Assignment Week #2: Previous Student Responses

Student X:

1. I feel the poem NOT WAIVING BUT DROWNING by Stevie Smith has an unusual voice. The poem talks about the death of a man in a body of water. But what makes the voice unusual is the author’s use of his own voice as that of the man who has drowned. The voice of the poem is describing his own death. The poem illudes to the notion that the main character of the poem was drowning in a sense his entire life. The voice of the poem goes back and forth between talking about the drowned man like the voice of the poem was not a specific person to the voice of the poem being the drowned man himself.

Part 2. 1. Jonathan Holden - THE NAMES OF THE RAPIDS
melee - (confused tumultuous mingling) The word is used here because it fits the theme of the poem. The poem does not use the word choice for rime, but instead for the tone and effect the word has on the reader.

2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - AFTERMATH
rowen - (the second crop in a season, such as hay.) The word is used in the poem in such a way that it conveys to the reader the idea that the fields are not fresh and spring like, but insread are used and have lost their vigor and youth. The word rowen is not used to rime with anything here, but it is used as a means to introduce its association with the word weeds later in the line. The word weeds is then used to rime with several other words at the ends of the lines around it.

3. John Donne - BATTER MY HEART, THREE - PERSONED GOD, FOR YOU
viceroy - (A man who governs a country, province, or colony as
representative of a sovereign.) In this poem viceroy is used because it
is seen as a means to explain to the reader how important the use of
reason is to this person. Reason is what should govern the actions of
this person.

4. Edwin Arlington Robinson - LAKE HAVERGAL
crimson - (Of a rich, deep red) I think the poet may have chose the word crimson because it is a more formal way to say deep red in color. It gives a different feeling to the reader. The color crimson tells you the vines are a brilliant fall color and they could also be symbolizing death or the color of blood.

5. Emily Dickinson - I LIKE TO SEE IT LAP THE MILES
Boanerges - (A biblical interpretation of the name given by Christ to
the deciples James and John - son of thunder. Or a loud vociferous
preacher or orator.) The word as used here emphasizes the power with which the horses neighed. The word is not used for rime, but does fit well in the space it is allotted.

Student Y

I selected the poem "Funeral Blues," in the voice of a woman in mourning. In the first two verses, she reacts with grief as many people do, and tries to escape anything that might keep her from concentrating on sorrow. First, she used the old tradition of stopping the clocks, then she shut off the telephone so nothing would dispel the grief. After the coffin arrived, she called for the mourners. In the next verse, a plane was to write in the sky that "he is dead," and I felt this indicated he was well known and his name would be recognized. The policemen wore wear black cotton gloves, so the deceased probably was not wealthy because silk or leather gloves would have been more appropriate.
Finally, in the third verse, the voice becomes more personal and she says, "He was my North, my South, my East and West" and covered all times of the day and the music in her life (which indicates why she wanted all music to cease). In line twelve, the truth is revealed that she is grieving not for death of the body, but "love I thought would last for ever." Verse four she further says the stars, moon, sun and moon should go dark, because "nothing now can ever come to good." This blues poem varies from the tradition and does not repeat lines; however it focuses on the imagery and traditions of grieving for loss of one who died, and written from the perspective of one who wishes she had died rather than experience the pain.

*Words from poems:

“In the Counselor's Waiting Room” by Bettie Sellers Page 39

According to the dictionary, existentialist is defined "having to do with existentialism" defined as "a philosophy holding that reality consists of living and that man makes himself what he is and is responsible personally only to himself for what he makes of himself."

The girl is waiting to go in the counselor's office and reading an "existentialist paperback." As the poem progresses, we learn she is in love with another girl, and their backgrounds are in the Baptist Church. It speaks of the guilt the girl is suffering, and by contrasting the existentialist philosophy and the Baptist Church, it shows the conflict she is facing.

“I Saw a Jolly Hunter” by Charles Causley page 36

Although the word "jolly" is not unusual, the irony makes it an interesting choice of words. Jolly is defined, "very cheerful, full of fun, mirthful, delightful, … British Informal syn. Agreeable, big, great, jolly fool, extremely flattering to make a person feel agreeable to gain some end… British slang a royal marine"

The voice is from a person who objects to hunting… or a particular hunter. "Jolly" is the only adjective and adverb used in the poem and used very effectively to use irony in making a statement. He used it to
Describe the rabbit, the gun, and the hunter. When the hunter shot himself, the writer made his statement that it was "jolly good," his political statement.

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by Wordsworth page 26

The word Jocund; "adj. cheerful, merry, syn. Blithe, debonair.

In the poem, "jocund" accents the lighthearted tone of the daffodils. He says they are "tossing their heads in a spritely dance" and they outdid the sparkling waves in glee." He then said a "poet could not help but be gay in such jocund company." The tone of the poem is that remembering the daffodils was sufficient to bring back the joy of the moment.

“I Like To See it Lap the Miles” by Emily Dickinson Page 21

Prodigious "very great, huge, vast, out of the ordinary, monstrous"
Supercilious "showing scorn or indifference because of a feeling of superiority; haughty, proud and contemptuous, disdainful; proud"
Omnipotent "God. Boasting"

By using the words prodigious, supercilious, and Omnipotent to describe the train, she shows it as strong, powerful, godlike and more than human, disdainful of others who are live by the side of the tracks.