Week 8 - Blog
Feb. 29th, 2012 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
west_coast_bestPart 1:
Both Crozier and Wilbur use extended metaphors within their poems to enhance the idea of growing up and the challenges often faced by those on the path from protected to vulnerable that is unpaved and often un-lit.
Crozier’s suggestion of packing a bag is an extended metaphor for growing up and what one might expect or not expect to experience. He gives certain advice that pertains to aspects of life and ideas we should live by. “Take the thickest socks, where you’re going you’ll have to walk” implies that life is a long journey and “There may be water. There may be stones. There may be high places” this is something you cannot avoid. No one is going to drive you to the final destination. Therefore, you need to be prepared. The idea of keeping “an old tin box” symbolizes holding onto things of the past “This is to carry that small thing you cannot leave. Perhaps the key you've kept though it doesn't fit any lock you know, the photograph that keeps you sane, a ball of string to lead you out though you can't walk back into that light”. Although we are moving forward and we cannot turn back, we must take with us our memories and things we hold dear to our hearts or they might slip away.
Wilbur expresses the struggle of a “dazed starling” which relates to the inevitable struggles of life. He writes what could to be a parent’s point of view in saying “for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world”. I’m sure many parents watch their children face hard times and challenges, and even witness them spiraling out of control at times. Just as the bystanders in this poem, our parents cannot just step in and place us in the “course for the right window”, as much as they might wish they could. It is up to us to make our own way. We learn from our mistakes and make our next moves differently because of our failures. It’s all part of life. Yes, we might fall and if we do we must get up again. Just as life goes on and the world continues to spin, one foot goes in front of the other (maybe slowly at times), but no matter how bad we may wish to rewind or press pause at times, the truth is we must face life’s challenges and fight or we won’t make it out alive. Like solving a problem we struggle so that we can find a solution or find a way and that is how we become shaped as individuals, through the experiences we encounter.
Part 2:
Slyvia Plath committed suicide in 1963. She had placed her head in the oven, with the gas turned on. She was 30 years old (wikipedia.org). Her father was from Germany, just as the father she writes about in the poem “Daddy”. Therefore she must be writing about her own father. “At twenty I tried to die and get back, back to you”. This is ironic and overlaps with the events of her life as her cause of death was pinned as suicide. Another overlap being “the black telephone’s off at the root, the voices just can’t worm through” describes the cold winter they experiences in the house that had no telephone. “The vampire who said he was you and drank my blood for a year, seven years, if you want to know” may overlap with her marriage to Ted Hughes (their marriage was approximately 6 years). I believe Plath would agree with Jeanette. The way in which she chose to share her life was exactly the way in which she knew how to by expressing it in poetry. She was a strong writer and this was her art, true art, free of lies and containing only raw emotion and thought.
Works Cited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
Both Crozier and Wilbur use extended metaphors within their poems to enhance the idea of growing up and the challenges often faced by those on the path from protected to vulnerable that is unpaved and often un-lit.
Crozier’s suggestion of packing a bag is an extended metaphor for growing up and what one might expect or not expect to experience. He gives certain advice that pertains to aspects of life and ideas we should live by. “Take the thickest socks, where you’re going you’ll have to walk” implies that life is a long journey and “There may be water. There may be stones. There may be high places” this is something you cannot avoid. No one is going to drive you to the final destination. Therefore, you need to be prepared. The idea of keeping “an old tin box” symbolizes holding onto things of the past “This is to carry that small thing you cannot leave. Perhaps the key you've kept though it doesn't fit any lock you know, the photograph that keeps you sane, a ball of string to lead you out though you can't walk back into that light”. Although we are moving forward and we cannot turn back, we must take with us our memories and things we hold dear to our hearts or they might slip away.
Wilbur expresses the struggle of a “dazed starling” which relates to the inevitable struggles of life. He writes what could to be a parent’s point of view in saying “for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world”. I’m sure many parents watch their children face hard times and challenges, and even witness them spiraling out of control at times. Just as the bystanders in this poem, our parents cannot just step in and place us in the “course for the right window”, as much as they might wish they could. It is up to us to make our own way. We learn from our mistakes and make our next moves differently because of our failures. It’s all part of life. Yes, we might fall and if we do we must get up again. Just as life goes on and the world continues to spin, one foot goes in front of the other (maybe slowly at times), but no matter how bad we may wish to rewind or press pause at times, the truth is we must face life’s challenges and fight or we won’t make it out alive. Like solving a problem we struggle so that we can find a solution or find a way and that is how we become shaped as individuals, through the experiences we encounter.
Part 2:
Slyvia Plath committed suicide in 1963. She had placed her head in the oven, with the gas turned on. She was 30 years old (wikipedia.org). Her father was from Germany, just as the father she writes about in the poem “Daddy”. Therefore she must be writing about her own father. “At twenty I tried to die and get back, back to you”. This is ironic and overlaps with the events of her life as her cause of death was pinned as suicide. Another overlap being “the black telephone’s off at the root, the voices just can’t worm through” describes the cold winter they experiences in the house that had no telephone. “The vampire who said he was you and drank my blood for a year, seven years, if you want to know” may overlap with her marriage to Ted Hughes (their marriage was approximately 6 years). I believe Plath would agree with Jeanette. The way in which she chose to share her life was exactly the way in which she knew how to by expressing it in poetry. She was a strong writer and this was her art, true art, free of lies and containing only raw emotion and thought.
Works Cited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
