Inoculation

The poem Inoculation was very interesting to me for some reason… it was very powerful. The word inoculation stood out to me so I looked it up and it means vaccine, which completely makes sense with the whole small pox thing. When I looked up inoculation there also was information about Boston and how back in the day with the vaccine for smallpox they kept records of who had had the vaccine and who had not. It was a huge thing in Boston at the time. When Mather asks Onesimus if he had ever had the pox Onesimus’ response is “My mother bore me in the southern wild. She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave.” To me his response ultimately means he survived one disease just to be hit by another, but not one that he has, but the mental disease that the whites have that makes them believe it is okay to have slaves. Mather was so concerned with finding a cure for small pox, but maybe he should have also looked at the disease that he has himself. “Consider how a man can take inside all manner of disease and still survive.” I feel like this refers to Mather taking in the disease of not understanding the wrong with slavery; Mather was fighting to cure a disease (smallpox) while all along he had a disease of his own with slavery. At the end, of the day I find it sad and exactly true that the slave owners did have a disease because obviously something is wrong when slavery is normal. The last lines just really leave a sad lasting impression when Onesimus talks about he survived smallpox only to become a slave… all I can imagine is what is better… living or dying in that kind of a situation?

Blackberries for Amelia

The first thing I noticed about this poem is it seems to be a big metaphor. It took me a while to find exactly what that metaphor was, but I have found that it’s probably about the younger generation replacing the older generation, but in a good way. What makes me believe that the replacing of the generations is in a good way, is the tone. The poem has a relaxed and gentle tone, which is in no way bitter or sorrowful. The new blackberries blossoms seem to represent the children, the new generation, “(…) are small, five petalled blooms of chalky white, as random-clustered and as loosely strewn.” This quote describes children perfectly by using the word “small” and when he uses “loosely strewn” to me, that represents how a child is free and has millions of opportunities within their grasp. When the blossoms turn to berries I believe that they are what the older generation are, and how everyone starts as a blossom, but then eventually over time they turn to a ripe berry so sweet and full of knowledge. This next quote is something I think describes the feelings of the older generation. “As the far stars, of which we now are told that ever faster do they bolt away, and that a night may come in which, some say, we shall have only blackness to behold.” The quote seems to bring up death and how everything fades away as people get older and life starts to come to an end. But, ending on a good note, the poem describes picking the berries and how much they enjoy the time they have with the younger generation and the great memories that come along with it. Overall, I think this poem is just an older person coming to terms with the aging process and the fact that life will soon come to an end, but this person doesn't take for granted the best memories in life like picking berries with the grandchild in the sweet August time.

Third Poetry Blog: The Little Apocalypse

From the title The Little Apocalypse, and the first couple of lines I concluded that the poem was probably about the end of the world for these bugs and the place they call home. A rain storm is something small to humans, but to the insect world it can wipe everything away… kind of like an apocalypse… The line, “High up, in another world, the clouds assemble and mumble their messages” to me this represents the thunder and lightning in the sky which is always a message that a big storm is coming. What really proved that a rain storm was the apocalypse for insects in this poem was the line, “the robin, the great worrier, above” this was showing how robins are stronger animals and that rain storms don’t affect them as much compared to a slow, tiny, helpless insect below. The last lines of the poem really sums it all up, and that’s where I believe the climax is because of its intensity and the eerie feeling it leaves the reader with. “Bright bandages of fog starting to comfort the aftermath. Then, from the black horizon, four horses heave up, flash on their faces.” To me fog represents death, massacre almost. When I think of an old war, after a battle is over it is very quiet and there is a fog (at least that is how it is in the movies), and in this case it represents the death of the many insects that once lived in this place under everyone’s feet, creating their own world. The fog almost acts as a blanket to cover up the aftermath. The allusion I also gathered from that last line was the part with the four horses. Being the not very biblical person I am, I did have to look this up; I learned that these horses represent the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the ending of the world. In this case, the horses are ending the world of these little insects, which leaves the poem with a creepy intensity. Maybe this poem is meant for the readers to learn to take life a little less for granted because life can be over in an instant just like these insects. At the end of the day, I might have taken this poem a little too literately, but it really does make me feel bad for every spider I have smashed, or every ant I have sprayed knowing that things like insects have their own little world and it can be gone in an instant just because they are so helpless in their world.

Second Poetry Response: "A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields"

The poem “A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields” was very interesting, at first I only caught on to little bits of the meaning, but after the second read it seemed to become clear to me. In the first stanza, the second and third line, it says, “The black cow grazing with her newborn calf− long legged, unsteady−” this stood out to me right away because of how compared to the other lines with just the punctuation made me stop, so from there I assumed that the author did that for a reason. To me I felt the author was describing his life as a child and his relationship with his grandmother and mother. The word “unsteady” in that line leads me to believe that as a child life was hard mostly with his mother in guessing. From the title I gathered that this author is probably of Asian decent because of the rice fields, and along with that I also feel like culture has a lot to do with this poem. In Asia, I know that family relationships are a lot different there compared to the ones here in the U.S. From the poem, I think the lines “my mother didn’t notice me from beyond the closed door of her youth” represents that in that in Asian culture until a child is older or an adult, they are just merely children who should not be seen nor heard. I think that part about his mother in that line represents the fact that he feels his mother should remember what she felt like as a child being ignored, and knowing that, she should know how he feels. But, in the end, the author’s mother just closed off the door that remembered her past. The last six lines only reiterate what I am talking about when it comes to his childhood and how the author felt. “But at times I see a shadow move slowly over these, a shadow freed from the past and from the future, that contains the footsteps of that childhood so light I can only think of squirrels slipping in and out of mango trees”, to me this really shows how the author grew up like a squirrel, he was quiet, yet wanted to be playful like squirrels are. When a squirrel is looking for food they are very quiet and try to go undetected to get what they want, but at the same time they are very playful creatures wanting to just play, but they have to suppress that playfulness sometimes. Also, from that same quote when the author talks about “a shadow freed from the past and from the future” that seems to represent the author himself as he has grown up, and how he will remember how hard it was not to be the playful side of the squirrel, but rather be the undetected, unnoticed squirrel. At the end of the day, the poem was very interesting, and had some pretty cool comparisons that really helped get the author’s point across.