Amends

Amends

· Explore in detail how the poet memorably conveys delight in nature in Amends (by Adrienne Rich).

The author uses images of the nature that delight her. The first stanza:

Nights like this: on the cold apple-bough

a white star, then another

exploding out of the bark;                                   

on the ground ,moonlight picking at small stones.

She uses words that show her surprise or admiration for the nature, for example -picking up small stones -rises with the surf -laying its cheek for moments on the sand. That makes the stanza more descriptive.  Also uses words to create the atmosphere, such as “cold”. And the progression from the sky to the trees and then, finally reaching the ground.

 In the second stanza, she uses personification for the moon. It represents the female power. It also uses words such as licks, flows and flicks, which show delightful movements.

She chooses images that impact a lot on you, making you remember every detail that she describes.

Is not strange that Adriane mention the moon as the female power in the poem, knowing that she was an active feminist.

In the third stanza describing nightly beauty and also trying to release the disturbing and conflictive thoughts in people’s minds over the night.

in the fourth stanza, the authos writes “dwells uponthe eyelids of sleeper´s” to attempt to wash away the troubles of the day, wishes for the people to be at ease.

The moonlight feels as though during the night it has to give peace to humans and creatures alike. It feels sorry that humans have a negative energy throughout the day and hopes to help by making positive energy.


Lucrecia Magi,Gonzalo Anido,Tomás Mendez Díaz y Bárbara Geoghegan

Sonnet 29 – EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

·         What do you think makes this sonnet so sad? Support your ideas with details from the poet´s words.

The sonnet is about a woman that doesn’t want people to feel pity of her because time is passing by and things that happen to everybody in life are happening to her. This shows that the woman refuses to accept the reality of the situation, “Pity me not” meaning that she doesn’t want readers to feel bad for her.

The woman feels that as she is getting older and doesn’t take care of herself anymore “Pity me not for beauties passed away”, her husband is not attracted to her or doesn’t love her in the same way anymore. This is shown when the writer says “Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon”. The way in which she expresses is sad.

The woman feels like the happiness that the light of day brings is not worth it and she thinks that death will arrive someday somehow.

The way in which the writer expresses and prevents people from pitying her is a soothing sad manner. Although she doesn’t want people to feel the pain that she feels, her sadness is evidently shown.

The writer compares the things that are happening in her life with other ordinary things that happen in life, for example, she says that the ending of her lover’s love is as natural as the sun light ending at the end of the day. She seems to say that it was known by her that the love she and her lover once shared would end in some way. But in the short run, she begins to feel slightly angry and depressed and this is shown in a change of tone beginning in line 12 “Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales…” which is destructive and more chaotic.

In the last two lines, it is told “Pity me that the heart is slow to learn, When the swift mind beholds at every turn.” Here the writer talks about a different pity. She wants one to pity her not for her pain but for her being naïve towards something she clearly knew was going to happen. She also feels sad for herself because she didn’t react to something she knew was going to happen.

The conclusion of the poem is that everything in nature finishes or disappears at one point but that it always ends somewhere to start somewhere else. 

Camila Pellegrini, Lucía Neira, Martina Cervi

The Voice

In the poem The Voice, Tomas Hardy communicates the pain of loss his wife when he imagines Emma trying to communicate with him. The poem is in the first person and He is the speaker and imagining that Emma calls to him. She tells him that she is not the woman she had become after forty years of marriage, but has regained the beauty of her youth. In the text it says:

·         Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

The poem begins optimistically with a hope that Emma is really addressing Hardy. But by the end, a belief or fear that the “voice” is imaginary has replaced this hope.

·         Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

As a conclusion we can say that Hardy missed his wife a lot, and he tries to remembered her in any way.

Time

Time

In his poem “Time”, Curnow personifies time with human-like qualities. In the first four stanzas the poet gives examples of where time is seen, how time is seen and used, and what time is. It also describes the effect of time on people and objects, and with time, pretty much everything around changes. This is clearly seen in verses such as “I am […] the rust on railway lines” and “I am dust…” because rust represents the trace time leaves as it passes and dust shows the flow of time. Curnow makes the reader understand that time is everything. The poem also tries to explain the very difficult matter of what time actually is. The poet does this by stating that time is many different things, such as “I am (time) the water-race”, which can refer to a river. The reason why the poem might have used this to try to describe time is because rivers never stop flowing in one direction, same as time. In the third verse “I am the mileage recorded on the yellow signs” the author tries to compare flow of time with the yellow signs on the side of the road as you travel.

Although all the verses analyzed up to now show time as a durable thing, there are some others (“I am nine o´clock…”) that represent time as a fixed moment.

Stanzas three and four connect time with two of the five human senses. Stanza three relates time with the smell; this is seen in verses such as “I am […] the smell of the machine”. Stanza four links time with the hearing; this is reflected in verses “I am recurrent music the children hear” and “I am level noises in the remembering ear”.

Also, the poem states that time is “the Beginning and the End”. Time lets living things live, but it also kills them. Time creates any object, but it also destroys it.

Martina Barvo and Micaela Oroz Matias

The Voice

©       How does Hardy powerfully convey distress and grief in this poem?

Hardy transmits distress and grief in many ways. One way is the fact that the poem is written for a woman, making it more personal because there is a dialogue between Hardy and the woman he refers to. At the same time, the reader can understand his feelings for her. For example: “Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then

                          Standing as when I drew near to the town.”

This dialogue is between him and the image he brings of her, like a ghost, he feels the woman near. Hardy wants and misses the woman that she was when they first met. This is shown in the first stanza, “When you had changed from the one was all to me,

                                         But as at first, when our day was fair.”

Another way is the use of natural elements as wind and wet grass in an opened field. He wants to trap her with these breezes because he feels distant from her, feeling pain and missing her.

This means that he suffered for the changes she passed through and didn’t like the woman she turned to. He misses the girl she met at first and as she won’t be as before, he distresses. All this causes him grief .

Manuela Scatena Bugallo, Jorge Lin Kang and Martina Izurieta.

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

In Keats poem, the text is divided into two parts, the first one, full of life and joy, and the second one, full of sadness and freezing cold.

The grasshopper is associated with the jolly and hot summer, while the cricket is related to the winter and the cold.

Both parts of the poem are divided by the 9^th line: “The poetry of earth is ceasing never”, where the first part presents the summer, where life returns and everything is happy and wonderful. To enjoy the season, however you have to endure the pain of the harsh second part of the poem that is the winter, where life nearly ends, and the happiness fades away to be covered by a snowy cover of sadness.

The poem also presents two different ways of seeing life, the first one is the optimist, without taking in account the worries, compared with the summer, and this presents people who don’t take life too seriously, so they can live better, without stress. On the other hand, the second one presents the cricket’s point of view that is very worried for his life and takes everything too seriously.

But at the end of the poem, the grasshopper is confused with the crickets, which shows that in moments of drowsiness, roles can be swapped and the characters can be different depending on the situations they are found in.

Also, the poem is an intertext of the known fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper:

Once there lived an ant and a grasshopper in a grassy meadow.

 All day long the ant would work hard, collecting grains of wheat from the farmer's field far away. She would hurry to the field every morning, as soon as it was light enough to see by, and toil back with a heavy grain of wheat balanced on her head. She would put the grain of wheat carefully away in her larder, and then hurry back to the field for another one. All day long she would work, without stop or rest, scurrying back and forth from the field, collecting the grains of wheat and storing them carefully in her larder.

The grasshopper would look at her and laugh. 'Why do you work so hard, dear ant?' he would say. 'Come, rest awhile, and listen to my song. Summer is here, the days are long and bright. Why waste the sunshine in labour and toil?'

 The ant would ignore him, and head bent, would just hurry to the field a little faster. This would make the grasshopper laugh even louder. 'What a silly little ant you are!' he would call after her. 'Come, come and dance with me! Forget about work! Enjoy the summer! Live a little!' And the grasshopper would hop away across the meadow, singing and dancing merrily.

Summer faded into autumn, and autumn turned into winter. The sun was hardly seen, and the days were short and grey, the nights long and dark. It became freezing cold, and snow began to fall.

The grasshopper didn't feel like singing any more. He was cold and hungry. He had nowhere to shelter from the snow, and nothing to eat. The meadow and the farmer's field were covered in snow, and there was no food to be had. 'Oh what shall I do? Where shall I go?' wailed the grasshopper. Suddenly he remembered the ant. 'Ah - I shall go to the ant and ask her for food and shelter!' declared the grasshopper, perking up. So off he went to the ant's house and knocked at her door. 'Hello ant!' he cried cheerfully. 'Here I am, to sing for you, as I warm myself by your fire, while you get me some food from that larder of yours!'

The ant looked at the grasshopper and said, 'All summer long I worked hard while you made fun of me, and sang and danced. You should have thought of winter then! Find somewhere else to sing, grasshopper! There is no warmth or food for you here!' And the ant shut the door in the grasshopper's face.

It is wise to worry about tomorrow today.

And there we can clearly see the meaning of the fable, and in a way that of the poem too.

The words in the poem that portray the pleasures of nature are mainly the ones in the first eight lines, in the optimistic part of the poem. These words are mainly adjectives and nouns, and in a lower proportion, verbs, e.g.: birds, hot, new-moon, lead, summer luxury, delights, fun and pleasant.

The rhyme of the poem is steadier in the first part of the poem, while in the second part the rhyme changes, showing a difference of scene.

Finally, in the poem, it is shown how although you can think that sadness will last forever, there is always  an end to it, and happiness will flourish again, renewing the cycle that is portrayed in the whole poem

Keats vividly portrays the never-ending pleasures of nature, because it offers us a circle between the seasons that never stop, like life. That’s why you have to appreciate everything you have and work to have a better future, because although there will always be an opportunity to succeed, we never know what will happen to us in the future.

Full Moon and Little Frieda

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket - 
And you listening. 
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch. 
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror 
To tempt a first star to a tremor. 

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm 
wreaths of breath - 
A dark river of blood, many boulders, 
Balancing unspilled milk. 
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!' 

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work 
That points at him amazed.

Explore how Hughes conveys the delight of this moment

Little Frieda’s vision of the moon is portrayed as being full of joy and delight. Through the use of aural imagery, Hughes successfully portrays the glee of the girl. He writes ‘‘Moon!’ You cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’ and by this he makes the listener become aware of the excitement faced by the girl. One realizes how the view of the moon thrills the child and through her ‘cry’ one can imagine hearing the sudden dynamism in her voice. The tension which had been building initially in the play is broken here as the child’s enthusiastic voice defines the climax of the cool evening in the English countryside. Thus, by mentioning the child’s passionate ‘cry’, Hughes successfully portrays the delight of the moment.

The whole poem is a delight of the nature, so he adds details of animals such as the spider and the barking dog. The atmosphere is described as very peaceful and calm. Furthermore, the moon is compared to an artist who has created this atmosphere, and the author expresses its delight towards it.