Those Winter Sundays

When I first read this poem, I knew the author was a guy but for some reason I visualized the narrator as a young girl.  But as I read it again I realized it was a boy talking about his father and the day to day schedule his father has to deal with even though he is doing it achingly. I find it sad that when the boy says “fearing the chronic angers of that house” I think how on Sundays, the house seems empty without his father and it seems especially cold since it’s in the middle of winter. The descriptions in the poem describing his father are so vivid such as: “My father got up early and put his clothes in the blue black cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze” (1450).  It makes me wonder if this is about Robert Hayden recalling memories of his father and what he did to put food on the table, and how he feels a lot of respect towards the man even though “No one ever thanked him.” The descriptions also are the reason why I implied the narrator as a woman.

But I also feel like the boy is angry towards his father because this is all he has done with his life and sort of wishes he had done something more: “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” The descriptions almost imply to be that the father is young and had children at a young age and didn’t leave much for himself, and what he really wanted to do in life.

We Real Cool

I had read this poem previously in my poetry class and thought this was one of the best poems I had ever read. The first thing I notice about it is how it’s formatted into four stanzas with eight lines, and has the repetition of the word “We”. “We” begins the poem and ends at every line except the last one, indicating the person speaking had died. But it also leaves me curious as to who “We” is. Are they the narrator’s friends, complete strangers, or a gang the narrator is sort of following in line with, or maybe the narrator is the leader of the gang?

Also it says near the title:

The pools players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel.

I think with the pools players go with the eight lines and how you never want to knock the number eight ball in. Also I think the lines:

“We

Strike straight.” Are talking about playing pool.

Then with the seven at Golden Shovel, I think the number in there is significant as well and how at casinos the lucky number is seven. So I’m assuming the Golden Shovel is a casino and a sort of night club where the narrator spends his/her time throughout the poem or perhaps I'm overlooking this:

“We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin.” (1463)

But overall, I think the main message of this poem is about breaking rules, living fast and dying young or just being an outcast when everyone else is in school, making curfews and living longer:  

“We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.”

In Just-

            In the poem: “In Just-” the first thing that spoke to me before I even read the poem was the format Cummings created. I’m not hundred percent sure why the words are spaced the way they are in certain parts of the poem, but I think the spaces between the words in "whistles far and wee" suggest that the distance that a whistle covers, and how far it can be heard. Also when I turn the poem to the side, the extensions of certain lines reminds me of blades of grass just popping out of the ground, signaling that spring has finally arrived. Also the unusual spelling of words such as “mud-luscious”, and “puddle-wonderful” (Pg.1112) sort of gives me a sense that Cummings wanted to combine a noun and adjective after the word “world” to present imagery with it: “in Just spring    when the world is mu-luscious” and “when the world is puddle-wonderful.”  Also I found it interesting how Cummings combined several names such as: "eddieandbill" and "bettyandisbel" suggesting that the pairs are friends and are very close that they’re practically connected. I also discovered he does the same thing with “whistles far and wee” but does the opposite, and instead adds space.

            To me, the poem itself was very straight forward: that it’s that day in May when the sun starts shining for the first time in weeks and everybody heads out to the park. Though the poem seemed simple to me, the structure however was complex and hard to figure out. But the poem overall gives me a sense of childhood innocence and how there’s a sort of magic to the first day of spring and being in a park. “from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s

spring

and

wee”

The Young Housewife

As I read through the short poem The Young Housewife by William Carlos Williams, the first question that popped into my head was: Who is the narrator? Since there is someone looking outside their car window watching this young housewive carry on with her daily activities. "At ten A.M. the young house wife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband's house. I pass solitary in my car" (1007). Because the narrator gives a specific time I feel as though the person speaking knows or once knew the woman or is even perhaps a neighbor, and seeing her is a daily routine. Also I feel the car and the housewife in her house serve as counter parts. The car symbolizes freedom and the privilege to go wherever, while the house for the woman is sort of a cage and she is confined to the house with "wooden walls". Then as the person in the car is watching her, he/she sees her interacting with other man who aren't her husband "then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair" (1007). To me, I think the woman calls upon the men not to restock on resources, but out of lonliness because her husband is away and since she is so young she calls upon men who are willing to come to the house and flirts with them. Only after the narrator witnesses this is when he/she compare her to a fallen leaf because she leaves her position as housewife and goes outside the house to interact with other men and then drives off. In a way, this story reminded of The Yellow Wallpaper and that back in the day women mostly worked as housewives and were confined to their homes that men owned. The same happens with the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper because her husband has a job as a doctor and bought a new house for them. He also keeps his wife in the house, believing outside made her sick when it was really what she needed.

Trifles by: Susan Glaspell

I really enjoyed reading the beginning of this story because I envisioned the opening to some sort of detective/mystery movie. Also, when Mr. Hale asked Mrs. Wright what her husband had died of and she answered by saying "He died of a rope around his neck" (919). I though at first he had killed himself. But as the story progressed, the readers realize it wasn't a suicide, but murder.

As the story goes on the men are searching around for evidence in order to convict Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discover an empty birdcage and a bird nowhere to be seen. They eventually find the dead bird in Mrs. Wright's sewing basket while they are searching for materials for the quilt. They also discover that the bird had been strangled in the same manner as John Wright. The two women are hesitant to flout the men, since they found evidence when they didn't, and instead decide to hide the evidence. Without a trace of evidence, the men are unable to find any proof against Mrs. Wright which will prevent her from being acquitted by a future jury.
I feel like Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale hid the evidence to protect Mrs. Wright because they felt "It never seemed a very cheerful place" (920). Also Mrs. Hale mentions how happy Mrs. Wright was before her marriage which led me to believe she was abused throughout the marriage by her husband and killed him as a result. With regarding the bird, I feel like she used the bird to practice on before she carried out the act on her husband.

Elsa Wertman

The poem by Edgar Lee Masters tells the story of a German woman named Elsa Wertman, who has blond hair and blue eyes, and is working for a politician named Thomas Greene and his wife Frances Greene. When Thomas' wife is away, he seduces Elsa into sleeping with him. Although it describes that "neither of us seemed to know what happened" (878), Elsa says when Thomas came onto her "I turned my head". After reading this, I'm convinced Elsa was raped and had no desire to be with Thomas Greene. However, when Elsa's "secret began to grow" meaning she is pregnant, Mrs. Greene finds out about the affair and tells Elsa that she will take the baby and raise the child as her own, since Elsa is not married and can't support the baby. Mrs. Greene's behavior strikes me as very strange because I expected her to be angry, upset or even shocked, but she presents herself as very calm and understanding. Reading the lines "so she hid in the house and sent out rumors, as if it were going to happen to her", I'm not sure whether her intention is to cover up the affair from the public or if it was a planned event between Mr. and Mrs. Greene so they could have a child to pass on their name. At the end after Elsa has married another man and years have passed, Elsa sees her child again at a political rally and acknowledges Hamilton Greene as her own son, not with pride but with verification.

Roman Fever and The Open Boat

In the short story “Roman Fever,” which I had read previously, I always found Mrs. Slade to be a horrible, stuck up upper class woman. Horrible in the sense that she become so blinded by jealousy from Mrs. Ansley, someone she had known since childhood, and her relationship with Mr. Slade that she hurt her. The fact that she tried to give Ansley Roman Fever through a fake letter, just to illuminate the competition is awful and tells me that women back then had nothing better to do then hurt each other over a man. “It’s odd you never thought of it, if you wrote the letter.” “Yes. I was blind with rage.” (P. 786). I was glad at the end when Mrs. Ansley revealed to Mrs. Slade that she had a child with Mr. Slade, a daughter named Barbara.

I found the “The Open Boat” to be quite interesting because by not often using their names, and referring to them as their professions instead, I feel like Crane expands the background of the story. It’s like Crane almost wants his audience to identify with the four men. Their obscure naming interprets them as more anonymous and therefore relatable and generalized.

Though the characters angered me at times because I feel they didn't really communicate or work together with each other, and stretch a theme that is misconception. The men do not communicate with each other that extensively, but they do have various misconceptions. For example, the cook and the correspondent have differing notions of the location of the nearest station that could launch a rescue mission; both are incorrect. “None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of this wreck,” said the oiler, in a low voice, “else the life-boat would be out hunting us.” Also I think it wasn't fair that the oiler and the correspondent where the only ones rowing when everyone could have taken a turn so the two weren't completely exhausted and the oiler could have survived.