Poetry response Sestina

Britton Woodall
Jernigan
English AP
29 March 2011
Sestina
The poem “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop shares a sad moment between grandmother and granddaughter. The reason for the sadness is unclear. However, water imagery expresses suppressed emotion ready to burst. Ironically, I also relate to this poem in some immediate family connection like I have with so many other poems we have responded to.
My grandmother, or “Mama” as my family calls her, lives with us. Like the poem she always seems to be suppressing tears for many understandable reasons. The first being the fact that her husband, my grandfather, died a few years ago. His memory always rests with her because they were together for such a long time. The second reason being the fact that she is slowly losing her mind and she knows it. She cannot tell difference between my dad and I partly because her poor vision and partly because of her memory. She cannot remember anything she does throughout the whole. She runs purely on emotion and hunger because her mind is so weak. Her stomach tells her what to eat and heart tells he how to feel.
The fact that I know all this makes me feel like the child drawing the houses., the child trying to draw a perfect world when it is not. Except I am not even trying to draw a better world. I just watch hers fall apart and stay far away as possible. I understand the emotion waiting to burst in the poem because I see it at home. I do not have to know what the causes it in the poem.

Poetry Response March 22 Villanelle

Britton Woodall

Jernigan

English AP

22 March 2011

Rage Against the Machine

            The poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” reminds me of my grandfather. I saw him for the last time over thanksgiving a few years back. He rested on a hospital bed exhausted and hardly able to keep his eyes open to see his family. Yet the minute I flew into Austin, Texas and he knew, he began scheming ways for me to sneak him out of the hospital “to get some McDonald’s and a sweet tea.” Over that week a saw an old man, my grandfather, “rage against the dying of the light.”

            Despite the fact that the Dylan Thomas, the poet, obviously speaks to his father as he slowly dies, I understand the emotion he feels even though my relation is not as close. I know the wish to will a loved one on to life, yet understand “men at their end know the dark is right.” It remained clear that his time had come whether or not anyone wanted it that way.

            He, in the tamest way, reminds me of a “wild man” mentioned in the poem. He lived his life as a mild mannered golfer and father, yet his wit and lifestyle choice remain unparalleled (except of course to Charlie Sheen). He had a keen appetite for sweets. I cannot recall a homemade milkshake that tasted quite like his. I also have never heard of a man after his second stroke hiding peanut Eminem’s from his family trying to take care of him. He drove his car with only the use of one arm and one leg due to the strokes and recited “The Cremation of Sam McGee” from memory. He died the same way he lived, he “[did] not go gently into that good night.”

Poery response ODE

Britton Woodall

English AP

Jernigan

8 March 2011

Wild Wild West Wind

            In the poem “Ode to the West Wind” Percy Shelley expresses a positive faith in the cycle of nature in order to expose the reason of man’s problems as a means through which he receives his blessings.

            Shelley begins his ode by exalting the wind because it blows the dead leaves during Autumn. He begins the poem with death for a specific reason. The dead leaves and the dying Autumn represent man’s universal pain and she specifically points out the seasons in which a man tends to suffer by calling upon autumn.

            The rest of the poem tells the story of wind as the force that paves the way for life and blessing, represented by the season of Spring. She says, “Winged seeds, where they lie cold and low/ Each like a corpse in its grave, until/ Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow.” In this stanza alone, Shelley walks through the natural process from autumn to spring, from life to death. The wind takes on the same role in nature as the God or a god does for man as Shelley calls it a “destroyer and preserver.” It blows the leafs and seeds from the trees in the autumn, spreads them, then they bloom and grow in the spring.

            Shelley reverses his role in the poem from an observer to a potential leaf or seed experiencing the powers of the wind. He clarifies his intentions of the poem by putting himself in place of everything he had described previously to this point by saying, “If I were a dead leaf… If I were a swift cloud.” And confidently returns to his original faith in the seasons of man with the last stanza “The trumpet of prophecy! Oh wind,/ If Winter comes can Spring be far behind?”

Poetry Response #6

Britton Woodall

Jernigan

English AP

1 March 2011

The Black Hell

            In “The White City,” Claude McKay describes his anger due to racial tension. From the poem the reader infers that Claude McKay must be a black man during an earlier time period or from another country because very few African American men can say they have the name Claude.

            Claude’s does not describe the kind of anger he has, it describes the emotion he feelings knowing the existence of his harsh emotion. He “will not toy with it or bend it an inch.” In other words he has no desire to tinker with or understand the hatred in his heart. He goes further to say he “[muses his] lifelong hate” and he “[bears] it nobly.” His hate gives him a sense if identity to an extent. He flaunts like a war veteran wears his medal. Claude twists the expression of hate in this poem.

            Claude continues to twist the usual form of such a poem by juxtaposing black and white and heaven and hell. He calls his “heaven” the “white world’s hell.” He comes to this conclusion because his race essentially built the white man’s heaven. Therefore his heaven would be away from all the labor that made the “white world.”

            The end of the poem returns to loving his hate. He recalls all of the structures in the “the white world’s hell” and refers to them as “sweet like wanton loves because I hate.” The idea of sweet hate recurs often with vengeance.  He loves to hate because that is all he has known like wanton love.

Poetry Response

Britton Woodall

Jernigan

English AP

22 February 20011

Batter Up

            “Batter My Heart” by John Donne expresses a man’s relationship with God. He writes the sonnet in Shakespearean method with a rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDCD EE. Donne begins his poem with the command, “Batter my heart, three-personed God.” That desire stands contrary to the desires of most people. Most would say “bless my heart” or “raise me up,” but John grabs the readers attention with an unexpected statement.

He continues to describe how overpowering the three-personed God by utilizing strong verbs and metaphors such as “knock, breathe, shine” and “break, blow, burn.” He uses metaphors such as “an usurped town.” All illustrate a man completely at the whims of a powerful God.

However, despite the lack of power he describes himself having he says, “Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain.” Over many years, love has lost much of it’s meaning due people over using it, but Donne understands its full meaning. He understands that love entails trust. He, by using the word love, among other things says that he trusts God to do whatever he has to do to bring him to himself.

In the same stanza he describes his brokenness by saying, “but I am betrothed to your enemy.” This sets up the twist at the end which all Shakespearean sonnets have. With the final stanza he says, “[I] never shall be free, now never chaste, except you ravish me.” He creatively shows his passion for God through the feelings of an affair. It creates an interesting perspective to see the God of holiness and desire an affair with him because he remains married to sin.

Britton Woodall
Jernigan
English AP
7 February 2011
Rich Prick
In the poem “My Last Duchess” Robert Browning writes the poem from the point of view of a wealthy individual, possibly a Ferrara or the Ferrara. (Whatever that may be). The wealthy man most likely speaks to a guest in his house during a social gathering.
As the two walk down the hall of the Ferrara’s home, the Ferrara points out a picture on his wall. He begins to explain who the picture depicts. He tells his guest it is of his last wife who no longer lives. He tells the guest with very little remorse or sadness. He speaks more about the painter who painted it than the woman herself. Already the reader sees the man speaking as a cold soul.
He continues talking about the painting and he finally begins to mention the girl and with it he says “she had a glad heart too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.” All seem good qualities to have, but the man does not appreciate them because she was having an affair. Now the plot starts to come unraveled. He had her killed because she was cheating. However, the manner in which he did so lacks class.
Rather than confront her and talk to her about what he suspected and how he felt he just acted and killed her. To talk to her would be “stooping” and “[he chooses] never to stoop.” In his pride he kills his wife and keeps her picture in his hallway. Unashamedly he shows the picture to his guest then they return to the party.

glog

Glog

Poetry Response #2

Britton Woodall
Jernigan
English AP
31 January 2011
Dust Can Only Settle for So Long
In “Ulysses,” Tennyson expresses the longings of youth in an old man through Ulysses, a famous Greek king. Ulysses finds himself with heart desiring adventure and a body that simply cannot do what he desires. He has returned home from his adventures and he speaks men his age.
He expresses his inability to sit still for long throughout the poem. He begins the second stanza, “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees.” He most nearly means he will enjoy life to the last drop. He then proceeds to summarize all the life he has enjoyed so far in his life. He recalls travels, friends, and times alone. Unfortunately, he again realizes “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!” The present moment unsettles him because for the first time he sees no future in sight.
He breaks in the third stanza and mentions his son, Telemachus, briefly. He gives Telemachus his blessing and acknowledges his love for him, but he separates himself from him. He says, “He works his work, I mine.” In a sense Ulysses frees his son to rule in whatever way he sees fit. It is an odd combination of trust and lack of care anymore.
Finally, in the fourth stanza he takes heart and plans to set out again. He calls to his friends of the same age, “Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” The newer world juxtaposes their age for it is strange to think of many old men inhabiting a fresh new world. However, that does not stop Ulysses from encouraging his peers and men of age “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Ulysses understands that it is only over when it is over and not to worry about death beyond that.

me again

me