Thursday, April 22, 2010
Kubla Khan
Samuel Coleridge uses an interesting rhyme scheme in his poem titled "Kubla Khan." Each of the stanzas has its own, distinctive rhyme scheme (even though they may appear to be similar). I believe the poem is written in iambic tetrameter which gives it an overall neat flow. It's actually a fun poem to recite because of the way it's written giving it a song-like tune.
Before even interpreting the poem, I saw a relationship with nature. It's chant like quality reminds me of the bird songs, like the many we have discussed throughout the semester. There was the nightingale, finch, linnet, etc. All of these birds sung their own unique song, just like the unique rhyme schemes in Coleridge's poem. When a bird sings, there is a certain, cheery sound that brings pleasure to the ears. The same occurs when reading this poem. You can even say that it's an exotic sound which can then correspond to the place he talks about in the poem. He describes Xanadu and the Alph with such rich imagery allowing the reader to portray it as this beautiful, exotic scene. I think the picture above does a great job revealing this image.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Frost At Midnight
What stood out to me in this poem is Coleridge's change in word usage. His words are like a roller coaster. They go from happy to sad, calm to angry, joy to sorrow, etc. What I found interesting is how this compares to nature. You can say that nature also has it's "mood swings" which can be identified through various ways; take the weather for example - one day it's warm and sunny, and the next it's cold and rainy. Coleridge starts the poem off with strong words such as "owlet's cry", "loud", and "hark"and then moves on to calm language like "solitude", "peacefully", "calm", "meditation", and "silentness." Those two groups of words are very different, opposites in fact. The same can be with nature; an ocean can be loud and rough, while the fields can be filled with peace and tranquility. What's neat about all this is that no matter what side nature is showing, the baby is so calm and at peace. Whether it be the "redbreast that sit and sing" or the "silent icicles shining to the quiet moon, " there is a sense of security that nature provides. The pictures illustrate nature in two different ways - the first shows nature in the winter time on a mountain while the other is during the spring near a creek. You can see how different these two images are, but they are both beautiful in their own ways.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree
What is unique about this poem is William Wordsworth's use of the long dash. It really made me think and what I came up with is that the lines that were left upon a seat in a yew-tree are the first seven lines in the poem. Wordsworth uses the long dash as a separation which divides the "lines...yew-tree" and his own poetry. I think that he might have come across those few lines and then in a way responded to them through the rest of the poem. What convinces me even more is that in the first seven lines, he is directly addressing a person (the traveler) telling him to stay and wait and then talking about the yew-tree. In the lines following the dash, the use of the word "he" is very common. Wordsworth may be trying to analyze and figure out "who he was that piled these stones..." and he talks about this with the "stranger" or "traveler." The Lake of Esthwaite also put a thought into my head. I looked for images of what this lake is like and it turns out it's a very beautiful part of nature. So maybe someone started writing some lines in this yew-tree, but never got around to finishing it because of the beauty nature. Perhaps nature was calling them, and so they went to explore the terrain rather than finishing up what they started writing - hence the long dash in the poem. It would be nice to know what Wordsworth really meant, but it sure makes you think and every time I look at it from a different angle, I come up with a different interpretation.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Haunted Beach
Throughout the whole poem, Mary Robinson uses words with apostrophes. There is at least one in each stanza, and most stanzas have more than that. As a reader, my eyes were attracted to these words. The words in which Robinson uses the apostrophes are verbs, and they bring attention to them. Those words are significant because they are part of the descriptions. For example, the white foam in line 2 was "scatter'd"; lofty Barks were "shatter'd"; Sea Birds "hover'd"; the wave resistless "roll'd"; the green billows "play'd", and so on... There are just so many words like that within the poem and they especially emphasize the lines in the poems in which they are used. It's like they are haunting the reader, just like the ghost is haunting the fisherman. I also noticed that most of the time, Mary Robinson is using words with apostrophes when writing about nature (birds, waves, billows, etc). The apostrophe replaces certain letters, so it looks like letters are missing. Similarly, this is connected to nature because this beach she writes about is "lonely" and "deserted" so something is missing there too. The video below is basically a reading of the poem, but I think it does a good job of setting the spooky, supernatural mood.
The Haunted Beach
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)