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.