"Delight in Disorder"

"A sweet disorder in the dress

Kindles in clothes a wantonness" (1-2).

"Delight in Disorder" by Robert Herrick was the epitome of a poem I that I read and immediately wonder if it is really as easy as it seems.  Oh, and the poem is a sonnet - I have gotten really good at making that connection!  Wantonness is a very strange, yet suiting word for this situation.  See, I kept staring at the first option and trying to figure out how it related, but we want the noun version - a lustful person, usually a woman (they are in a dress, PLEASE be a woman).

I think that this poem uses metonomic imagery?  Since the disorder is delightful (Emily Dickinson would agree), we also have a paradox in order.  Time to prove those two theories in the cone of realism.

The imagery is not really able to be proven unless you just read it.  Really, do you not just see a woman in a dress, scarf, cuffs, waving, and shoes?

Note to self:  Erring does not equal earring.

Okay, it is metonomic (definitely the adjective form of metonomy...)  because each article of clothing represents a new part of her life.

The dress hides the lust and makes her feel safe.  The scarf distracts the people, but traps her stomacher.  Her cuffs are tearing.  All this is further hidden behind her waving.

Waving.  Who waves?  The queen of England or a Miss American model would wave so graceful.  Delight in disorder?  The speaker is mocking these people who hide behind perfection.  I think...

"Getting Out"

"Taking hands

we walked apart, until our arms stretched

between us.  We held on tight and let go" (21-23).

In Cleopatra Mathis's "Getting Out," the tone of the speaker appears to be nostalgic - that's a tone, right?  If it is not a tone, then I guess I would go with regretful.  The speaker really does not seem to feel the same now as he did when they broke up.  The imagery of a feuding couple is juxtaposed by the only tangible memory of the speaker which practically depicts them as being born for each other.  The main imagery in the passage is sound.  This imagery is even paired with a simile (that's so cool!) in line 13 when they heaved "words like furniture."  I don't know about you, but if I was being bombarded with furniture, then I would expect it to be quite painful.  The couple needed to learn to talk with each other more respectfully.  Now, they speak once a month through the mail and their words are only hurtful.  Personally, I feel like they would not even still communicate if they did not have love for each other.  They only "held on tight" because they did not want to leave, but they felt like they had to.  It's almost like that feeling when you flip a coin that it will land on one or the other, even if you are only flipping it because you were in a toss up.  Neither wanted to leave, yet both couldn't stay.

"The Apparition"

"Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat, wilt lie

A verier ghost than I" (12-3).

In "The Apparition" by John Donne, I kept thinking about how this completely negates everything I learned from Casper: The Friendly Ghost.  I felt like the tone was definitely revengeful.  Donne creates this tone by his very scary imagery of wanting to get back at an old "murderess" lover.  The diction in this poem confuses me.  Literally, it sounds like the speaker is truly a ghost, but I think that it was more metaphoric for killing the speakers sanity.  This really only makes sense logistically and does not have much text support (other than maybe line 8 and 13).  If the speaker wants revenge, then simply being a ghost would leave them incapable of any physical ability for revenge.  I think that the idea of a ghost is a metaphor for the speaker being invisible to the former lover.  In line 13, the speaker wants to make his old lover a "verier ghost."  I took this to mean that the speaker is not a ghost, but that he wants to make the cause of his broken heart a true ghost (e.g. dead).

"Pink Dog"

"Ash Wednesday'll come but Carnival is here.

What sambas can you dance?  What will you wear?" (32-3).

"Pink Dog" by Elizabeth Bishop seems to be an extended metaphor which compares the fear that a pink dog strikes into people with the foolish nature of a beggar.  While both of the images in comparison are negative, I feel like this poem is much like "London" in that Bishop is shining them in a new light.  The pink dog has "a case of scabies, but looks intelligent" (8-9).  To me, this line implies that the pink dog is only naked because of an outside force brought upon by some indirect life choices, much like a beggar.  Dogs would never choose to have scabies much like how a beggar would never choose to have to beg.

The quote I chose above mocks society in a sort of way.  The society (Germany calls their Fat Tuesday celebration Karneval, so maybe a German society?) is creating a false sense of perfection in the society with the celebrations.  This correlates with the message that Bishop is achieving because she seems to parallel on the message of Jesus that those with misfortune on earth will have happiness later in eternal life.  Bishop juxtaposes her early negative imagery of the pink dog ("Naked," "passersby draw back and stare," "of course they're mortally afraid") with a new light of hope for the dog that it might look grim now, but in time, the dog will be glorified.

Also, are the rhetorical questions there for a purpose or just decoration?

"To Autumn (Murphy?)"

"Where are the songs of spring?  Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too..."

This is the only type of personified
pumpkin that I enjoy to see in my life.

This poem by John Keats completely baffles me.  It is divided into three stanzas which seem to go chronologically by time of day and the time of Autumn.  The first stanza seems to represent the longing for summer as Autumn quickly sneaked in, while also representing early morning.  This is kind of contradicted though since it talked so much about the harvest, which is more in the middle of Autumn if I remember correctly, but I suppose most crops are harvested at different times of the season.  The next stanza proceeds on to what I would consider a more stereotypical Autumn with an old time store selling cider to people passing by the store.  It feels midday in the setting descriptions given by Keats.  This stanza also had the strongest imagery when it described the multitude of aspects of the store.  One of the questions asked what was being personified, but I cannot figure out what this image is.  I think that it might be either apples or a pumpkin, but I have narrowed it down to where it is probably something mentioned in the first stanza.  Gourds are the last items in that stanza, so I will deduce that the gourds are being personified?  The last stanza I believe is supposed to show the speaker's anxiety towards spring and life beginning to flourish, but that is probably not correct since they still have to endure winter as well.  This stanza also seemed to continue our chronological pattern by being more set in the evening (You know, that awkward time when it is not dark enough to start a bonfire, but too dark to play cards on merely daylight.  After I typed that all out, I realized that most people call that dusk.)

"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"

"And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -"

The imagery in this poem is highly linked to the sense of hearing.  While I read this, the TV was on and my dad came in to talk to my dog- yes, my family is very odd- yet while I was reading this, I still was able to really hear the sounds of "Mourners" (2), "a Drum" (6), "creak" (9), "and Silence" (15).  I do not actually think that I have ever read a poem where sound was the major feature of it, but it was quite an experience to imagine the scene through the sounds in my head.  Dickinson was very smart to use the sense of sound for this poem since it really describes the inner workings of this person's mind instead of the traditional poem that is depicting some wonderful scene from nature.

I picked the above selection of lines because they featured an anaphora through the repetition of the word "and."  This really set the stage for the dramatic effect in this poem.  I felt like this entire poem was leading up to the inevitable suicide of the person being described (though it will be very embarrassing if that is wrong).  This person was throwing themselves their own funeral, because they felt like no one would come.  He or she imagined it- silent- no one was there to say their goodbyes.

The last two stanzas feature a large juxtaposition of good versus evil.  In the fourth stanza, I believe that Dickinson is describing the chaos in heaven as the angels try to frantically to speak the person into not going through with the suicide, but the Devil won over the diseased mind.  The last stanza depicts the snapping out of reality and killing themselves.  The last stanza seems to display the idea that people who commit suicide go to Hell by having had the person "dropped down, and down" (18) as if they are in Dante's world and slowly falling to the level of Judas.  They finished knowing what it was like to live in a world of real pain when they reached Hell, which led to the closure of the poem.

"The Panther" by Rainer Maria Rilke

"As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands pararlyzed,"

("The Panther," Rilke)

This oxymoron used by Rilke really answers the first question posed on the handout.  Rilke uses the image of an entrapped panther because of the connotation of a panther versus the connotation of a lion.  This oxymoron alone gives the opinion that panthers are creatures to be respected, while the normal opinion of lions is that they should be feared.  Also, this stanza (was that the right word?) seems to juxtapose the natural power of a panther with the paralysis of an imprisoned panther.  I had thought that this was at a zoo when Rilke described the bars that the panther lived in, but the other images of people and, maybe more importantly, the ritual dance make me feel like this panther is a part of a circus attraction, but I do not know if panthers are actually circus animals.

In the last stanza, an "image enters in" the heart of the panther, which I take as being when the panther is released from its cage and finally gets to experience the world, but this goes away when the show is over.  I got this conclusion from the possible double meaning to the word "curtain of the pupils."  It makes it sound like the panther is simply waking up and opening its eye lids, but it could actually mean opening the circus curtains for the viewers, which can be described as pupils as well.  So I guess an image does not actually enter into the panther's heart, but rather the viewers at the circus who get to the dark silhouette of the panther doing a ritual dance.

Through an oxymoron and juxtaposition, Rilke seems to portray the immense pressure of a circus panther undertakes as a result of being taken in by a circus and treated as an attraction instead of an actual beast.

I wanted to put a picture of a panther in the circus to show how silly they look, but there are none on Google Image so I guess maybe it really was just a panther in the zoo.  Most of my analysis seems to still work though, so I am pleased with this poem!  Seriously, why do I feel like I have seen panthers in the circus?

"London" by William Blake

"In every cry of every man
in every Infant's cry of fear,
in every voice, in every ban,
the mind-forged manacles I hear" ("London," Blake).

This quatrain in "London" by William Blake seemed to portray an image of London when France attacked them in 1794 through imagery.  Blake repeated the word "every" as a way of really showing how huge of an effect the invasion had throughout London in every aspect of human life.  "Mind-forged manacles" seems like a very strong way of Blake depicting the feelings of entrapment within the citizens of London.  France did not shackle the citizens, but every citizen was scared to the point that they would not actually do anything.  The feelings of imprisonment were so strong in the mind's of all the people that it was even noticeable in their voices it would feel.

I am very confused by two things throughout this entire poem, each deriving in the context of words that I do not think kept the same meanings throughout history.  When Blake said, "And mark in every face I meet," I am very confused by what he means by "mark."  I suppose he may mean that every face appears as though someone had branded it with fear or woe since it was blatantly expressed on their faces.  The other phrase which is alluding me is, "in every ban," which is used in the above quote.  I suppose dictionary.com's definition of...

a malediction; curse.

is closes to the use in "London," but I really have no clue at all.

Lastly, the handout says that lines 11 and 12 cannot be read literally.

"And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls."

I absolutely cannot figure out any symbolism that this could mean.  Is it maybe still further portraying the helplessness in the citizens, but maybe transferring this hopelessness to the monarchy as well?

P.S.  I love Firefox's auto-save.  Firefox randomly crashed twice as I typed this.

Brave New World - Fifteen

"Opening her (Lenina) eyes, she had seen his face- no, not his face, a ferocious stranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury.  The hands that held her wrists were trembling.  He breathed deeply and irregularly.  Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth" (pg 194).

This stark imagery used to describe the persona of John far counters his original attitude in this chapter.  Before this, John and Lenina seemed to joking with each other about how much they loved each other, but now John is on the verge of a homicide.  I feel the necessity of this detailed imagery surges from the clear change in attitude and the need to really drive home this change.  Huxley does not reveal the reasons for this mood swing, but I believe it has something to do with Lenina's golden T necklace from the Arch-Community-Songster and her unwillingness to commit to him.  Because of the lack of details, Huxley was forced to show John's mental attitude through his appearance.

The part that really strikes me in this imagery is when "she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth."  Using his mouth to show anger gives John the animalistic presence, like a lion licking her lips as she pounces the unaware antelope.  I find this particularly striking because of John nature as a Savage.  The stress on his mind about his mother's impending death and his love of a "pure-bred" may have forced him to snap back to his roots of hating humans.  Another piece of his past, his loneliness and suicide attempts, might have resurfaced as he tries to figure out why he was not successful in ending his life.

How I imagine this conversation going.