Week Nine Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Donna Stevens

March 16, 2011

Comments on “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning

My initial impression was that it would have been very depressing to have lived back in Victorian times when men ruled the world. Basically, the poem was about his last duchess, as he is in the market for a new one. He is giving a tour of his mansion to a person who will set him up with his new young wife. The duke gives a list of his last duchess’ imperfections as he says she was a flirt and did not appreciate his “nine hundred years old name”. He alludes to the fact that he “gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together” and therefore may have killed her. The irony is in line 45, “There she stands as if alive”. She is very much dead, but still stands in the house among the other trophies he displays. The Duke’s attitude toward women in general is just provocation for his own demise in my opinion. I think that it was because of men like him who use big words and have small opinions of others that we no longer talk or act this way anymore. The poem used rhyming pentameter lines with a dramatic monologue. Browning used enjambment or lines having no end punctuation which goes over into the next line.

Comments on “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake

My initial impression of this poem was that it was a very sad account of child labor. The boy was sold for his labor as a chimney sweep. The poem explains a dream that Tom had. This dream was about dying and going to Heaven. Basically, Tom dreamed that he and his friends died, left everything behind, were washed in a “river” this could symbolize salvation and shone in the “sun”. The sun could symbolize God. Line 16 talks about the boys being “naked and white”, this could symbolize their purity and simplicity in the eyes of God. In line 19, “the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy” this could symbolize the fact that by being a good person one could get into Heaven because the Angel said he could have “God for his father and never want joy”. Tom’s new found happiness was a knowledge in his heart that he has a Heavenly father. His Heavenly Father loves him and will welcome him to Heaven because he is doing his work down here, believes in the Father, and is “washed in the river” of salvation. The irony of the poem is that even though these boys are locked in child slavery, they are free in the eyes of their Heavenly Father.

Comments on “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke

This is a very sad poem about child abuse. The poem is written in four line stanzas called quatrains. The speaker is the child and his tone is that of a scarred child. The audience is the father, as noted in the last line, “still clinging to your shirt”. They rhythm of the lines are 6 syllables then 7. Roethke’s rhyme scheme was that every other line rhymed. An example of a simile is in line 3, “But I hung on like death”. The metaphor used in the title of the “waltz” was simply the act of being beaten every night like it was a dance routine. The poet used end-stopped lines as he ended every second line with a semi-colon and every last line with a period. The theme of this poem is that it is a narrative of a child giving account of the nightly routine of child abuse. He gives a gut wrenching account of how much he loved his father through the abuse in lines 3 “the waltzing was not easy” and the last line, “still clinging to your shirt”. He loved his father just like every son does. Roethke used the title “My Papa’s Waltz” instead of “My Father’s Waltz” because he loved this man dearly. This man was not just his father, but he was his Papa.

Comments on “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas

Thomas varied the meanings of the poem’s two refrains: “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” by inferring that his father was to fight and even rage against death which was being portrayed as good. He was urging his father not to go gentle as in give up easily into the night or darkness of death. The contrast of day and night were metaphors for life and death. The good night was death and the dying of the light was his father’s actual death. Thomas’ tone was one of begging his father not to give into death and this establishes the overall theme. The men who are “wise” (line 4), are the smart, good men who know it is time to die. Even though Thomas knows his father is smart, he does not want his father to do as the wise men have done and choose darkness (death). In line 7, the words “good night” refer to the fact that Heaven is good, but he does not want to lose his father to death. In line 10m Thomas speaks of other men who were wild and took chances that ended their lives tragically. In line 13, Thomas speaks of “grave men” these are old men who are nearest to the grave. He brings up all kinds of men and how they have gone “gentle” into death. He begs his father to be different from all those men and refuse even “rage” against death. This poem is an example of a villanelle. It has 19 lines, 5 tercets (three line stanzas), and one quatrain (a four line stanza). This form helps to drive the theme of please dad don’t just die home to the reader.

Comments on “Lonely Hearts” by Wendy Cope

Finally, a light-hearted poem this week! This poem is a villanelle because it has 19 lines, 5 tercets and one quatrain. The repeating line or refrain is “Do you live in North London? Is it you?” this line is the theme. The poem is about a man who is placing a personal ad. The listener is the person who would eventually read the personal ad. Several speakers’ voices in the poem are unified by tone because the words they speak rhyme with the next speaker. The second line in each tercet rhymes. The connotation of the words gives the poem a simple straight-forward tone. This man describes himself as a “successful, straight… executive in search of something new”.