Week Seven Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

Comments on “The Secretary Chant” by Marge Piercy

My initial response to the poem was that this one had a very creative use of imagery. I enjoyed the poem because I work in an office and I can relate to the author’s writing. I would describe the speaker’s persona as comedic sarcasm. Words like “my breasts are wells of mimeograph ink” portray the tone of a person who feels they are merely a machine instead of a human being. The poems setting is inside an office because she says “File me under W because I wonce was a woman”. The role of figurative language in the poem is to paint for the audience a picture of a woman who is feels like she is a bulky machine instead of a woman. The theme of the poem is that the woman no longer feels like a human, but now she is treated like and feels just like a piece of furniture in the office where she works.

Comments on “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

I simply loved this poem. It made me think of my father and how hard he worked. We had a woodstove when I was little and my father always kept the house hot as well, it was hot. In order for it to be so hot, he had to get up really early, like dark thirty, and cram it full of wood. He never complained. He worked as a mechanic and his hands were rough, blistered and bruised almost all the time. I really love my dad. In the poem “Those Winter Sundays”, the father got up in the “blue black cold” just like my dad; only I called that dark thirty. In the last sentence, “love’s austere and lonely offices”, spoke volumes to me about the role of a parent. The role is full of love, it is plain and simple and at times, it can be so lonely and thankless. However, it is the most important role anyone can ever have.

Comments on “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop

This poem sounded like a poem that Hemingway could have written because it portrayed the fish as a manly fish that had fought bravely and successfully so many times. The manly fish had five strings of honor or a “five-haired beard of wisdom”. The speaker is the person who caught the fish. His persona is that of a fisherman and his attitude toward his subject is respect. The fisherman respects the bravery of the fish so much that he lets the fish go. The setting is aboard a boat. The poem is about how the little fish overcame adversity and lived to fight another day. The fish was much more brave and much more of a fighter than the fisherman. The poet showed her values when the fisherman understood he was in the game for the sport of it and to kill such a brave fighter would be a shame.

Comments on “Some Words for Fall” by James Applewhite

In this poem, I see a portrait of eastern North Carolina in the fall about twenty years ago. Still today, there are tobacco barns packed full, but they are on the decline. The line “Pete and Joe paid out, maybe two weeks ago” means that they were paid the most money they would see until next season about two weeks ago. This timing places the poem in the late fall. I loved the illustration of the signs on the barn “silvered and alive”. The theme of the poem is the sensory illustration of what life was like in eastern North Carolina in the fall. The poet’s values are shown as a value of hard work, good barbeque, and a strong sense of pride in the community. “The language they speak is things to eat” means the language of the community revolves around food. Every sign, every aroma, every dollar earned that the author writes about makes up the “torn banner of a heroic name”.

Comments on “Something I Know About Her” by Gerald Barrax

This poem makes me think the author is talking about his mother and she is a black lady because he says she uses “jive words”. I loved this poem. I loved the fact that she “touches when she talks”. This fact means that she is sensitive and kind. The personification he used when he said she “smoothed out syntax with her fingertips” was beautiful. When the subject must “lay on her band to hear her echo” makes me think that she was elderly, kind and attentive; all are enduring qualities. The line “to feel the words you don’t speak” is just what a mother would do. She is reading her son’s face just to make sure he is not hiding anything too painful. I loved the line “if she touches you, listen” this means that if you are special enough to get her attention, soak it up. She is a very wise woman with worthwhile advice. ‘To surprise her at it” means not to interrupt her while she is talking because she is fully engaged in conversation both verbally and through her body language. The reader is advised to keep her engaged so that her words have meaning and are not just “jive words”. If the reader listens to this woman, she can offer true pearls of wisdom. The “Something I Know About Her” is that she is wise.

Comments on l(a by E.E. Cummings

In this poem, when all the letters are put together, they spell out “a leaf falls one 1”. I think that the poet put it together this way because the letters fall down the page like a leaf falls down from a tree, one by one.