Elise\’s Blog

William Stafford’s “Ask Me”

In this poem, the author is telling someone (the reader or the intended audience) to ask him about how he has lived his life so far. He wants them to ask him these questions so that by answering them he himself can have a better understanding of his life. The river that he frequently mentions in his poem is referring to his life. When he writes “Sometime when the river is ice ask me,” he is saying that when there is a time where his life is frozen he wants someone to ask him about what he has done in his life. And then again when he writes “What the river says, that is what I say,” Stafford is implying that the river and himself are as one.

Marilyn Nelson’s “A Strange Beautiful Woman”

This poem is all about discovering yourself and finding your confidence. Nelson uses simple language yet the message that she sends through the poem makes the reader think about the message she is giving. The first line “A strange beautiful women” gives us the sense of empowerment of women, but the use of the word “strange” makes her feel kind of distant and unknown. This sets the reader up for the rest of the poem where the narrator encounters this “strange” woman in the mirror, only to find that it is herself. Nelson gives the that the reflection is just as surprised as the narrator to see the other, and makes it as if both are happy to both be a “strange beautiful woman.”

1. world is being compared to as a stage
2. spring is being compared to a hound, winter to a trace
3. night is being compared to a bone, sun to a dog?
4. hearts are being compared to drums
5. “hope” is being compared to a “thing with feathers” (bird)
6. work is being compared to a person “squatting” on author’s life, wit to a pitchfork
7. patience is being compared to a light green dress author says she wear’s both “thin”
8. laugh is being compared to glasses
9. fence is being compared to a banjo
10. stirring of spring being compared to a spoon
11. headlights being compared to a flare
12. life being compared to western songs

James Stephen’s “The Wind”

- wind is personified as a man

- rhyme scheme ababcc

- gives sense of a storm coming

- heavenly, god-like creatureà man

- wrathful

James Stephen uses personification to portray the wind as a man in his poem “The Wind.” He says things such as “The wind stood up and gave a shout/ He whistled on his fingers and,” which gives the wind human qualities. Stephen does not just say “The wind is like a man,” but he implies it by using these figures of speech. Another way that helps the reader is by using the pronoun “he” and by also using “his” to further personify the wind. The feeling that this poem gives off is somewhat fearful of the wind’s wrath and power. Stephen gives the reader the sense that the wind is man with god-like powers that has the ability to destroy.

Charle’s Simic’s “Fork”

- everyday object is made into something evil

- connection between fork and foodà bird’s foot

- makes eater feel like a savage

In Charles Simic’s poem, “Fork,” an ordinary object is turned into something deathly and evil. In the first two lines the poet writes “This strange thing must have crept/ Right out of hell.” This makes this reader start thinking about how a fork could be from hell. Simics connects the fork to the food by saying that it looks like a bird’s foot, and the meat that it is stabbing can be assumed to be some type of fowl. Simics goes so far as to even connect the fist of someone using a fork as a bald substitute for a bird’s head, giving the sense that those who use forks are resorting to a cannibalistic and savage way of life.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

- gives a sense of happiness

- rhyme scheme: ababcc

- six-line stanzas

- tells story of a man talking a walk

- the man is a poet-> first person P.O.V

- personification of flowers-> “dancing in the breeze”

- poet enjoys “company” of daffodils

- he thinks about them when he gets home-> “when on my couch I lie”

- makes the poet feel happy -> “and then my heart with pleasure fills”

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
–They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro–
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

- 16 lines

- 4 lines per stanza

- Rhyme scheme: a-b-b-a

- Narrator describes his surroundingsà first stanza and last line of last stanza

- Repetition of the color grayà ties into title “Neutral Tones”

- Feeling of coldness, bleakness and bitternessà “And a grin of bitterness swept thereby”

- Narrator is with person he loves

- love contrasts to bleak surroundings

- at the same time love is somewhat bleak

- seems like love is not returned–> “the smile on you mouth was the deadest thing”, “love deceives”

Line breaks are an important part of poetry because they can alter the meaning of the poem if they are re-arranged. They can put emphasis on certain words or phrases by separating them from the rest of the poem, or they can connect the content in certain lines by grouping them together.