"Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

"Now let us sport us while we may, / And now, like amorous birds of prey, / Rather at once our time devour / Than languish in his slow-chapped power" ("To His Coy Mistress," 37-40).

I like identifying and creating arguments, and my favorite essay last year was the argument essay, so I'm going to answer question three. "Outline the speaker's argument in three sentences that begin with the words If, But, and Therefore. Is the argument valid?

If we had all the time in the world, we could develop our love slowly, but we are immortal; therefore, we must utilize our time well.

I think that the speaker is a little bit extreme in comparing playing "coy" (title) to developing love from the "Flood" to the "conversion of the Jews" (8-10) and to admiring each other for "thirty thousand" years (16). Personally, I think the speaker is just trying to get into his mistress's pants as he refers to her "long-preserved virginity" (28). But they're overstatements, so I guess it makes sense rhetorically. The truth behind it is that the speaker and his lover cannot wait to love each other -- they must "devour" their time now (39).

Carpe diem, right?

I think it's a valid argument, though the comparisons are a little bit extreme. Being shy and flirtatious is nice to an extent, but it can't become the extent. We need to be "like amorous bird of prey" and such. Similes are good.

"me / a princess"

"so i goes ta flushm down / but sohelpmegod he starts talkin / bout a golden ball / an how i can be a princess / me a princess" ("Hazel Tells LaVerne," 9-13).

What did I notice? There's no capitalization and no punctuation, but the poem still flows nicely because Machan started new lines with new phrases and clauses. When we read Shakespeare freshmen year, we said that when somebody spoke in prose, he was usually drunk or uneducated. That might be the case with the speaker in this poem; I'll call her "Hazel." (I'm not sure why -- I just have a good feeling about it.) She does not capitalize or punctuate or use proper grammar because she is less educated and probably of a lower social class.

I also noticed that the phrase "me a princess" was repeated, which probably means that it's important. That repetition underscores how the author feels about being a princess -- it would be completely ridiculous. Why? I would say because of her lower social status. It makes her feel less of a "worthy" person than the cliche princesses in fairy tales.

I just worked up to figuring out the theme, I think. People who rank lower socially don't feel worthy of higher statuses.

Maybe the person who came up with the new movie "The Princess and the Frog" thought of the idea after reading this poem. I really liked that movie -- it was jazzy, and we ate spaghetti tacos when we watched it.

In Celebration of My Third Poem by Donne

"What I will say, I will not tell thee now, / Lest that preserve thee" ("The Apparition," 14-15).

In deducing the connotative situation of this poem, I'm zeroing in on lines like "thou thinkst thee free / From all solicitation from me" (2-3) and "in worse arms shall see" (5). The speaker claims that his "murderess," likely a former lover ("my love is spent," line 15), isn't off the hook. She will receive some sort of persistent request from the speaker, and I don't think it's a nice one. The speaker seems to imply that his "murderess" cheated on him -- that's why I think he wants her to "painfully repent" (16). I split that infinitive in service of the quote's cohesion.

So I'm going to analyze my quoted line based on that situation.

What is the speaker going to say to her? It's an empty threat. However, empty threats can be the most powerful ones. When we threaten people like that, they usually assume the worst. I don't think the speaker actually has a plan as to what he's going to say to his "murderess," or even if he's going to say anything to her at all, but if he does, I know it can't be good. The tone throughout the poem is very judgmental of the woman in question, and this quote extends the tone to threatening, as well.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

"And may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea" ("Crossing the Bar," 3-4).

I distinctly remember reading this in Channel 1 today and getting "We Will All Go Together When We Go" stuck in my head. Tom Lehrer sings, "We will all char together when we char, and let there be no moaning of the bar." Good allusion, Mr. Lehrer -- he's so smart!

I'm going to dissect the meaning of this metaphor here. "When I put out to sea" (4) is a metaphor for death. Later, "When I have crossed the bar" (16) serves as another metaphor for death, but what about "no moaning of the bar"?

Looking at it in the context of Tom Lehrer's song (which I know I'm not supposed to do, Perrine, but bear with me), we must accept that we're all going to "char" when the bomb drops on all of us. Lehrer sings about why dying together is a good thing -- it's a "comforting fact" that we're all going to be glowing with radiation when we all die, and there's no reason to "moan."

I'm going to use the definition of "bar" in my AHD that says "attorneys considered as a group." A "bar" defined thus is a group of attorneys, who state someone's case on behalf of him. The speaker does not want the "bar" -- those metaphorical "attorneys" -- to mourn his death on his behalf. Rather, he wants a quiet, subdued, and peaceful death.

You're not all that special, but you are.

"And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare" ("My mistress' eyes," 13-14).

In the first twelve lines of Shakespeare's sonnet, the speaker identifies a handful of love cliches and disproves that his mistress exemplifies them. For example, the first line identifies the cliche "your eyes are like the sun," but the speaker denies this simile -- his love's eyes are "nothing like the sun" (1). The speaker is viewing his lover from a very literal standpoint, and relative to other poets, he is humbling his lover. I would say that the tone in the first twelve lines is judicious and condescending.

I quoted the final two lines at the beginning of this post; they mark a shift in tone, as observed in question three in the textbook. It's a "yet" kind of deal, so the speaker is saying, "My lover isn't as great as other guys claim there lovers are, buuut . . ." something. He thinks his love is as "rare" (13) as all of those other women whose lovers have lied to them. Even though he spends twelve lines describing the ways in which his mistress is not special, he still calls her special in the last two lines. I'd call that a passionate and admiring tone.

You know whose eyes are kind of actually like the sun?

next to of course sharp cheddar coherent poems i

"centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb" ("next to of course god america i," 4-6).

as i read this poem i wondered if i was allowed to write in punctuation in the above quote i would probably add a period after more a question mark after it and a dash after language lack of capitalization i can deal with but punctuation matters so says the poster in mr costello's wall will you let me be yours gloria

i can say a few things for certain that jingoism is extreme nationalism and that the first few lines recite patriotic songs for instance question four asks if cummings admires the dead who did not stop to think based on the fact that this question was asked and we're on a unit of irony i will say no

the last line does little more for me than establish a speaker who drinks rapidly a glass of water after reading this poem i'd like to rapidly throw it against the wall that split infinitive was definitely necessary however i feel like i'm going to have to answer multiple choice questions about it

Folding Laundry: Metaphor for Love? Or the Black Plauge?

"A mountain of unsorted wash / could not fill / the empty side of the bed" ("Sorting Laundry," 49-51).

I think this poem is pretty adorable. (You know, until we discuss it in class and I find out it's actually a metaphor for the Black Plague. I don't . . . think it is. Nope. I just wanted to consider that idea.)

The first three lines establish a metaphor. As the speaker folds clothes, she thinks of folding her lover into her life. When I fold clothes, I think of how horrible I am at folding shirts -- they just never look good once I'm finished. I need one of those shirt folders. Maybe I'll try to think of something more philosophical next time. I'll get back to you on that one.

For most of the duration of the poem, the speaker describes in detail all of the clothes, towels, and sheets she folds as she does the laundry, and how they are connected to her and her lover. "So many shirts and skirts and pants / recycling week after week, head over heals / recapitulating themselves" (16-18). It's just very nice!

The last three lines (quoted above) contain an overstatement, "a mountain of unsorted wash," which is supported by the continuous and lengthy description in the poem of all of the laundry the speaker was folding. What the speaker is saying at the end is that a mountain of just her own clothes would not be able to fill the empty side of the "bed." Her lover is an integral part of her life.

"Why, Professor Dumbledore, you look absolutely ravishing!"

"Take me to you, imprison me, for I, / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me" ("Batter my heart, three-personed God," 12-14).

In this poem, the speaker is addressing God, asking Him to "batter" him so that he can "rise and stand" (1-3). That paradox is nice and everything, but I'm going to focus on the last three lines, which contain two paradoxes. Both paradoxes are resolved by the double meanings of certain words (like "batter" in this first example). Okay, the last two paradoxes . . .

The speaker asks God to "imprison" him, for unless God "enthralls" him, he cannot be "free." At first glance, that makes no sense because one who is imprisoned is not free. However, the word "enthrall" can mean to captivate in a charming way or in a slavery-y way. The speaker is suggesting that it would be oh-so-charming if God were to enslave him; that would make him free of evil.

Then, the speaker asks God to "ravish" him, for unless God ravishes him, he cannot be chaste. If we just use one definition of "ravish" -- to rape -- this statement seems contradictory. Rape is not chaste. However, "ravish" can also mean to fill with joy, which is more of what the speaker is requesting.

My argument here is that the speaker wants to be figuratively imprisoned and raped, and he literally wants to be charmed and filled with joy. Iiii sincerely hope it's not the other way around.

"Water, water, everywhere" but not a "drop to drink"

"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains" ("Ozymandias," 10-12).

This is irony of the situational variety. King Ozymandias is "mighty," "cold," and "wrinkled"; those conceptions of him have survived for centuries since he ruled Ancient Egypt. Simultaneously, the words on the pedestal recall Ozymandias's "mighty works"; those works are nowhere to be seen. We expect Ozymandias's mighty works to remain because of his aforementioned power and might, but instead, the sand around his crumbled statue is "boundless and bare" (13).

In Ozymandias's case, people remembered the "despair" of his cruel tyranny longer than his "mighty works" lasted. It's a nice reminder that though our attitudes are not exactly immortal, our material accomplishments are certainly more mortal.

So, I was reading the introduction to situational irony, and I came across the example "water, water, everywhere" but not a "drop to drink." Like what happened with Ozymandias, this is the opposite of what we would expect to happen. I felt pretty cool because I knew exactly where this reference originated -- in Hank Green's song "This is Not Harry Potter."

(There was some verbal irony in that last sentence.)

"We sit down in our Thinking Chair and think, think, thiiiink."

"Much Madness is divinest Sense -- / To a discerning Eye -- / Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --" ("Much Madness is divinest Sense," 1-3).

My new strategy is to blog about the weirdest poems of the unit, so I'll naturally begin with Emily Dickinson.

That quote up there is a paradox, which I know because equating madness and sense is an apparent contradiction and because the first question in the book told me so. Since it's a paradox, there must be some sort of truth behind it. Let's investigate.

"To a discerning eye" (2) suggests that the speaker sides with those who equate insanity and good sense. Dickinson also writes that those who "demur" are viewed as dangerous and are "handled with a chain" (7-8), so she is not with the majority. "Handled with a chain" sounds like an understatement to me; "handled" is a very light way of saying "imprisoned" or "strangled." Let's keep investigating.

"Madness" is a fairly ambiguous word -- insanity has many interpretations -- but that word "demur" shrinks the area of interpretation to some kind of objection. Here's what I have written in my Handy Dandy Notebook (ding!):

• The speaker sees a connection between insanity and sense.
• The majority sees a connection between compliance and sense.
• When a person objects, the majority suppresses them.

This poem gives me the idea that the speaker doesn't think that locking up all the crazy rebels is such a good idea. (I mean, they're probably going to escape, anyway.)

The Joy of Cooking (in your pants)

"Best with horseradish / and economical -- it will probably grow back" ("The Joy of Cooking," 5-6).

There was a speck on my computer screen to the right of that closing parenthesis, and I thought it was a period, so I kept clicking to the right of the speck but my cursor would never get to the other side of it! Man. Poetry is hard.

This poem is definitely metaphorical, but I also think it's amusing -- I laughed a little bit about the quote I quoted. We'll get to that a little bit more later. What's happening in this poem, though, is that the speaker is judging her sister's talkativity (don't tell me that's not a word) and her brother's heartlessness.

Her sister's tongue has a lot of parts to it -- the skin, roots, and bones -- and it will probably "grow back." That suggests to me that she talks too much and is unyielding in whatever she says. Her brother's heart is firm, dry, and not interesting, and it barely feeds two people. I can interpret that as a brother who is kind of callous and boring, and he has little love to offer.

I haven't gone through the funniest poem titles for "in your pants" yet, so I'll do that now:

• "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" in your pants
• "The Convergence of the Twain" in your pants
• "I taste a liquor never brewed" in your pants
• "The Joy of Cooking" in your pants

EXPLOSION!

"Or does it explode?" ("Dream Deferred," 11).

The basic structure of Hughes's poem is this:

• First stanza: four rhetorical questions, each presenting one simile
• Second stanza: one declarative sentence, presenting one simile
• Third stanza: one rhetorical question, presenting one metaphor

The speaker begins by comparing a dream deferred to a dried-up raisin, an oozing sore, smelly meat, and crusty candy. All of these comparisons suggest that an abandoned dream deteriorates and pesters us. The second stanza compares it to a heavy load, suggesting that it drags us down.

There's nothing wrong with those comparisons because they all have truth to them, but they aren't as vivid as the final metaphor, directly comparing a deferred dream to an "explosion." When we abandon a dream, the results are sudden, sharp, and violent -- this image makes abandoning a dream less appealing.

The speaker uses his first four rhetorical questions to deny that things like raisins and meat are not vivid enough comparisons for a deferred dream. The second stanza's declarative sentence is a detached resignation -- maybe it's just something that drags us down like a load. Then, the third stanza's rhetorical question is an assertion that a deferred dream and an explosion have the same effects. The metaphor and the italics single out that image as the most significant one.

Dying and Journeying are Very Different Things

"And though it in the center sit, / Yet when the other far doth roam, / It leans, and hearkens after it, / And grows erect, as that comes home" ("A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," 29-32).

Donne's poem presents images of both death and journeying. It seems to me like the speaker is using figurative images of death to compare them to his journey in which he will depart from his love -- in other words, I don't think he's going to die soon.

The initial stanza is a simile -- "as virtuous men pass mildly away" (1) -- to introduce a figurative image of death. The title also presents a picture of mourning, public grief over someone's death. However, details in the poem suggest to me that the speaker is not pondering his impending death.

The "priests," or the true lovers in the poem, engage in "refined" love that is "inter-assured of the mind" (17-20), and when they depart, their souls behave in a special way. Their souls endure an "expansion," hearkening after each other, and even if they are two different souls, they are like "compasses" because they spin in the same direction (25-28). Then, there are implications of those lovers reuniting -- "as that comes home" (32) and "makes me end where I begun" (36).

I suppose they could be reuniting in the afterlife, but the images of a journey -- the compass and the longing for company -- seem to be predominant.

Toad on the Road

"For something sufficiently toad-like / Squats in me, too; / Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, / And cold as snow" ("Toads," 25-28).

It's like a more elegant version of "The Lazy Song." I despise that song.

My goal in this post is to identify the two metaphorical toads described in the poem. The first one is easy because it's explicit: "the toad work" (1). That first toad represents the speaker's questioning view of work as he ponders a bunch of alliterative lifestyles -- "Lecturers, lispers, / Losels, loblolly-men, louts" (10-11). Those people "don't end as paupers," "seem to like" their lives," and do not actually "starve." So essentially, the first toad (work) restrains the author who doesn't understand the necessity of it.

I'm going to say that the second toad is the speaker's pragmatic and positive view of work. The similes I quoted at the beginning of the post suggest that this toad is steady and unyielding. With a pun on the word "stuff" in the sixth stanza, the speaker develops his point that work and pensions are "stuff" that form dreams (which apparently happened in The Tempest -- I don't recall). The second toad won't allow the speaker to "blarney" or get everything he wants "at one sitting" (32). He has a steady conscience (the second toad) that reminds him that work creates dreams, which require patience and effort to achieve. That's a more uplifting and reasonable view of work than the one presented in the first half of the poem with the restrictive toad.

Has anyone else read Toad on the Road? It's a classic.

I'll drink to that!

"Inebriate of Air -- am I -- / And Debauchee of Dew -- / Reeling -- thro endless summer days -- / From inns of Molten Blue --" ("I taste a liquor never brewed," 5-8).

The second question in the book makes it explicit that this poem is an extended metaphor -- a conceit, if you will. I'm pretty cool with accepting that because the speaker is obviously not just talking about drinking alcohol; there is a deeper meaning.

Literally in the poem, the speaker begins to "taste a liquor" (1). She is an "Inebriate" (5) and a "Debauchee" (6), and by the end of the poem, she is a leaning "Tippler" (15). However, certain phrases suggest a figurative meaning.

Firstly, the alcohol is "never brewed" (1), so I know it can't be real alcohol. The things which she is figuratively drinking are listed in the second stanza -- "Air," "dew," and "inns of Molten Blue." All of those things are beautiful components of nature. Air is fresh and crisp, dew settles in drops on plants in the morning, and "Molten Blue" seems like a sky (but I could also see it as water). The speaker is not drinking liquor but is appreciating the world to such an extent that she can compare it to intoxication.

Sometimes I'm kind of delirious when I'm extremely happy. I'm not sure if I can compare it to alcohol or not; from what I know about alcohol, it makes people less in touch with their consciousness and inhibitions. People do crazy things when they're drunk, so I guess they can do crazy things when they're admiring the world around them! I blame my title on being tired.

London . . . in your pants?

"In every cry of every man, / In every Infant's cry of fear, / In every voice, in every ban, / The mind-forged manacles I hear" ("London," 5-8).

I had the most trouble understanding Blake's poem out of all of them, so I'm going to embrace that and blog about my confusion. First of all, I did notice a few things that are probably key -- the dark, somber tone and the woeful motif of crying. Essentially, what I know for sure is that London is not such a happy place in this poem (litotes).

The third question asks for the meaning of line eight, which I quoted at the top. My best guess is that every person and infant in London is full of sorrow because they're restrained in some way. The only thing I can think of that would restrain them is the monarchy, which is kind of mentioned in the twelfth line. Speaking of which . . .

I don't understand the subsequent stanza at all. "And the hapless Soldier's sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls" (11-12). The figurative "Soldier" is apparently unlucky and frustrated about something that has to do with the "Palace," which I think could be the crown, which has a lot of power to restrain (hence the "manacles").

And what about that last part? All I see is that there are prostitutes who "blast" the Infant's tear. So in addition to blaming the crown for London's woe, I think that Blake could also be blaming anyone (mostly prostitutes) who "blights" (16) the family.

I'm trying to be very honest with the things I don't understand about this poem. I think it's working. I'll add the label "ambiguity" because I think that could be going on here.

Kinesthetic Imagery: Fun Stuff

"As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, / the movement of his powerful soft strides / is like a ritual dance around a center / in which a mighty will stands paralyzed" ("The Panther," 5-8).

According to the introduction of imagery by Perrine, the images in this second stanza are primarily kinesthetic images, meaning they have to do with muscle sense. The words "cramped" and "paralyzed" illustrate confinement through images of muscle discomfort. When the undefined image in the last stanza enters in, the panther's muscles are described as "tensed" and "arrested" (11), further suggesting confinement.

The imagery in this poem translated better to me than the imagery of any of the other assigned poems to read -- I mean, to study. While most of the poems dealt with the sights and sounds of nature or gloomy and woeful feelings, this poem dealt with restraint. I'm not really all that into that kind of stuff, but in this poem, immediately, I recalled how horrible sleep paralysis is for me. Waking up and not being able to move is a horrible feeling that never gets better no matter how often it occurs. I could vividly feel and understand the panther's desire to roam free.

Also, I'm not even really sure what a panther is. I assume that it's something that usually is unrestrained and wild and is kind of like a lion. I'll look at some pictures. The babies are kind of adorable, but I don't want to cross them:

"And took he forth a saw, and cleft her in twain."

"Till the Spinner of the Years / Said 'Now!' And each one hears, / And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres" ("The Convergence of the Twain," 31-33).

The only other time I remember hearing the word "twain" is in Rowan Atkinson's "Amazing Jesus." The part I quoted is between 2:35 and 2:55:

At first, when I read the title and the helpful epigraph, I thought that the "twain" might have been two halves of the ship, or something. Did the Titanic break in two? I don't know these things.

However, the "twain" are the vain and "opulent" Titanic (8) and its "sinister mate" (19), the iceberg. Of course, the poem's denotative situation is the meeting of those two separate spheres. What I liked about the structure was that in each stanza, there were two lines of approximate length x followed by a third line of approximate length 2x. The stanza construction in which two lines "converged" into a third line that was twice as long reflects the convergence of the Titanic and the iceberg.

The other question I want to answer is what I think of the "Immanent Will" and the "Spinner of the Years." I absolutely loved the final stanza where "the Spinner of the Years / Said 'Now!'" (31-32). At first, it made me think of God's commands in the creation story. However, I don't think God is the undefined Being in the poem. The text says that the Being created "a sinister mate" (19), which is not what an benevolent God would do; it also uses the word "consummation" (33), which suggests to me a fulfillment of what was inevitably going to occur. Therefore, I think the "Immanent Will" and the "Spinner of the Years" are fate.

My first-ever sad poems! Hooray!

"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" ("I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," 1).

Emily Dickinson "felt a Funeral in [her] Brain" (1), which I think reveals a lot about the imagery in the poem. She felt the numbness of her mind (8) and the "Boots of Lead" (11), and she heard the beating of Drums (6) and the lifting and creaking of a box "across [her] Soul" (9-10). She felt and heard, but she did not see, so her imagery was confined mostly to those two senses. The images still conveyed the somberness and pain of a funeral, but it was fresh to me because I (presumably like most people) associate events with what we see. Dickinson gave me the perspective of feeling and hearing the event.

Now, I'm going to defend my belief about what happens to the speaker in the final stanza -- she dies. She imagines the feeling of a funeral in her brain for the duration of the poem, and that picture in her mind becomes real when she herself dies at the conclusion. She "dropped down, and down" (18), and death is often associated with descent. She "hit a World" (19) because it was new to her -- she was unfamiliar with death, so it hit her when she died. She "Finished knowing" (20) because she lost consciousness, something that seems to happen when people die.

I'm skipping "The Widow's Lament" in my blog posts, but I have a theory I wish to express. The poem is extremely depressing, which is obvious, but I think that the reason the poem is extremely depressing is that the poet himself had an extremely depressing life because his name is "William Williams."

I need some more tissues if I want to keep analyzing this one.

"A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning / In Eden garden" ("Spring," 10-11).

Hopkins's central point is his first sentence: "Nothing is so beautiful as spring" (1). The poem's imagery effectively reflects that beauty of spring. "Echoing timber" (4), leaving and blooming peartrees (6), and a blue sky "all in a rush" (7) within the first stanza let the reader experience the most rich and beautiful facets of spring. As I read this poem, my eyes got watery and I sneezed a few times, so the imagery also messed with my allergies. This is true -- I have witnesses.

This poem contains two allusions in the final two stanzas. First, Hopkins relates Spring to the beauty of the Garden of Eden. The poem glorifies the beauty of spring, but then presents a contrasting warning -- "Have, get, before it cloy" (11). I think that Hopkins wants to express that spring is so beautiful that it cannot last, and anything that precedes or follows it cannot compare to its "sweet being." Next, "Spring" discusses the "innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy" (13). The purpose of the convergence of these two allusions is to realize both the beauty and the innocence of Spring that we must embrace while it lasts.

Hopkins could have reworded a few lines to express his point more clearly, but the poem would have lost its rhyming structure and alliteration. The second line's alliteration jumped out at me -- "when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush" -- because it gave the poem a rhythm I could follow. The soft, rhythmic consonants repeated in these lines reflect the subtle, sequenced season of Spring. That . . . was unintentional. But I like it.

For the record, I think that this poem's central theme is moot for people who have to deal with this:

CPCTC

"A poem -- in fact, any pattern of words -- defines an area of meaning, no more. Any interpretation is acceptable which lies within that area" ("The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry," 4).

Sometimes it's easier for me to whine about something a little bit before I can start talking about how I also appreciate it; this principle applies to the essay I just read about poetry, so here I go. Perrine was a little bit too cocky for my taste. Maybe his straightforward assertions made me feel like that irrationally. I felt like he was trying to create strife by saying things like "there are correct and incorrect readings" (1) and "the poem is a description of a sunset" (3). He was ready to be all, "I know you don't think that what I'm saying is true, but I know that it's true, and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong and I'm right." Whatever floats his boat. Then, by the part where he said, "ordinarily we have only the internal evidence of the poem itself on which to rest an interpretation" (3), I was a bit peeved that he was gladly typing pages and pages about how to prove that his interpretations were true without explaining how to discover interpretations. I'm over that now because I realize that his purpose was not to give us explication techniques -- he just wanted to explain that some interpretations are right and that some are wrong, which I can swallow pretty easily after reading what he had to say. Additionally, he actually said a few helpful things to someone like me who's not so great at interpretation.

What I quoted at the beginning of this post was my favorite part. The "area" explanation made complete sense to me. The reason that a poem isn't open to any interpretation is that it has words which limit the interpretation. That doesn't mean that there's always one way to view a poem, but it does mean that there are invalid ways to view it -- namely, when a view falls outside a set area. The more words a writer uses, the smaller that area becomes. That puts a good picture in my mind. Another helpful part of the essay was Perrine's distinguishing between metaphorical poems and symbolic poems. "The essential difference between a metaphor and a literary symbol is that a metaphor means something else than what it is, a literary symbol means something more than what it is" (5). Melville's poem was not (as I originally assumed) about a marching army. It was about the stars because it was metaphorical -- the language in that poem said "stars, stars, stars," and Perrine makes me feel silly for missing that. However, Blake's symbolic poem is open to more interpretation. It's hard for me to grasp that the poem is about a rose and a worm and also about something bigger than them, but it's not hard for me to understand the area to which I must confine what I find the rose and the worm to symbolize. Metaphors are challenging because they point to only one answer that can be difficult to discover. Symbols are challenging because they point to scores of answers that are subject to people's unique takes. So overall, while a few components of the essay made me go "Gahh," it was a helpful piece to read.