I especially love this chart (which I did not create):
You may recognize this from a previous post of mine where I was playing around with this and another William Carlos Williams poem. Well, here I am playing around with them again.
I also really love this chart (which I did create):
I believe Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” would lend itself wonderfully to a flowchart such as this. Had I but world enough, and time . . .
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to cancel an appearance Monday at a global warming rally in Washington, D.C., that was hit by a snowstorm because her flight was delayed, her office told CNSNews.com.
Inspired by the pre-1950s, forward-thinking tweets* of Edna St. Vincent Millay, such as . . .
Your absence goes through me like thread through a needle; Everything I do is stitched with its color.
First Fig
My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – it gives a lovely light!
Grown Up
Is it for this I uttered prayers, and sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs; That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire by half-past eight?
. . . that I was inspired to write my latest tweet:
To the nap that finds me after lunch (though I never truly mind too much): It was okay when I was young, not so at upwards of thirty-one.
**********
*A “tweet” is a text-based post of not more than 140 characters to a website called Twitter, the intention of which is to answer the question, “What are you doing?”
Look up pedantic in the dictionary and you’ll find this video.
Harry Reid is the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate.
I really enjoyed my Freshman English classes in college. Studying literature and poetry was something I would have loved to spent more time on. While at my parents house in Georgia, I’ve tasked myself to “clean out” a number of English papers I wrote back then and have been holding on to thinking Clara might be interested in seeing one day. After rereading them, however, I doubt anyone will have much interest in them, with the exception some of the poetry analysis that I still find interesting.
I really enjoy reading poetry, but it’s not something that I “get” like some people do. In rereading these papers, however, I’m reminded of some wonderful poems and find even my analysis of them at the time to be quite enlightening. Although I don’t see any of my English teacher friends giving me an A for these papers, I do see a poetry series coming up on The Joy of WAHM-ing starting with the following:
1 Pity me not because the light of day
2 At close of day no longer walks the sky;
3 Pity me not for beauties passed away
4 From field and thicket as the the year goes by;
5 Pity me not the waning of the moon,
6 Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
7 Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
8 And you no longer look with love on me.
9 This have I known always: Love is no more
10 Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
11 Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
12 Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
13 Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
14 What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poetry has the ability to touch each and every one of us in a uniquely personal way by the music of it’s carefully chosen words. It is how this music has been created by a poet that leads us to examine such poetry in more detail. Pity Me Not is a wonderfully written sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay. While using this familiar form, Millay manages to keep the reader’s attention by combining the elements of diction and tone in such a way as to illuminate a theme understood by many, but state it in a way no other than she could.
Millay’s poem is a Shakespearean sonnet, traditional in its fourteen lines of five beat iambic pentameter with an alternating rhyme scheme, finishing in a rhyming couplet. The octave (the first eight lines) of the sonnet classically presents a question, which the sextet (the remaining six lines) then answers. Millay, however, keeps this sonnet from becoming predictable by making more of a general statement about her feelings in the octave and having the sextet then specify what she is trying to say.
The rhyme scheme for the octave is ab ab cd cd. Each of the ab phrases is a complete thought: Do not pity her because the sun goes down, and do not pity her that she grows older. All four lines have something to do with the passage of time. It is between the first and second cd couplets, particularly lines 6 and 7, that we begin to see the transition from the general to the specific. She does not want to be pitted because time passes (as, she tells us with some indifference, there is nothing to be done about it), nor for the specific reason that this passage of time has cost her the love of a man. That she uses the repetition of “Nor” to ease us seamlessly into this transition is testament to her power as a poet. The last cd couplet brings us to the point, “Nor that man’s desire is hushed so soon,/And you know longer look on me with love (7,8).” The true turning point of this sonnet, however, is between the eight and ninth lines. We have been introduced to the specific topic and now, beginning the sextet, are receiving the “reality” of what the woman of the sonnet is trying to tell us.
To prevent her poem from becoming predictable, while still using the traditional form of the sonnet, Millay takes time to set its tone via the words she chooses (i.e. diction) in general, as well as the words she chooses specifically to repeat. Millay selects the word “walks,” for example, to describe the sun in the first two lines of the sonnet, ” . . . the light of day/at close of day no longer walks the sky.” The sentence implies the passage of time, but use of the word “walk” implies that time goes by very slowly. It is this impression of leisure which helps set the tone as sad but almost indifferent, as though there is nothing that can be done and never was. This indifferent, sorrowful tone continues as the poem progresses through phrases like “as the years go by,” “waning of the moon” (an ever-continuing cycle), and “ebbing tide.” With the idea of “life goes on” established, Millay brings the reader to the same conclusion as the woman: It is inevitable that a man’s love would also cease, leaving no reason to pity her. She state’s this so matter-of-factly, “This have I always known (9),” it is hard to deny.
In her conclusion, Millay unites the poem by coming back to the word “pity” which she had given up when beginning the sextet. This is significant for a number of reasons. The repetition of words such as “nor,” “than” and “pity” help to quickly convey a tone of sorrow and distress as previously noted. But, in truth, the reader is not exactly sure why we are lead to feel this way until the last reiteration of “pity” in the final couplet.
The general statement being made by Millay in Pity Me Not is about the duplicity of hope. She begins to give us, the reader, hope when, as mentioned above, we no longer see “pity” being used as it previously had been in the octave. However, as Millay concludes her sonnet, we see “pity” has returned in the final rhyming couplet, “Pity me that the heart is slow to learn/what the swift mind beholds at every turn (13, 14).” The woman of this sonnet is stating that though we all can recognize the reality of the situation, Hope is constantly there saying, “Yes, but maybe this time it will be different.” Even though we know it will not be different this time, we find ourselves disregarding this truth and holding on to a false hope. That in itself is something to be pitied more so than the actual event, in the woman’s case, the loss of a man’s love.
Millay uses form, diction and tone to say something about hope that many of us can relate to. By artfully interweaving all of these poetic tools, she relays her message beautifully, in a way most of us cannot. This is but one reason her Pity Me Not sonnet stands out among its traditional counterparts.
I have LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the following two William Carlos Williams poems since college:
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
***
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Years ago, Carrie brought homemade pie (and crust) to our house as a contribution to a meal I was making for a gathering of friends. The following day, I emailed this note to her:
I have eaten
most of the peach pie
and the ice cream that was in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
wishing I
had saved for you
Forgive me
it was delicious
so sweet
and so cold (a la mode)
Her response, a few hours later:
so much depends
upon
a white pie
plate
filled with crust
crumbs
beside the black
kitten
Just finished reading my old journals and came across a few poems (and I use that word loosely) I attempted to pen in a couple rather awkward and emotional “I’m a person with deep feelings who feels things deeply” moments.
Since they will never be published in real life, and rightly so, I’ll share them here and hope that they don’t leave you with a slight sense of dread at the thought of me possibly asking you, the next time we meet, what you thought of them. What’s funny to me about the idea of “publishing” them here is that true poets spend a painstaking amount of time carefully selecting each word down to the and or the. Whereas, these poems, written under the circumstances described above have not had such a thorough editing. Me, a poet? I think not.
Nonetheless, on with it . . .
This one was written, it appears, after an argument with Chad that, even after re-reading my journals, I cannot really recollect:
The way you say the words,
The disdainful tone of your voice,
Has more meaning, cuts deeper,
Stinging my soul, taking my breath away.
Like the time as a child
I fell off the porch deck
Knocking the wind out of my body
For the first time.
The shock of the impact,
Then surprise after a moment
That I had survived.
The throbbing pain that followed,
A lump forming in my throat,
Tears welling up in my eyes,
Reality setting in.
Best to just keep moving forward with this painful exercise. This next one is a love poem of sorts, written during the time that Chad and I were doing the long distance relationship thing; He in Seattle and I still in Georgia:
I know exactly
What I will say
The next time
We are together.
I imagine how it will feel
To hug you
To kiss you
Once again.
So fleeting, I do it again and again
Kisses melting like snow.
Another, but it is gone too soon
And does not linger.
I cannot catch it.
Is this starting to feel like one of those bad perfume commercials that’s trying to hard to be . . . poignant?
Okay, last one. This one is an acrostic poem, meaning it uses a topic word, in this case “Papa”, as the theme of the poem. The papa, I’m referring to was my papa, my great uncle, whom I saw as a grandfather and whose really very good poetry I published over on my My Papa’s Poetry blog a while back:
Pipe smoke lingers from days gone by
Already clouding memories of unpleasant things;
Perhaps retreating from the fresh
Air of a new day.
***
Do you ever think to yourself, as I do, that on the day the comma-police find my blogs, they’ll be handing down a life sentence?
I HATE that word!! That one right there:
Dampened Towelette has a much classier ring to it, don’t you think? I may start a petition to get KFC to change the adjective they use to describe the slight wetness of their towelette.
Yes, I know there may be something not quite right with me. But please, no one send me an anonymous postcard with deranged scribblings of MOIST again. Too scary.
I love this movie and it has inspired a post from me. This post is all about my favorite lyrics from songs because as Gwen can attest to, I do listen to the lyrics and I make everyone else in the car with me do the same until I’m absolutely sure they find it as funny or poignant as I do. I think I may throw in a few favorite lines from poems as well.
To quote Hannibal Smith, had he been an English professor, perhaps, rather than leader of “The A-Team”: I love it when words come together!
***
Figuring out you and me is like doing a Love Autopsy;
They could operate all day long and never figure out what when wrong.
- “Love Autopsy”, Music & Lyrics Soundtrack
[A bird] stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free
Though I respect that a lot
I’d be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts
- “Birdhouse In My Soul”, They Might Be Giants
The art of losing’s not too hard to master
. . .
practice losing farther, losing faster
. . .
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster
. . .
The art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
- “One Art”, Elizabeth Bishop (a poem)
But if he ever breaks your heart
If the teardrops ever start
I’ll be there before the next teardrop falls
- “Before The Next Teardrop Falls”, Fredie Fender
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
. . .
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
. . .
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
- “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, Robert Frost (a poem)
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure whats deep inside,
frightened of this thing that I’ve become
- “Africa”, Toto
I was living in the past,
but somehow you’ve brought me back
And I haven’t felt like this since before Frankie said relax
. . .
You’ve given me a reason, to take another chance
Now I need you, despite the fact, that you’ve killed all my plants
- “Don’t write me off just yet”, Music & Lyrics Soundtrack
***
OK, this post was sooooo much fun to write because I got to listen to all these great songs. I may have to make this, like, a regular feature or something!
I love words. And there are a lot of good ones out there. I love the words that just jump in and take over your tongue saying “I’m in charge here!” and the ones that sound like the things they represent (it’s called onomatopoeia – another word I love!) – sizzle, pop, fizz.
I’m really loving the word anaphylactic right now. An-Ah-Fah-Lack-Tick. It describes an allergic reaction and if you say the word out loud to yourself you can see how it sort of rolls around in your mouth and falls down your throat a little bit, like it might get stuck there, especially at the “Fah-Lack” part, and you start choking on it and then you can’t breath and dizziness sets in. It practically creates the anaphylactic shock it’s talking about!
OK, but, there are also words that I HATE. Really despise. Like moist and panties. I’m not the only one with an irrational hatred of some words. My friend Nancy hates the word pamphlet. What is it about the words moist and panties that I hate? I’m not sure exactly. Their texture? I just really hate the way they sound when they are spoken aloud. Something about it is like nails on a chalkboard. I have that hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-my-neck reaction when I hear them or even read them. I have a friend that suffers from coulrophobia and because I just don’t get it, I continue to think I’m funny when I mail her pictures of the clowns I meet around town (ha!). Her physical reaction to my silly pranks is the same type of reaction I get when someone talks about their forehead being “moist with sweat” or how the humidity has “moistened” their shirt. ewwwww. Choose damp or slightly wet, people, please!!
To my friends that read this post, this “revelation” will not come as a shock. In fact, back when we lived in Ireland, a friend (I know who you are) mailed this postcard to me.
There is so much that is disturbing about this card, but the picture I can’t get out of my head is of her sitting down to write this to me, thinking it was funny (which, I admit, it is) but then getting really CARRIEd away to the point of almost losing it. Like, I picture said friend’s husband having to grab her hand and wrestle the pen from her moist palm, saying, “Get a grip, woman!” And her being like, “Where am I? What just happened? I better get this in the mail. Help me up.” And then having to be treated for anaphylactic shock.
