My Papa's Waltz

My Papa’s Waltz

Much like the last poem I wrote about, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden has a sense of ambiguity because we don’t really know as readers whether or not the child is enjoying the experience, and whether or not the father is being mean or if he is just playing around in the kitchen with his son.
We see that the mother’s face “could not unfrown itself” and in my mind I’m thinking that her face is upset either because they are knocking the pans off the shelf and she’s going to have to clean it up or because she doesn’t like what the father is doing to the son. I believe that that aspect of the poem is one of the things that emphasizes the ambiguity.
Also the son “hung on like death” which could mean that he really needed to hang on and cling to his father, or it could be because that was the only way he could somehow avoid the father’s hands. This statement has a negative connotation to it because they say that the son was holding on to his father “like death” and another statement that has a negative connotation would be “the whiskey on your breath” because the smell of whiskey on anyone’s breath is not a pleasant thing.
I really liked this poem, but I didn’t like it at the same time. To me it was like the father was beating his son, and because of the title “My Papa’s Waltz” it was almost like it was something trademarked to his father, so it was like it was something that happened often.

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Those Winter Sundays

Those Winter Sundays

I really liked this poem the first time I read it. I really think that the tactile imagery of “and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,” and auditory imagery of “hear the cold splintering, breaking,” really made the poem memorable. The poem is essentially about a father that did everything for his children, he would get up in the early morning and start the wood stove before his children, and it says that he worked for their family. It is also implied that there is a mother of wife absent from the picture because the father is doing all of the work, but because of the ambiguity of the poem we can’t really tell. This poem is in the perspective of an older, wiser person, looking back on their childhood with more knowledge and understanding of their father’s situation. I think that it really shows the innocence of a child and the way children regard adult relationships and the way adults act. The child had acted somewhat mean towards the father, “speaking indifferently to him” even though he done all that he could for their family. In a way I think that the father was very lonely because of the last line that says “lonely offices?” In this poem offices mean duties, so it is very solemn to me when they say lonely duties because yes, people have an obligation to their children, but often times they do not have to do these duties on their own.

I chose this picture because of the solemn atmosphere of the picture, and because it portrays a very cold winter day.

Death of a Young Son by Drowning

Death of a Young Son by Drowning

This poem spoke to me on a certain personal level, not necessarily on the level that I’ve lost a child, because I haven’t, but in recent years I watched my aunt lose her son and the effect that it can have on a family. Margaret Atwood wrote this poem fantastically because she used imagery to show the different things that would always be imprinted in her mind when she lost her son. It’s like the river turns from a metaphor of his life, into an actual thing that takes him away from the world. She also talks about how when her son died, her world stopped, but the outside world, the people that didn`t know him just kept going, and nothing could stop them. She writes “it was spring, the sun kept shining...” meaning that the world kept on turning. My cousin Tyler was eighteen when he was killed in a plane accident, and I know that every year that passes, on the anniversary of his death, I feel like the world should stop spinning, and that everyone should stop and remember for a day. It never happens, but my whole family stops, and just remembers his face and his smile, and his personality. He was so bright, and he was so nice, and it’s hard to believe that someone so full of life could be gone, but I realized that our family isn’t the only one that is affected by the tragic loss of a family member and I believe this poem really shows the feelings that are associated with the loss of a child.

Stones: Before and After the War

Stones

Most people wrote about the connections between Stones and The Red Convertible, or the connections between Stones and the war that took place in the time the story took place. I want to look at the relationship that the father has with the child and the rest of the family before and after the war. Before the war, the son remembers his father as a tough man, who had high expectations however he was still genuine and nice to the mother, and never used violence as a means of communicating with his children. After the war the father came home and he was a completely different man. He was very angry and he often had violent breaks in his unusually calm behaviour. Not only did his personality change but so did his appearance. When the mother saw him it said she closed her eyes against him, like she didn’t want to see what he looked like because he had changed so much and he looked so much more sad and angry. The short story also says the episode when the father pulls the son off of his top bunk and slams him into a wall. It is a very violent outbreak and it really shows the effect that the war can have on someone. A man who was nice and loving towards his kids was now a man that beat them, and made them do unreasonable things (such as closing the curtains only on certain nights.) I really think that this story shows the effects that war had on families and how it tore them apart when the men couldn`t be changed after coming home.

This is a website that has an article about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which was a very common disorder that men returning from war possessed.

http://www.medicinenet.com/posttraumatic_stress_disorder/article.htm

A Worn Path

A Worn Path

A Worn path by Eudora Welty is a story about an older Negro woman in the south. The story takes place in December, and the story was published in 1941. As we know, colored people were not accepted in that time, racism was a big thing everywhere, but particularly in the South. Colored people were used as slaves and they were mistreated by all. This elderly woman had to go on a journey to get medicine for her grandson who was sick with a sore throat. This is a journey she has taken many times because she says she walks “until her feet knew where to stop.” Along the way she encountered a lot of different animals, and a man who in the end puts his gun up to her face, however Phoenix Jackson doesn’t even flinch when she is in that situation. The story goes, “’Doesn’t the gun scare you?’ he said, still pointing it. ‘No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done,’ she said, holding utterly still.” This shows that she has had a hard life and that she really isn’t afraid of anything that this man could do to her. I believe that it’s terrible that people had to go through such hardships in order to live and to stay healthy. Also I believe that Phoenix was a smart woman because she managed to get that nickel from the man, managed to get her grandson’s medicine free of charge, and she got a nickel from the nurse that was working at the clinic. She seems like a fragile old woman that really needs help, but she was smart enough to get ten cents and enough to buy her grandson a pinwheel. I think that this was a really good story and that it really shows how colored people had to live back in those times.

This story also reminds me of the book/movie The Help because it is also about how colored people were treated in that time.

Plath

Research project:

My topic for the independent research project is Sylvia Plath, her life, her novel The Bell Jar and her poem Daddy, and how they are all related, and the connections that I have found amongst them. Plath was a troubled woman who lived in London, England with her two children, she was married for a short time to the British poet Ted Hughes. She studied at Smith College on a scholarship, and she wrote over one hundred poems during her time at Smith. She tried once to kill herself with sleeping pills, but was unsuccessful, during her recovery time she underwent electroshock therapy and psychotherapy. We see the links from the Bell Jar, where Esther tried to kill herself while on break from an internship with sleeping pills. She then goes to a mental hospital, or a mental car facility where she undergoes electroshock therapy much like Plath does. Her poem Daddy was written for her father that, many people feel, may have had a negative impact on her life. She compares her father to Hitler and her ex-husband to prove her distaste for the man. He passed away when she was ten, and she resents him for not being there, and for not getting to talk to him before he passed away. Finally in 1963 she killed herself, just about a month after her novel was published, she put her head in her oven and killed herself with cooking gas. Her life was full of experience; it was a tragedy that she had to die so young.

This is a video of Sylvia Plath reading her poem Daddy, you can pick out from the way she talks how much she dislikes and how much pain she feels towards her father.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM

CM 1120

CM 1120

CM 1120 is an English course at my school that I chose to take this semester. When I started my first year of university in September I was almost sure that I wanted to be a math teacher because I had always wanted to be a math teacher. When I started into the math courses I found out that I no longer wanted to peruse a career in math. Math was difficult, and it still is, I no longer like to sit in math class and learn math, I would much rather be reading a book, or writing a short story. Trying to figure out what you want to do with your life is hard, and I believe I’m not the first person to change their mind right off the bat. I still want to be a teacher, but I decided that I maybe want to be an English teacher now, instead of a math teacher. I really enjoy English, I enjoy the poems that we read, discuss, and analyze, I enjoy writing even though my sentence structure and grammar are not fantastic, but most importantly it is something I can see myself enjoying for a long time. English is my favourite course that I’m taking, even though it isn’t my best or highest mark. It doesn’t matter to me that I don’t do well right away, I know that I can improve myself and my writing and do better. I’m also very excited to take more English courses in the future, and seeing if this course is the thing for me.

Eleanor Rigby

Eleanor Rigby

The song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney called “Eleanor Rigby” was a very well written song that really showed the irony of how two people could be so close to one another, yet so far away in their own words. This song talks about Eleanor Rigby who is a lonely woman who works at a church. She is all alone and she “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” showing that she has to stand by and watch as people get married and start happy lives together when really she doesn’t have anyone in her life. Also we have Father McKenzie who is the Father at the same church where Eleanor works, “writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear,” meaning that he writes these sermons, but no one shows up to listen to him talk. They both attend the same church, they are both alone each night wishing for someone to be with them, but they don’t see each other. I think it is ironic because they really could have just turned to each other, then they would have had someone to be with. In the end Eleanor dies and is buried in the cemetery of the same church that she used to work in, and Father McKenzie was the one who performed the ceremony to no one, because no one showed up, emphasizing the fact that she was truly alone. In the end Father McKenzie is still alone and we see just really how close they were.