Its hard for anyone, not just poets to avoid or minimize the state of being sentimental when he/she write about personal experiences and write confessions about their past life, especially if this confession or experiences carry painful memories. Moreover, it’s a human nature to be sentimental when someone remembers death and dead loved one. Some people cry, other hold their tears in their eyes forever, and some write it down and try to let the paper hold these painful memories instead of their minds.
In fact, sentimentality is a the a factor in some of this weeks poems that put them together. Some poets used it in a way that makes the reader relate to them and feel what they feel and it seemed like a massage that tells the reader to feel sorry for them. Fro example, Sylvia Plath wrote about her depression and how it made her try to kill herself. Some readers will think she was exaggerating when she said “Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident.” and “The second time I meant. To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut”. In fact Plath fell in the trap of writing with sentimentality in this poem.
On the other hand, Anne Sexton was successful in avoiding sentimentality even though she went through a lot of painful experiences in her life. For example, in her poems "And One for My Dame" and "The Truth the Dead Know", Anne Sexton was not sentimental when she wrote about the death of someone else. The death of her parents. She wrote the poems with pure feelings to let the reader know why she reached such a high state of depression and how the death of her parents affected her life, without letting her emotions govern her writing like Plath, and did not write with sentimentality.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The Beats vs. NY School
Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery are tow poets from two deferent schools, where the first one is from the Beats and the second one is from the New York School. Furthermore, those two poets have a similar poetic style, but at the same time they hold some differences which make them relate to their schools of poetry.
On one hand, Allen Ginsberg wrote his poem “A Supermarket In California” in a form that looked like a story, which started with some feeling he had and went to describe the whole supermarket atmosphere. He wanted to send a message to the past poet, Walt Whitman, and tell him how life changed in America. Moreover, he wanted to highlight the changes that happened in people’s lives since Whitman’s time and until his time. Furthermore, he used long lines, no visible breaks that a reader can follow, and had an interesting flow that makes the reader what to read more and engage him/her to the story in the poem. He used a simple language and straight forward images that a reader can easily comprehend without struggling when it comes to understand the poem.
On the other hand, John Ashbery wrote his poem “The Painter” in a way that he wanted the reader to picture a painter drawing some art work. He used metaphor in his poem to make it easier to the reader to understand and visualize what he wanted to say. For example, at the beginning of the poem, he compared the painter to “children imagine a prayer”. Furthermore, the randomness in his poem make it a little harder to comprehend compared to Ginsberg’s poem, but at the same time used a simple language that helps the reader understand without digging for hidden meanings and images.
On one hand, Allen Ginsberg wrote his poem “A Supermarket In California” in a form that looked like a story, which started with some feeling he had and went to describe the whole supermarket atmosphere. He wanted to send a message to the past poet, Walt Whitman, and tell him how life changed in America. Moreover, he wanted to highlight the changes that happened in people’s lives since Whitman’s time and until his time. Furthermore, he used long lines, no visible breaks that a reader can follow, and had an interesting flow that makes the reader what to read more and engage him/her to the story in the poem. He used a simple language and straight forward images that a reader can easily comprehend without struggling when it comes to understand the poem.
On the other hand, John Ashbery wrote his poem “The Painter” in a way that he wanted the reader to picture a painter drawing some art work. He used metaphor in his poem to make it easier to the reader to understand and visualize what he wanted to say. For example, at the beginning of the poem, he compared the painter to “children imagine a prayer”. Furthermore, the randomness in his poem make it a little harder to comprehend compared to Ginsberg’s poem, but at the same time used a simple language that helps the reader understand without digging for hidden meanings and images.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Contemporary Free Verse
Free verse is one style of writing poetry and it became more popular as the poetry developed from one period to another. It is a style that is not governed by rules and does not have a lot of boundaries. Moreover, a poet can write his/her poem with an irregular rhythm, without an obvious meter in the lines, and with a great freedom to the ,awareness of rhyme.
The poems used in this week’s collection seemed like they were some sort of lyrics that singers use in their songs, especially those which tell stories. Moreover, the poets used their personal experiences and turned them into lines that created poems and not just ornamental ancestors and maybe the free verse used in them made them look like written narratives, but the use of images, language, and themes relate them to poems. For example, In his poem "This Be the Verse", Philip Larkin talked about how his life went wrong and blamed it on his parents. Furthermore, he created a theme for his poem to show how angry he was and how he was treated made him a mad man. Hence, poem’s flow started with anger at the beginning and started to cool down in the last stanza with a piece of advice for people.
Another example is John Berryman’s Dream Song number two. In this poem he used a metaphor in the beginning of it to relate his position to someone who is out in the cold when he said “A final sense of being right out in the cold”.
The poems used in this week’s collection seemed like they were some sort of lyrics that singers use in their songs, especially those which tell stories. Moreover, the poets used their personal experiences and turned them into lines that created poems and not just ornamental ancestors and maybe the free verse used in them made them look like written narratives, but the use of images, language, and themes relate them to poems. For example, In his poem "This Be the Verse", Philip Larkin talked about how his life went wrong and blamed it on his parents. Furthermore, he created a theme for his poem to show how angry he was and how he was treated made him a mad man. Hence, poem’s flow started with anger at the beginning and started to cool down in the last stanza with a piece of advice for people.
Another example is John Berryman’s Dream Song number two. In this poem he used a metaphor in the beginning of it to relate his position to someone who is out in the cold when he said “A final sense of being right out in the cold”.
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