Poetry Response #9

All-American Sestina by Florence Cassen Mayers

Mayers’ mastery of the Sestina is impeccable as she uses the form to compress as many American ideals as possible into her poem. The numbers one, two, three, four, five, and six are her intertwining and repeating theme. She incorporates those numbers into each stanza, giving the poem the feel of a children's rhyme or game. The poem follows no rhyme scheme and has a blatant lack of proper punctuation, emphasizing its unsophisticated construction. Within each of her stanzas, the content has no pattern; the subjects cannot connect them. The poem encompasses symbols of life, death, and everything in between. This poem's simplicity reflects the defining traits of America, revealing that an uncomplicated life is best. Her references to sports, the suburbs, history, TV shows, music, and everyday phrases that have fallen into the slang of Americans evokes both nostalgia and patriotism.

As the poem opens with the recognizable line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which any school child would have memorized, she stirs the nationalistic feelings almost tongue-in-cheek. It goes on to reference nearly everything associated with America that has a positive connotation. Every item or event referenced displays the consumer-obsessed society, but also the good times that come with that attitude, the positives of the progress greed essentially has brought upon Americans. Her epitaph for the country of America is a double-edged sword, in how everything is sentimental to the countrymen, but while it reflects America not everything in the mirror is flattering when put all together. Her poem is a wonderful and intricate puzzle of past and present ideals within the country that cover a variety of life's experiences, and there is undoubtedly a country song focused on each of the topics Mayers listed in her poem.

Poetry Resonse 3-22-11

In Martha Collins “The Story We Know” is a simple poem depicting life at its most basic, where the days are full of the phrases hello and good-bye. It shows the process of decisions, snippets of conversation in a day. She portrays this in that she seems to slip between remembered dialogue and her thoughts behind each interaction. She describes the day as “always the same,” but not in a monotonous way, it more reflects the settled rhythm and pattern of one’s day. In this poem she talks of meeting someone and the pleasantries that go along with it “your hand, your name.” She also makes plans with a friend “lunch tomorrow?” stressing that the beginning of anything begins “simple, sane” and follows the routine of a Sunday. But then she begins to change her attitude, the repetition is no longer looked on as endearing, but monotonous in how it begins to make life too predictable and calluses the individual. But life goes on, the same until something comes and changes the routine, in this instance, a snow day. It stops everything, work, plans, and the routine. It makes everything new and brings people together, but it is new within the story that always begins with hello and good-bye.

I found this a beautiful poem in how Collins shows a typical lifestyle of the Western World, where people depend on their routine to guide them through life, and depend in the dictated norms of society to run everything smoothly. Its only when we take a step back, when people are forced to stop that people begin to look and process the world around them. The underlying tragedy is that most everyone is painfully aware of the effects of the non-stop lifestyle that has become essential to the culture. Collins ends her poem with the apparent sigh of “we know, we know” in the repetitive form of a scolded child to the punishing parent.

The Ode: Poetry Response #7

Savannah Gilman
Jernigan
English IV AP Literature AP
March 6, 2011
Ode to a Grecian Urn

In Keats’s poem, he uses the paintings across a Grecian Urn to illustrate how fleeting and yet how beautiful, mysterious, and yet sad life is for all. He begins by addressing the lovely bride of the picture whose story is essentially unfinished as she is perpetually silent, unable to escape her fate or share it. Yet, he states that the music frozen on their lips is more beautiful than any that has been realized, as theirs remains ever a mystery. But there is the fate that they will never be able to kiss, embrace, or enjoy the scene, as they are to be ever beautiful but never together. Keats believes that in this state of eternal beauty, happiness can be obtained as their love is always at its height. The events that surround the lovers will ever remain a mystery for they cannot let known their predicament. He concludes stating that the urn mocks humanity as it will outlast all mankind yet preserves the admirable attributes of the human race.

Keats uses the depictions upon the urn to reveal to humanity that while there is a certain grace in eternity, there is true beauty in the moments we live fully and take full advantage of. While the unspoken, the unknown, and the evergreen hold not only majesty but is unattainable, it need not be envied, but appreciated. Keats is trying to show that despite all of the beauty that this symbol of a Romanticized civilization encompasses, the more he studies it the more apparent it becomes that in life we should be fully conscious of our potential.