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.