The art of Nature

When considering rhythms in poems and understanding the different variations, I believe that “Still of be Neat “ by Jonson, best represents the nature of art. When scanning this poem, I mainly got a dominant prosody of iambic tetrameter. Which I believe best fits this poems, meaning that appearances can be deceiving. Therefore, when reading this poem, I feel as if it is portrayed as a scene of a man talking to a woman who is dressed up neatly. Then, as I continued the poem, I also got some anapest meter inline six, which gave the poem a different feeling to the scene as if, it was a monolog, and the man was speaking in his mind. Therefore, we were all listening to how he truly felt towards the women that are neatly dressed. Line six best shows this by saying, “All is not SWEET, all is not SOUND”. This line explains how even though the woman is dressed up neatly and has a graceful face, he still sees her adultery actions. Therefore, lines eleven and twelve can capture his distaste and distrust of overly neat women. This makes me wonder if his preference for women would be for a more natural look. Therefore, that could signify that he believes that women who dress up more naturally and modestly have a more kind and true nature. Overall all these different variations in meters make a sound of patterns that create a visual for us readers to visualize in our minds.  

As for the poem “Delight in Disorder” by Herrick, I feel does represent the nature of art, yet it never created a visual in my head with the rhythm of the poem. The poem seemed so full of metaphors, that it took the visual it could’ve created. The dominant prosody was also an iambic tetrameter, therefore this visual for me was more of us readers listening to a man’s monolog. He suggested with all the metaphors that beauty and attractiveness are not perfections but rather imperfections. This statement can be seen in line twelve when he says, “I see WILD civiliTY”, therefore explaining that all sexy dressed women have the same wild informal behavior and speech. Also, like Jonson, through his use of diction, we readers get a sense that he prefers the way people look naturally when they enjoy their lives, not when they are putting up an act or façade. Through this whole poem full of metaphors, imagery, and personification, I was too caught up in trying to understand the meaning of each line that the visual was never created in my mind. This poem is more a hyperbole that only has an audiovisual of just a man talking, making no suspense to capture our attention.  

-Jeshua Rocha