"Homes"

“Homes”

         “Homes” by Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman is structured as a Sestina. These particular poems have a very distinctive organization pattern and very specific with its classifications. “Homes” holds repetition and is bountiful in metaphors, but the most distinctive technique is Gilman’s tone.

         The tone throughout the poem is calmly accusing. It sheds light on the fact that homes have been turned into a persons “god.” Homes have become the safe haven, private, intimate and expressive. The outside of the house gives the first impression of what the owners may be like. For example, a large house is obviously owned by a wealthy family and so on. One can easily gather a family’s “social rankings” just from the outside of a house. But when did houses become our defining for social ranking? It actually goes to the root of possessions. A home only holds all of a person’s possessions. These possessions can be shown off or hidden within the privacy of the home, but the home still contains all of these earthly things. The “toys” that men work so hard for so that they can flaunt how much money they make, or even the furnishing of a well kept house.

         Each stanza penetrates deeper into what a home or dwelling holds for a human. It goes even deeper than possessions and what it contains; humans have added significance. A home gives significance because of its privacy. Everyone can be whoever they want to be within the privacy of their homes. This is where the connection back to God lies, that the homes control significance, no longer God. 

"Lonely Hearts"

A Villanelle poem has a very organized structure that must be followed exactly for it to be considered this kind of poem. The amount of stanzas, rhyme scheme, and lines all has to fall under the guidelines of a Villanelle poem. The lines specifically have to be repeated in certain orders leaving a unique tone to each poem. For example, the poem "Lonely Hearts" repeats a question at the end of every stanza. This depicts a tone of desperation or searching for affirmation. The tone continues through each stanza as different scenarios are described.

                The content of the poem is shared through different types of people that one might be searching for. The author, Wendy Cope, asks through an athletic man, a vegetarian, business executive, a homosexual, a Libran and ending with an all-inclusive tone of desperation for the different types. These rhetorical questions leave an open-ended wonderment coming from all kinds of people. Cope took a universal question that each person wonders, "is there someone out there for me?" and placed it into genres.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn"

This ode is driven through the emotions Yeats sees while looking at an urn. Urns typically have scenes painted on them telling a story or just a painting of a special, meaningful place. Yeats depicts these scenes through the emotional tags he feels to each. He utilizes these places to take him to a deeper place of thinking. He splits each scene into five stanzas and ties a romantic twist to them.

         The in general the poem is reflecting his belief of love and the innocence of it. He begins with talking about a bride and then on to someone that has never been kissed. It clearly expresses meditation on love and what it should look like, being happy and blissful. He structures it into five stanzas; ten lines each with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDEDCE. One of Yeats main devices is rhetorical questions that he places throughout the whole poem. 

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind"

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind”

                  This poem is depicting the winter wind and comparing it to human relationships. It is a Shakespearean poem split into to two stanzas with a rhyme scheme of AA-B-CC-B-DDDD. Each stanza begins and ends the same way, and there are few differences between the stanzas. This effect allows it to flow more like a song. This poem is a nature poem that personifies something in nature to take on human characteristics. 

                  The poem’s tone is whimsical cheerfulness even though the winter wind is dull and “unkind.”  Its description also gradually gets softer as the poem goes on. Shakespeare uses this type of poem to keep it structured and organized. The repetition follows the life of wind and its constant swiftness. 

Poetry Response #4 "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day?"

“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”

                  Shakespeare expresses one of those warm, breathtaking days captivating the months of June and July and compares it to a beautiful woman. Each quatrain he depicts a new picture of what this woman looks like and paints an image of a gorgeous day. This Shakespearean sonnet follows the four quatrains with an abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyme scheme.

                  This format enriches the development of the poem. The quatrains split up allow Shakespeare to flow from one picture to the next. For example, the first quatrain gives these woman characteristics of being lovely and temperate.  The next characterizes her with a fair complexion followed by an exaggerated expression of how beauty, at some point, will always fade except for the beauty that the girl attains. His writing is influenced by the structure because it allows him to describe sufficiently and deeply as the poem continues. He splits up in this way so that each quatrain acquires its owning meaning, and then he ties it all together again with the couplet at the very end. 

Poetry Response #3 "Captivity"

“Captivity”

         Mrs. Rowlandson remembers the nights of imprisonment when the Wampanoag captured her in 1676. She dives deeply into her personal memoir about what it was like being enslaved and now, having been set free, what it is like to be with her own family. The author, Edrich, uses imagery and expressive diction to recall the days of living in the cold outdoors with the Wampanoag. The shift to her life after captivity evokes a sense of understanding for the Wampanoag and her lifestyle that she lived with them. At first, fear overwhelmed her and what would become of her as she struggled from starvation and the bitter cold, but she reminisces to the privileges and things she now has such as food and a warm place to sleep. In the middle of it all, she is searching for truth and a broader understanding of the world around her. Edrich depicts this in her images that begin in captivity and end in freedom. 

Agamemnon Glog

http://carolinecorinne.glogster.com/edit/agamemnon/

Poetry Response #2 "Hazel Tells LaVerne"

“Hazel Tells LaVerne”

         In this poem by Katharyn Howd Mechan, the speaker is a housemaid that is cleaning up after her over seer. It would appear that she is recalling a dream that voices her childhood desire to be a princess. The dialogue used depicts her as an African American woman and her disbelief and doubt display her as an older woman. The words are written like she was saying them out loud, so most are misspelled and nothing is capitalized. Her circumstances must be grim considering that becoming somewhat of a princess is out of the question. This type of lifestyle may have been something that she grew up into and her family before her did similarly what she does to earn her living.

         Mechan is addressing the disbelief of rising above what has been placed in front of a person. Back in these times, people were not able to rise from different social classes. The character in the poem is uneducated and going to back to what she used to imagine as a child. However, this time, she is shutting down her dream forever by saying that she could never be a princess.