I was wary about the poems I had chosen to contrast because I thought it might be difficult to find differences in their interpretations of love, but I'm sticking to my original choices. The two poems I've chosen are "Measure" by Zareh Khrakhouni and "My Ugly Love" by Pablo Neruda. "Measure" focuses on the depths of love and the extraordinary things one can compare one's love to: "Taller than tall, we chose mountain altitudes / to scan and grade. / We chose stars and galaxies to outdistance / in love." On the other hand, Neruda's "My Ugly Love" focuses on the speaker's love interest and how she is beautiful while still having ugly traits, but the speaker loves her anyway. The speaker mentions physical attributes that are beautiful and ugly but ends the poem speaking of something that is not a physical attribute: "My love: I love you for your clarity, your dark." Khrakhouni's poem seems to center on an idealistic love, where everything seems perfect and the love consumes the affected. The lines "Finally you said your love was as deep / as the light in my eyes when / I looked at you and knew / I was defeated." convey this intense love, where the speaker says he was "defeated" by the other's love for him. Neruda's, on the other hand, sheds a much more realistic light on love, where the speaker notes the subject's flaws but puts a spin on those flaws to turn them into something beautiful, and also accepts the flaws and loves them despite them being flaws. The love is still there, it just seems more realistic.
Have I mentioned my love for love? I'm a hopeless romantic so both of these poems are wonderful to me. I'm not sure what view I have on love considering I'm both an idealist and a realist, it just depends on when I'm asked about things. I'm going back and forth between which one is closer to my view, but in this moment in time I'd say Khrakhouni's poem is closer.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Poetry Blog Post #3
These two poems exemplify two different kinds of hope: hope put in love and hope put elsewhere. In “Measure”, the speaker longs only to put into words the love that he or she feels for his or her significant other. The speaker tries, but does not succeed giving the idea that love is so much more greater than we can all imagine. Millay takes a completely different direction in her poem “Love is not all” and clearly states that despite popular belief, romantic love can not satisfy all your needs. The speaker of the poem compares love to food and drink (necessities) and then the luxuries of everyday life. She then goes on to say that love is no magical power and can’t fix everything in your life.
I would say that my views on romantic love fall in between these two points of view. Because although I am a hopeless romantic, I do believe that romanticizing someone in such a way might lead to being let down in the end. That’s really pessimistic but that’s the truth.
I would say that my views on romantic love fall in between these two points of view. Because although I am a hopeless romantic, I do believe that romanticizing someone in such a way might lead to being let down in the end. That’s really pessimistic but that’s the truth.
Mi fea Soneta XX vs. Short Story on a Painting of Gustav Klimt
The two love poems I've chosen to compare are "Mi fea Soneta XX" or "My ugly love Sonnet XX" Pablo Neruda by and "Short Story on a Painting of Gustav Klimt" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Neruda's poem is about a relationship in which the physical appearance of the speaker's mistress is not up to par. "where did you hide your breasts? They are two meager scoops of wheat" "Your mouth is big enough for two mouths," "My ugly love, you're a messy chesnut." The poem goes back and fourth stating ugly parts of her, only physical appearance, to the beauty: "My ugly love, you're as messy as a chestnut./My beauty, you are as pretty as the wind." The theme of the poem is that love does not lie on the outside of humans, not in the physical nature of the relationship, but in the actions and emotions shared. But in Ferlinghetti's love poem, the main theme he is expressing is that though a relationship may be passionate, fiery, and fierce, that doesn't mean there is love. The speaker uses imagery to describe the scene of a man and woman in a garden embracing each other, using words like "tangerine lips" and "so passionately" to create a somewhat, well, passionate moment. But the woman is not so passionate. The man is the only one with obvious signs of passion and love, and the speaker closes the poem with "She/will not open/He/is not the One." So, Pablo's poem contrasts with Ferlinghetti's in that in the preceding, love does not need to be physically beautiful to be real and passionate, while the latter leaves us with the impression that even the most beautiful relationship can mean nothing at all.
Poetry Blog #2
Going into this assignment, I actually did not expect to find similarities between "To His Coy Mistress" and "You, Andrew Marvell." However, both poems left me with the exact same thought, the thought that time is fleeting and life is short (yes, both are super cliche, I know). The first poem, though written centuries before the second, emphasizes more about how time and love are both intertwined, racing towards their ends. This becomes familiar at a shift in the poem, at the second stanza, "But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near." "You, Andrew Marvell" discusses the pace of time, but on a more global scale. While Marvell's poem focused on how time related to one person or pair of people, Baghdad, Sicily, and Spain. The last line in this poem especially displays time's tendency to darken subtly the lives of people: "The shadow of the night comes on..."
Reading Strand's essay only confirmed my thoughts on the two poems, especially "You, Andrew Marvell." In the third paragraph he states plainly, "'You, Andrew Marvell'... suggests is not just the simple diurnal round of night and day, but the more tragic rise and fall of civilizations." He also helped me understand the poem further by pointing out punctuation and syntax that I hadn't noticed before. For example, the ellipsis is used to restore the cities and civilizations that will eventually fall to the dark, to time. It "seems to imply that another cycle of replenishment is on its way." Overall, I think that Strand points out the cyclical pattern of life and time. He highlights the parts of MacLeish's poem that emphasis this ever-changing force that is time. I'm not sure how well I can relate to the poems and the essay; I can't say I understand all of their parts. Perhaps one day once I've been through time and have experienced its nature as described in these passages, I'll be able to comprehend it better.
Reading Strand's essay only confirmed my thoughts on the two poems, especially "You, Andrew Marvell." In the third paragraph he states plainly, "'You, Andrew Marvell'... suggests is not just the simple diurnal round of night and day, but the more tragic rise and fall of civilizations." He also helped me understand the poem further by pointing out punctuation and syntax that I hadn't noticed before. For example, the ellipsis is used to restore the cities and civilizations that will eventually fall to the dark, to time. It "seems to imply that another cycle of replenishment is on its way." Overall, I think that Strand points out the cyclical pattern of life and time. He highlights the parts of MacLeish's poem that emphasis this ever-changing force that is time. I'm not sure how well I can relate to the poems and the essay; I can't say I understand all of their parts. Perhaps one day once I've been through time and have experienced its nature as described in these passages, I'll be able to comprehend it better.
Poetry Blog #3
It was difficult to find two poems with directly contrasting views on the topic of love, since the topic contains a wide variety of themes that can be touched on. I eventually selected "Measure" by Zareh Khrakhouni and "True Love" by Roger Penn Warren as two which seemed to express roughly opposite ideas of love. "Measure" is all about intense depth of love, with two people trying to compare their amount of love for each other. "True Love" expresses the fleeting and distant nature of love, with the speaker loving a girl across years who has said his name once. The main difference is the speakers' statements about the intensity required in true love. "Measure," with a couple competing for loving each other most, expresses the idea that true love is broad and intense, with the speaker's lover telling her that his "love was as deep as the light in [her] eyes." Yet "True Love" puts forth a very different idea, that real love can be the barest little thing between people with little connection. The speaker claims he fell in love with a girl he saw on the side of the road, and occasionally would run into her throughout his childhood. While Khrakhouni's speaker delves deep into an intense, close connection with her partner, Warren's character almost unconditionally loves a near-stranger. Yet both authors describe it as a pure form of love.
As far as my opinion? It's kind of hard, considering these poems are at the extremes of the spectrum. I don't think "True Love" represents actual true love, not considering a crush on a stranger love of any kind. But on the other hand, "Measure" is almost... sickeningly cheesy, and seems so cliche and over-the-top. Since I have a boring, average view on love, that it's about a strong personal connection but doesn't need to be intense and fiery, I'm kind of in between the two ideas. I guess I'd lean a little towards Khrakhouni's idea of love, if only because extreme cheesiness is more acceptable than mildly stalker-ish behavior.
(Note: I did really enjoy "Siren Song," "Weighing the Dog," and "Mi Fea," but sadly could not find any good comparisons using them. Just let it go on record that they're kind of awesome.)
As far as my opinion? It's kind of hard, considering these poems are at the extremes of the spectrum. I don't think "True Love" represents actual true love, not considering a crush on a stranger love of any kind. But on the other hand, "Measure" is almost... sickeningly cheesy, and seems so cliche and over-the-top. Since I have a boring, average view on love, that it's about a strong personal connection but doesn't need to be intense and fiery, I'm kind of in between the two ideas. I guess I'd lean a little towards Khrakhouni's idea of love, if only because extreme cheesiness is more acceptable than mildly stalker-ish behavior.
(Note: I did really enjoy "Siren Song," "Weighing the Dog," and "Mi Fea," but sadly could not find any good comparisons using them. Just let it go on record that they're kind of awesome.)
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Yay plagues
Passover is a rather important if unpleasant Jewish holiday. The story is this: while Jews were slaves in Egypt, Moses, one of those Jewish slaves, was divinely instructed to confront the Pharaoh and demand the release of his people. Moses did so, Pharaoh laughed, and Moses warned him of ten plagues, ranging from rather unfortunate to really unpleasant that were to be visited upon Egypt.
Pharaoh had no particular fear of plagues and continually refused to release the Jews or reneged on his promises to do so even as God ramped up the plagues. The first nine plagues were as follows: water turning to blood, frogs being everywhere (what?), lice and gnat infestation, wild beast infestation, pestilence, boils (ugh), hail, locusts, and darkness. They were all bummers, but not so severe as the last one. For the last one, Jews were instructed to put lamb's blood on their doorposts so that the Angel of Death might "pass over" them (like Passover, see?) as he/she/it visited death upon the first born son of all the Egyptians. After this one, Pharaoh relented and let the Jews go, but they were in such a terribly hurry that they did not have time to allow their bread to rise. Unfortunately, this rush gave rise (so to speak) to one of the defining features of modern Passover, or, in Hebrew, Pesach: observant Jews do not eat grains which have risen. This means no pasta, bread, crackers, cookies, cakes, brownies, etc., which is a real bummer if your birthday falls during Passover as mine so often does. Instead, we get to enjoy matzah, which is a sort of edible cardboard made from flour and water. Many non-Jews like matzah. Jews do not.
The other major tradition of Passover is a seder, a sort of ceremonial/religious meal that retells the Passover story and involves symbolic foods. In my house, it's a family and family-friends type of affair.
Liberation, though of a much milder sort--really, no comparison with being emancipated from slavery--will come in June. Or maybe July, if we continue to have snow days at our present rate. Enjoy your last few months in the Fayette County Public Schools system, and keep sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Pharaoh had no particular fear of plagues and continually refused to release the Jews or reneged on his promises to do so even as God ramped up the plagues. The first nine plagues were as follows: water turning to blood, frogs being everywhere (what?), lice and gnat infestation, wild beast infestation, pestilence, boils (ugh), hail, locusts, and darkness. They were all bummers, but not so severe as the last one. For the last one, Jews were instructed to put lamb's blood on their doorposts so that the Angel of Death might "pass over" them (like Passover, see?) as he/she/it visited death upon the first born son of all the Egyptians. After this one, Pharaoh relented and let the Jews go, but they were in such a terribly hurry that they did not have time to allow their bread to rise. Unfortunately, this rush gave rise (so to speak) to one of the defining features of modern Passover, or, in Hebrew, Pesach: observant Jews do not eat grains which have risen. This means no pasta, bread, crackers, cookies, cakes, brownies, etc., which is a real bummer if your birthday falls during Passover as mine so often does. Instead, we get to enjoy matzah, which is a sort of edible cardboard made from flour and water. Many non-Jews like matzah. Jews do not.
The other major tradition of Passover is a seder, a sort of ceremonial/religious meal that retells the Passover story and involves symbolic foods. In my house, it's a family and family-friends type of affair.
Liberation, though of a much milder sort--really, no comparison with being emancipated from slavery--will come in June. Or maybe July, if we continue to have snow days at our present rate. Enjoy your last few months in the Fayette County Public Schools system, and keep sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.
The Rescue of the Child Moses
Jacob and some fellow Israelites went to Egypt, bringing their family members with them. when Jacob's generation all died,their children continued producing offspring; when a new king came to power, he didn't know Jacob's relative, Joseph, and feared the Israelites would become too populous and too powerful, and eventually overtake the throne. The Egyptians put the Israelites into slavery. They were forced to build storage cities. But the Israelites just kept producing kids! The hatred toward God's people grew so strong that the Egyptian midwives were told to let only newborn Israelite girls live and to kill off the boys. The midwives, however, had to much respect for God to kill the babies. When the pharaoh asked how it was going, they lied and said the babies were already born when they got there. (I guess they were planning on making the infanticide look like an accident.) God was pleased with their loyalty. The pharaoh then changed his order: drown the boys.
One Levite woman became pregnant and had a son. She saw he was special, so she hid him. She made a basket-boat and set him afloat in the Nile. His older sister watched this scene:
I have a few friends who are adopted, as well as family friends who adopt and foster. I'm glad they have loving homes, but I understand the frustrations that may come with it. One of my friends found out that her birth mother (BM) has a son a few years younger than her. She doesn't know if her BM kept him, and she doesn't know how she would feel either way. She wants her BM to be in a good and healthy place, to not be on drugs, and to be a good person. She doesn't know what she even looks like. She's mad, and that's perfectly understandable, but she's so thankful for the family she ended up with.
One Levite woman became pregnant and had a son. She saw he was special, so she hid him. She made a basket-boat and set him afloat in the Nile. His older sister watched this scene:
The pharaoh's daughter came down to the Nile to bathe and saw the basket. She opened it and saw the baby, and decided to keep him. She asked a maid to nurse the baby, offering her payment. She eventually adopted the boy and named him Moses.The Prince of Egypt Start at 3:51
I have a few friends who are adopted, as well as family friends who adopt and foster. I'm glad they have loving homes, but I understand the frustrations that may come with it. One of my friends found out that her birth mother (BM) has a son a few years younger than her. She doesn't know if her BM kept him, and she doesn't know how she would feel either way. She wants her BM to be in a good and healthy place, to not be on drugs, and to be a good person. She doesn't know what she even looks like. She's mad, and that's perfectly understandable, but she's so thankful for the family she ended up with.
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