My Papa's Waltz

     When reading the title of Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz," one would think that it would be a pleasant or uplifting poem.  However, when glancing through the poem, words such as "dizzy," "like death," "battered," and "scraped" suggest otherwise.  Through the contrast of a waltz and a drunk father, Roethke presents a scene of tension.  The boy waltzing with his father obviously cares about his father and wants to be like him/be close to him.  Lines 15-16 show this in the way the boy clings to his father as he carries him to bed. Even though the father is drunk and unintentionally being rough with the boy, the boy still desires to waltz with his father: "But I hung on like death / Such waltzing was not easy" (lines 3-4).  The mother observes the scene and is not pleased--"My mother's countenance / Could not unfrown itself" (lines 7-8).  The mother knows that the father is being careless, possibly selfish, and a bad example to their son, yet she doesn't do anything but frown at them.  I wonder why this is.  Did the mother not want to draw any more attention to the father's drunkenness, or did she feel that she could not step in and stop the waltz out of fear?  Either way, the scene gives us a picture of a child wanting to be like his father even though the father is flawed.

Lady Lazarus

     I thought the metaphor used by Sylvia Plath of herself being a "Lady Lazarus" was an interesting consideration.  Understanding that the poem deals solely with her attempts at suicide gives the biblical reference a dark connotation.  The reason Plath gives for being a Lazarus isn't necessarily because of her own want to be raised, but because someone else stopped her from death. She desired to die, but wasn't allowed to because society doesn't allow it. When she refers to herself as Lazarus, she does so cynically.  Lines 43-48 exemplify her want to die: "Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well. / I do it so it feels like hell. / I do it so it feels real. / I guess you could say I've a call."  It doesn't seem as though the speaker is alive out of her own free will; she clearly wants to die and considers herself good at it.  Her language makes her sound sort of like the walking dead; she is here on this earth but clearly doesn't want to be and looks forward to another opportunity to leave it.

Diving into the Wreck

     Through an analogy of scuba diving down into a wreck that many myths have been written about, Adrienne Rich cleverly brings up hints of feminism, gender, and history.  The speaker in the poem is adamant about one thing--she will not just hear about the wreck, she will experience the remains of it first-hand.  The speaker doesn't want to settle for what other people have said, but rather wants to form her own ideas.  "The thing I came for: / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth" (lines 61-63).  One image that comes up several times is that of the female figurehead that is on the front of the ship--"the drowned face always staring / toward the sun," (lines 64-65) "I am she: I am he / whose drowned face sleeps with eyes open," (lines 77-78).  The image presented is one of a woman who has been forgotten, left behind, yet still sees what is before her.  Rich compares this to women who has historically been marginalized.  Even though they played an important part in history, their "names to not appear" in the textbooks as prominent influences (line 94).  The speaker in the poem does not want to be marginalized, nor does she want to be one who marginalizes.  Therefore, she literally dives down into the wreck--the myth--in order to disperse the myths and figure out how they came to be.

The Armadillo

"The Armadillo" by Elizabeth Bishop points out the tensions we see, or pretend not to see, between nature and man.  In the third stanza, when the speaker references the "illegal fire balloons," she says that "it's hard / to tell them from the stars" (line 9-10).  It's as if manmade things have become so much a part of everyday life and our existence that they have become indistinguishable from nature.  Humans have almost forgotten that the things they create are not natural parts of creation.  It isn't until the manmade clashes with nature and causes destruction that we notice it.  But even then, it seems as though the speaker is the only one in the poem to take notice.  Only she pays attention to the horror that has befallen the animals--specifically the armadillo who, despite its best efforts to curl up and protect itself, cannot escape the fire and manmade destruction.  

Howl

     I can't say that Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" was my favorite poem we've read thus far, but it did bring up some topics to consider.  In the first section, the mood and feeling I got from the poem was dark, sinful, filthy, and chaotic.  Many of the lines referenced suicide, sickness/disease, crying, drunkenness, and just general chaos.  Section 2 solidified this with Moloch, the Canaanite fire god.  Ginsberg's way of relating American culture and society to Moloch was an interesting consideration, and one that I had never thought of before.  The line, "Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitols! demonic industries!" related this sacrificial burning of children to Moloch to Americans and the "American Dream."  Ginsberg gives some of the negative effects of buying into this notion that there is an American Dream to work toward--hopelessness and despair are what he finds on the other side of the search for this dream.  Lines like "Jumped off the roof!" "Down to the river!" and "Into the street!" give us a vision of giving up and suicide.  This is what Ginsberg said the search for the American Dream leads to.  In the last section, one quote in particular caught my attention.  "I'm with you in Rockland / where we hug and kiss in the United States under our bedsheets the / United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep."  These lines related a child/parent relationship to Americans and the United States.  The United States presents all of these opportunities for Americans to work toward, and then keeps Americans up all night, restless and worrying about this dream.  The desire for something that ends up being hurtful is a tension that Ginsberg presents a lot in "Howl."