Daily Archives: October 18, 2024

I’ve learnt so much about poetry over the course of us going through the different types of poems etc. Therefore, my ability to read and understand poetry has increased. I’d rate myself a 6. Even though it’s seemingly low, before we started this topic, I would’ve rated myself a 3. I realized that poets use the different times of day or seasons to represent time or age. Like in the poem “What my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. She wrote, “Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree” (Millay). The term winter can convey that a lot of time has passed or now she’s older. This shows that you need critical thinking, creative interpretation and sometimes a little research to figure out what the poet is trying to convey. Just like in Oedipus the king, we are provided with interpretations for the language used. But without these interpretations I would’ve been confused about some of the references. For example, where it says, “You may see them one with another, like birds swift on the wing, quicker than fire unmastered, speeding away to the coast of the Western god” (Grene 3).  At first read, the meaning behind this is hard to understand so I had to research It to realize that the western God refers to “the god of night, or Death” which tells me that this means the women were dying quickly.

In the last 2 week my ability to read poems has improved significantly When starting to read poems i would let the word play and symbols go over my head without understanding the meaning of each word but now i pay close attention to the small details and word play in certain lines. This experience can help me with reading oedipus the king by getting to understand theme like fate and self discovery, for example like sylvia plaths poem Mirror they both have to deal with self awareness and confrontation.

I would say my ability to read poetry hasn’t changed, if it did then only slightly, within the past couple of weeks. However, my experience with Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening did help me when I had some issues understanding what “A blight is on the fruitful plants of the earth.” could mean or who “a God that carries fire, a deadly pestilence” could be. I had to think about what each line had to do with each other in Oedipus the King, the same way I had to think about what the line “And miles to go before I sleep,” had to do with stopping in the woods to watch the snow fall, which was that the context clues from the surrounding text would help figure out what was being talked about. I ended up realizing the god who carries fire and pestilence was Apollo and the pestilence he brought was towards the crops.

Poetry really taught a lesson for me throughout the semester, much more than when I was in high school. In my studies in high school, we were introduced to poetry in ELA where all we know much about, that was true at the time, is they always rhyme when we were studying about their fluctuation and how the reader is taught “to make ideas as they believed” when reading a poem. For the majority we had to read them by overused but famous poets like William Shakeshphere and Edgar Allen Poe. We also learned that poetry’s like a code of words dressed into the sentence structures of each stanza, along with the assumption every poem can be easily understandable by just the beginning, or read once.    I would like to include Haiku there as a good example written by Buson.    “In lantern light,  My yellow chrysanthemums Lost all their color”   This comes at first glance as simple to me if I were a beginner of poetry. It then tells me Buson’s people became old when his friends died. Which I respect about the way Buson described coloration as shifting. In Oedipus, there comes a simile and metaphors between most lines at the same time, as usually within haiku’s use in describing their ideas in a natural element.    Before high school, we were taught that poetry comes with a “hum”, describing the melody in the tone of the writer who made them decide to express figurative languages into emotions and feelings.   These myths both helped and discerned me. For the good side, myths are used as a testament to my knowledge because they allow people to understand what to avoid, and not to accept. On the flipside, knowing these myths into true beliefs had led me […]

I would rate my ability to read poetry after these past two weeks a 7. Reading the different poems and analyzing them really helped me understand the true meanings of poems, but I struggle with some here and there. Understanding the poem in general is always confusing and I need to reread a couple times and definitely annotate to get some ideas from it. I feel like my experience with poems can help with the reading of Oedipus the King because I’ve seen many different words and the definitions of them. This is one of the things I struggle with the most when it comes to poems, many of the poems I read use words and phrases that are from an old period of time, which we don’t use anymore. This always confuses me, but I think being able to read numerous poems these past two weeks that both show and don’t show it will help. Touching more upon the word choice and how I struggle with understanding it, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” because they both use certain words that I don’t understand. The difference between the two is that “Oedipus the King” uses those older words such as “thee” and more less, and, they added the definitions of not so common words on the bottom of each page which was useful to me as well.

Over the past two weeks, my ability to read and understand poetry has improved. Now, I  can better understand deeper meaning and emotions, especially in themes of loss and conflict. Reading poetry was never an easy task for me, and I always thought that poetry is simple writing with random picked words. Gwendolyn Brook’s poem ” the mother” has been important in this growth. What caught my interest was the title ” the mother”, which is written in all small caps. That intrigued my curiosity to learn deeper meaning to this poem. Her focus on grief, guilt, and the struggles of motherhood connected with me. The poem deals with fate and choice, This new understanding of how to read a poem will better direct me onto reading the ” Oedipus the King” , as Greek plays, stories and mythology requires some type of background history, as everything in the play might have a meaning. It is difficult for me to directly quote from poet ” the mother”, but I will paste 1st stanza of the poem for references. Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I believe I am improving in my ability to read poetry. Even with some improvement, I still catch myself rereading specific lines multiple times to fully grasp the sentence. More specifically, the older poems (such as Shakespearian poems) are less direct with their meaning. The sentence structure used in its lines is typically outdated today, which makes it read less fluently. At the same time, I believe this has prepared me to read Oepidus the King. One example of a poem by Shakespeare that uses rather indirect sentence structuring is “Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” A line such as “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks…” doesn’t have the same flow as modern writing; therefore, it forces you to pay more attention to its meaning. Oepidus the King uses very similar language and sentence structuring; hence, I have experience to aid me in fully understanding each line. .

Lately, I’ve been getting more comfortable with poetry, even though it’s not something I usually familiar with. At first, trying to dissect each line and uncover the deeper meanings felt pretty daunting. But with some practice, I’ve learned to take my time and really enjoy the layers in the poems. Going over them multiple times, like we did in class, has really helped me grasp the content better. I think these skills will be super useful when diving into Oedipus the King. One poem that really sticks with me is Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. The way he uses the paths as a metaphor for choices and their consequences reminds me a lot of how Oedipus’s choices lead him to his tragic end. Realizing how Frost creates deeper meaning from something as straightforward as a road has made me notice how even small details in Oedipus—like the crossroads—hold significant symbolic meaning. All in all, the readings has boosted my confidence in tackling the complex themes in Oedipus the King and looking for the hidden messages beneath the surface.