We Real Cool
The three videos watched are The Sentence by Anna Akhmatova and read by Nancy Narsessian, The Emigrant Irish by Eavan Boland and read by Stephen Murphy and We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks and read by John Ulrich. Out of these three, I liked most We Real Cool mainly because it vividly portrayed the reality faced by the youths once they went for the option to drop out of school. The poem was written in the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement. The poet further describes the lives of uneducated youths. She lists out the illegal activities they partook and then hints that these youths end up dying young mainly because they have an existential life devoid of values and ethics. Reading this poem makes one understand the contribution of education in establishing values. This is the main reason as to why I like this video.
My favorite poem
Sylvia Plath’s Daddy is a poem that narrates the intense anger and hatred of a girl towards her Nazi father. The girl narrates that her father died which she was ten years old and a decade later tried to take her own life. Reading through the notes of Silvia Plath, one comes to understand that the central character of the poem suffered from Electra complex, and this was further complicated by the fact that her father was a Nazi and her mother, possibly Jewish. Hence, the poem also gives an indication of contradiction and conflict that constantly ran in the mind of the girl. The poem mainly intrigued me because it portrays intense anger of a girl towards her father. Also the vivid use of symbolism and imagery has further enhanced the feelings of the girl, thereby making this poem interesting.
“The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
The Fish is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop in which the fish is caught and then released. This poem is a comparison in which the poet tries to attain a blend of the aquatic and the human world. The initial few lines hint that the fish lie in an alien world “half out of water”. These words suggest that the fish lay half in the aquatic world and half in the world of the humans. The poem is rich in imagery and diverse poetic alliterations in the form of metaphor, tones and images. The poet initially views the fish as an inanimate object, because it simply embraces failure by not putting up a fight. The phrase “a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely” suggests this. The poet’s initial discussion suggests the fish to be an object rather than a living being and words and phrases like “ancient wallpaper” and “rags of green weed” suggest this.
As the poem progresses, the poet’s views of the fish is transformed. The fish, initially viewed as an inanimate object, is now being viewed as an animate thing that finally leads to the decision of the poet to release the fish into the water. The poem, when deeply analyzed helps the reader to know and also agree with the poet’s paradoxical opinion that a thing may be innovation is made by means of suffering and destruction as is the example posed by the fish. The poet subtly hints the signs of human and that of the sea in the fish by the phrases “infested with tiny sea lice” and speckled with barnacles”. The poem suggests the existence of a world comprising of good and evil. The possibility of the water to be both beautiful, as well as toxic, is an inherent suggestion to this opinion. The repeated words “rainbow” suggests that both the fish as well as the poet survives in a world which is full of threats but also provides several opportunities to live and endure.
References
Plath, S. (2014). Daddy. Retrieved January 26, 2014 from http://www.sylviaplath.de/plath/daddy.html
Favoritepoem. (2014). Favorite Poem Project. Retrieved January 26, 2014 from http://www.favoritepoem.org/videos.html
