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In the article “How to Read a Poem” from the Poets.org website, the poet William Carlos Williams, in acknowledging the challenges of reading poetry, writes that a reader must “complete” what the poet has begun.
With specific reference to one of this week’s poems, explain how you “completed” what the poet set in motion. In your answer, be sure to refer specifically to the article and to quote from your chosen poem to illustrate your response.
Please be sure to address comments to others by name.
37 thoughts on “Week 3 Discussion”
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
After reading Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare for at least three times. I can reflect on my experience of this theme of nature and beauty. In the first quatrain, Shakespeare is proposing idea by asking a question which is the center of the sonnet by comparing a beloved one to nature. The word “temperate” is referring to the lovely one as being consistent and clam in comparison to “nature’s changing courses”. Summer is described as extreme, it is too short and too hot. The idea that time is fleeting, “and every fair from fair sometimes declines” is trying to portray everything of beauty will at some point diminish. The nature changes constantly, flower ages, summer fade and so is the beauty. But the beloved one in this sonnet is exempted from “nature’s changing course”. She has an eternal youthfulness and loveliness. As time moves, her beauty and loveliness will only grow, it will not decline. That raises the question, is “eternal summer” possible? Shakespeare provides solution in rhythming couplet. “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”. “This” is referring to this sonnet. The concept that Shakespeare is trying to illustrate is the time/age can be preserved through this sonnet. The physical beauty fades in age, but in sonnet “eternal lines to Time thou grow’st”, beauty can grow.
Hi Maggie
I agree with you, this poem is basically focusing on lover. Speaker asking different question comparing its subject to a summer’s day. He is mostly talking about Summer days, less sunny days and winds in autumn. Overall it is talking about wether.
Sabrina, I hope you will revisit Shakespear’s sonnet. It is not a poem about weather. It is really about the power of poetry to keep eternal the beauty of a loved one, which in actual physical life will change and deteriorate with time.
In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare describes his mistress in such a strange fashion. Poems of love express the beauty of the subject in a good way but Shakespeare did something different. The woman he describes in the poem is someone who doesn’t have good distinguishing features. He quotes “ her eyes are nothing like the sun” in other words her eyes may not be the prettiest eyes. Shakespeare uses a unique way to hyperbolize in his poem. I think the significance of this poem is to realize that if someone doesn’t have distinguishing or perfect features they’re still considered beautiful. One way I completed what Shakespeare set in motion is by realizing that this poem holds a lot of weight, especially during the time we live in. Nowadays, we see ads in magazines where women are identified by how they look. The perfect woman is considered to have beautiful eyes, a slim waist, and a light skin tone. Shakespeare breaks the ideal logical description of how a woman should look, and we can complete that work by applying it today.
Marowa, yes, Sonnet 130 is a very unusual poem, especially in a time when love poems tended to be flowery and over-the-top. In fact, many critics believe that part of Shakespeare’s message in the poem is a rebuke of such exaggerated and unrealistic love poetry. In this sonnet, we also get a glimpse of Shakespeare’s wit and humor. As you say, however, this is a serious reversal in the poem too in the last two lines, which make a statement about love that is not superficial. Your comments about the modern-day emphasis on feminine beauty is also well taken.
@marowa3 – I agree that in this time period what constitutes as beautiful is very hard to attain. But here we have a male testimonial going back to shakespearean time to remind us that we are beautiful!!. Like my mom says, there is a shoe for every foot. The male perspective in this poem is honest and humerus about his beloved’s attributes that are not that amazing. Even her voice is not pleasing, yet he loves listening. She may have hair like black wires, pale as ghost, and treads like an elephant (my own interpretation) …..that’s his goddess!!. He knows his love will never be believed by the woman. And here we are centuries later and women are still skeptical….lol
Hi, Marowa! I agree that Shakespeare uses unique expressions and strange fashions of love to create an imagination of his ideal woman. At the same time, Shakespeare’s use of hyperbole illustrates how he treasured this woman. This means that through these poetic imaginations, an individual can create a picture of the desirable traits; however, “the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” holds water on you. The reason emanates from your idea that “someone doesn’t have distinguishing or perfect features they’re still considered beautiful.” Notably, I can relate to your assertion that people should break from the norms to create uniqueness.
Hi Marowa
I agree with you because the speaker describes the eyes of the woman that he loves and he is trying to compare her beauty with other beauties. As you said in nowadays women are identified by how they look and I think it is not good thing to do because not only beauty of women can show that he is most beautiful woman. I think not only appearance could make a person beautiful. I think we do not have to compare ones beauty to something because It is absolutely wrong to make false comparisons.
“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.”
I continued this poem when I finished the first line by holding my breath when I finished the first line. I felt the tightness in my stomach and lungs when the memory came back. I know the feeling of loosing a child. It is like a gut punch, air you will never get back. I sympathized with the author and embodied her experience as my own. Because she took me back to my own experience by pointing out what we will never forget. I completed the poem by realizing that the lineation continues to take your breath away, deliberately done by the author who chose to not have end stopped lines. This I think was done to make the reader feel like she did when she remembered her abortion, to fell that punch that takes your breath away. The author also points out that the children too will never get to feel that air. It ends wonderfully by the author, by reminding herself that even though the babies are gone she loved them all. She also repeats “Believe me” as if she herself needed to be convinced or reminded that she did.
Andrea, I think I was holding my breath reading your post too. This poem is so incredibly painful and full of love. I think everyone who imagines that women have abortions in a casual or light way should read this poem. Maybe some of the judgment would stop. One of the things I find most powerful is the idea that the memory and feelings will never stop—and what a mix of deep and lasting feelings!
Andrea, I must agree with everything you said especially with that first line it is hard to not keep reading after that. That line opens a big door to a sensible topic and I was a little nervous because did not know what to expect as I kept reading, but it is a interesting poem. Personally, I did not choose this poem because even though is a great poem I could not identify myself with it even if I understand it. They are many people who will understand it the same, but it will have a deeper meaning for them base on their life events. Thank you for your post because it states a deeper and simpler version of the poem.
Andrea,
I do agree with your point of view with this piece and connect with it as well! The poem describes a combination of strength, love and pain. Going through something so tragic changes the way you may think about yourself and how you view reality. This piece not just connects with me but, mainly my mother. She had a still birth and experiencing that really shatters ones heart.
In the ‘Mother’ by Gwendolyn Brooks, the narrator uses the persona of an impoverished mother to bring out the psychological and mental trauma that mothers undergo as a result of aborting. Through the poem, the persona is able to convey irony, whereby although she thought abortion was the best course of action to take, she considers these decisions as regretfully. This has resulted in the mother being anxious and remorse. Arguably, although she accepts that she aborted, she is in a dilemma to accept or deny responsibility. Brooks uses anaphora to create emphasis, in the line such as “believe me,” to show that aborting leaves devastating psychological trauma because “abortions will not let you forget.” At the same time, the use of imaginations strengthens the poem’s realism and naturalness. This creates an emotional tone that people should embrace the joy of motherhood despite challenges. I can complete the ‘the mother’ that today’s feminism that advocates for the legalization of abortion evade the realities of the disastrous trauma that it leaves behind for the mothers. The realism and poetic imaginations employed by Brooks brings the trauma that a mother feels after aborting a child despite that “I have contracted. I have eased.”
Hey Aman hoping that you are doing well!,
When I read the first time the poem, I was thinking that the author suffered a sporadic miscarriage. Nonetheless, I realized that was not the case, since she regrets in every line of the verses that she felt so guilty about the abortion. She may have had practiced an abortion by herself or went to a clinic to practice the procedure. As a consequence, the author is having psychological side effects such as low self-esteem, for the act she committed. Furthermore, she is feeling culpable about the terrible decisions that she made, as you said. Taking her to write this realistic and hard poem to try to relieve her suffering.
Aman, you have completed the poem by connecting it to your own apparently negative ideas about abortion. This is absolutely one way of completing a poem. Others who have different attitudes about abortion will bring their personal perspectives to the topic, which consider the opposite side of the issue—how abortion for a woman is a deeply painful experience that will be with her for all her life.
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
This poem caught my attention in many ways compared to the other ones. It’s much shorter in length compared to the other poems but I felt like it told much more of a story. I also connected to it because I personally was never a big fan of schools and neither were my friends, I remember this exact situation happening to me. Skipping school because I dint enjoy been in school. The difference between me and the kids referred to in this poem I wasn’t naive to what I was doing. In the poem’s, first 2 lines “We real cool We left School” (Brooks) highlight the immaturity of the kids, they feel cool because they are skipping school but that’s not really something to be bragging about. The lines that paint a further picture of how these kids act is the third one “We lurk late” (Brooks). This line tells us that these kids are actually not just skipping school but also lurking out late in the night in potential danger. This is why the writer writes “We Die soon” (Brooks) at the end sort of like an epiphany or foreshadowing that these kids skipping school and lurking late in the streets may lead to their early deaths.
Hi Patric
I agree with you because skipping and leaving the school may bring into different kind of danger and you just ended up by not gaining any useful thing at the end. What you get is just trouble and different kind of dangers. 1st you will think that you doing right thing by skipping because you are going to have a lot of fun that moment but later you will get to understand that it is actually giving you a lot of trouble and nothing useful. I absolutely agree with what you wrote.
Hi Patric,
This poem also remined me of my freshmen year in college. Those times that I felt like I was the coolest kid among my friends going to parties and drinking alcohol. Kids in this poem are not ashamed of their rebellious, instead they “sing sin”. As they “lurk late”, they will sooner or later end up in trouble. Just how the author ends the line with “die soon”. This also make us think about the got into the situation that they are in and will they regret the choices they made? Die young is a serious cost for being carefree.
Patric, what a great response to how you completed “We Real Cool.” In so few words the poet manages to show the whole trajectory of life for these do-nothing boys. You can relate to their behavior because you may have once engaged in some degree of the same behavior. I’m glad you made it to college!
Hi Patric, this poem also stuck out to me because my 9th grade teacher read this to the class early in the year. The poem resonated with me a certain way because of the how she read it aloud and the body language she used. The way she put emphasis on the beginning part of every line was as if she was comparing the class to the writer. A time to reflect on how some of our actions could lead to bad endings. Reading it now I still feel it conveys the same message, but I appreciate how it does so with so few words. With every “We” a new chapter to the story is added and we are left to imagine what is happening in between.
”What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
The speaker is forgotten all of her previous lovers and she wonders about those people she has kissed ones, trying to remember when she has kissed and where. The speaker reflects on her loss of memories, tries to remember of her lovers. She is feeling as a heart broken person for all of the lovers she has forgotten. I think like she is comparing herself with tree. Because tree is also lonely when birds leave its branches. She is trying to say that when her previous loves and lovers were here she only felt warmness and love but know she is only feeling loneliness. I completed this sonnet by realizing that ones you lose someone it will never be the same again as it was before or it will never come back again. Even when you try to regret for what you did in the past you can not change anything ones you did. The speaker wants to feel the same love again but she will never know when it is going to happen again.
Sabrina, I’m glad you that were able to catch that central metaphor of the tree in “What My Lips Have Kissed.” The nature imagery points to the idea that the speaker is an aging woman whose of youth and love and kisses are behind her now. The seasons are meant to suggest the seasons of life.
I very much enjoyed reading your description of this sonnet. This is very beautiful yet relatable. The speaker feels this desire for the feelings the had in the beginning when she first loved. According to your description she seems as she has forgotten some of her memories specifically her precious ones. She misses her previous lovers and the love that was involved within her previous relationship. This is relatable because as humans it is our nature to miss people that are no longer in our lives.
Marowa, please just be sure to address comments to others by name so we can all follow along. Thanks!
In “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett, I perceive that the writer uses a lot of the literary figure simile, in which she compares what she feels with objects. For instance, when she said, “I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.” Nowadays, it is sad to say, but we live in a century in which people around their 20’s would consider the kind of language that the author used as corny. Young adults every less they write for their significant others. However, the author of this sonnet makes me believe that true love still exists. She enlightens me to try to find a partner to love unconditionally, as she did. On the other hand, I completed the sonnet, by comprehending that the final two lines, take you to realize that she not only will love her significant other for the rest of her life. Her love will go on to grow as time passes by, irrespective anyhow if she or her better half is still on the earth alive.The author’s love for her partner is so powerful that even death could not tear it down.
Hi Adriana, I do agree with your sentiment on how nowadays this sort of romantic writing is no longer used. Perhaps the simplicity of sending a text through the phone somehow has turned our youth less intrigued in writing deeper and more meaningful messages. This poem is unique in the way that it starts off with a question “How do I love thee?” and then answering the question with metaphors and a rhythm to them which structures the poem in a unique way. What is the obvious take away from this poem? well, it is obvious that the speaker is in love with her significant other and she further pushes this idea by saying “I shall but love thee better after death. Meaning that even death wont be an obstacle in the way for her love.
Patric, you make a great point about how texting has simplified our language. Now we use emoticons to express what is hard to say.
Adriana, thanks for the good observations about how younger people might regard the emotional language of “How Do I Love Thee?” You are right the central metaphor is about ways of measuring—height, depth, and time.
Maybe you were able to complete the poem with the final two lines because they are ideas that you can relate to regardless of the highly poetic language in the rest of the poem?
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
]In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a poem from a collection called Sonnets from the Portuguese, and is interpreted to be towards her husband. This poem also known as Sonnet 43, is a beautiful yet thought provoking piece of literature. From the very title, we can begin to discover the meaning behind the poem. Is Browning asking how to love, is she doubting her ability to love, or is she simply giving ode to how much she loves her husband. Browning took the latter approach, using enough rhyme and imagery to express to what extent her love goes for him. It is as almost as if she sketched out a picture for the reader to then, “color it in” if you will. “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/ my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight” and “I love thee freely, as men strive for right” are just a few examples of her use of comparison and simile. The use of simile and imagery allows room for the reader to in his or her own mind interpret the text. Completing her imagery we can see that her love is limitless and there is no depth or height it could not reach and “as man strive for right”, she means the immeasurable extent men would go for what is right so would she for her lover. Barret Browning does an amazing job of using personification and examples to immerse us in her poem, while still remaining true to her theme of her eternal and unconditional love.
Samuel, I like what you write about how readers can “complete” by applying their own understanding of the measurements set forth in “How Do I love Thee?” to describe the limitless quality of the speaker’s love.
Hello Samuel, this is another poem besides white lies by Natasha Trethewey that l loved from all the poem. To me it feels like she is pouring out her heart for her husband and expressing how much he means to her. This is one of the most romantic poem I read describes in detail how much she loves him and how far she can go for him. I really like the similes that she used.
“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”
By Enda St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
In the octave of this sonnet the speaker tries to answer the question what, where, and why she has been with her lovers. She cannot recall any specifics of the encounters and as she tries to remember she hears the rain from outside. To her, the sound of the rain hitting the window resembles the past men calling out to her. It hurts her knowing that she cannot respond back and that she never will hear another man call out to her again. In the sestet she compares herself to a tree in the winter. The tree does not know of all the birds who were housed there during the warm months. It only knows it’s branches, just like her old lovers, are all gone. The speaker is deeply heartbroken that she has lost her memories. She cannot cherish the moments spent and feels terribly alone without them. The message I get from this poem is that we should not take the time we have with loved ones for granted. Our memory of them is precious and when they are gone those memories are all we have.
“White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey, when I read the tittle I thought it’s just about telling innocent lies. I didn’t know this poem is about race until I read it the second time. One way I have completed what the poet set in motion for me to show her struggle that she went through as a child because of her mix race. Her skin tone is more of white so she easily fits in with the white kids and she also gets mistaken as just white. She also feels because she is black she is lives in poor and dangerous neighborhood. She is more comfortable letting other people think that is just white. But whenever he mom found out about her lying about being white her mom would abuse her and “then washed out my mouth with Ivory soap. This is to purify, she said, and cleanse your lying tongue. Believing her, I swallowed suds thinking they’d work from the inside out” (Trethewey). This quote really touched me because as much she lies about her race she also wants to be who she is but don’t know how to be both race at same time.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
[5]Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
[10]Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest n his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This poem Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare is a very interesting poem because it opens with line “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” after that we can only assume he is going to be talking about something or someone beautiful to make such comparison. While everything is devoted to the first line it is noticeable that he is referring to his love towards nature, then he procced to describe summer as extreme because it has rough winds, the sun is too hot and “summer’s lease hath all too short a date” meaning as beautiful as summer is it has short days and it ends fast. In the last quatrain of this sonnet, he talks about how the love will last forever and in the couplet he says “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see” meaning as long as people can breather and see the love will remain forever in his poem.
The poem.I chose to focus on is “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway. The first lines in the poem that I completed were the lines of the first stanza. I related to the descriptive wording she chose. In the sense that while I was young and did not understand the gravity of some lies, the lies were very much made in innocence.
In the following stanza I was able to complete the poem and once again in the final stanza. Stanza two through my understanding of being black was how I completed the poet’s aim and what it was like for a child growing up in a different time. The realization of the lies made the energy much more real. The reader is able to understand even further than while as a child the narrator didn’t completely know her situation she still felt the feeling of having to tell small lies to feel somewhat the same as white people.
Stanza 3 line 8-10
“Believing her, I swallowed suds,
thinking they’d work,
from the inside out.”
Theses lines validate the place I was taken to because in sympathizing with the author. It is easy to understand that her lies come from within and she can only hope that she feel comfortable enough to tell the truth.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Reading this piece brought an incredible flashback to my heart. During 2020 I had gone through one rough break up. When the speaker states, “Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one”; it reminded me of when he had left. Leaving me feeling broken, alone, abandoned, internally torn. Find out how much he had changed after the break up just hurted me even more. When he tried coming back to me after dating another girl he “realized” what he had lost. I still loved him and was willing to work with him but, I also still had my insecurities and kept bring up what he had done. I began catching him in more lies and felt emotionally exhausted in holding on to love. So now I’m at the point where I have decided not to force anything and allow everything to be placed by faith and in gods hands.. If him and I are meant to be no matter what we will and that’s where I connect with the lines: “I cannot say what loves have come and gone” and “A little while, that in me sings no more”.