The Joy of Cooking

This poem is probably the oddest poem that I have ever come across. Once I got passed all the macabre and disgusting imagery, however, one thing really stood out to me: the tone. The tone at frist seemed sort of sarcastic. Who would actually want to kill their brother and sister and cook them to serve as dinner? But as I read the poem again, I began to notice things that, while the speaker did not want to actually cook their siblings, their might have been some underlying animosity and bitterness towards the two. What led me first to believe this was the body parts that the speaker chose to "prepare". In the very first line, they talk about their sister's tongue. Usually, this is associated with speaking. So I'm inclined to believe that they said something offensive. Then, the speaker talks about their brother's heart. Now, heart is associated with love and feelings, so this could symbolize that brother's lack of one. For example, a few lines down the speakers says that a normal beast heart serves six, but "my brother's heart barely feeds two" implying that the heart was already small to begin with. This all generally adds to the tone of bitterness.

London

This is another where I don't think I comprehended it very well. But I will give it a go.

The images in this are all negative and kinding depressing. Especially when the author writes, "runs in blood down palace walls." To me, this whole thing was talking about the different social castes within the city of London at the time. The Palace was simply a symbol for the king. And the blood running down the walls could be all the people that the king was using sort of as pawns. They represent the people who had no respect, but were forced to give their lives to not only the king, but the Church and other institutions. The "forged manacles" represents the mindset that everyone had towards other people. They had a set way that society must be in order for it to run the way it should in their minds. This led to no diversity and no individuality. Finally, what also struck me was when they were talking about Harlots and how they hurt infants. This means to me that prostitution and arranged marriages, something very common in that time, are making children unahppy and corrupting the youth, as well as the city as a whole.

The Panther

I'm finding out that my interpretations of poetry are usually much different than everyone else's. I'm also figuring out that I do not delve very deep into possible meanings for poems. For example, this poem is one of those that I simply saw on the surface. I am really looking forward to figuring out exactly how to interpret poems. But for now, I will just go over what I thought this one was about. To me, this one is about someone or something that is locked behind bars (well duh, it says that. "It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.") But what this is referring to is not physical bars, but the implications that they pose. This being is inhibited by something and is therefor unable to move forward. And when this creature gets glimpses of what life could be like, they get a sad feeling and close off from the world, knowing they will never acheive it while they are imprisoned by something.

I realize that this was inredibly vague...

To Autumn

Out of all the other poems, "To Autumn" really stuck out to me in terms of imagery. Unlike the other poems in this selection, this had extremely vivid imagery that appealed to all of the senses. The sense of touch is represented when the author writes, "thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind" because it evokes a familiar feeling of the wind blowing through one's hair. Another example of imagery in this poem appeals to the sense of sound. "Hedge-crickets sing; and now with the treble soft the red-breast whistles from a garder-croft." But most predominantly, this poem has lots of imagery relating to visual senses. From the very beginning, it is stated, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfullness". This initially evokes a scene behind the readers' eyes. This is kept up throughout the entire poem and makes it very easy to follow.

I Felt a Funeral, In My Brain

This poem was greatly confusing to me, and I feel like that may have been Emily Dickinson's objective; to confuse her reader a little. The central theme of this poem is insanity. The speaker in this poem had something happen to them that caused them to lose their mind. This final breaking point that I observed was in the last stanza: "And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dopped down, and down-". Once I read this, I reread the whole thing and it began to make sense. The funeral she was descibing was -to me- a death of some idea or constant in her life, leading her break down. Another thing that added to the them of the poem was at the very end of the poem it just ended. Midthought, the speaker stopped. This could mean that the speaker had lost the ability to use words and finally suck into insanity, or maybe even death.

The Widow's Lament in Springtime

(I'm going to start off saying that blogger does not really work on my laptop all that well, so I've been writing my posts all out and posting them at once... is that alright? Because I'm now seeing that you said to post them separately...)

After reading through this poem and then looking over the suggested questions, number eight really stuck out to me. An obvious tone of this poem -to me at least- was depressing. Even though she was talking about beautiful flowers and other things that usually are paired with happiness or content thoughts, she stated them in a sort of mournful way. It is apparent that her husband died as the title states she is a widow and it jumps out at you throughout the poem. However, I had to dig deeper to find just how she felt about it. When she says towards the end that she wants to "fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them" I feel like that is her giving up and giving in to her depression. Maybe, she ultimately is hinting at an eventual suicide. What leads me to this was she said "sorrow is my own yard". When she talks about all the things that are outside her yard, it makes me belive that her sorrow is like a prison to her and to escape it this she must leave to go out to the flowers. And the only way to do this, and to be with her husband, is throught suicide, further carrying out the tone of depression.

The Perrine Article

(for some reason this was not letting me post it on my laptop...)

Let me first start off with this: I never knew there were so many different ways to interpret poems. I mean, I knew there were different ways, but it just dawned on me how I can view something one way, and someone else can have a totally different opinion. However, I don't always agree that one person has to be right and the other must then be wrong. I understand what he was saying in the passage that there are usually more correct ways to viewing poetry, but I don't think that that is always the case. I belive that there was a way the writer wrote it, but people can take from that what they want. I strongly belive that what the reader's past experiences can greatly influence what they see in the literature. And I do not think that this fact makes them incorrect in their interpretations.

But -and I'm going to contradict myself- what also really struck me was how Perrine explained the reasonsing as to why he was correct. He had and almost scientific method to proving his point. I got excited when all of his students thought the same things I did about the poems. But then as I kept on reading, I realized that what he was saying actaully did make a lot of sense. We have to think about our interpretations to fully understand what the writer was trying to convey. Sometimes- although I'll be the first to admit how difficult this is- we should do some extra work in deciphering the messages. We should look things up and read into the history of the writer in order to get a good understanding.