My reaction to tone

For some of these poems, tone was a very easy to recognize because I understood what the poem was about giving the tone more meaning. However, for other poems that I did not quite understand, it was difficult for me to establish what the tone was. Sure I could go and look at the diction and try to find out the tone of the poem, but I don't think this is enough. Without knowing what the idea of the poem is, then the tone is meaningless to me and even though I looked at the diction, I could still be wrong about guessing what the tone is. Knowing what the theme and central idea of the poem are key to knowing the tone in my opinion because simply knowing what the speaker is talking about would give me a very good idea of the tone. If the poem is about death, then the poem is most likely going to be negative or sad in some way. Then looking at diction and such would solidify what I believe the tone to be. So in order to truly know the tone of the poem, I think the reader need to know firsthand what the poem is talking about.

Unlike the others

In the poem "Getting Out", the main idea is how these two people are married but it somehow just was not working out so eventually got a divorce. This is the quick, shallow version. But when read into, it seems as if the couple getting the divorce almost didn't want to get the divorce as if they still loved each other. For example, in the last stanza, the speaker describes how she and her husband were holding on to each other crying and almost just had to force themselves away from each other. So maybe it's not that the couple simply got in a fight or one did something wrong in the marriage. There has to be another reason that made them get a divorce simply because they had to even though they still loved each other. I believe that the reason for their divorce is found in the first stanza. It keeps taling about how they kept trying and trying to do something but they kept failing at doing it. What I believe they were trying to do was have a child, but for some reason they could not. They both wanted a child, so because of this, they got a divorce becuase they felt they had to go off and be with different people if they were to have a child.

Threatening

In the poem "The Apparition", the tone is very easy to describe. Throughout the poem, the speaker seems to speak in a very threatening and harsh tone. This can easily be identified just my the main idea of the poem in which the speaker would haunt the girl if she were to every leave him. This part is where the threatening tone is established. He then begins to spit out the harsh truth at her by saying how any other man would not be able to satisfy here as he would be albe to. This harshness is easily seen in just the idea of this section of the poem. But the tone is established in other ways as well. First of all, the word choice establishes the theme pretty well. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is saying that IF you do this, THEN I will do this. Usually this kind of word choice represents an ultimatum or threat. Finally, the tone is also achieved through the diction. Words or phrases such as "poor aspen wretch" or "cold quicksilver sweat" all would be phrases that would be used in a poem with harsh toem and this reinforces the idea of a threatening tone.

Unexpected Irony

In the poem "My mistress' eyes", the poem is full of irony throughout the poem, and the big "bang!" part of the irony really comes out at the end. Usually when men describe the woman they love, they use hyperboles and go on to say very cheesy things. They may compare the girl to something that is far more amazing and beautiful than the girl, but they make the comparison anyway and "lie" about it. However, the speaker in this poem does quite the opposite. Instead, he goes on to describe how many other things in the world are much more beautiful than her. This is ironic becuase men usually don't say things like this to girls, the reader expects him to say nice things like how her eyes are like the sun. But throughout the poem he goes on to make these "negative" comparisons. However, the big irony comes to play at the end of the poem. He goes on to say how he loves her and she is as beautiful as all the other girls who are lied to (or exaggerated to). The reader would expect the speaker to not love this woman and probably even think she was ugly in the narrator's eyes. But instead, she is supposedly beautiful and throughout the whole poem, he was just mocking those who do exaggerate to their women.

I can relate

"Next of course god america i" was the poem in this unit that I could relate to best. The example given in class that is a very good example of this poem's theme is that when I say the pledge of allegiance every day, I never pay attention to it. Those jumble of words have in a way lost meaning to me and whether or not they were jumbled and and didn't make sense wouldn't matter. There are so many things in society that are repeated so much and become so cliche, that they lose almost all their meaning unless the speaker actually takes time to think about what they are actually saying or doing. And that's another point, the speaker isn't only talking about not thinking about what we say (which is conveyed through the first half of the poem), but by also the repeated actions that we do. We may go through the day without even thinking about what we are doing and why we are doing it in the first place. If we were to stop and think about half the things we were doing, we would not be able to explain the purpose of our actions. So that could be another good theme to take from this poem... just stop and think.

Mr. Z

I am kind of proud of myself because I think I partly understand the Poem "Mr. Z" just by reading it multiple times and not having to use any other source to understand it. Each stanza seems to go through a different phase in his life in which the first deals with his entire childhood and how he dealt with racial pressures until the last stanza that mentions the character's death. While the poem never directly addresses how the character is someone of another race, many clues are given to confirm this observation. For example the first line states, "taught early that his mother's skin was the sign of error" shows that he was never ignorant of the fact that he and his family and anyone of his race were looked down upon simply because of the color of his skin. Thoough, the first stanza goes on to descibe that he did not let this fact affect him. He tried hard at everything he did and would chose "raceless views of each situation." However, when trouble came to him about racial issues, he dealt with it. But I'm going to skip to the last line which I think criticizes viewing people not as a whole, but by their race. The writer's acclaim the man as the "most distinguished [member] of his race" instead of viewing him as a person all of humanity. I'm sure if it were a white person, the writer's would say, "one of the most distuinguished people to ever live."

Repitition

"APO 96225" has a pattern that really establishes what I think to be the theme of the poem. The whole poem consists of stanzas no more than 3 lines that all end with either the soldier replying to his family's letter or his mother replying. Each time the family replies saying that they want to know what it's really like in the war, but he avoids these questions and replies by saying something irrevelant. However, when he does tell them, his mother gets upset by what he describes. This form of the repitition in which it goes back and forth helps establish the theme of the poem in which I think it symblizes how the average person wants to know about what really goes on and their curiosity overshadows how they might not like the truth. But when the truth actually does come and they get a sense of things, it is too much for the normal person to handle. So the repitition of the last line in which he replies by saying what he did in the first letter may be the soldier's realization of this. However, I am not sure about that.