Poetry Response 4

Callie Huseman
Jernigan
English 4 AP
23 February 2011
Poetry Response
“Shall I Compare Thee To a Summer’s Day”

This poem is written by Shakespeare. The obvious answer would be to say that this is a Shakespearian sonnet, as that is the rhyme scheme that it follows. Each of these sections focuses on a different idea of the poem as a whole. The rhyme scheme follows ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG
The first four lines set up the comparison between the girl and the summer day. Shakespeare then goes on to say that summer is too short and the rough winds often shake the May flowers. These lines are used to show the comparison between the two, but also so that Shakespeare can say that she, the girl, is more constant that the summer. He writes “Thou are more lovely and more temperate” which means that he thinks that she will last longer than the quickly passing and changing summer day.
The second quatrain describes the different ways that the summer day can end or go wrong. It can be too hot or the sun can be hidden behind the clouds. Shakespeare, in this quatrain, includes the main idea in the third line. He writes “ And every fair from fair sometime declines.” This means that eventually, everything loses its beauty.
The third quatrain is where Shakespeare begins to shift his focus back to the girl that he is writing about. He says that her youth will not fade and she will always be beautiful. He even goes as far to say that she will never die, by saying “Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade.”
The last two lines, the couplet, is where Shakespeare makes his main point. He says that the poem will allow the girl to live on forever. He does not mean this literally, but in the sense that she will always be remembered because of this poem that he wrote about her.
Shakespeare split up the poem in this way because it allowed him to give each section of the poem a different meaning. He was able to focus the attention on to the last two lines, the couplet, to show his main idea in the poem as a whole.

Poetry Response 3

Callie Huseman

Jernigan

English 4 AP
8 February 2011

Poetry Response #3

Hazel Tells LaVern

            This poem begins by the girl, Hazel, describing an experience she had.  Hazel is the speaker in this piece, and she is speaking to an unknown audience, the reader. She talks as if she is telling the story to someone she knows well.  The circumstances of this dramatic monologue are that the girl, Hazel, has just seen a talking frog in a toilet. She does not believe the frog, and she is more concerned with what it is saying than the fact that it is talking.  She is telling the story in the past tense, so the reader is able to see her complete reaction. In the end, the part she can’t believe is the fact that the frog thought that SHE could be a princess, not that he was talking.

            This leads into the traits of Hazel. She obviously has low self esteem, and she seems to be stuck in the ideals of the society. Woman in her society seem to be treated as essentially worthless, and this shows in the way she reacts to being called a princess.  This reaction shows how she does not trust others and that she can not see the order of the society changing any time in the future. Also, there is an underlying fairy tale allusion throughout the entire dramatic monologue.  It is ironic that the readers obviously catch this allusion, yet the person living it does not seem to be familiar with this classic story. However, Hazel’s reaction to the frog is essentially the opposite of what the fairy talks ending is. She chooses to ignore the frog.

Glogster- "Entangled Themes"

http://calliehuseman.glogster.com/agamemnon/

Poetry Response 2

Poetry Response

Dora Williams by  Edgar Lee Masters

            This dramatic monologue describes all the different men that the woman, Dora, has married. The narrator does not spend more than two or three lines describing any of the men. She just mentions their names, how they died or left, and what she gained from them. The focus on all of material things instead of the actual relationships with the men shows how she, Dora, is flightly and trying to belittle the relationships. The shift in the poem comes when she moves to Paris. . This is when she really becomes her own person and stops relying on the men she is dating or married to.

This poem characterizes Dora through her speech.  The quote “I moved on…” is repeated throughout the poem. This shows how instead of dealing with issues, she continues to try to escape them. When she says “Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich” it shows how she is proud of her accomplishments, even through the majority of them come from chances outside of her control, like her wealth. However, she did cause her being “versed in the world” by her constant moving while trying to avoid life’s problems. It seems like Dora Williams is a person who spent her life ignoring everything, until finally she was forced to confront what was going on in her life. She finally does this after her apparent death. She says “Contessa Navigato Implora eterna quiete." which means something about death. This shows that she has come to terms with the fact that she has died. This contrasts with the other deaths in the poem, which are mentioned yet then basically ignored. Her death is another shift where she realizes that she can no longer "escape" life.