I, being born a woman and distressed

it sounds as though the narrator is struggling with her pride and her mind. her pride wants to not let her get abused by people, perhaps a lover, but her mind is trying to let love others. it would seem she has been abused by loving to freely, thus she "finds this frenzy insufficient reason for conversation"; the conflict of being abused for loving too freely to someone who she believes to be dependable is too much, thus she will not make herself vulnerable any longer. perhaps she means that she will no longer love that person without putting up boundaries? very confusing, i'm interested in hearing what has to be said in class today.

The Raven

Some INTENSE alliteration going on here, and some good rhymes to. for someone who likes hip-hop music i enjoyed reading this immensely, i feel like you could put it over a sick beat and get dr. dre to rip it on the mic.

either way, i'm pretty sure it's the man's consiounsce driving him crazy, this bird who nags at him, for his murder of Lenore. He wants to forget about her but the raven won't let him. he stand and waits and tortures him evermore with his 'nevermore' business. pretty funny read honestly, although it might just be how cliche it is today. either way it's good stuff, if you havent read it cuz u think it's too long, well ya it's a long poem and prolly coulda been a shorter one, but i'd still suggest reading it.

The Sick Rose

Reading this incredibly short poem at first is a bit daunting to figure out. It's only 8 lines and everything seems to have a symbolic meaning. I really enjoy how they give you a couple paragraphs at the end of many poems to explore the meaning behind the poem, because it's a lot easier to start a base understanding of the poem if you don't know which way to start (although I do feel like it ruins a bit of the search to find out for yourself). Either way, the paragraphs below the story give a bunch of good examples of how the sick rose, and everything in this poem, is not your average symbolic icon; the sick rose is part of a world seperate of ours because EVERYTHING in the poem has seperate meanings. no longer can someone say "well obviously the invisible worm is referencing blah blah blah in the poem" because everything in the poem is already a reference to something externally from it. Thus, as the info at the bottom of the poem tells, you need to know more about William Blake to understand this poem (the way he writes, the topics he writes about, any other poems that are part of the same universe as this one, etc).

having said that, I do feel as though the sick rose is something that has become sick because of this invisible worm. it would seem as though this worm has gone behind the rose's back and the darkness he represents has somehow made a sickening impact on the rose. then again, because the rose's sickness is mentioned in the beggining, the rose could already be sick, merely the invisble worm has exploited its sickness to utterly destroy it. It'll be intersting to hear other interpretations and other background info about Blake to get the full story.

To His Coy Mistress

It would almost seem as if he's presenting an argument to his love why they can't be idle in their love, including the physical aspects. If they had all the time in the world he would love her still as passionately as he does now, even if she were to be hesitant until the very end. his ability to love her is passive because she is so hesitant, even if she is not trying to be. he says this love grows with time and he would continue to admire her from far. Since humans don't live forever, she could find herself hesitating until her very death, thus his love for her would never be found although his love would continue to sing within his soul even after death.

Death, be not proud

basically John Donne is mocking death for being a supposedly might and horrible thing. He believes death resembles sleep, and that sleep is joyous. This also says that he believes life is tedious and and that the livelihood of day is worse than the unconciousness of night. perhaps this poem was written during the industrial revolution when workers had 12 hour shifts and lived under horrible living conditions. furthermore he shows the accomplices and cronies of death - poison, war, and sickness - showing that death is not accompanied by anything it should be proud of. furthermore, with medicinal products humans can sleep better than they could if they were dead, and much less painfully so than a deadly stroke, so why should death be proud of its effects?

the last two lines are obviously a further mocking of death, but i can't seem to understand what he is implying fully. i'll have to ask this in class tommorow.

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

- This stanza is in the past tense, obviously the father's son reminiscing of his alcoholic father and probably what he said while he was drunk (aka his breath making him dizzy). The son perhaps wants to belief in his father and what he stands for but it's hard for him to stay on this path.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

- Again in past tense, the boy might be reminiscing of his first sexual experiences. after reading the questions and analysis that was posed at the end of this story in the book I realized two odd word choices that Roethke made: "We romped UNTIL the pans slid from the kitchen shelf" and My mother's countenance could not UNFROWN ITSELF". It is as if he wants to change his sexual deficiency when he was younger, but the memories will not change for him, he still bothers his mother in his memories.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

- The son again reminiscing of his father. It is possible to believe the father has beat his son with his hand and his belt buckle. Roethke shows the pain that the son remembers by expressing where the buckle was scraping him: the tender body part of his right ear. he also doesnt blame the buckle hitting him, merely that his father missed and that his knuckle was battered. it can be assumed that the son, while reminiscing of his father's beatings of him, has completely forgiven the acts of his father or believes that it was merely the nature of things in his past.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
still clinging to your shirt.

- Another reminscence of the son's father. His father possibly just came back from a long day's work. He most likely works at a job that requires a lot of physical labor, based on the dirt on his hands. He beats his son again, trying to teach him the lesson of time and how to use it. With the ammount of work he does, he is possibly teaching his son to make something for himself instead of ending up where he is today. the last two lines shows that the father gives the son rest, perhaps even forces rest upon him because of the term "waltezed", which seems to imply a leadership. "still clinging to your shirt" might imply that both in his memories and also now he clings to his father's lessons.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Having watched much of the movie in class I found it pretty easy to visualize the scenes. It was surprising at the end that Stanley needed to rape Blanche even though he had won the war against her already. It was hard for me to really find a character that i could totally sympathize with, each character had an ugly side and a beautiful side. As far as the transference from the play to the movie, their were little to know changes, although I believe the scene between Mitch and Blanche after their date is in a different setting in the movie and her explanation of the boy she fell in loved with and hurt was completely different from the movie (if i'm not mistaken he is depressed in the movie and she calls him weak, but in the book he is actually gay and she calls him disgusting). definitely can't wait to watch the movie version and how it changes the two last scenes, it's an older movie so they probably changed the scenes drastically as to avoid references to rape, although i hope they keep it true to the play; it has a lot of significance to every one of the character's decisions in the last scene.