stanza rolled around, I go lost.This stanza required the reader to read it several times! I interpreted it to mean this: in order to fully appreciate the winter scene and environment, we must bring nothing to the scene. Just like in the case of the snowman. He has no previous judgment, he is nothing. WE must be nothing to see the full nothing of the winter. Does that make sense? This poem reminds me of this time when I was skiing with my family. I was about 8 years old and I got lost-ish off the side of the run and my ski's popped out into the deep snow. I was frustrated and cold so I just sat in the deep snow in all my ski gear and took off my mittens and just looked around and ate snow. The image was almost exactly how Wallace Stevens describes winter, and the picture of "Winter" in my head, is the one I have from when I was young, not thinking, and just sitting in it.

This is a good winter poem to read while your cold :)

<3

A Gray Haze Over The Rice Feilds- Poem Response 8

For the record... I was absent when the new packet got handed out, so I just picked a poem that no one had done yet for my response, from the old packet! Ok. That was the disclaimer, here's my response:

Looking at the title, I had to read the poem to know the meaning behind the "gray haze." I originally thought it was a literal foggy day, but it most definitely is a shadow, or hazy memory of the authors childhood. The author is searching for a memory to clarify her childhood, yet she stumbles upon these things that she is trying to forget. The author says, "I am looking out in search of memory, not death." The author obviously dealt with death and hurt in her childhood, or the haze would not be there. I really liked the style of compare and contrast Jayanta Mahapatra(author) uses when she talks about the relationship with her grandmother compared to her mother. I interpreted the meaning, that the grandmother showed so much love, and gave so much attention that the author was incredibly sad when she died. This contrasts to the mother, who was absent in the child's like, because of the mother's own youth. "Behind the closed door of her youth," was the exact line referring to the mother. I automatically thought of a teenage girl getting pregnant and ignoring, not intentionally, her child because she was not ready to have one.

In the second stanza, the line about the dangling thread was the most important. I assumed this meant that there is something missing from this person's life. That the author, or whoever she was writing about, always feels like her thread is not complete- that she missed out on something, or is searching for something that is constantly out of reach .

This poem was really good :) so far I haven't hated any of the poems!!!

<3

A Chinese Bowl - Poem Resonse 7

Wowzers. I read this poem... easily 10 times. Still, the intense metaphors, sad lines, and reflective thought made my mood kind of gloomy. I really really liked how the author incorporated lines in the poem that clearly reflect specific childhood memories. For example, she talks about how the bowl from a thrift store was old, chipped, and had some faded painting, yet it was the symbol of childhood. Also, the scene where her dad is writing some document on the desk, while she is writing some story, thinking she should be happy. Yet, for me, the general outlook on those lines was kind of nostalgic and sad because it talks about a lock box type of thing that holds all these terrible memories. "Black list," "Party Business," "Drink," "Mother's Death" all connect negative things. This made me reflect and kind of literally think about what has been locked away that no longer allows me to be happy. I feel fortunate in the fact that I am a genuinely happy person. I feel like my lock box fills up with events, but those events slowly crumble away with the slightest erosion of happy memories. I might be too young to have dramatic events that hinder my absolute happiness, like others might, but I also feel that people must find a way to- not necessarily go to a shrink and drastically change his or her life- move past limiting factors. Everyone should be given the opportunity to be happy. Great poem! :)
<3

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle- poem response 6

This poem was one of my least favorite ones. The thing that stood out to me was that the author was really trying to portray a certain feel, describe a certain thing, which led to be being very overwhelmed with following the scene or trying to visualize what was happening. One of the on going strategies the author used was tying to use certain words to incorporate all different senses in order to have the effect of the violins and the church. In the line that illistrates how the violins produced red an blue, I thought of Disney's fantasia. The movie uses color, and motion to describe a musical piece. The next thing the stands out in my mine was the reference to the composers Vavaldi as well as Brahms. These composers have different style as Elise demonstrated. Brahms is more relaxed and tranquil where Vivaldi is more intense. It is more powerful. This interpretation of the music also works well with how the author describes the light that is coming into the church. He makes a reference to milky light. Although we have said that a reference to milk can sometimes refer to a child, or youth, but in this case I think he literally means the light gets kind if cloudy. It isn't crisp light, instead, it is softened to a more milky light. To wrap up this poem, I struggle with the line about lead. "our violins were trapped in thin but solid sheets of lead." I remember talking about this line, and how it has meaning with how a violin is constructed? I will look at other people's responses and see how they interpreted it!!