New Mother EMS

Sharon Olds' "New Mother" is about a woman who has just given birth, and who is describing a sexual encounter with her husband. The woman is clearly not in a position of power. She describes the experience with lines like "you cornered me in the spare room", and "my milk undid its / burning slip-knot through my nipples". She seems to be at the mercy of her man. At his mercy, she describes how her vagina "had been torn easily as cloth by the / crown of her head", and other ways that her vagina has been hurt through the childbirth. This makes her "lay in fear and blood and milk", a state of hopelessness. While she does this, the man is kissing her, and "you hung over me, / over the nest of the stitches, over the / splitting and tearing." This is a really touching part, because it is describing how the man, who is in a position of power, is simply hanging over her, not trying for sex. His penis is "dry and big", meaning it is erect but has not been inside of her. This is touching. She describes it as "someone who / finds a wounded animal in the woods / and stays with it, not leaving its side / until it is whol, until it can run again."

Colossus EMS

"The Colossus", by Sylvia Plath, is a poem that I am not sure if I understand. The poem, in the literal sense, is about her building a colossus of some sorts, which seems like a large statue of greek epic proportions. She starts the poem off by saying "I shall never get you put together entirely" which makes the reader immediately aware of the enormity of the task. This colossus, the narrator believes, is self righteous in its enormity, shown by the lines "Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, / Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other." The narrator has spent much time with the colossus, staying at nights to count the stars, and seeing the sun rise from it. From the lines "My hours are married to shadow", we see that the narrator starts to resent the colossus. My guess for what this poem is comes from when she writes "O father". This makes it so the poem is about her father, and I would guess that the poem is talking about how she built the impact her father's death had on her into such a huge thing, she was always tending to it, and always having it affect her life. I really can't think of more with it, this poem is tricky.

An interesting thing i found from the poem was the flower references. You have "the weedy acres of your brow", "a hill of black cypress", "acanthine hair", and "scrape of a keel" (which can mean a pair of united petals in a flower). These aren't the happy 'roses are red, violets are blue' flower references. It seems that Plath is trying to imply organic growth rather than pretty flowers. This organic life is also shown in the first stanza from the lines "Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles / Proceed from your great lips. / It's worse than a barnyard." Again, these aren't pleasant noises, and this time she seems to be making a direct attack at her father.

Lady Lazarus EMS

Lady Lazarus, by Sylvia Plath, is a poem about the female narrator coming back from the dead, like Lazarus in the bible. Unlinke Lazarus, however, the narrator's deaths, except for the first, seem to be coming from suicides. She says "I am only thirty. / And like the cat I have nine times to die. / This is Number Three." This makes it sound as if she will continue to attempt suicide until she finally succeeds.

It seems obvious that these suicide attempts are referring to Plath's actual suicide attempts. She tried to kill herself at 20, and killed herself at 30. The accidental death referred to in the poem could be a near-death experience for her when she was younger, or possibly a reference to her father's death at 8.

While the poem centers on the return from death, it also includes a few references to her being the center of attention to her critics. These critics, "The peanut-crunching crowd / Shove in to see / Them unwrap me hand and foot--- / The big strip tease." This seems to be a reference to how Plath puts so much of her personal pain into her work, and can be see in the words "Dying / Is an art". She seems to resent her apparent selling-out of her pain, throuigh the lines "There is a charge / For the eyeing of my scars" and "And there is a charge, a very large charge / For a word or a touch / Or a bit of blood". She seems to be selling her pain, something that she really seems to detest.

Like some of Plath's other poetry, she seems to villify her father as a nazi. She says "So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy." She describes the way the nazis sifted through the ashes of their victims to find gold, and makes the imagery of a phoenix with "Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And i eat men like air." This imagery seems to suggest Plath believes that through her misery brought on by her father

The Japanese Wife EMS

The Japanese Wife, by Charles Bukowski, is an ode to Japanese women, and the narrator's Japanese wife. He describes these Japenese women as "real women" who are "closing the wounds men have made". He soon after describes American women in a very negative manner, saying they "care less than a dime" and "always scowling, belly-aching", among other things. It is interesting that he includes "but American women will kill you like they / tear a lampshade". Right after saying that Japense women will close wounds, he immediately says how American women would easily kill you. These lines become even more interesting during another section of the poem, when the narrator describes how his wife "broke out the bread knife / and chased me under the bed". The difference between the American women's violence and the Japanese wife's violence is how the American women are described as killing without caring too much, while the wife was provoked. The narrator broke down the locked door, and he seems to aknowledge that he did wrong. After the ordeal with the wife, "she didn't mention attorneys, / just said, you will never wrong me again". This seems very reasonable, and a very calm thing to do, something that the "derailed" American women would likely not do. The poem takes a more tragic turn when it is revealed that the wife died. This is when the poem seems to turn into a nostalgiac piece. We are told how the narrator had to hide all of his Japanese prints covering his walls, and hid them in his shirt drawer. When he hid these, "It was the first time i realizes / that she was dead, even though i buried her".

First Kiss EMS

First Kiss, by Kim Addonizio, is a poem about a woman kissing an individual for the first time. It isn't the first time the woman has kissed anyone, just the first time she has kissed this one male. The woman is, in fact, already a mother. This is an interesting twist, and also leads to the woman comparing the look of the man to the look of her mother after drinking milk. The woman describes the breastmilk almost the same as a drug, and makes a clear point that the baby was not drinking the milk for substanance, but for please. The baby drinking is described as an act "of satiety, which was nothing like the needing / to be fed". She describes the baby by saying "She could show me how helpless / she was", and then describing the man looking the exact same way. She makes the comparison of the baby sucking on her teet, and the man sucking on her face (although she doesn't use that wording). She uses the comparison lines "when she had let go / of my nipple" for the baby, and "when you / pulled your mouth from mine" for the man.





There seems to be something tragic about the woman in this poem. She seems to be reminiscing about her daughter's infancy, making it sound like she was a while away from that point. It then seems from when the man "leaned back against a chain-link fence, / in front of a burned-out church" Those lines make it seem as though the woman is the burned-out church. She seems to also be at a loss of power, first being helpless to her daughter, and then to this man, and in both scenario's it is because she is stronger than the other and has something they want.

river merchant's wife EMS

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter, by Ezra Pound, is a story about a growing relationship between the female narrator and her eventual husband, the river-merchant. The first stanza starts off while the two were still young. At this time, the narrator "played about the front gate, pulling flowers." The future husband "came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse". These activities show the youthfulness of the pair at this point. They don't seem to be romantically involved at this point, as they are "Two small people, without dislike or suspicion".

The second stanza begins with the narrator being 14, and marrying the river-merchant. At this point, the wife "never laughed, being bashful." We still see the youth in her, still making the transition to being a wife. The next stanza, when she turns 15, she starts to mature, when she "stopped scowling". She starts at this point to love her husband, saying she "desired my dust to be mingled with yours / Forever and forever and forever." This is certainly a shift from before.

During the fourth stanza, the wife turns 16, and the river-merchant leaves. The line "The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead" shows the manifestation of the wife's sorrow. The last stanza shows even more of this manifestation, with a different moss growing where the old moss was that the river-merchant walked. The wife is getting older, and yearns for her husband. She asks that if he is "coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang", if he would let her know, so she can come to meet him.

The most significant part of this poem for me is the transition of the romance. The relationship goes from indifference, to just a marriage without significant love, to love, then despair and longing. Something beautiful to it.

The Flea EMS

The Flea, by John Donne, tells of a husband trying to have sexual relations with his wife. To make his point as to why they should have these sexual relations, he uses the example of a flea who has sucked the blood out of the pair, and "in this flea our two blood mingled be". The husband tells how the mixing of these bodily fluids is not a big deal through lines such as "Thou know'st that this cannot be said / A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead". We then have a turn, when the wife kills this flea, in the line "Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?" The husband then flips this situation on her, asking her what the flea did wrong, "Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?" And even though the wife has had her blood mingled, the husband argues that the wife is not weaker at all from the experience, and then says "then learn how false fears be". He ends by saying that when having sex, the wife will lose as much honor as how much life she lost from the flea dying.

The original question I had after reading this poem was whether the husband and wife had sex already. It seems from looking at the poem, though, that they had already. The line "nor loss of maidenhead" seems to suggest the wife is not a virgin already. When you add that with the line "Though parents grudge, and you, we're met", it suggests through "we're met" that they have had sex, and it can possibly be read that it was a forced marriage due to premarital sex. And could this premarital sex have led to a baby? There is certainly baby imagery through the flea, a third party, containing the mixed blood of the two parents. I don't feel like this is the case, although an argument could certainly be said that abortion is included in the poem, as the wife seems to have killed the flea, potentially meaning that she killed the child.

Mock orange VH

In Mock Orange there are five stanzas. She talks about how she hates flowers and compare them to sex. She then talks about the acts that are done during sex and how it is humiliating and says she doesn’t like it. She also compares the scent of the flowers to the scent of sex in lines 21 to 26. Throughout these poems she detests sex with a comparison to mock orange.

For my daughter VH

This poem is 12 lines long with a rhyming scheme of ababccdedeffgg. The poem is speaking of the death of his daughter. She has died and he is mourning for her throughout the poem. It seems as if he is bitter that his daughter has not made it. The whole poem is description of how he feels about losing the daughter. In the end he says “I desire none” but that is false obviously because he is bitter that he lost his daughter.

Colossus VH

The poem has six stanzas and doesn’t have a rhyming scheme. It is clear that the poem is speaking about her father but only so if you have a little bit of outside knowledge of her life. If you know about her past you would be able to connect the dots quickly. She is very angry at her father because he passed away and wasn’t there for her. She holds it against him and has not forgiven him for not being there.

The title is very important because throughout the poem she discusses how significant an impact on her life her father’s death has had. She also compares herself to small things when she is speaking of herself and him. She makes him seem so much larger and more important than herself hence Colossus is an appropriate title.

In the first stanza she states that she doesn’t understand “him” also saying that the sound off his lips are those of farm animals. “Mule-Bray, pig grunted and bawdy cackles” She then proceeds to say that he is worse than those animals.

The next thing that jumps out is in the third stanza. She compares herself to an ant in mourning. That image makes you think of all kinds of thing. I imagine an ant in mourning means that because she is even lower and smaller than an ant and very insignificant. She says that’s how she feels in his presence.

“I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress” has a connection to death because it is commonly known as a tree used to decorate cemeteries. So that is another hint that she is talking about her father who died. In the following stanza she begins to speak on the impact of her father’s death saying that when he left is more ruining then a lightning stroke. This is a comparison that is describing the impact her father not being there had on her life.

Shakespeare sonnet 18 MP

Love sonnet 18 follows iambic pentameter and consists of three quatrains and a couplet, much like most of Shakespeare's other sonnets. The rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg. Shakespeare compares a person to a summer's day, stating that the person is "more lovely and more temperate." Shakespeare then lists some negative aspects of summer saying that it is too short and sometimes gets too hot. "And summer's lease hath all too short a date, sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, while summer has to end eventually, the beauty of this person will never fade. The person's beauty is immortalized by the fact he is putting them in a poem. "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." Shakespeare is capturing this person's beauty and making it eternal by the fact that this poem continuously lives on.

Anne Sexton Article

The article starts off with having two viewpoints about poetry:
1. The mad writer approach such as Edgar Allen Poe and Sylvia Plath that battle with "inner demons" in their poetry, and
2. therapeutic creative writing, where individuals use writing to cope with a difficult situation in their life and it has helped them overcome that problem.
The article states that although these two concepts are complete polar opposites, there seems to be a relationship-those with emotional or mental trouble leaning towards creative writing as an outlet of emotions.
The author first makes an analysis of mental illnesses but, unlike one of the three articles we read a few weeks ago, it uses the references very well and even states that "making distinctions can be particularly prone to error". Without manipulating the data, the author states how there is a high correlation between suicide rates and artists, such as writers or poets. Furthermore, suicidal poets tend to write for the self "revealing inward focus". It shows that they are socially shy as opposed to their non-suicidal mates. Schizophrenia is also mentioned to be another factor.
This article then starts talking about the Sylvia Plath effect as well. Female poets tend to pay attention to their depression, whereas male poets apparently tend to distract themselves, thus they are less likely to be suicidal. 

Dream Songs

John Berryman's poetry is very different to the other poems we have read so far. It is more..abstract and harder to decipher than the others. He uses a character called Henry in his poems, something that other poets have not created. Henry, as discussed in our classes, could be considered his alter-ego.
His style is usually writing in tercepts, quatrains, or a mixture of the two. His diction and grammar is very odd, although they are purposely written that way. Why they are written this way is a bit unclear but to me, it sounds like the poem is more raw, or, more original-giving it a very freestyle writing image, as if it were fresh from his thoughts without careful revision or any revision at all. 

3 Articles on Sylvia Plath (M.A)

I Bask in the Dreams of Suicide: Mental Illness, Poetry, and Women


The article talks about how female poets are more affected and prone to mental illnesses than male poets or other kind of artists, such as visual artists or prose writers. It has a very generalized analysis of the data, taking different types of experiments and just fitting them in to the topic of the paper. It is also very repetitive in its data and I find it very generalized. The article does not seem to have substantial data to prove its point. The article's beginning is also very negative, as to me, I did not want to read it anymore because of its pessimistic tone. Furthermore, it states that female poets tend to have the "Sylvia Plath" effect because poets start off as mentally unstable and it worsens when the poetry does not help them resolve their mental or emotional problems. It stated that although writing can be helpful for people to let go of emotions or deal with situations, it is unclear how valuable and helpful poetry is due to the statistics of female poets developing mental issues and their suicide rate.

Sylvia Plath and the Failure of Emotional Self-Repair
In this article, three dualities were listed by the author:
1. balance between creative individual's use of the audience to serve her own narcissistic interests
2. balance between destructive and constructive activity
3. interplay between pretense and fantasy.

The article talks about how Plath realized that poetry was self-destructing for her, yet she still kept writing poems. Some themes that were major themes of Plath's poems were her father's sudden death, and about suicide and pain as well.

Sylvia Plath: Fusion of the victim and suicide
According to the author, Sylvia Plath was able to use poetry to resolve some of her emotional and mental issues but it states that the poems would backfire and haunt her again, which it did. It also stated that if the poems are read in order (i.e. chronologically), it shows how Plath is forcing against death but towards the end of her life, the poems forces against death and suicide weaken, which shows her weakened stability of mind and her attraction towards suicide.

Sexton - BK

You can't help but draw parallels between Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, however there are differences between the two female poets as well. While the article explains the whole "female poet being more likely to have psychiatric problems" argument, it is also stated that Sexton was instructed to write to help her depression (known as the writing cure). I don't think it worked, but you can see in Plath's works such as "Wanting to Die" and "Suicide Note", that she put all of her feelings on to paper, openly expressing that suicide in on her mind. The way she describes it made me think of Plath discussing how it is an art form, although Sexton doesn't use the same metaphor, she talks about how a carpenter doesn't ask why build, just what tools. This is a comparison between suicide being a profession and that people who are suicidal aren't questions if they will do it, just how.

A lot of the info in the article by Kaufman we have seen before because it was referenced a lot in the articles on Plath.

I think that Sexton's style is more interesting than Plath's, she uses more of a narrative style that allows the reader in to her life, and get a new view point whereas Plath is more figurative. Also I think the rhythm in Sexton's poems are more enticing,

"Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees / it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying / through the mist." (Funnel)

"Tonight all the red dogs lie down in fear / and the wide and daughter knit into each other / until they are killed" (The Wifebeater)

With Sexton, I need to be in a certain mood to read her poetry. Most that I have read are very depressing and not usually the type of poetry I gravitate towards reading, although I think her poems are of merit.

Anne Sexton - Poetry/Articles - Jeet

The essence of the first article lies in two theories - 1) The Writing Cure 2) The Sylvia Plath Effect.
According the "writing cure", expressive and narrative writing about personal and emotional experiences ought to have therapeutic benefits for the mentally ill/depressed. According to the Sylvia Plath effect, women tend to ruminate more than men and are more affected by external constraints. These and other factors, combined with a non-narrative style of composing poetry may prove to be deleterious to the mental health of female poets. Anne Sexton was recommended to write for therapeutic reasons. Unlike Sylvia Plath however, her work is decidedly non-narrative in nature. Sexton carefully crafts her poems to elicit certain emotions and sympathies without explicitly narrating the underlying story.

"Even then I have nothing against life.

I know well the grass blades you mention,

the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.

They never ask why build."

In these lines, Sexton uses grass blades and furniture to signify the emotions she identifies
with feeling positively about life. Yet, it is unclear exactly what she is talking about. Perhaps, grass blades signify fertility and furniture hints at domesticity. Going back to her justification for suicides, she employs the somewhat distant analogy of carpenters. A clear storyline rarely emerges in Sexton's work. According to the writing cure, it is the narrative aspect that is most beneficial since it allows the writer to make meaning out of events and move on. In Anne Sexton's case, perhaps the lack of narrative meant she was constantly drudging up the traumatic experiences in her life and dwelling on their detrimental emotional effects through her poetry.

The second article looks at contemporary views on suicide and offers brief explications of Sexton’s poems – “Wanting to Die” and “Suicide Note”. A major distinction is made between euthanasia and other suicides. In our society, some sympathy is conferred upon the former; the latter always invites some repugnance and fear. In “Wanting to Die”, Sexton tries to persuade the reader of a rationality that might underlie a suicide that arises simply out of mental agony. She tries to establish suicide as natural and innocent when she speaks of children pondering upon the “sweet drug”. She hints that people might be born with a detached mental state that they cannot continue living with. Since they weren’t still born, it is rational that they wish to return to their state in the womb, where the first boundary between life and death exists.

The third article goes in depth into some linguistic research that was also cited in the first article. Suicidal poets tend to be more inward focused and a linguistic analysis of their writing confirms this. For instance, they use the first person singular noticeably more than the non-suicidal poets.

Anne Sexton Poems and Article- VB

The article was talking about a study done on the language of poems and how that correlated with suicide in any way. It used poems of poets who had committed suicide and was also testing two suicide models by analyzing text. This also pointed out that suicide rates are higher among poets than authors in other literary fields and the general population. Their are certain words that seem to be a trend in the writing of poets who commit suicide such as I, me, and my being used heavily. Also, there was a trend of suicide among poets who wrote more about death and lust as well.

Anne Sexton's poetry did have many hintings towards suicide but I feel she used her writing as a coping mechanism just like her close friend Sylvia Plath. However, just like Plath eventually neither of them were able to handle living in this world and took their own lives. Poetry was a release for them because they clearly had something unstable or wrong either in their minds or in their lives and poetry allowed them to express themselves in ways they could not in person. I believe that poetry also contributed to their suicides because it allowed them to get through situations without getting real help. They could only express their anger they could never confront the problems head on in their lives and caused the eventual breakdown of their mental health to the point where they took their own lives.

I feel that when reading poems written by Anne Sexton it is easy to make the connection that she is suicidal. However, I am not sure that I could have concluded that she committed suicide just by reading her poetry. She is very talented but it seems that her mental instability which was apparent in her poetry eventually wore her down. It would be interesting to see how different her life would have been without poetry.

Anne Sexton Articles/Poetry - R. Abbott

One theme mentioned in the articles was the purpose for many writers' work - are they writing because they are 'mad' or are they writing as a form of therapy. For Sexton, I believe it was a bit of a combination. Again, the articles reinforced the research which supported the fact that of all writers, poets (more specifically female poets) had the highest rate of psychiatric abnormalities. Sexton certainly supported this assertion. She clearly ran a very high risk of depression which ultimately resulted in her suicide. As the articles concluded, depressed/suicidal poets (or artists in general i.e. Kurt Cobain) started using the first person singular in their work. This is evident in many of Sexton's poems from a later portion in her life such as: in 'Sylvia's Death' - "...the death I wanted so badly and for so long," along with many other uses of I in the poem; in 'Wanting to Die' - "...even then I have nothing against life," along with other uses; and in 'Suicide Note' - "...I will have to sink with hundreds of others...I will be a light thing. I will enter death." Sexton clearly used first person singular a great deal in her writing, but not just in her works closest to death. Another interesting point brought up in one of these articles (along with the Plath one from a few weeks ago) was the fact that female writers are more affected by extrinsic constrainst. I particularly believe Plath's suicide added to the mental stress of Sexton. Overall, from the select writing we have read of Sexton, I believe it has a similarity to that of Plath in reference to what the articles explained of female poets/their writing styles.

Dream Song - AS

After reading the set of Dream Song Poems by John Berryman, there is a clear sense of pain in all of his writings. When you first read these poems, there is no real order to them. Also, it makes it kind of confusing all the different names he uses. The most noticeable name is Henry, which appears over and over again. Most likely, Henry is a name that he uses for himself in his writings. If not a direct correlation to himself, than maybe it is someone who feels similar emotions throughout life. The emotions that come through in his poetry are obscure and painful. In the poem dream song #5, he uses the line "Mr Heartbreak, the New Man/come to farm a crazy land;/an image of the dead on the fingernail/of a newborn child." This line stuck with me as I continued to read his poems. I believe that Berryman sees the world as though it is broken. I think that through his poetry, he is trying to show people that there is good in the world, but he can't find it. In his poems he continues to talk about death, and heartbreak, and even starvation, which makes me believe that he only capable of seeing the bad, and looking at the world as if its in pieces.

Mr. Bones and Me, EMS

The biggest question I have from reading the poems by John Berryman is who is Henry? My guess would probably be that he is the depressed alter-ego of John Berryman. It starts in the first poem, where he describes Henry as someone who has lost something, possibly a first wife. He then becomes reclusive and sad, and is angered at how public his sadness is. Henry also seems to be someone who hates what he has become, as seen in "The Prisoner of Shark Island" with Paul Muni. He describes the "Big Ones" who laughed at Henry being unable to understand The Man from Blankley's. And then, "Now Henry is unmistakenly a Big One". Something he seems to regret. During the later poems, it seems that Henry is in the hospital, from what I assume is a suicide attempt. In 74 it says "Henry stabbed his arm and wrote a letter/ explaining how bad it had been/ in this world." Berryman uses language in a way where he seems to mess around with proper grammar, and it seems like he is trying to give an uneducated dialect. An example from "The Prisoner of Shark Island" with Paul Muni is "Funnee; he don't feel so." There are supposed to be some of his oddly placed accents over funnee and feel, but I don't know how to type those in. It seems that he doesn't want the characters of Henry or Mr. Bones to seem particularly intelligent. About Mr. Bones. I assume he means death, possibly someone who has already killed himself (maybe it is the future dead Henry, but I'm probably just putting my own imagination into that idea), and he seems to be something out of Henry's imagination. He says "I have sent my grief away" in 36. Does this mean he has already died?

Dream Songs - BK

Berryman's writing is a very interesting style. The first thing I notice is use of poetic license. He frequently uses incorrect subject verb agreement with respect to number and sometimes tense. I believe he does this for a reason though, and it causes the reader to reread many of the lines again. It can also be used to cause the reader to pause in certain areas,

"-Easy, easy Mr. Bones. I is on your side." (36)

I have also noticed Mr. Bones is a character through which Berryman communicates his ideas; however, there are many references towards bones in general and digging things up. Also it seems like Henry is sort of a stand in for Berryman, except that then he uses "I" as well, so I'm not sure of the exact differences between Henry and the "I".

I have also noticed that "Frost" is mentioned a lot and am not sure if this is a reference to the poet.

I enjoy Berryman's style, it is very unique. I like how he writes his poetry with the idea of how he wants people to read it. It gives his poems a life and a rhythm that we have yet to see in this class. It is almost musical to read and must be read out loud.

"Spellbound held subtle Henry all his four / hearers in the racket of the market / with ancient signs". (71)

". . . and the fifteen changeless stones in their five worlds / with a shelving of moving moss / stand me the thought of the ancient maker priest." (73)

Dream Songs - Jeet

Many of the Berryman poems I read were sexains. They have a very unorthodox style and make ample use of liberally interpreted spelling and diction. This lends the poems a personal, casual touch which i found very appealing. Consider the spelling and accent for "f`unnee" in dream song 7. Berryman also has a unique take on grammar. Consider dream song 9 - "if he's still human, see:she love him, see, / therefore she get on the sheriff's mike and howl".

The poems had a very personal feel and the writing style complemented that very well. After reading up on the poet's background, it is apparent why that personal feel is so obvious. The dream songs are a collection of largely confessional poetry with the gentleman Henry serving as an alter ego. The descriptions of Henry are very much a parallel to Berryman's own life.

"In a modesty of death I join my father/ who dared so long agone leave me." This line from dream song 76 is a clear allusion to his father's suicide and perhaps even foreshadows his own life. Dream song 77 narrates Henry's exasperation with life and foreshadows his tragic suicide.
"These fierce and airy occupations, and love, / raved away so many of Henry's years/...his head full/ & his heart full, he's making ready to move on."

In dream song 74, Berryman writes about the lack of love by describing how the holiest and prettiest cities in the world cannot make up for the "unlove" in Henry's life. Some of Berryman's distaste for the world and perhaps his emotional/societal instability is apparent in the following lines - "Henry hates the world. What the world to Henry/ did will not bear thought"

Dream song 5 also captures the confessional nature of Berryman's poetry.
"Henry sat in the bar and was odd,/off in the glass from the glass,/ at odds wif de world and its god,/ his wife is a complete nothing,/ St Stephen getting even."

This single stanza touches upon Berryman's alcohol abuse, his anti-social streak and his struggle with a failed marriage.

Having said all that, I was very confused about large parts of the poems.

Dream Songs MQ

Berryman's dream songs nearly al uinclude the character henry and many of them are just an account of his life were he suffered some great loss. henry through the songs refers tohimslef in 1st 2nd and 3rd person really making the poem difficult to decifer. on top of that the awkward syntax and unnatural line breaks are also very demanding of the reader. Most of the poems have a very dark tone to them involving death, hell and beign alone "the image of the dead on the fingernail/of a newborn child" (5) and "I am alone too" (28) "If i had to do the whole thing over again/I wouldn't."(28). These dark peoms where berryman seperates himself from the world really lead me to believe that he was suicidal. also supporting this suicidal theory, he often describes himslef or the charaters of his poems, to be lying in a hospital bed getting no visitors. the entitre song 8 invloves a person lying in a bed having things putinto them and things taken away eneding with the crotch being taken, a possible simply for pride being stripped away. And again in song 28 that beings by simply saying "no visitors" and describes again a person lying in a hospital bed who seems to have lost all point in staying alive other than writing poetry. these songs mostly all contain 3 stanzas of six lines with a few slightly breaking the mold and have varying rhyme schemes. what i can interpret from them is that berryman was a very sad man who felt isolated from the rest of the world yet on display at the same time, like an animal in the zoo. he seemed to find his only joy and purpose in life in love and writing poetry.

Dream Songs MP

John Berryman's poems in Dream Songs consist of 3 stanzas with 6 lines each for 18 in total. He uses Henry as the main character as a type of alter-ego in his work. Knowing Berryman stumbled into problems with alcoholism, you can infer Henry comes from his drunken state (relating to the title). Berryman had a very different style of writing, and I especially liked how he would alter the English language. This becomes very eminent in poem 5 where he begins each stanza with lines such as, "Henry sats in de bar & was odd," "Henry sats in de plane & was gay," and "Henry lay in de netting, wild." He manipulates the English language very similarly to many popular musicians today, however, Berryman does this to prove a point while artists today are forcing words to rhyme. Berryman's style is very unique and he is considered one of the founders of confessional poetry.

The form of most of John Berryman's works in the dream songs is mostly 3 free verse sexains in each. However, in songs 73 and 74 he adds a tercet in the middle of each. Also, in song 75 he has 2 sexains and the third stanza is a septet(7) and in song 77 he has a line by itself after the first sexain and the second stanza is a septet. Other than those few variations the others are all the same of the songs assigned. /////// Within his poems there are many commas, periods, line breaks and other tools to dictate how the reader should be reading the poem. The lines themsleves vary from one word to filling the entire margin of the page. There is quite a bit of alliteration and internal rhyme within the poems that I found very impressive. "-Hit's hard. Kinged or thinged, though, fling & wing."(Song 2 line 16) Many of the poems seem to use words in the wrong place to catch the readers attention. "Seasons went and came."(Song 75, line 9) ///// He wrote a very confusing style that was hard to understand and follow. Some of the songs seemed to have complete different meanings in the first stanza compared to the last and even middle stanzas at times. Song 54 I understood to be of him in a hospital bed dreaming of his wives and his son. The memories make him feel like he had no purpose for doing anything he did in his life "I have been operating from nothing, like a dog after its tail more slowly, losing altitutude." The third stanza is him saying I did nothing that would warrant anyone taking advice from him yet he still gives advice "write as short as you can, in orde, of what matters."

Dream Songs-WR-

Before I read John Berryman biography, I thought he is really nuts. However, on his biography he described as one of the major post-war American poets, and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Most of the poem contains extreme expression such as “my psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist” (Dream Song 3),” Filling her compact & delicious body” (Dream Song 4). Those sexual expressions do not seem to hide other meaning inside rather John Berryman wanted to deliver nasty feelings. I believe expressing a true feeling without distortion is one of the characteristics that Berryman’s poets have. Also he seems to be suffered from loneliness in his life. In his biography, there is a story that he was not hanging around with his friends when he was young. In Dream Song 28, he wrote “If only the strange one with so few legs would come…he too is on my side”.
In his poems, Berryman uses name “Henry”. Henry can be Berryman himself, or his ideal friend, but it seems obvious that Henry and Berryman shares memories and feelings. Also most of his poem has three stanzas and each stanza has six lines. Also Berryman never uses word “and” in his poem. But he uses character “&” to replace the word.

Dream Songs-FK

I think professor said it best in her email when she said John Berryman was nuts. Berryman definitely has a unique style to writing. Most of his poems usually consist of three stanzas and these stanzas usually consist of six lines. For the most part Berryman's poems don't have structured rhyme schemes, but there are rhymes in some of his poems. For example Berryman rhymes the words cloud and aloud in dream song 5. One thing I noticed when reading Berryman's poems is the fact that he uses a lot of short phrases and sentences that make you slow down when you're reading them. Another thing I noticed is Berryman's poems don't have clear underlying themes like Sylvia Plath's poems. Plath's poems usually had some reference to her father, Nazis, or death; while Berryman's poems had different themes and references in each poem. One thing that I did notice that Berryman does in each poem is that he refers to people by their name. Some poet's don't specifically say the name of the person they are talking about in a poem, but Berryman will refer to them directly. Some names that Berryman used in more than one poem are Henry, Jack, and Mary. Now I don't know if these people that Berryman refers to are friends or family members, but I believe they have some significance to Berryman because he is referring to them directly in his poems. Another thing I got from these poems was the fact that Berryman tried to tell a story through short thoughts or fragmented thoughts. I almost get the idea that Berryman is writing the exact things that went through his head during the situation he is writing about. One strange thing that Berryman did in some poems was use parenthesis, which was the first time I have ever seen that done. All in all I thought that most of these poems were difficult to read and understand, but I believe that was Berryman's intention when he wrote them in the style he did.

Dream Songs - R. Abbott

From the number of 'Dream Songs' I have read by Jon Berryman, it is very clear that he writes in a rather unorthodox fashion. Most of the poems were written in tercepts, with few quatrains mixed in. But that seemed to be the only standardized part of his writing. Overall the poem were difficult to read quickly with interesting choice of diction, seemingly random over spacing between words ('I feel my application failing' #77), and accente egues thrown onto vowels in several words that did not require and type of accent (his, feel, so, would). Berryman's grammar was odd, which honestly appeased me and gave it a more personal feel. His usage of colloquial terms like "hafta" for have to, "de" for the, and "wif" for with serve as examples of this. There is virtually no set rhyme scheme, but Berryman does exercise end and internal rhyme is some situations, most likely to attract attention. In the 'Dream Songs,' Berryman has created perhaps and alter-ego named Henry and tells and ongoing tale of his life in the majority of the poems. The tone of the poems ranges from humorous (#3), to loving (#4), to even suicidal and depressing towards the end (#74). In these demented, elaborate tales of Henry, Berryman writes about his thoughts of past wives and his daughter, but they left me somewhat confused on the whole.

3 Articles-FK

I Bask In Dreams of Suicide: Mental Illness, Poetry, and Women This article discusses the connection between mental illness and poets. Among poets with mental illness this article also discusses the fact that it is mainly female poets that have mental illness. The article discusses how people that have mental illness tend to express there feelings more then someone else who does not have mental illness. Poetry attracts people who are willing to express there feelings. The fact that people with mental illness tend to express there feelings more regularly may cause them to gravitate to expressing them on paper through poetry. Poetry may also cause writers to become mentally ill because of the fact readers tend to enjoy the work of poets that seem to be emotionally unstable. The article also discusses how women tend to be more emotionally unstable in fields of work such as poetry. All in all this article was discussing the connection between mental illness and those who write poetry. Sylvia Plath And The Failure Of Emotional Self-Repair Through Poetry The author of this article discusses the life of Sylvia Plath and events that could have led to her having unstable mental state. I liked the fact that the author used Sylvia Plath's on journal entries when going through her life. Reading this helped me better understand how the loss of Plath's father really wore her down emotionally. I feel that growing up with no father figure to guide her was a main reason for her being emotionally unstable. The article also discusses how Plath used poetry to channel some of her emotions. It also discusses that being able to express her emotions freely on paper may have led to Plath developing a case of mental illness. As you can see this article was about the events in Plath's life that may have caused her to develop a mental illness. Sylvia Plath: Fusion With The Victim And Suicide This article was about Sylvia Plath's poems and suicide. The author discusses how some of Plath's poems foreshadowed her eventual suicide. I feel that the author tries to connect Plath's suicide with her ability to freely cope with her emotions through poetry. All in all I believe the author was trying to connect Plath's suicide with the actual words of her poems.

Bask in the Dreams of Suicide VH

I Bask in the Dreams of Suicide:

This article discussed the research that highlights the relationship between mental illness and poets. It was pointed out that scientific research has been done and that research has discovered that many poets suffer from mental illnesses. They also discovered that poetry attracts those with a mental illness and although poetry may help those with a mental illness it may also cause one to obtain a mental illness. Also the research pointed out that woman are caused a great amount of physiological stress from poetry. Overall the idea was that Tendencies of mental illness are greater in artistic fields of work.

3 article -WR-

The article “Sylvia Plath : Fusion with the victim and suicide” is about Sylvia Plath’s life and related her life to the poem that she wrote for better understanding her life. The author of the article has hypothesis that a poet who wrote about and committed suicide, a series of assumption concerning the relationship between the failure of the defense of identification with the aggressor and a tendency toward self-destruction. To support the hypothesis, the author uses some lines or stanzas from Sylvia Plath poem. This article is somewhat hard to understand and take long time to finish reading because sometime I don’t get the same feeling that the author get. However, the article helps me a lot to understand Sylvia Plath life and the reason of her suicide.
“I Bask In Dreams of Suicide: Mental Illness, Poetry, and Women” . The purpose of the article is to explore possible reasons for the high rate of mental illness among female poets. The authors also give some examples of the linkage between creativity and mental illness, especially in the domain of poetry and among female poets. In the article Sylvia Plath is introduced as an example of a female eminent poet who committed suicide.
“Sylvia Plath And The Failure Of Emotional Self-repair Through Poetry” This article is about Sylvia Plath’s life. The author tries to find the reason why Sylvia Plath committed suicide and what effect her decision. In the article introduce two important events that effect Sylvia’s decision. The first event was Sylvia’s mother’s visiting to England possibly stirring up her old fears of her father. And the second event was Sylvia’s husband’s affair with another woman.

Articles - Jeet

I bask in dreams of suicide:

1. Empirical studies have established a link between mental illness and creative writers/artists; female poets in particular
2. Poetry attracts more expressive, emotional, "narrative", "legislative" thinkers who are more prone to instability. Depressed women tend to ruminate more than men and writing may have a deleterious effect. The personal nature of poetry attracts emotionally disturbed women looking for an outlet.
   
3. Poetry may not have the same benefits as other creative writing and might adversely impact the artist's internal locus of control, and therefore his or her self esteem. Female poets in particular tend to attribute their accomplishments to an external agent such as a muse.
4. The "gatekeepers" of poetry may have ingrained expectations about the personal nature of a female poet's work and therefore may view the works of emotionally unstable female poets in a more favorable light.
5. Mental illness is more prevalent in the young population and compared to artists and professionals in other fields, poets tend to peak earlier in their lives.
6. Female poets in western society might struggle more than men to deal with the higher expectations that accompany creative success.

The failure of emotional self repair through poetry

1. The dualities - a)Writing for an audience and writing for personal reasons. b) Destructive and constructive activity within writing. c) Fantasy and pretense as opposed to reality. d) Interplay and harmony between content and form
2. In Plath's later years, the emotionally devastating experiences of her life, coupled with her unstable mental state and her narcissistic withdrawal from the world led to her abandoning her controlled traditional style of composing poetry. She adopted a more a much more personal style that let her feelings run loose, only heightening her inner turmoil.

The Fusion of the victim and suicide
I'm not sure if i understand the article. The implication seems to be that Plath's poetry gave her a venue to vent her rage and control her swirling mass of ambivalent emotions. However, in her later years, the creative force weakened and the absence of this coping mechanism led her to kill herself. (?)

KaufmanBaer Women are not at a disadvantage to men when in the literary world. However, while writing seems to be the most prevalent area for great success and recognition also carries the burden of a high rate of mental illness more than men and women as a whole. There seems to be a link between women writers, mostly of fiction and poetry, and mental illness. There have been studies that have shown that women creative writers are more likely to have a mental illness and increased levels of depression. These studies have also shown that of the artistic professions poets are more likely to be bipolar than fiction writers and playwrights. There are any reasons given to explain why it is female poets who are usually the most likely to be mentally ill. The reasons are that poetry is the type of art that mentally unstable are most drawn to, poetry does not alleviate mental illness, and that poets peak at a young age which is when most mental illness strikes. Another possibility is that the linguistic style of poetry may appeal more to the mentally ill than other forms of art or writing. A reason given to explain why females are more likely to suffer from mental illness is because they write about more personal things than men poets. Also women creative writers suffer from more stress than men, which is another cause for mental illness. SP Fusion Victim “Fusion with the victim” is a term to describe people with a regressive vicissitude of identification with the aggressor. The article talks about the life of Sylvia Plath and mentions the death of her father when she was 8. It also mentions a poem written by Matthew Arnold that was read to her by her mother. The poem was the jumpstart of her writing career because she began to write poems shortly after. In college she used her father’s red leather thesaurus to write her poetry in. The writer then tries to use Plath’s works to understand her thinking and her suicide. The writer cites many of her poems to show how she is feeling when she was writing a line or what she was intending to mean when she wrote it. Most examples were of poems talking about her father. He says that she was putting herself and ideas of suicide in her writing to temporarily get it out of her system. SP Emotional Repair Poetry needs a certain criteria to be truly successful. There are four sets of overlapping dualities that explain how the writer used everything from the tone to the poet’s own personal tendencies. One of these is the balance of wanting to write for an audience and wanting to write for your own personal reasons. The second is the balance of destructive and constructive activity the writer is using within and while writing the poem. The third includes the interplay between pretense and fantasy dictating one part and the other part of it is the poet’s acceptance of reality. The fourth and final duality in effect when writing a successful poem is the ability to create a harmonious interplay between primary and secondary process mechanisms. The article then begins to talk about Sylvia Plath by saying her life was a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to make use of literary talent to resolve the powerful, unconscious, emotional conflicts of a severe narcissistic and depressive disturbance. Her father died when she was 8 which she was never able to fully understand or accept. Despite being smart she had a painful adolescence. She made a serious attempt at suicide shortly after receiving a one month guest editorship at Mademoiselle. After returning to school she met Ted Hughes who she later married. Her turning point of her work occurred in 1959 because of a combination of doubt and trouble within her personal life. She had resumed psychotherapy again until she went to England with Ted Hughes that December. In February of 1961 she suffered a miscarriage, which was followed by an appendectomy a month later. Then in January of 1962 she gave birth to her son and after this she began to write many poems. She wrote very little between the end of 1956 to early 1960. In the summer of 1962 her mother comes to visit bringing back bad memories. This combined with Hughes leaving her for another woman in late 1962 seemed to be her breaking point. A few months later she wrote her last poem, 6 days before her suicide.

3 articles - BK

I Bask in Dreams of Suicide: Mental Illness, Poetry, and Women discusses the linkage between mental illnesses and creative writes namely poets. Within poets, there is a bigger connection between female poets having mental illnesses over male poets. It goes on to describe many studies that have proven this correlation.

"The tendency toward being more expressive

may make one more prone to illness."

i think the people who are prone to illness are more expressive, not the other way around.

"Ludwig’s

(1998) investigation of more than 1,000 people

in 18 different professions showed that people

who pursued professions that were more objective and formal were less likely to be mentally

unstable"

again, I think that makes sense but it is probably the other way around.

There are way too many assumptions in this article, and facts that are used to argue for a point, that while true, don't relate to the point being argued.

I agree with this " People who may be more likely to suffer

from mental illness may be more drawn to writing poetry"

That pretty much sums it up right there.

One thing this article did not discuss is the fact that many people who are poets are introverted, and spend a lot of time by themselves, perhaps this could cause mental illness? Again this could be the other way too, people have the mental illness therefore spend time by themselves, and then since they are by themselves, and probably bored, they right poetry to express how they feel. Maybe because they don't get enough time talking to other people about their feelings, I'm not sure.

It may be found more often in women due to their schism between their personal life and duties to raise a family and be a certain image in society. Creative writing isn't exactly looked at as a viable option for women and that may contribute to the feelings they deal with.

_________________________________________________________________

Sylvia Plath and the Failure of Emotional Self Repair discusses her life through her prose, poetry, and journals. Silverman and Will go chronologically through her life, discussing major events that happened as well as interjecting with her journals, which I found most interesting. She was quite cognisant of what was going on within her head, and even alludes to the difficulties of growing up with no fatherly influence to teach her things like science. It discusses the transition that she made within her poetry, and how that transition coincided with the progression of her mental illness. It is said that her poetry allowed her to control something, which was a break from the chaos she dealt with in her head. They also discuss her possible inability to have children playing a role in her losing it, which I didn't get because she had children.

______________________________________________________________________

Sylvia Plath: Fusion with the Victim and Suicide:

Orgel discusses a lot about Plath's life, and I wasn't aware that she started writing poetry so early, 8 or 9 years old.

I found it interesting that in college she used her father's red leather thesaurus to write poetry. I'm surprised that she would keep that and almost use him to do that. She recalled her father's "perfect" timing.

I don't understand a lot of what this means. page 273 2nd and 3rd paragraph

Orgel believes that a lot of it does go back to the untimely death of her father at a pivotal stage of development.

This article mainly discusses a lot of her poems and how the poem explained an aspect of her life

We should look at the bottom of pg 283 to 284 and discuss that. There is some statement about why she killed herself and letting the aggressor object and victim merge... I just don't get it. Whenever I read stuff like this I always feel like saying, "yeah that makes sense, because you are looking back on it and connecting the dots, but what if it had nothing to do with that"

3 Articles - R. Abbott

'I Bask in the Dreams of Suicide: Mental Illness, Poetry, and Women' This article basically stated taht mental illnesses plague female poets far more than either male poets or other women in general. Through scientifically conducted research, it was deduced that creative writers had significantly higher rates of mental illness - labeled the 'Sylvia Plath' effect. It was explained that mental illness was more prone to [female] poets because the type of people that are drawn to poetry to begin with are sometimes unstable and then the prolem worsens when poetry itself is unable to solve their problems. Research has also shown that writing can be very therapeutic, but the value of writing poetry is less clear. An interesting note from the article was that suicidal poets were found to use the first person singular more often than a control group. More specific to females, the reason why they are more mentally unstable is that as they produce high levels of work and expectations increase, they feel more stressed than males. 'Sylvia Plath and the Failure of Emotional Self-Repair Through Poetry' The author listed three dualities in her poetry: (1) balance between creative individual's use of the audience to serve her own narcissistic interests; (2) balance between destructive and constructive activity; (3) interplay between pretense and fantasy on the one hand and the acceptance of reality on the other. In a biographically portion of the article, Plath's adolescence was described as very painful and difficult, despite having great academic success. An interesting note about her first meeting with Ted Hughes was how she bit his cheek, drawing blood, and giving herself crashing, fighting to him. The articles also acknowledged the fact that Plath recognized that powerful destructive force wtihin herself through her poetry. Several tragic disasters which re-surface in her poetry were the death of her father, her miscarriage, her suicide attempts, and Ted Hughes cheating on her. It was said that the loss of Hughes was the final blow in Plath's short life. 'Sylvia Plath: Fusion with the Victim and Suicide' This was easily the most difficult of the three articles to make complete sense of. A revealing Plath quote in the reading was, "...it's quite amazing how i've gone around for most of my life as in the rarified atmosphere under a bell jar," stated well before she ever wrote he book. The author's hypothesis linked suicidal behavior (like Plath's), Christ-like empathy for victims, and poetic sensibility. The author also believed that Plath's poetry abled her to vent her rage for a brief period of time, but it would all come back once she completed the writing. It was also stated that, while reading Plath's poem chronologically, the forces opposing death as constuctively dealt with until in the last few, where this force weakens and dies - along with Plath herself.

The Colossus (M.A)

This poem by Sylvia Plath consists of six stanzas, with five verses each. The poem seems to be about her father when he was suffering through his illness. The first stanza talks about how she is not able to understand her father's words because he is unclear and is making "mule-bray, pig grunt and bawdy cackles/ [that] proceed from your great lips". The second verse suggests how much she respects her father with the words "great lips". And she also describes the noise "worse than a barnyard".

In the second stanza, she describes how her father considers what he says to be important and maybe is therefore trying to say something. But she states that even after thirty years, she still does not know what the sounds mean that he made.

In the third stanza, she describes how she is trying to clean his face with disinfectant.. slowly "like an ant in mourning" over his bushy eyebrows and cleaning his eyes. This creates a segway into the fourth stanza  of his expressive looks that are "pithy and historical". This metaphor is compared to the Roman history.

In the fifth stanza she describes how her father's physical and mental ability have been ruined and that it takes "more than a lightning-stroke to create such a ruin". She realizes that it isn't a normal illness that can be cured and a lot of damage has been done.

In the sixth stanza, her message is a bit confusing but it seems like she is just trying to say that she doesn't have to hear those harsh noises anymore. 

The Colossus MQ

This five stanza poem is another work of Plaths were she truly mourns her fathers death and uses hatred for him as a tool for coping with his passing. this poem describes her father as being like a giant statue or colossus as the title states and often refers back to ancient greek and roman culture through various jargon used throughout the poem including "Roman Forum" "Oracle" and "cornicopia". all of these words really bring the reader back into this ancient time when reading the poem. one of the greatest inferences to the ancient greeks was in lines 22-23 "it would take more than a lighting-stroke/to create such a ruin" this is an obvious referance to zues, and it is like the author is saying that not even the greatest god could have caused this much destruction, and this much pain. the poem also shows how Plath is suicidal in line 28 when she says "My hours are married to shadow". I really liked this line and saw it as a way to set tone and show the reader just how much of a negative effect her fathers passing had on her. Plath ends this poem saying how she no longer waits for the sound of ships coming in meaning she no longer waits for her fathers return and she has accepted his death.

The Colossus - Jeet

In the six stanzas of the poem, an irregular meter is apparent. The poet is speaking about her father and her somewhat unflattering thoughts about him. This becomes apparent towards the latter half of the poem and is much more easily divined with some knowledge of Plath's life - her father died when she was young and she came to feel betrayed and upset by his death; she even blames him for it.

She starts off the poem by likening his didactic speech with the senseless sound of beasts. She says that while he himself might have had a high opinion of the wisdom he was imparting, she for one never could make sense of it.

She speaks of herself as an ant in mourning, a small creature in his overbearing presence. In alluding to the skies of the Greek tragedies and the Roman Forum, she is indicating that while he didn't offer her anything of value, he still is a very significant part of her life, which at times was rather depressing for her.

The reference to cypress and the symbolism that associates that tree to death and funerals indicates the father's continued significance even after death; and that death had such a profound impact on her that it must have been caused by something much more powerful than even lightening.

"My hours are married to shadow" - in thinking of her dead father all the time, her life is somehow linked inextricably to death. She has given up on being conscious about the more easily perceptible things (emotions) in life.

The actual description of the father is also linked to the stone colossus (statue) and lends itself to comparison with a stony, unmoving figure that is a big part of her life. In this, the poem may be thought of as an extended simile/ deceit.

The Colossus MP

The Colossus was written by Sylvia Plath in 1959. The poem contains 6 stanzas with 5 lines in each, making 30 in total. Plath seems to be comparing their father to Colossus, a larger than life figure (statue) as well as mourning his death. The poem's underlying tone is dark and uneasy. The first stanza talks about the speaker's trouble of reconstructing her father's memory properly. In lines 3-5 in the first stanza, the speaker uses animal noises to describe the way the father spoke, and sarcastically adds "proceed from your great lips" to show how people saw him.

The second stanza begins by comparing her father to an oracle or god-like creature. However, she claims that for 30 years she's tried to "dredge the silt from your throat" which asserts that she hung on to every word he said during this time. But, this is only to add on that she is "none the wiser" after 30 years of hearing it.

In the fourth stanza, the setting is described as, "A blue sky out of the Oresteia arches above us," which comes from a trilogy of Greek Tragedies. The father is then described as "pithy and historical as the Roman Forum." These comparisons give her father very powerful qualities, to make her seem smaller as well as make his image even greater.

The end of the fifth stanza shows the speakers inability to communicate properly with her father. "Nights, I squat in the cornucopia of your left ear, out of the wind," portrays the fact that she wanted to communicate with her father, but they never truly communicated well. In the ast stanza, ''My hours are married to shadow." talks about the fact that she'll always be under him and never will escape his glory. But, the last 2 lines "No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel on the blank stones of the landing" relates to the author's acceptance of her father's death.

The Colossus-VB

The Colossus was written by Sylvia Plath in 1959. The form of the poem is 6 stanzas containing 5 lines each and there is a total of 30 lines of the poem. The tone of the poem is very disheartening and has a feeling of someone who is done and giving up or realizing the fact that they cannot c0omplete or conquer a task. I get this from the first stanza where the writer is talking about never being able to put soemthing together completely. She can be talking about life as a whole or understanding the people in her life. However, the references seem to be talking literaly about a statue which I feel is a metaphor for the ideas listed above. The writer talks about scaling ladders with glue pots and put the image of people building a huge statue or pyramid in ancient times using simplistic ways to do so compared to the tools we have now. The last stanza seems to be where the writer has come accustomed to failure and hardship at this point in her life and no longer trys to solve others' problems or figure out what else she has to do to make the people around her appreciate her.

The Colossus-WR-

“The Colossus” is written by Sylvia Plath in 1959. I think she compares colossus to her father. “The Colossus” has six stanzas (of thirty) which is cinquains. From the first stanza, the colossus is taking apart and it seems unable to be repaired. Also I think “Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles” (Line 3) is the sound that she hears from the conversation with her father in her dream. From the second stanza “ I am none the wiser” explains how she does not understand who he is because her father was taken from her too early to share his wisdom with her. From the third stanzas “I crawl like an ant in mourning” (Line 12), she describes herself as ants and it makes the image of the colossus even larger which gives me an image of authoritative. Not only giving the colossus larger image, she also describes it ugly. Also from the last stanza “My hours are married to shadow” (Line 28), I think she did not wanted to be exposed to the sunlight because the sunlight shines the tongue of the colossus which reminds the sounds that she wrote in line 3 in first stanza. I think the last stanza also connected to the first stanza because she will hear voice again from the colossus someday.

The Colossus-FK

"The Colossus" is a poem written in 1959 by Sylvia Plath. The poem consist of thirty lines arranged in six cinquains. There seems to be no apparent rhyme scheme within the poem. The title of this poem is "The Colossus" which I believe is a reference towards Greek mythology. I looked up Colossus and found out that it was a statue of Greek god Helios. The poem is written in the narrators perspective towards her dad. For the most part I believe the narrator is comparing the building of Colossus to the narrators own troubles trying to construct and understand her fathers character as a person. The first stanza of this poem paints a picture of someone trying to construct a statue that they are never going to be able to complete the way they want to. In the second stanza the narrator admits to trying to piece together the statue for thirty years, but not being able to. The narrator uses the simile "I crawl like an ant in the mourning." Along with stanza three, this simile paints a picture of the narrator looking so small in compared to the statue he/she is trying to construct. In stanza four the narrator refers to the statue as his/her father. Stanzas four and five are a little confusing to me, but I believe the narrator is trying to get the point across that he/she is done trying to make this statue perfect. By the narrator implying that he/she is done trying to make this statue perfect I believe he/she is actually saying that he/she is done trying to understand his/her father because he/she is never going to see him as perfect.

The Colossus - BK

I understood the Colossus to be a statue, which she compares to her father.

The statue is in pieces and the speaker admits "I shall never get you put together entirely, / Pieced, glued, and properly jointed." This is congruent with the plea to her father later in the poem "O father, all by yourself / You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum."

All throughout the poem there is a mythical element that made me think of old Roman and Greek culture, "great", "oracle", "god", "skull-plates", "Roman Forum", "cypress (which sounds like the island), and "old anarchy".

It seems as though the speaker is trying to put together her father in her memory "Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol", but the damage is too much, "It would take more than a lightning-stroke / To create such a ruin."

Therefore the speaker isn't able to recreate her father in her head, so her "hours are married to shadow", or she is all alone.

The last two lines "No longer do I listen for the scape of a keel / On the blank stones of the landing," I took to refer to the actual statue of the Colossus of Rhodes, which constantly hears the sounds of ships (keel is the hull of a ship) coming in and out of shore.

'The Colossus' - R. Abbott

Written in 1959, 'The Colossus' consists of six five-lined stanzas. The poemk begins with what seems to be the discription of someone who has lectured the speaker his/her whole life but has really made no sense. The second stanza reinforces this notion when the speaker says he/she is "none the wiser" after listen to this person for 30 years (10). In the third stanza the speaker goes on to describe the person of which he/she speaks as very old, whom is later revealed as the speakers father. The second to last stanza opens up to the reader that she really dislikes who her father is saying, "it would take more than a lightning stroke/to create such a ruin" (22-23). The speaker concludes the poem with what appears to be a description of the death of his/her father, but the speaker seems indifferent or even satisfied with his passing. Throughout the poem, there is no set ryhming scheme.

LAdy Lazarus-WR-

Sylvia Plath suicide several month after she wrote this poem. So when I read the poem I cannot get rid of an idea that she was suffered from her life. The poem has tercet form, and her tone is very pessimistic. The first stanza gives me an idea of suicide. She has tried killed herself every ten years, and she is counting her suicide. The thirteen stanza is about her desire to death “The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all”. She did not want to be survived, but she failed to die.
The poem really made me sad because I felt her weakness throughout the poem. In the seven stanza and third line she wrote, “And like the cat I have nine times to die”. She may believe she could live until ninety years old because she said she “done it again one year in every ten…”(1). When she wrote the poem, she was still young. She did not live enough to say the world is terrible. The overall image is of the poem is very dark and painful. However, after reading this poem, I only had one thought in my mind. I really wanted to help her.

Lady Lazarus (M.A)

The poem has 29 stanzas and has three verses in each stanza.
The poem seems to be about dying three times out of nine. She refers to herself as a cat, because it is a myth that cat have nine lives. She starts talking about her injuries, of how her right foot was "like paperweight", which means she couldn't feel it and it was broken.
She then mentions how she has gone through this three times, although the first one was an accident, and the other two were purposely done. That means that the first time she had an accidental near death experience and the other two were suicide attempts.