This Blog Background Reminds Me Of TFiOS

Skunk Hour - Robert Lowell

I am pretty sure it's about loneliness, but maybe I'm projecting again.

Beyond that, I'm sensing a theme that the speaker wants to be with someone but can't. Here are some words that jump out at me:

- hermit

- fairy

- marry

- love-cars

- "Love, O careless Love"

- sob

- Church

I think he's afraid of growing old alone, like the hermit with the son and her "farmer" has. He refers to the millionaire "who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean catalogue," perhaps indicating attractiveness, and "our fairy decorator" who would "rather marry" than find work for money. I thought perhaps "fairy" had some sort of ship imagery, but that's "ferry." The only definition of "fairy" aside from the floaty magical things is a derogatory word for homosexual males.

The next stanza refers to his watching for love-cars, and he says, "My mind's not right." I suspect the speaker is uncomfortable with his sexuality, which is why the lyrics, "Love, O careless love..." might make him "sob in each blood cell," and he perceives himself as hell. Not in hell. Just hell itself. Hell personified. His own hell, his own prison he can't escape. Alone but for the skunks marching alongside the Trinitarian Church--the structure he probably views as somewhat responsible for his loneliness.

Eigentlich Nicht: Second Thoughts

Here are some things I learned in class discussion.

Sylvia Plath - The Colossus

I should've just skipped the title. I was closer the first time.

Anyway, the consensus reached seemed to be that the poem was probably written about Plath's frustrations as a female writer and with her husband Ted Hughes, whom she viewed as sort of a father figure with whom she had an unhappy marriage. Hughes was the British poet laureate, and the theme of Greek antiquity throughout the poem seems to have been utilized to indicate Plath's feeling that there was no way for her to escape male dominance in the poetry hierarchy.

The poem is an allegory. The "mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles" probably point toward Hughes' poetry, which often dealt with animal sounds. She writes to convey her years of laboring to make herself known. She cleans the ruins of The Colossus of Rhodes to see if it has anything to say, but she is only an ant, and her efforts are fruitless.

The enjambment, which emerges only in the latter stanzas of the poem, imitates the unending debris of this monument.

Though we discussed that the "red stars and those of plumb-color" act as a symbol often ignored by analysts of the work, we spoke about the association of the colors with pain, and I proposed that stars turn red as they die. Also, I am realizing as I type this, she says she is "counting" them, which makes a lot of sense with the theme of fruitless labor.

No one can count the stars.

Robert Lowell - Epilogue

I was more on track with this one, though I missed some things. I think I was projecting a little bit.

The poem was less about seeking inspiration and fearing being too realistic and more about the constraints of writing in general. He perceives poetry to be an art dealing with recollection, which consequently relies on fact and is paralyzed by this. He expresses a certain self-consciousness about the shortcomings of his writings, but then he goes on with this:

"Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination

stealing like the tide across a map

to his girl solid with yearning."

assonance

alliteration/consonance

more assonance

What he wants is to bring his poetry to life--to give it a certain timelessness--and he envies Vermeer's ability to do so.

All the world's a stage.

I think Miss Brill watched a little too much Toy Story. Necklets don't cry. Although I guess this one did have eyes, which is disturbing to me.

I also think she was projecting. Right there at the end, when she's gone home and passed the baker's because she's sad, she thinks she hears something inside the box crying, but it can't be. She is projecting her sadness onto inanimate objects.

This is somewhat ironic because, from all of her Sunday people watching in the park, she seems to be something of an expert at interpreting people's reactions. She's in denial, however, about her own. It's also possible, though, that she's projecting in the other instances as well because she can never know, for sure, how the strangers in the park actually feel about things, as she never interacts with them.

On a side note, "Brille" means "glasses" in German, but I didn't see any other evidence that led me to believe Miss Brill to be German.