What Are Helena Mesa's The Past And Our Bodies Stood Like Houses?

As an aspiring young poet, Bishop kept numerous notebooks, which offer insight into the inner workings of her mind, and offer explanations for many symbols and imagery in her future poems. Themes that emerge within Bishop’s notebook entries from 1934 and 1935 serve as connection points between many of her poems. As her notebooks

The idea that human beings look for a variety of ways to escape pain in their lives is vividly supported in the book “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. Minerva suffers the pain of her husband repeatedly leaving her. Writing poems is her method of escaping her pain: “But when the kids are asleep …, she writes poems on little pieces of paper that she … holds in her hands a long time” (Cisneros 84). Minerva uses poetry as a subtle way to express and let out her hardships while not interfering with her responsibilities like taking care of her children. This theme is also supported through the story of Alicia.

These allusions help paint the image of a time of youthful, naive love which the speaker looks back fondly upon. In contrast, any hint of affection is absent from “Killing The Love” and replaced with hateful regret. The speaker describes moments that were significant to her in the past such as “the music [they] thought so special” and “the Camp [they] directed” and proceeds to tell how she is “murdering” all these memories (Sexton, lines 2, 15). Unlike in “Photograph” where the speaker reconciles with memories that may now be associated with pain, the speaker in “Killing the Love” wallows in regret in an attempt to bury any inkling of past relations. The second differentiating factor is seen from the perspectives from which the poems address the mistakes made by the previous partners.

“My Husband Discovers Poetry”, by Diane Lockward is a very interesting piece of poetry that I have thoroughly enjoyed delving into. The idea behind the poem is that the writer felt angry and discouraged because her husband would never read her work, so essentially to get back at him she wrote a poem about cheating on him. She hid it away in the hopes that he would one day find and read it. This poem is Lockward telling the story of writing her poem, and what happens when her husband finally discovers it. The meaning of the poem is that we must support our loved ones.

In examining "At Lost Lake" by Nicole Callihan, one is struck by the intimate and reflective nature of the poem. Callihan employs free verse, a decision that frees her narrative from the constraints of traditional poetic forms, allowing the rhythm of natural speech and the nuances of thought and memory to guide the poem's flow. This stylistic choice creates a conversational tone that draws the reader into a series of vivid, sensory-rich snapshots of a moment shared among friends beside a lake. The absence of a strict meter or rhyme scheme in Callihan's poem does not detract from its musicality; rather, it enhances the personal, introspective quality of the narrative.

This section of the poem is completely opposite of the last stanza. She is happy and in love with the man she married, and it really is a turn of mood and tone in this stanza. The first picture I choose where 2 trees growing together. Once she accepted her marriage and feel in love she was happy. I think the trees to me show how they used to be 2 people apart and now they are together and growing together.

Elizabeth Bishop hid many aspects of her life, and although she was not openly confessional as Robert Lowell, pieces of her did filter through in her poetry: intentional or otherwise. Even so, Bishop’s work is like twisting the blinds open. You must exert some force, though not too much, to allow the light to come in. There is a delicate balance a reader must find when interpreting Bishop’s poetry between knowing the context of the poem and bringing in personal experience. Moreover, interpreting her work through only raw text rather than the communication between poet and reader will dilute the experience. Using expert tone and imagery, Bishop paints elaborate scenes that create a portal to places one has never been, but feels like they’ve

Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.

The lover’s eyes looking at the poet “were as eyes that rove”. The comparison raised in the use of the word “as” add to the idea that the lover has left in spirit and wandered away. The word “rove” adds movement to the scene leading into an enjambment between the first and second line. This reveals that the wandering of the lover is an internal one, one of remembrance concerned with “tedious riddles of years ago”. The past is strongly brought into the scene in this line with its emphasis on “years ago” which is created through the use of the semi-colon placed just after these words. The riddles themselves are “tedious” which seems to imply they no longer hold their appeal, have become monotonous because they are long known and understood, no longer difficult to understand they are now merely objects of the over’s distanced inspection. This distance and lack of meaning is furthered in the lines “And some words played between us to and fro/ / On which lost the more by our love”. The words are useless and empty, they merely play like a ball game “to and fro”. All meaning has become lost between the lovers, and in the last line this meaninglessness has been made worse because of the love that they once shared. In this is the tragedy of a love that has died.

In my thoughts, Harwood’s poetry engages readers through its poetic treatment of loss and consolation throughout relationships as well as its exploration of universal themes about human existence and processes of life. Harwood’s poetry validates the consoling influence of childhood experiences upon adult development evident in both At Mornington and A Valediction where they both explore one sense of loss and consolidation. Harwood cleverly includes personas with their own feelings and anxieties to outlook on the present and future and the power of memories held with past relationships. Relationships link within Harwood’s poetry as throughout life she experiences suffering and includes her personal voice and life within the story of her poem.

Roetzheim begins by setting an affectionate scene for the reader: the first line reads “you lie beside me,” which suggests that they are most likely lying in bed together, and he continues by describes her as “nude.” From this, the reader already knows that they have an intimate relationship, as people don’t commonly lie in bed naked with people with whom they are not close. In the final two lines of the poem, Roetzheim says “[the stretch marks] spell our love, our family, our thirty years together;” the anaphora of the word “our” shows that Roetzheim wants to emphasize the togetherness the man

The three poets chosen for this week are fitting into the American literary tradition. Sharon Olds is one of the voices that represent the contemporary poetry’s. Olds is known to write intensely personal, emotionally affecting poem depicts a world political events, as well as graphically family life. Frankness of children has led both high praise and blame. The contemporary poet Sharon Olds is a confession that the poets of the 1950s and 1960s engaged in the natural tendencies, but she has carved a less desperate persona. Linda Pastan’s firmly her poems are deal with children, families, gardens as the lives of around her and loss, death, identity, on a deeper level for the expected unexpectedness of life. This is admitted in the initial

Elizabeth Bishon’s poem “One Art” explores the universal experience of loss through enacting a structured, post-modern villanelle, which utilizes parody through understatement and “disobeying” the rigid structure of a villanelle. The speaker’s strategy is revealed through the structural form as well as the play of language through the speaker’s discourse, implications, and ordering. The poem’s linguistic contributions help perform the speaker’s poetic purpose.

Considered by many as a poet for poets, Elizabeth Bishop was one of the most refined voices of the American poetry of the last century. She was known as one of the best female American poets of the contemporary period famous for her style patent with simplicity and precision. Her work was famous for disclosing the mysteries of her personal life by cleverly chosen representations. In her very-famous villanelle, “One Art,” Bishop’s tone seems relaxed at first impression, yet the reader can later feel her disguised frustration. Her internal feelings reflect the pain she has experienced due to loss, and with the emotions wanting to come to life from the page, Bishop converts them into art by controlling and shaping them into a very well-

The poem “I Am Learning to Abandon the World” by Linda Pastan is closely similar in context with Sharon Olds’ “Still Life in Landscape.” Each of the two poems narrates an ordeal with the persona being the writer of the poem. The persona directly speaks to the audience. However, these two works differ in the number of lines, the length and appearance of each line and the entire apparition of the poems. The two authors employ a similar tone as both use a melancholic and reflective tone. The poets present their thoughts in a simple diction and understandable language. It is evident that both authors have an impeccable interest in narrating their story.