A Little Intro To My Journal

Professor Nicosia -

First of all, let me apologize a thousand times for getting this to you so late. It's been a very hectic week with the last week of classes and my mom and brother in Poland. The funeral service was on Wednesday for my Grandmother, and it was just a gloomy day even though I didn't have much time to be gloomy as I was running around trying to get everything done. I don't know what's worse...if I would have sat around and moped all day, or if my busy schedule kept me from being sad. I'm more or less back to normal, but I'm afraid to go home, as I'm sure my memories will start welling up when I realize she'll no longer be with me.

As for the journal, here it is, all shiny and cool. I have to say that your class is among the greatest I have taken at Montclair State University, and has really opened my eyes to the wonders of poetry. Before this class, I really was not a fan of poetry at all, but my ways of thinking have completely changed. Your class has also given my heart some warmth, as I'm sure you'll be able to see, it was quite cold and cynical at the beginning of the semester (I hated romance poems). I love poems now, and have an entirely different outlook on the genre.

I hope that after this class, you and I will still keep contact, as you have been a very helpful and motivational professor for me. Have a great holiday season, and I hope to see you around!

-Bernadette

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

I'm not entirely sure what this poem is about, but the title intrigued me. I'm assuming the speaker is a child, watching her aunt weave or knit something on a screen (do you knit or weave on a screen?) and she's knitting tigers. Why she describes the tigers as topaz is a little confusing...topaz is a reddish color, but perhaps when woven, the yarn isn't quite the color of orange, but more reddish instead. Maybe it's as vivid as topaz is, and maybe that's why she chose to use that color. I love how she personifies these tigers, which I don't think in actuality are animate objects...but on the screen they look heroic and courageous. In the third line it says "They do not fear the men beneath the tree;" which I'm assuming again, are men that are put into this picture, but it could also be seen as Aunt Jennifer herself. The tigers don't fear Aunt Jennifer, even though she is human, because she's the one who's making them.

I love the shift on thought in the second stanza too. Poor Aunt Jennifer seems old and frail. I hope she gets to finish her piece.

Then the poem is ended with a hint of happiness almost. Even after Aunt Jennifer dies (which further emphasizes my theory that she is old and will be gone soon) the stuff she has birthed will live on. The tigers will look no different no matter what happens.

This is a really touching poem for me, because my grandma was a handy person who loved to make art s and crafts like these. And now, even though she's gone, what she has done for me will always be there. My grandma was big on keeping things neat and organized, and labeled. There are boxes all over the house with her handwriting on it, specifying what's in each of those boxes. Her handwriting appears strong and invulnerable. Even though she's gone, the strength she projected through her hand-work will always be there.

Not Waving but Drowning - Stevie Smith

The reason I like this poem, and find it fascinating, is that I can tell there's more than one way to interpret it...there's so many ways for it to be read. In fact, my interpretation of the poem changed from the beginning to the end, and by the end I had an entirely different view of what was going on. By the end, I saw the dead man as someone who had been yearning for attention and tender loving care all this life. The "not waving but drowning" is kind of like a metaphor for him profusely and desperately waving his hands for attention, but since nobody would give it to him, he'd drown in self-pity instead. The coldness that is described, is the coldness one feels when it seems that nobody cares about them. And at the third line of the third stanza, he kind of brings it all together, because he's saying that he was too disconnected from society all his life... he was a loner...kind of sad, really.

I could be entirely wrong though. This doesn't have to be a metaphor, it could be realistic. Maybe there was a guy out in the ocean who wasn't waving to anybody, but trying to signal for help. Either way, it would bounce off my other theory, because nobody cared to find out what was really going on...he drowned anyway.

I don't like the set-up of the second stanza...it's a bit discomforting. It's not balanced or equal. It's a hard stanza to read, because you don't know where to pause to make a good rhyme scheme. I do like when poets put parentheses in their poems...I LOVE parentheses because you can just go astray from your thoughts, or give a little anecdote, without ruining the structure of everything else....parentheses might be my favorite punctuation mark.

Harlem - Langston Hughes

What an interesting thought and way to look at it. This entire poem is a personification of a dream...even though Hughes isn't giving the dream human-like qualities, it makes it an animate object. The thing about this poem is he's describing each way a person can feel when their dreams aren't attained, which in point, makes the dream more human. It makes me want to attain all my dreams because the dream seems so human, and if I don't it's like I failed at doing something important and then rejected it...just like that. It's a very sad but persuasive way to look at this type of situation. I really will have to strive harder for my dreams now.

Towards the end, I like how he says "Maybe it just sags like a heavy load" because by that time, even though the poem is short, I really feel like I'm sagging...and when you're sagging you just want that pressure to go away, to just magically disappear, and then at the last line that pressure explodes! That probably isn't the best thing to happen to a deferred dream either, but at least you don't have to go around carrying all that weight of failing at your dream.

I want to know why the poem is named Harlem though...is it saying that many people in Harlem can't reach their dreams? Isn't Harlem a really crime-infested area (at least parts of it?). That explosion could correlate to the last line...with guns going off and stuff, it's like a mini-explosion. Is he saying that people who can't attain their dreams rely on crime to help their problems? That's probably a really risky thing to say.

And the raisin in the sun...there's a book called "A Raisin in the Sun" ... I want to know if those two have anything to do with each other, and if so, who got the influence from who?

i thank You God for most this amazing day - e.e. cummings

I'm not too familiar with e.e. cummings aside from the little bit I read about him in the back of our book, which I found a little surprising. The way he writes would make me think that he was uneducated, or maybe dyslexic (even the words in the title seem like they're out of order...shouldn't it be "for this most amazing day"? it just seems a little weird the way he does it). But low and behold! He's a Harvard scholar! Who was also a prisoner of war...which may explain the first line of his second stanza. Because being a prisoner of war I'm sure doesn't make you feel alive until you walk away freely into the sunny day.

I do like his depiction of the sun's birthday, and it reminds me of Shakespeare's (whom I've actually come to appreciate for some reason) "Sonnet 18." Shakespeare personifies the sun by making him "the eye of heaven." Then also, John Donne has a small monologue with the sun in his poem "The Sunne Rising." I'm assuming that there was some sort of influence, going on here, or each of these poets just really love the sun, which is cool too.

This should be the prayer that is said at the beginning of the day. We should be thankful for each day that we wake up and find everything in the perfection we so adore.

I kind of see this poem as a dream though, because at the end he has those two lines in parentheses "(now the ears of my ears awake and / now the eyes of my eyes are opened)". It seems like he was dreaming of this ever so perfect day, and at the end of the poem he awakes ... it kind of makes me want to know whether his dream came true or if he awoke to a gloomy cloudy day...how ironic would that be?

Cake - Mark Strand

This poem reminds me of Robert Frosts "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." Both characters are lost in the woods, only I feel more detached from this one than I did for Robert Frost's character. I felt like I was actually in the woods on that snowy evening, and here I feel like I'm watching this man on a screen or something, but I'm not actually with him. What it reminded me of, is this story I saw on Dateline (because I LOVE investigative journalism) about this man who had been spotted walking along the beach somewhere...nobody knows where he came from, and he couldn't speak. The only thing he could do was play the piano like Mozart or Chopin...other than that, nobody knows about him, he just showed up randomly. I was hoping this character would be like that...it would have made for an interesting story.

What I don't get, is why it was cake that was the whole reason he got lost. Cake. Out of all things, he chose cake. Cake just seems so unrelated to the forest, so far from nature. It's almost discomforting. That discomfort goes along with the fact that this man disappears and then suddenly reappears a few years later without any transition between the two events.

And why are the waves of the sea black? It makes me think of muck and gooey water. Ew.

The only comforting thing about the discomfort of this entire poem is the way it flows. It starts with the guy going to get the cake, and then not finding it, getting lost, and then going back to get it again, to end up in his thoughts, where he was while he was lost. It just seems to flow really well, even if the poem doesn't make much sense.

Eating Poetry - Mark Strand

I really really like this poem. It takes me back to childhood when you play pretend and turn into something. Eating poetry...I just love that sound and that concept. It's like having a tea party with poetry as the cookies.

It reminds me of an actor who will for a time, while filming, turn into his character, to really get the gist of his personality. The speaker here, turns into what he is reading to better understand it. I picture a little boy at the library, literally eating the pages of poetry, with the librarian standing there in shock. Or maybe even, it's a little boy who's just reading all this poetry which should be way over his head, but isn't, and the librarian can't get over that.

This is sometimes how I feel after I've been reading a book for a really long time, and after I finish reading, I'm so caught up in the characters of the book that I begin to think and act like them. If it's a British book I really honestly start thinking in a British accent and answering people with British phrases.

I don't have much to say about the style or structure of this poem, except that the 3 line stanzas go with my theory of this reminding me of a little kid poem...it's simple and broken up, something you might see in a children's book. It doesn't take a genius to understand it, although I'm sure there are things beneath the words that I'm just not catching.

This Is Just To Say - William Carlos Williams

I love this poem...it reminds me of that nursery rhyme about Little Jack Horner, who was eating the Christmas pie, and put in his thumb, then pulled out a plum and said "What a good boy am I!" Of course here I picture Little Jack Horner in the corner looking all guilty about the plums he has eaten and saying "What a bad boy am I!" It also makes me think of a post-it note a guilty husband would stick to the fridge..."Sorry hun, I ate the plums you had in the icebox...I'm sure you were saving them for breakfast, but forgive me anyway." It's so cute and so simple. I really do want to forgive him, because I can so relate to eating something or taking something away that was not meant to be used until later, or it was for someone else, but I had to take it because it was too tempting and just took control over me!

I would like to know why he doesn't use any punctuation in this poem. I can see the enjambment happening from the first stanza to the next, but it makes it all the more confusing when you reach the third stanza, because then you have to realize the stop. He does make up for it by capitalizing the first letter of the first word in the third stanza, but still...I don't understand why there is absolutely no punctuation, especially at the end of the second stanza. And also there should be some sort of punctuation after the second line in the third stanza, because when you read it, there should be a slight pause, to think about the sweetness and temptation of these plums.

Maybe he's trying to make his apology quick.

Sestina - Elizabeth Bishop

I just don't really get this poem. It's kind of weird. I like the idea of a Sestina, and I may want to try it sometime. I kind of like this feeling of tranquility and peace of coloring on a rainy day while listening to my grandma bustle about the house. My grandma just died last week, and this kind of scene is something I'm going to cherish for the rest of my life. When I was younger, this would be exactly what a rainy afternoon with my grandma would entail. My grandmother was big on arts and crafts and right now, I can actually picture a specific day when we were doing this sort of thing.

Although, I would really like to know why the grandmother is crying. I like how Bishop relates everything back to the tears, but I really want to know why the grandmother is crying. It makes me wonder if my grandmother ever cried or tried to hide her tears before me. I can't imagine how that must feel...to be crying and just want to burst out and let someone know how you feel, but you can't. I hope my grandma wasn't sad. :(

I like the metaphor Bishop uses for the kettle, of the kettle singing. People usually find that noise annoying, but I've always liked it, and now I'll be able to explain why. And I love the way she says that the tears dance (15) ... I wrote a story not that long ago that described tears as "trotting" and I submitted it to The Normal Review...people were making fun of that statement, but now I see I'm not the only one who tries to personify tears and give them human-like actions.

Is the grandmother a happy kind of sad, knowing that for her also, this will be the type of memory she will cherish for the rest of her life, which chances are, may not be too much longer?

I feel bad for the grandchild. He's in his own little bubble...kind of like A.D.D. ... doesn't he see the grandmother crying? Well I guess not, because she's trying to hide her tears.

But I really really want to know why she's crying. This is going to bother me.