To My Dear and Loving Husband

To My Dear and Loving Husband is a poem written by Anne Bradstreet. This play is about Bradstreet and her husband’s love for each other. The first line says "if ever two were one, the surely we" (Bradstreet). This line means that if there were ever considered that two people loved each other so much that they became one person, that her husband and her would be that couple. This really shows how much the two mean to each other. The most intriguing and influential part of the poem that gives an example of how much their love means to her is lines five and six that read "I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold/ or all the riches that the East doth hold" (Bradstreet). The saddest part is that many people prize money more than their husbands and wives. Bradstreet explains that she prizes him more than anything. I think that the seventh line is very interesting that she used a type of metaphor to describe her love for her husband. This line reads "My love is such that rivers cannot quench" (Bradstreet). It is tough to think of the large amount of love existing between two people. Bradstreet later goes on to say in line nine that "Thy love is such I can no way repay" (Bradstreet). This line begins to make the readers think about who she is repaying for this love because she has already briefly described how much she loves her husband. The question is, Is she repaying God for this strong love in her life or her husband for loving and caring for her so much? The following lines begin to talk about love in relation to heaven. Line ten says "The heavens reward thee manifold. I pray" (Bradstreet). We learn here that she is probably referring in line nine to repaying her husband. She believes that her husband loves her more than she loves him and she cannot repay him. I got this idea because of line ten saying "heavens reward thee manifold," which means God will reward all types or various amounts of love for each other (Bradstreet, line 10). Lines eleven and twelve say "Then while we live, in love let’s so preserve/ That when we live not more, we may live ever" (Bradstreet). These two lines are stating that while they are living and loving, they should conserve their love so that it will last forever, even in heaven after they die. The line twelve really makes the readers think about what Bradstreet is really meaning by "we may live ever" (Bradstreet, line 12). What Does this mean? Does it mean that as long as they love they will live forever? Or does it mean, will they still love in heaven forever? I found that there is much irony in this poem, but I did find line nine, that speaks about not being able to repay his love, the irony is shown because she just describe how much she loved her husband and how much she truly cared for him. I believe that this poem was truly written about someone that Bradstreet loved because of all the metaphors that are included in this poem to show their love for each other.

Antigone

The play "Antigone" is a Greek play that was written by Sophocles. This play is about a king named Creon. Whose son was named Haemon. He was engaged to Antigone. Her brother died and she told no one to bury him. Once Creon heard that someone was burring Polynesis, he decalred that the guards arrest whoever it may be. The guard arrested Antigone and took her back to Creon. Creon seemed to be trying to show that he obeyed the law and not one person would get away with disobeying him. Antigone on the other hand wanted to follow the Gods and burry her brother. The biggest dispute in this is between Antigone and Creon. Creon seems to be a person that needs to be dominate, in all aspects at all times and at this time, men were dominate over women. Women should not and would not disobey a man or disobey a law. Antigone disobeyed both. Antigone was a very strong woman in a mental aspect. When Antigones sister, Ismene, refused to help burry their brother, Antigone did not hesitate and buried him even in the daylight. She did not try to hide the fact that she committed the crime. When Antigone was arrested and was said to be killed, Ismene claimed that she was in on this crime as well. As readers we start to question and to wonder why she tried to claim that she committed the crime, when she didn’t and she knew the consequences. I believe that she either felt guilty or she didn’t want to live without her sister. Creon tried his best to show his dominance when his son begged him to let his wife, Antigone, go free. Many people beg Creon not to murder the poor girl. In the end Creon "mans up" and decides to let the girl live. When Creon returns to get Antigone, he finds that she has hung herself. This angers and upsets Haemon, Creon’s son. Instead of living the rest of his life and accomplishing something for himself or others, he kills himself as well. I think that Haemon is a very selfish person. He was a prince and had the option to be a king, he could have done so much more for the people and affected others. Instead of thinking about his potential and his future, he thought only of himself by killing himself. We later find out that Creon was severely saddened about the death of his son. He begins to realize that what he had done was wrong and That the Gods were punishing him. In the end, Creon’s wife, Eurydice, decided to kill herself too. She had lived through the murder of her niece, Antigone, and her son, Haemon. She did not want to live through anymore. Eurydice’s suicide was Creon’s largest punishment because once she was gone that left Creon alone with no one. This really affected Creon and changed his way of thinking. He could tell that the Gods were punishing him for acting out as he did. Now, he had to live the rest of his life alone.

A Doll House

At the start of this Play you see Nora who is a complete loving wife and mother asking her husband for money.  In order to get the money she has to ask like a Sequel. I’m sorry a sequel if my husband wanted me to ask like a sequel or anything else if I need money to purchase something.  you know,  why don’t you finish the shopping for the children and During the time that you are out go and pick up the stuff we need for the house and do all the house work while you’re at it because I am going out and working for my own money. The husband also gets frustrated with her because she is eating macaroons. The husband then tells her “has the little spendthrift been out throwing money around again” (859). I’m sure he eats sweets, I mean you have to have a little sweets now and it’s not throwing money away if you enjoy it. As you read the play who would think that they have a great marriage and that they would do anything for one another in fact Nora has done something that she knows her husband would disagree with. A few years before her husband was making money he was sick and would have “never have lived if he hadn’t gone south”(866). So she had to borrow “four thousand, eight hundred pounds”(866). To take him to Italy to save his life. The wife never told him she borrowed the money because her husband would have had gotten so angry. At the end of the play he does find out she barrowed money. After seeing his bad side and knowing that he would not to anything for her she leaves him. I would leave him too because If I risk everything for a man I love and he would not even stand up for me when I need him most I would leave but I would still want to take care of my children.

My Papa's Waltz

This poem was hands down the best poem I ever read. My Papa's Waltz could be taken in two totally different directions. The author writes, "The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle; at every step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle." The way that I understand it, the child is being physically abused, but in another aspect, the father is just coming home under the influence of alcohol and playing with the child and putting him to bed. In this part of the poem the child says that he is clinging to his father shirt, "You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt, then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt." Even though the father is drunk and pushing the child into things, he's still clinging on to dear life. This poem can be confusing and hard to comprehend what the author is actually trying to get us to understand, it is a very fun story and poem to read!

Today was a day like TB

This poem that I read was fun to read seeing as how I haven't had to read many things relating to the Indian merchandising issue. In the poem the author talks about how everyone has possession of something that an Indian made and probably the only reason they have it because they might have had an ancestor that was Indian.""Maybe they have an old Indian grandma back in time to excuse themselves." Chrystos supposedly feels very strong about the Indian merchandising issue. "How many Indians do you have working there? How much money are you sending the Haida people to use their sacred Raven design?" The issue is that everyone is paying Indians money not equivalent to what they deserve to make for crafts and etc. Those people then sell the merchandise for more than they are paying the workers. This poem should be required to read in schools around the country, along with the rest of the world; I would recommend this poem to everyone!

The Elephant Man

The Elephant Man is a play that was written by Bernard Pomerance. This was a play that was a true story about a real person named John Merrick. Merrick was a young man that has a horrific crippling disease that changed his entire life. From the beginning John is one of the acts of a traveling circus. This was where the title and john got his name of the elephant man half elephant and half man. The circus got their money from him exposing himself and his diseased body. In return for doing this he received a place to live, food, and was taken care of. John and the circus traveled to Belgium and the police say that he is indecent for anyone to see him. After John was taken by the police they find a card that was given to him by Doctor Treves, in which he works at the London hospital. Treves accepts him to the hospital and begins to study him. He wants to help john be as humanly normal as possible and eventually tells John he can call it “home.” While John is staying at the hospital many people come to see him and see what all the talk is about. Also while there in his free time he built a model of St. Phillips and shows actually how intelligent he is. Many people were interview to be Merrick assistant and the only one that passed was Mrs. Kendal. She visits and helps him very often and starts to find out that all john wants is to be normal and in his eyes to be normal is to see a beautiful woman naked. Eventually Mrs. Kendall reveals herself to him to help him feel more normal. When she does this Treves walks in and yells at her to leave. I believe Mrs. Kendal was the only one that saw John as a real person and felt that he was just like her. After Mrs. Kendal left, John felt left out and alone, because no one really talked to him anymore. Merrick lives the rest of his life at the hospital until he dies. My last thoughts about the story was that he was in a nice place staying in the hospital, but I start to become just like Ross and the director. Ross and the directors shows off Merrick for money and Treves shows off Merrick

Snake

In the poem “Snake,” by D.H Lawrence, there is a man that travels to a water-thought to get a drink and on his arrival he sees a snake already there getting a drink of water.This man waits patiently while the snake finishes drinking. He waits and waits and begins to think of why he is waiting when he could be taking a stick and break him now, and finish him off. If I was in his position I would of killed the snake, so why doesn’t he kill the snake? When some people think of a snake, they think evil, or gross or dangerous and that it needs to be killed. I said it’s for some people but that is what the person meant in the poem when he said he must be killed. This snakes color was yellow-brown and if you look that up it means they are poisonous, so I kind of believe that he feels like he should kill it. He could also think that killing it could save others. If he even may feel like that everything is telling him to kill it, he still doesn’t.

For someone to stand there and not do anything, I wonder if he wants socialize with the snake. I notice that he never calls the snake “snake”, but him or king. So the question is why did the man see himself in the snake? The man seemed as if he was a lonely guy, but the snake was as well. The difference between them was that the snake could go anywhere, do whatever it wanted, and since he was one of the few of the snakes that were poisonous made him more noticeable and respectable. When we think of a snake even though most of us are afraid of them makes us show respect for them also. There are other types of people that would hurt or kill that snake, because they know they can and that there is no comparison between them and the snake. I see him more and more as the snake as each passage passes and that the man goes through each day and hope that he doesn’t get bothered, injured, or hurt. There is one part he will not compare but only wish of and that is that the snake is due to be crowned and that he wishes he could be as powerful and noticed as the snake is. No matter how low you or anyone gets everyone always knows that they will concur or be on top of something one day.

Blackberries

My other blog that I chose was from “Blackberries” by Yusef Komunyakaa. It was about a boy who picks blackberries from the woods and tries to sell them. As he collects them he eats them and while doing this he daydreams about history. A car passes him while he is near the road and the two children in the back seat brought him back to earth from his daydreaming. First of all, from “They left my hands like a printer’s / Or thief’s before a police blotter,” it is as if this is a daily job for this young Child, and this child had been doing this job for quite some time. The child does not want to do this job but he has no choice due to his family being so poor. I believe that  the author uses the word” Terrestrial sweetness” to describe how rich the berries taste. However, at the same time, the young child cannot enjoy the sweet juicy fruits. As I can see from the third stanza “An hour later, beside City Limits Road / I balanced a gleaming can in each hand, / Limboed between worlds,” after the boy fills out his basket, he aspires to sell his blackberries to make a little money. We understand that this young boy in the poem didn’t have a childhood corresponding to the childhood of the others. Instead of a child who plays, jokes, giggles and has fun, he must make money for his family. I feel sorry for this child, but this is his life and not anyone can change this for him. In the last stanza, “The big blue car made me sweat. / Wintertime crawled out of the windows” the author gives us a clear gap between lower class and upper class people, which is meaningful to how different their lives are. The upper class people, also called the “rich people” relax inside enjoying their comfy lives, while, the young boy suffers in the treacherous summer. Also, as we can see from the lines “I saw the boy& girl my age, in the wide back seat.” People who purchase blackberries must have a luxury car, and therefore, their children live in a very comfortable family setting in comparison to this, young boy, who is only ten years old, who lives in such a brutal environment. The young boy also has to face all kinds of problems that he isn’t supposed to deal with in his young age.

The Fish

The Fish is a poem that was written by Elizabeth Bishop. In this poem there were two types of irony. In the beginning of the poem she talks about how she caught a big fish, in which she goes in great detail about. This fish being as big as it was said that he didn't fight at all. The poem talks about how big this fish really is when she says “He hung a grunting weight" but also of how he is “battered and venerable and homely". When it came for her to describing this fish she talked about how his "skin hung in strips like ancient wall-paper"," its pattern of darker brown was like wall-paper", and "he was speckled with barnacles". The list continues of how she describes this glorious fish. All of these descriptions tell you how old the fish really is. After describing the appearance of the fish she starts to describe the insides as well. She talks about “the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers", " big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails", and "the pink swim-bladder like a big peony". She then talks about how she stares at his eyes and his face. As she looks at this fishes poor face she notices his lip where it says “hung five old pieces of fish-line". She describes these hooks as two things from “medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering" and "a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw". She talks of how she kept staring at the fish and "how victory filled the rented boat". The speaker is realizing how big of a catch this fish really was and that catching him on his worst day was nothing special. In the end the speaker sees all this that she has thought and lets the fish go. One of the irony points is that she talks and talks about this fish for over 2 pages and how great this fish is and everything, but in the end lets the fish go. Another point of irony was that he caught this great fish and decided to let him live and lets him go, but with all the oil in the water the fish is going to die anyway.

In Creve Coeur, Missouri

What is “In Creve Coeur, Missouri” I took this as that there was a photographer taking pictures of a young woman taking her last breathes in a fireman’s arms. It talks about how the fireman is bent over the rag body held like impossible laundry pulled too soon from the line. When I read that line and a little more into it all I got out of it was that the fireman was bent over her and holding her, but the body was so ragged that it may have well been burned very badly. It mentions also about her hair standing out like a flame and that she is naked with no name. As I thought earlier about her being burnt I start to realize I may have been correct. With her hair standing out like a flame I start to picture her hair either completely burnt off or just still hot from where most of it was. Her close was burned off of her in this fire and as far as her name she could not speak to tell the fireman anything. She is no longer a baby, almost a child, and not yet a ghost. This young babe girl is so young, but out of the point of being called a babe. I notice she is not a ghost; therefore she is still alive and still unable to speak. She is so small and young to where it talks about her pressing her doll-like fist to his professional chest. Her head falls back and as the fireman tries to resuscitate her they start to wonder if she will live or in the case of the poem stand again. It tells you that the fireman has done this time and time again using CPR. One way it talks about what he does is it states that he’s sucking the spirit back to us from its lair of smoke. With him continually saving people’s lives they say that they will call it a fine surprise, because apparently this doesn’t happen to him much. The last line says that “The snapshot won a prize though it couldn’t revive her that night in Creve Coeur.” There were two things that stuck in my head the part about the fireman always saving the lives of people and the photographer taking the picture of a disaster. The fact that the fireman saved lives again and again, and the fact that everyone around expected him to save her as well was normal. We expect EMT, fireman, ect. to save our lives, but we also realize as much as we would want everyone saved it’s impossible to save them all. I understand that people need to make a living working and his job consists of taking pictures, but to take a picture of a young girl dyeing in a fireman’s arms is just wrong.