weeks 1 and 2

Barbie Doll

Dexterity- skills in physical movements

Consummation- the act of consuming; fulfilling

I think this piece speaks about all girls who have ever felt they weren’t pretty enough. The title is significant because it relates to children growing up believing they should look like Barbie who is the perfect human. Unfortunately most people don’t have perfect bodies. The girl as related in lines 7-9 is portrayed as being smart and in good health, but in todays world these qualities don’t count for much. The poem has a sad tone even though it doesn’t convey remorse outright. The events themselves show us how unhappy the girl was.

Leaving the Motel

I don’t think this poem is about love as most of us view love to be. I believe it is about a sexual act between two people that is supposed to be forbidden. I see a young couple who are engaged to different people having a one night stand. I draw this conclusion from the last line where the author talks about “other names”. It’s as if the two people are getting married later and their last names will change later. This piece is written like a list poem and like most lists, it is not detailed, but generalized. As such it is very open to interpretation.

The Ruined Maid

This poem is difficult to interpret because of the language it is written in. It was written in the mid 1800s and we just don’t talk this way anymore. The whole poem seems to be ironic because Melina, the “ruined woman” is proclaiming that to have all these good things her friend points out like a new dress and new gloves one must be ruined. She says the reason her nameless friend is still a poverty stricken farm girl is because she is not “ruined.”

Death of a Young Son by Drowning

Bathysphere- A spherical deep-diving chamber in which persons are lowered by a cable to study the oceans and deep-sea life.

Cairn- A mound of stones erected as a memorial or marker

The tone of this piece is defiantly sad, but I think it’s passively sad because the father’s grief is never actually spoken of. I believe this poem to be about a son who travels to see his father in “this country” which I interpreted to be America because of line 6. In the line the speaker refers to how he doesn’t have a claim to the land he resides on. He can’t claim the land of his own because he is a foreigner, an immigrant. Te son fell into the water and the mission set out to rescue him failed. The son’s life was the father’s future. The father was to live on through his son, but now that dream is over. It’s spring, and life goes on, and the father travels to get his son and to bury him in America like a flag, which I took to mean he buried him free.

Soliloquy of the Spanish cloister
Abhorrence- One that is disgusting, loathsome, or repellent.
Refection- a portion of food or drink; repast.

This has been the most confusing piece yet! This poem is another good example of how people used to talk differently. It’s so hard to understand this piece because no one talks like that anymore. This manner of speaking reminds me of Shakespeare: Difficult yet beautiful. The poem seems to convey anger. Poems like this make me think about poems in omniscient form because the reader can’t completely trust them because we’re only given one point of view. Maybe Brother Lawrence is the good guy after all, we’ll never know.