Fern Hill

The second time I read this poem I focused on the idea of "time." From the first line of the poem the speaker says "Now as I was young," suggests that he is older and looking back on memories of his past. The speaker say's that he was happy ("happy as the grass was green") and that "time let me hail and climb." Therefore, there is two references on the idea of time. First he is living in the current time, thinking about the past. And secondly, while in the memories of his past he say's how it was "time" that made him free. The speaker then goes on to talk about the farm and the farm environment from the perspective of authority. He uses the words lord and prince as if he has some authority in his surroundings. The speaker again refers to time, in the second stanza when he says "time let me play and be golden in the mercy of his means." Here again time gives him freedom and happiness. Then the poem goes on to discuss God and the relation between the divine and farmland and sense of home the speaker feels. But in the last stanza of the poem the mood shifts to a different perspective on time, one of dissapointment to the realization that the time that made him feel free and happy is not infinite and will come to an end and that makes him feel trapped instead of free. I liked how subtly the poet says this when he says "In the moon that is always rising...Time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea." So here the poet shifts his mood yet again to now knowing the reality that life is not infinite and he will at some point, possibly soon, die but he lived his life on the farm to the best and got all the life out of it. Great poem.

colors, fern hill

I noticed a lot of color symbolism throughout the poem as well. Yet, I regarded the colors as change and an indication of time moving onward. The first color is “green” which embodies youth. Thomas then combines the beauty of “green” youth with “golden” to convey the idea that being young is the prized time in life. Yet, the poem shifts with the “fire green as grass.” The image of this green fire is unusual because one thinks of red, orange, or yellow flames not green ones. I think Thomas creates this green fire because when working with chemicals the color green is emitted when an element is added. For example, barium creates a green flame. I think the image of the green fire is the turn of the poem because the innocence of the pure green youth is gone and something has altered the innocence of the child depicted in the poem. Perhaps, the spoiled innocence is like the barium that changes the color of the fire. Thomas then reverts to the image of innocence with the “wanderer white.” Now, the person depicted in the poem is no longer a child or a child being changed by experience but an adult gazing nostalgically back at his youth. In the ending of the poem the color green is used again as the person is “green and dying.” I think the image of “green” is repeated in the end to reinforce the idea that the person is reverting back to youth. Also, by remembering one’s youth’s green one can keep a piece of their childhood as they wander into death’s arms.

On "Fern Hill"

I thought this poem was good but difficult to understand. However I did find a few points that I thought were interesting. I had trouble figuring out who the speaker of the poem is but I got the impression that the subject is Adam and Eve's fall from grace. There is a lot of reference to colors and time in this poem. Colors appear in every stanza and more specifically green occurs in every stanza. However, the meanings of the colors change as the poem goes on. In the first two stanzas green is correlated with being happy and care free. The third stanza contains a shift as the color green is now associated with fire. This could represent the eating of the apple. Line 35 in the fourth stanza states "out of the whinnying green stable." Whinnying used here may be a sign of distress. It could also possibly symbolize God's discovery of Adam and Eve's actions. In the fifth stanza, "the children green and golden/ follow him out of grace." In the final stanza green takes the worst position: "Time held me green and dying."

For the Union Dead

When I first read the title of this poem, I expected it to be a mournful address of those who sacrificed their lives for the victory of the Union. But instead it opens with a description of the aquarium, and how the speaker remembers being a child and was pressed up against the glass, looking at the fish swim by. It is five stanzas in that the statue is first mentioned, the one that commemorates Colonel Robert Shaw.

What I found this poem to represent was that even though so many died for the Union side, and even though it was a Union victory in the end there is no proper commemoration. Even though what Shaws did was revolutionary, leading an African-American regiment, now all that remains of him is a statue that is ignored by the populous of today. The populous of today is no different than the fish that the speaker watched as a child.

The last stanza brings it all together:

"The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease."

The first thought that comes to mind after the first sentence is that the physical building may be gone, but the 'fish' are still here, just moving along in large schools of fish, looking towards the future for survival. There is no looking back on the past, but the 'servility' of people today just forces us forward and doesn't allow us to respect those who have given up their lives for us to have the freedoms we enjoy today. Instead, it seems like something we try to avoid, for it is "like a fishbone/ in the city's throat." It still seems to apply to today, this idea of not respecting those who have given much more than they need to in order for the rest of us to live on.

Plath

I thought this poem powerful in its ability to dipict decay and regeneration. Plath looks at death in a unique light writting that "Dying/ Is an art, like everything else,/I do it exceptionally well./I do it so it feels like hell./I do it so it feels real/.I guess you could say I've a call." It is interesting that the emphasis of the poem is the art of dying not writting. At the same time however, through writting about the art of dying Plath showcases her other art, that of poetry.

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

It is heartbreaking to see Prufrock struggle with himself to escape his world of monotony, conformity and falsity only to question himself and fall back in line. The poem starts off with Prufrock’s greatest desire, to go into the dark, dirty streets, away from the confining security of the indoors. But instead he remains inside listening to the absent-minded “women come and go talking of Michelangelo.” He has gotten to a point in his life where he can no longer stand the emptiness of his existence in this high-class, crowded world. No one in that world has depth or anything meaningful to say; at each party the same women come back and have the same unconscious conversation about Michelangelo without ever going beyond the surface. As Prufrock says, “It is impossible to say what I mean!” when he lives in constant fear of what his cocooned society will say about him.
Stanza 8 really stood out for me with its vivid language and the hopelessness of his situation. The people around him already have him pegged and no matter how hard he tries or what he does he will always remain that way in their eyes, “pinned and wriggling on the wall.” There is no way for him to move away from his past because he will forever be pinned there.
Also, the lines: “There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” jumped out at me for the truth of its message. It reminds of a Beatles song where the character “Lives in a Dream/Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door/Who is it for?” Many times people (especially people living in Prufrock’s world) put on a mask around others as a way to hide their true selves and avoid getting hurt. All in all it is a sad situation for Prufrock.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

There are many things to touch upon in this poem, but one that always stands out to me is Eliot's use of 'yellow'. It's associated with death, plague - general disease; essentially, death. Also the animal that Eliot uses to describe this yellow fog is most likely a dog. But the first things that come to mind are Cerberus. I'm also not sure about this next association, but in certain mythology, a large black wolf or very large wolf-like creature with red eyes was an omen of death. The yellow fog's muzzle that goes about the streets and rubs against windowpanes is almost like marking those who will be next to die. This is a theme that exists throughout the poem, from the first stanza, where there is a patient about to go into surgery, to the end, where he is a helpless bug pinned to a backing, where he will be dissected and studied. And the feminine presence that Eliot refers to almost holds a death-like fear for the subject as well.

But he is in a dream, and this is most clearly seen by the last stanza, where the human voices will wake him and his companion and then they will drown. But what is important is that no matter if he is dreaming or awake, death is always there.