My absloute favorite poem we studied was “The stone” The way Wilfrid Wilson Gibson tells about the sorrow a woman goes through after the loss of her loved one is unmatched by anyone else. My third and final favorite poem was “Song” by Garcia Lorca. “Song” tells of “The girl of beautiful face” who “goes gathering olives”. The way Lorica paints a picture of content in the girl is what strikes me most about this poem. Many eligible men come by to take her away to their country. “Four ride’s… on Andalusian ponies [say] come to Cordoba, lass”.
But “the girl pays no heed”. Man after man comes to bring her home but she does not accept. This is because she is happy where she is, and she does not need anyone to make her feel content. I also liked the way the author uses personification, he writes “with gray arm of the wind encircling her waist”. Here he implies that the wind can grab the girls waist, when in fact that is not true. The author also uses free verse because there are no patterns in his writing. His writing sounds more like a paragraph then a poem to me.
My second favorite poem was “Ordinance On lining Up” by Naomi Lazard. This is due to the message behind Lazard’s words. I believe that the author’s message in the poem is that people have to make many life altering changes in their life. Each decision, a metaphorical “path” they have to take, each have their perks and each have their downfalls. An example of this is “In joining the line to the right you ill end life as a beggar. If you decide on the line to the left everything you believe will become nonsense”.
I also liked the use of metaphor in this poem. In fact, this whole poem is a metaphor. There are two lines, one on the right and one on the left. The author is saying you must make a decision, and comparing the decision to two lines. She uses free verse in her writing. This poem is written like a paragraph that has been cut at random places. There are sentences that end in the middle of lines, and there are sentences that go for more then two lines. The reason I liked this liked this poem is because I could relate to it closely.
Every day I must make big decisions and small ones. Which ever way I choose, I will never know the outcome of the other one, but that is the risk we take getting out of bead in the morning. One of the biggest decisions I have had to make so far is whether go to go to Stuyvesant or go to the high school next to my house. They both had positives and negatives. Stuyvesant was farther away from my home, and is a much harder school that would require much more focus and work. The other school was ten minutes from my house and would not be as taxing on my brain.
Although I could relate to this poem greatly, the message behind is was very obvious and did not require much thinking. Because of this it was only my second favorite poem out of the sixteen we studied. The poem which intrigued me the most was the first poem we studied, “The Stone” by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. This poem was my favorite simply because of the use of language and visual imagery. An example of this is, “three days before, a splintered rock had struck her lover dead” this quote paints a picture of death in my mind that is unlike any other sentence I have read before.
Another reason I loved this poem so much was the way Gibson shows you the lovers feeling of sorrow after the death of her loved one. The author states, “She did not sigh nor moan. His mother wept: She could not weep. Her lover slept: She could not sleep. Three days, three nights, She did not stir: Three days, three nights, Were one to her, Who never closed her eyes From sunset to sunrise, From dawn to evenfall, Her tearless, staring eyes,That, seeing naught, saw all. This shows how the heart reacts to devastating news. She was in such shock and sorrow that she could not even bring herself to cry. Among the other poetic devises used, I epically like the way the author uses personification, “The two of us were chiselling, Together, I and Death. ” The author uses the word death so freely, it almost makes me feel like death is such a common thing. Through Gibsons use in language, visual imagery and overall feel of the poem, he has created a timeless masterpiece.