Week Eleven Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

Week Eleven Blog

Comments on “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes

In this poem, Langston Hughes uses the symbol of human veins to portray the roots of our society. We have veins and like rivers and roots, they run deep. As a society, we have made our homes by rivers. Likewise as a people we cannot survive without our veins which carry life throughout our bodies. His poem has a racial connotation for which he is famous for. The connotation is in the singing of the “Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans”. This reference to Lincoln gives way to a slavery image. In the opening line, “I’ve known rivers” he is saying that he has known people. He has known people of many races and many different backgrounds. Ultimately though, people are all the same because we all have physical characteristics that make us human. Veins like rivers run through society from the “Euphrates…Congo…Nile (and the)…Mississippi) and they link us together as a society. In the last line, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” means that his soul has grown deeply rooted in his place in society.

Comments on “Dusting” by Julia Alvarez

This poem is about a daughter wanting to be something more than the housewife that her mother is. In the line “My name was swallowed in the towel” she says that her mother in a sense was erased from the world by becoming a lowly housewife. In the daughter’s mind, her mother was an insignificant nobody who did menial tasks and by her very existence she exuded “loser”. The daughter tried hard to make her “mark” in the house, but the mother continuously erased her efforts. In the line “the pine grew luminous”, she compares her life with the pine. The work her mother does with the pine, makes it “luminous” but it is erasing her as a person. She does not want to become like her mother. In fact, in line 17 and 18, she says “But I refused with every mark to be like her, anononymous”.

Comments on “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe

This is a love poem. In this poem, Marlowe uses a pastoral setting to lure his potential mate to come live with him. He uses this setting because it is more relaxing than a city setting and the pastoral was more ideal at that time in history. He tells his love they will “sit upon the rocks” and he will comfort her with “a gown made of the finest wool” which I personally find offensive, and “Fair lined slippers for the cold”. He may have a chance with the slippers, but certainly not the gown nor the rock. I don’t find this poem to be particularly persuasive. I think that if he had gold for the buckles on the shoes then, maybe he could afford a more comfortable gown, better place to sit and a warmer house. I think this man really knows nothing about women. I think the equivalent of the shepherd’s argument in the twenty-first century would be: I’ll give you the best land, car, clothes, and view from your enormous mansion if you will just come live with me. I think he would appear painfully desperate in any century.

Comments on “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh

This poem is the reply to “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. In this reply poem, Sir Walter Raleigh turns down Christopher Marlowe’s request for love theoretically of course. In this poem, Raleigh brings down to earth the lovely ideas Marlowe presented. He says that all things fade and that Marlowe’s love just was not enough. In this poem, the reality that all things fade even love is presented and explored. In Raleigh’s poem, line 5 he states “Time drives the flocks from field to fold” means that ultimately one must return to their inner truth and that youth and “folly” will not last. Ultimately, we must be true to ourselves. In Raleigh’s response, he cannot live a lie and nothing will make the person in Raleigh’s poem love the person in Marlowe’s.

Comments on “Sometimes the Words Are So Close” by Julia Alvarez

This is a beautiful poem about a woman who can only become her authentic self when she writes poetry. She expresses her true self through poetry. In the line “I once was in as many drafts as you”, she means that she tried many things to fit into society and to make friends. Ultimately, she found her true purpose in life as a poet. She inspires others to “take heart from me” if you are “yearning to be free”. By this, she means that if you too feel trapped and out of place maybe you could try expressing your thoughts and feelings with writing. She becomes simpler when she writes so that anyone can understand her thoughts as in the line “the real text a child could understand”.

Works Cited

Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Boston; Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”1134, Hughes, ‘Dusting”1200 Alvarez, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” 1233, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” 1339 Raleigh, “Sometimes The Words Are So Close” 1203 Alvarez