While pondering the question for this week’s blog entry, I must admit that I wasn’t very enthusiastic. That is because poetry is not one of my favorite subjects. I would much rather read a novel! However, since poetry is this week’s topic, I will offer my views.
Emily Dickenson and Walt Whitman were the first poets that we were assigned to read. I found some of Dickenson’s works dark, for example in “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” she seems to be describing being in a coffin: “And then a Plank in Reason, broke, / And I dropped down, and down-” (lines 17, 18). Also, in “Because I could not stop for Death” she states: “He kindly stopped for me-” (line 2). Death is not something I really like to think about therefore I did not really enjoy reading her poems.
I liked Walt Whitman much better, however, while reading “Song of Myself” and “Out of Endless Cradle Rocking” I had a difficult time staying focused due to their length.
We only read one poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Richard Cory” I found this short poem easy to read. However, I was not expecting the ending “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, / Went home and put a bullet through his head.” (lines 15, 16). Especially when the poem is describing how rich he was: “And he was rich-yes, richer than a king,-“(line 9).
Amy Lowell is another poet that we read in this class and although the three poems that we read were not long, they didn’t really appeal to me.
One poem by Robert Frost stood out to me the most from all of the poems that we read, and that was “Home Burial”. Although I stated previously that I don’t enjoy thinking about death, this poem struck a nerve, probably because I am a mother. In this poem, the wife is still deeply mourning the death of a child and resenting her husband because he seems to have gotten over it. I can easily identify with her because I imagine that I would never get over the loss of one of my children. Also, the poor woman in the poem has to see the grave every day because it is in the backyard of the house! I don’t blame her at all for wanting to leave. “I must go- Somewhere out of this house.” (line 116, 117) Also, she is really upset with her husband because she thinks he doesn’t grieve for their son. She says, “You can’t because you don’t know how to speak. / If you had any feelings, you that dug / With your own hand – how could you? – his little grave; (lines 75-77). This would also bother me if I thought that my husband had easily gotten over such a death. Although a depressing poem, I had a hard time getting this one out of my head.
Another one of Frost’s poems that I liked was “The Road Not Taken”. I feel that this poem gives the reader some good advice, that sometimes choosing the harder path in life, might lead to greater rewards. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” (lines 18-20).
This week’s poets were William Carlos William and Wallace Stevens. The only poem that I really stood out to me was “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” by Stevens. I found this poem to be very odd because it seems to be talking about a dead woman. “And spread it so as to cover her face. / If her horny feet protrude, they come / To show how cold she is, and dumb.” (lines 12-14) However, the first and second stanza both end with the same line “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.” (line 8 & line 16). I almost laughed as I read this because it seems silly to be talking about an emperor and ice cream in the same sentence also in a poem about a dead woman! Although I am not sure exactly how this all ties in together, the poem did intrigue me.
So, even though I am not really a fan of poetry, out of all of the poets presented so far, I have to say that Robert Frost was my favorite.
I completely agree with you about preferring to read novels! I also disliked the length of some of Whitman’s poems. I find it hard to follow poems with sentences that flow down through multiple lines. I chose Frost and Lowell as my favorites, and I think that poets like them are easier to comprehend for us non-fans of poetry. The use of imagery and simple symbolism was within my grasp when it came to deciphering the meanings of poems like “The Road Not Taken”. The same cannot be said for some of the other poets we’ve covered.
You make a very interesting point about the man’s perspective in the poem “Home Burial”. I never really thought about it that way, that he was trying to be strong. I just know that as I read it, all I thought about were her feelings and her grief. Looking at the poem from the man’s perspective, trying to be strong and reconnect with his wife, gave me another view of this sad poem.
Even though poetry is not really my thing either, I do love Frost. The poems you reference are a couple of my favorites, especially “Home Burial”. As a mother as well, I can completely relate to the feelings of the mother, but since the poem is written from a man’s perspective it gives us his sense of desperation to be reconnected with his wife. I almost feel like he had to be strong and do what was needed for their child, but that she resents him for it and that resentment has fractured their marriage. It’s a deeply moving poem, with sub meanings, which Frost is great at weaving into his work.