The Second Coming

I don't think we have this in our books, so I'm posting it to make it easier to find.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Personification—giving human characteristics to something nonhuman
-Envious moon

Metonymy—substituting the name of an attribute for the thing that is meant
-Suit for business executive

Apostrophe—An exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person (typically one who is dead or absent) or thing (typically one that is personified)
-The woman talking to herself (or the mirror) in The Wastelands (A Game Of Chess)

Synecdoche—a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole (or vice versa)
-Skagway had runners in the top ten at state (meaning Skagway’s cross country team)

Symbol—a thing that represents or stands for something else
-Gold is a symbol of wealth

Allegory—a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one
-After Apple-Picking

Paradox—a statement or proposition that leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory
-The paradox of war is that you have to kill people in order to stop people from killing each other

Overstatement—an exaggerated statement (too strongly expressed)
-The bed was colder than ice

Blues

Woke up this morning with sand in my eyes
Yeah, I woke up with morning, sand in my eyes
Laying on the road on my back
Yeah, I was laying on the road on my back

I hear that rain water dripping
It's dripping down on my head
I feel that rain water whipping
It's being whipped by the wind

I feel that cold rain just falling
Raindrops, falling on my head
I hear the wild wind a-blowing
Blowing on down the road

But I see sunshine, on this cloudy day
Yes, I see sunshine on a cloudy day
And I hear a train whistle blowing
Train whistle blowing, headed my way


*Fielding this is so much harder than the Villanelle or even the Sestina I was writing. Those came naturally, but this is so out of my range. This is torture, I swear it is!*

My Poem--Villanelle

Baby says he loves me
But I don't think that's right
He never wants to show it


Even if we're then apart
When he turns in at night
Baby says he loves me

Is he playing with my heart
Ev'ry night, flips off the light
He never wants to show it

Am I ever gonna get smart
To his games, when every night
Baby says he loves me

This dance, turning into an art
I don't want to always fight
But he never wants to show it


Something tugging at my heart
When he turns off the light
Baby says he loves me
But he never wants to show it

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

1) The speaker is lying in a hammock looking at the nature that's surrounding him.
2) The person in the hammock is very observant. He notices the colors and sounds of the things he sees/hears. He may be a returning guest, but he does not live at the farm.
3) He notices the small things that most people would find insignificant and explains them. He does more than just say the generalized statement like "oh, there's a butterfly." I know that he's a guest because of the title (...William Duffy's Farm...) and because farm work is constant and continuous. There is no end to farm work, so if he worked/lived there he would be working instead of lying in a hammock.
4) The title lets me know who the speaker is (a guest at a farm), what he's doing (lying in a hammock), where he is (on a farm in Pine Island, Minnesota), and who he's there to see (William Duffy).
5) The speaker notices all the small things: the colors, the sounds. He sees a bronze butterfly resting on the black truck of a tree, swaying, like a leaf blowing in the wind. He hears repeating cowbells from a place down the river, which is behind an empty house. To his right he sees two pine trees and a patch of sunlight where horse droppings from the year prior are reflecting the golden rays of the sun. He relaxes further as the day begins to fade. He sees a chicken hawk soar overhead.
6)a) As the poem progresses, the speaker is describing what he sees and hears, but he is also letting us know how he feels about his own life. "Over my head" could mean that the speaker is unsure of what exactly is going on in his life. "Asleep" could be taken to mean that the speaker is young or doesn't have a clear view of life as it is while it's occuring. The butterfly blowing like a leaf could be a symbol of his life being shaky and uncertain, like he's at a crucial point in his life or he's doing something he's never experienced before. The empty house could symbolize that his life isn't as full as he wishes it was, maybe he's been restricted from doing something he wanted to or the opportunity hasn't arose yet. The afternoon that he is observing could be symbolic of his life, that he's middle-aged now and starting to get older and maybe a little wiser. The fact that there's a field of sunlight between two pine trees to his right might be saying that he's at a point where he has to make an important decision and he can see what he thinks is the right choice, but in reality it's nothing spectacular. Those "golden stones" he sees are the right choice, but really they're "droppings," or not a good choice. The darkening evening might be saying that the speaker is near death. The chicken hawk floating overhead is searching for a home much like a soul looking for a place to go after the physical death of its host body.
6)b) The succession of ideas is, in a way, much like the natural progression of life. In the beginning of the poem the speaker is young and uncertain ("over my head" and "asleep") and his life isn't as full as he wishes it could be ("empty house"). The speaker is then referring to being older ("afternoon") and a difficult choice, maybe a mid-life crisis of sorts, where he can see what he thinks is the correct choice ("field of sunlight between two pines"), but that supposedly correct choice isn't always what it seems to be ("droppings of last year's horses blaze up into golden stones"). Then the speaker is talking about getting older, getting the hang of things and settling into his life, understanding the rhyme and reason of things ("I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on"). At the end of the poem the speaker is at the end of his life and his soul is searching for a home ("chicken hawk floats over, looking for a home").

Sestina: Altaforte

This poem is about a man, Bertrans de Born, who loves to fight. It seems that the only reason he loves to fight is because he thinks peace is too "womanish," like it's a cowardly idea. Every time Pound uses the word peace in this poem, he's saying something bad about it ("all this our South stinks peace," "the earth's foul peace"). He also uses the word crimson, which can mean bravery and blood. I think that Pound is trying to let us know that de Born thinks he's courageous and brave by battling all the time, but all he's really doing is shedding innocent blood. Music is another word that Pound chose to use. When I think of music, I think about the nice-sounding, meaningful songs that we all listen to, but music to de Born is something different. Music to de Born is the sound of swords clashing, thunder roaring, and the battle cries of heard through the night.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

In the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" either the title line, "rage, rage against the dying of the light" or both are repeated in each stanza to give the poem a new meaning. In the first stanza the writer is saying that in their last days someone isn't wanting to leave this earth. In the second stanza the author tells us that though wise men know their time is up, they too, do not want to die. The author explains in the third stanza that as "good men" near the hour of their death, they feel an undeniable rage at the fact that there is no more time. The "wild men" that the author talks about, who have "caught and sang the sun," are those that were always living life to the fullest of their ability and never slowed down for anything, but now that they're close to the end they've realized that they could have done more with their lives than strictly having fun and they don't want their time to end. These "grave men" the author talks about are probably old and nearly blind, yet they know so much it seems like they know everything. And though they know they're getting close, they too, want to rebel against the thought of dying. The last stanza is a more personal stanza, the author praying futilely that his father will fight death like all the others, even though it would be pointless because a person can only live so long before they finally have to give up.