Daily Archives: April 21, 2023

One of the three prior assumptions that I made with respect to the poem “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway is that the poet is writing about herself or her own experiences. This assumption could potentially limit my understanding of the poem, as it is important to recognize that Tretheway uses a persona or fictional character as the speaker. In the first stanza, the speaker describes her own physical appearance: “Be careful of stones that you throw / Young girl alone in a world / Where race is not a bone in her throat / But a stick in her side.” This sets up the context for the poem and establishes the speaker as a young girl who is not white. However, in the third stanza, the speaker reveals that she has lied about her race: “I could easily tell the white folks / That I am a spic, a mick, a hunky / Jew, a nigger, or even a chink.” This reveals that the speaker is not necessarily the poet herself, but rather a fictional character or persona created by Tretheway. The young girl in the poem, who lies about her race to fit in with her white classmates, is not necessarily a reflection of Tretheway’s own experiences. By assuming that the poet is always writing about themselves or their own experiences, I might miss the broader themes and issues that the poem addresses, such as identity, race, and social conformity. 

In week 13’s reading ” Most reader’s make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem” it hits on some valid key points about what many readers myself included tend to do when reading poems as if it’s an involuntary action. I myself am guilty of the latter I fall underneath the second category where in my heart I truly do believe that there is an undercover meaning behind and thus why it was written in such a way. In the poem “White Lies” written by Natasha Trethewey made me think of that poem in such a way and yet I failed to even realize it. Right from the opening line I thought that this short poem was supposed to have a deeper meaning behind it when it stated, ” The lies I could tell, when I was growing up light brown near white high yellow, red boned in a black place were just white lies,” In my head I thought the protagonist past had caught up with them and they would have a sort of epiphany were they would seeing the error of their ways when it came to being a liar.

1. Restate this in quote in your own words. ““Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique.” This quotes can be restated in my own words as to understand a poem you do need to have a right mindset and basic skill to understand it. 2. With specific reference to one of the week’s sonnets, discuss your personal experience with these two components of reading poetry. Be sure to support your response with a short quote from the poem you are discussing. When we read “”Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” by William Shakespeare, if you have a positive mindset and attitude you would be enjoying this line and thinking about love, In order to analyze this poem you do need to have a right mindset of understanding it and comparing it with beauty and love. Understanding a poem also involves on how you  approach the poem and some people do compare it with their past experiences, so if they had any bad experience or they lack in knowledge it would effect the understanding of the poem.

The quote “reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique” is basically stating that reading poetry well and correctly, requires both a certain mindset and a set of skills. With regard to the attitude component, it means approaching poetry with an open mind and a curious mindset, free of preconceived preconceptions about what or how it should be read. The technique part refers to specific skills that can help readers engage with poetry more effectively, such as asking questions and analyzing literary devices. Take Shakespeare’s “my mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun” for instance, A person might be more inclined to read with an open mind and a sense of curiosity rather than expecting it to follow the norms how they love sonnet. The poems use of metaphors and similes could then be examined in order to better grasp its meaning, for example “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.”

When I first read W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” I assumed it was about someone who wants to escape to a remote island and live a peaceful life. However, after reading Edward Hirsch’s article “How to Read a Poem,” I realized that there’s more to the poem. One of the false assumptions I made was that the poem was only about physical escape from the city. Upon closer inspection of the lines “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings,” I realized that the speaker is seeking not just physical peace, but also emotional and spiritual peace. Another false assumption I made was that the repetition of the line “I will arise and go now” was just a way to emphasize the speaker’s desire to leave the city. However, Hirsch points out that repetition in poetry can often have a deeper meaning, such as emphasizing the speaker’s determination to make a change in their life.  

 “Most readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem.” While reading “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway, I made the first assumption- “they should understand what they encounter on the first reading, and if they don’t, that something is wrong with them or with the poem.” This is the assumption I always make while reading poems. “White Lies” was a poem that I reread to make sure I understood it. It is about someone who is of mixed-race and lives in a neighborhood of more colored people, but can pass as a “white girl”. The narrator states that they can say they live “uptown”, which they seem to think is a better area than where they really live. At first, I thought the reading was about a kid lying to fit in, but then I realized it is someone struggling with identity and lying to figure out which race is “more them”. While reading “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks, I made the second assumption-“the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point.” I didn’t understand what the “code” was so I moved onto the next poem. I came back to it and realized it wasn’t so difficult to understand. I believe the poem is about a group of kids who drop out and think they are cool because they do their own thing and defy authority. I think the narrator sees their group as “thugs” because of their comment in the last line “We die soon”. It is a known topic that if you are apart of the “thug-life” you risk losing your life to “the streets”.

The poem “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey made me fall into the first and second assumptions Edward Hirsch discusses in his article “How to Read a Poem.” From the title, I expected the poem to be about one subject, lies that were not too grandiose. But it is not solely about lying, and each detail does not correspond to only one thing, like I originally thought. It took me three times to read it to understand it is more so about the experience of a young girl of African and European descent than about small fibs. The use of color in the first stanza of the poem is very powerful. “The lies I could tell, when I was growing up light-bright, near-white, high-yellow, red-boned in a black place, were just white lies.” (Trethewey, lines 1-6) I did not immediately understand the perspective of the narrator and it took me multiple times to read to fully digest the true nature of the poem, and the use of color in the first stanza. These exercises are definitely teaching me to read poetry with a more open mind, without expectations, to completely understand the message the author is conveying.

“Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique” In my opinion, this means in order to understand a poem you have to use the correct tone. For example, when it comes to William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the Sun” I would not read it in a happy and positive tone. I read it with more of an annoyed or distasteful tone because he is analyzing his mistress and almost comparing to other women who are attractive or “appealing” to him; meanwhile his mistress is not. “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight, Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.” I, for one, am not big on reading poetry because I usually have to reread it multiple times in order to fully understand what I am reading. For example, William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” I had to go back for a second time, half way through after getting an idea of what I was reading. The language also plays a part in the “technique” of reading a poem. The way writers used words such as “hath” instead of has, “thou” instead of you, and abbreviations such as “grow’st”, “ow’st”, and “wand’rest”. These are all tongue twisters in my opinion and can be all be factors in your understanding of the reading.

Which of the three prior assumptions did you make with respect to one of the poems read this week? Be sure to refer to specific lines or phrasing in your discussion. The poem that stood out in this week’s reading was “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway. At first, when reading the poem, I first thought I understood what the narrator was saying. When I read the lines, “I could easily tell the white folks that we lived uptown,” I was assuming only white folks lives uptown, and the narrator’s completion matches with the white folks who live uptown, then yes, the narrator will mix in as well. Then further in the poem, lines “I could act like my homemade dresses came straight out the window of Maison Blanche.” I paused, the narrator portraying to be some lavish person, which is a lie. Then my curiosity came out to question, is the narrator black, with a lighter complexion, but lying about their race, ethnicity, and lavish lifestyle. Then when her mother found out the lies that had been said, she was punished by “purifying and cleansing her mouth with Ivory soap.” I related to the poem “White Lies” because I did similar things as the narrator growing up, and my punishment was the same, my mom washed my mouth out with soap in front of my friends, which was embarrassing, but I learned my lesson.

Speaking about several poems of this week, I can say that “My last duchess” impressed me the most.  So firstly, I want to say that before reading the article I always thought that one reading of the poem is enough to interpret it in an appropriate way. After first reading, I caught the description of the duchess and created an image of the person she was, as far as the poem mostly consists of the description of her personality and appearance. “…too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere”. So it was a kind and openhearted woman. So, after first reading, for me it was a kind of drama about the young and beautiful woman who passed away too early.   However, after several readings, the personality of the narrator (her husband) has started to be disclosed to us on the basis of his words. It becomes clear that he was a strict, cruel person, who was trying to restrict the life of his wife, and probably finally killed her. “Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together”.  And after understanding that, I thought that this cruelty and relation of the narrator to his wife could be the unique code, the answer to this poem, with the help of which we can get the message of the author. But with the help of a video lecture about this poem, I learnt that this code “doesn’t feet”, so and  searching for “one universal code” is a mistake of a reader.