Completely Blind

She sits and stares at her reflection

Her eyes glisten like the night sky

Her face the ideal image of perfection

She doesn’t even have to try

Lips soft and pink like a flower,

Delicate and beautiful like a rose

Her staring continues hour after hour

looking back at herself in the same pose

Her nose, her ears, her hair

All just as perfect as the rest

She continued to sit and stare

As a heavy feeing filled her chest

For the beauty they spoke of she could never find

In seeing her own beauty, she was Completely Blind

In my poem I decided to use the sonnet form that mimicked Shakespeare’s ‘My Mistress’ Eyes are nothing like the sun’. I decided to use this poem as my base because of the fact that the sonnet could be used for Psychological discovery which goes along with the theme of this poem as well as the fact that I wanted to incorporate the vulta and have that switch that lingers with the reader. I also love how the rhyme scheme sounds so smooth and beautiful. I went along with describing outside features like Shakespeare did in his poem, then switched in the couplet to describing the Internal feeling and the truth behind the outward appearance. For example the lines “If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.” show he is describing this mistresses features in a bad way yet the last lines that state” And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare.” prove the feelings he has inside towards her even if her looks aren’t the best. In my poem I wanted to go for the same impact yet the opposite way, so I described beauty at first in this girl and switched it to have the internal feeling be not love, but more despair. The vulta incorporates a switch in the tone of the poem, which emphasized the message that the author wants to get across which is why I felt that it would be perfect for a poem that wanted to comment on a significant issue in today’s world. I feel that this poem can resonate a lot with people in any time, yet especially today with social media and the pressure that society puts on people to look a certain way. Though, it was more directed toward women and the way the society especially pressures women uphold to its impossible standards, I feel that it could be something every gender and age could relate to. People always tend to look at someone and compare what someone looks like on the outside and what they feel on the inside, which always makes the other person seem better off because we tend to be much harder on ourselves. I wanted to portray someone who upholds these standards of society, yet still isn’t happy with themselves to show that feeling beautiful isn’t about outward appearance. You could uphold the standards of society perfectly and still not be happy with yourself because feeling beautiful is about loving oneself rather than what you look like.

Emily Mayo

The endless cycle

The lives we live here in America seems to revolve around working and gaining money to live comfortable lives. We go to school to gain an education to work towards getting a job where we will work out whole lives and get paid to pay off the things we need to live comfortably and happily. In Claude McKay’s two poems ‘The Tired Worker’ and ‘Outcast’ he displays the actions of working tirelessly every day and the feelings of exhaustion and hopelessness that come with it. These two poems tie together so well to show how it feels to be forced into slaving away for the rich and the people who govern us just at a chance to live a life where we can have food on the table and a roof over our heads.

Starting with his poem, “The Tired Worker”, Mckay states things such as “Be patient, weary body, soon the night/Will wrap thee gently in her sable sheet,/And with a leaden sigh thou wilt invite/To rest thy tired hands and aching feet”. He separates his body and personifies it, as if it is a child longing for rest, which emphasizes the longing as well as innocence, informing the reader that the body didn’t do anything to deserve to be pushed to complete exhaustion. It makes the reader feel pity on the body as if it was a child being forced into labor. He ends the poem with “O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest/Weary my veins, my brain, my life! Have pity!/No! Once again the harsh, the ugly city.” to show that the work day comes again before there is any chance to rest and regain any energy. Showing the constant cycle of the working class. Also, I think it is really interesting how ‘The tired worker” is a sonnet with the exact rhyming scheme, it adds to the feeling of being stuck in the same cycle and constant pattern. Outcast ties so perfectly with this poem by displaying more of the emotions and feelings towards the endless days of work rather than the cycle itself displayed in ‘The Tired Worker”. In Outcast McKay states, “My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs./I would go back to darkness and to peace,/But the great western world holds me in fee,” which shows a desperate longing for his home in Jamaica, where he felt more free and at peace, yet he seems to be stuck in America. The word ‘fee’ is also very important because the only reason people work is to gain money, by McKay claiming America ‘holds me in fee’ it claims the only reason he is staying in this hopeless cycle is due to the money that he needs to survive. The next quote that stuck out to me was when he claimed “Something in me is lost, forever lost,/Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,”. By working in America and being trapped in the working class, I feel that he is claiming that he has lost possibly the carefree and joyous part of himself that didn’t believe all there was to life was work. The rhyming scheme follows the sonnet and the vulta is very strong when he claims, “For I was born, far from my native clime,/Under the white man’s menace, out of time.” which displays that he did not want this, yet he cannot beat the white men who are oppressing him and many others under their rule and how they continue to force this cycle onto the working class people of the world.

Emily Mayo

The artists’ POV

I learned a lot in the interview we had with Antonio Lopez over zoom. He helped me see a whole new side as well as the importance of poetry. The first thing I noticed about him was the way that he spoke was poetic in itself. He had a beautiful way of choosing words that communicated exactly the thoughts he was trying to get across. He even mentioned many metaphors and similes to describe what poetry is. It came across a little confusing to me at first, but I eventually understood that he was trying to get us to understand the meaning of what poetry meant through evoking feelings and emotions that we knew well instead of us trying to comprehend a dictionary definition of what it was. Like when he said “A poem is the obsession of an artist”, which can be seen in a million different ways depending on the person, it helps us think about what we are obsessed with and what we love and ties those emotions of our strong feelings of a certain hobby or even person, to poetry itself. I also loved when he stated that “poetry is a declaration that I AM HERE”. This provides the feeling of empowerment and that poetry is a way to express whatever feelings are in need of being expressed. That there is nothing to hide and that it is all your emotions and your own statement of your presence. I feel that his way of adding his own “I Am Here” to his poems is by always mixing Spanish and English in his poems. It creates a unique tone and even a more real tone and feeling because the reader knows this is his own language and he is not trying to hide who is, even in his work. He expressed who he is to the fullest by incorporating his language into his work. The last thing that really stuck with me about his interview was when he discussed that artists are the first ones people look to in times of tragedy because they can help try and make sense of things. This ties with another thing he mentioned which was that artists look to chaos and find the beauty in it. I believe that he is trying to explain that artists see things in a way that we may not right away. They see things from a different standpoint and by looking at things from another point of view we may be able to find the solution or make sense out of something tragic. I never thought of artists doing a job like that and it really stuck with me because it makes so much sense. Like artists could paint or write something and see it in a completely different way than everyone else and that is what we need when we cannot find an answer or a solution in times of tragedy. I feel that this is very important in politics and that we need more of it to be seen. By claiming that there is a need for different viewpoints of people to make sense of the world’s tragedies and set backs, it shows that we need to incorporate more of the views from different people of different cultural backgrounds, gender, sexuality, and all the possibly different viewpoints we can to find the best solution to the things wrong is our world. People are wonderful because we are all so different which means something that I cannot find the answer of may be insanely obvious for another person. Antonio also discussed that he is in politics now and is trying to incorporate his work and more artistry into politics just to make sense of issue or possibly find better and better solutions which I believe is a wonderful way of going about things and could lead to a better world. I overall loved the interview with Antonio Lopez and have learned so much from hearing about his point of view.

Emily Mayo

What a Twist!

When one thinks of Shakespeare, they think of the absolutely perfect author of many plays and stories we heard about from our AP English teachers in school. The one our teachers made seem like the god of all literature. Yet he was actually just a normal man who wrote for the working class and gave them a voice by using English which was the common language of the people at that time. In his sonnet “My Mistresses Eyes are nothing like the sun” Shakespeare goes against the normal idea of a sonnet and even the idea of a poem about a lover. Instead of describing this ‘mistress’ in a loving and beautiful way, he criticizes her looks and even makes her seem ugly. He claims things like, “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know/ That music hath a far more pleasing sound”, her hair is “black wires”, and claiming her breath ‘reeks’. This creates the idea that he has no attraction to her and shows that there is no reason that he should. Yet after these lines, there is a twist which shows his true feelings towards her. This is shown in the vulta of the sonnet in the lines “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare.” This ending couplet of the poem shows the opposite and projects his true feelings towards the mistress in the poem, that his love is so immense for her and so real that it the typical similes and overused lines for flattery cannot begin to describe her.

In the comedy sketch it displays a seemingly annoying student continues to pester a new English teacher by questioning his ability to teach based on his Scottish accent. I feel that it honestly emphasizes Shakespeare’s sonnet due to the fact that both Shakespeare and the character, played by Catherine Tate, project a dislike on the subject in front of them whether it be a mistress or learning about Shakespeare, yet later there is a twist to display the complete opposite. The way he describes her in the beginning contrasts so much with the two last lines which provides the surprising twist that he actually has genuine strong feelings for this person. This also shows in the comedy sketch when Catherine Tate’s character mocks old English and seems to make fun of her teacher and English as well. It creates the idea that she believes learning this subject is pointless or even a waste of her time by the fact that rather than listening she continues to mock it and disrupt the class as a whole. Yet, at the end of the sketch, she perfect quotes Shakespeare’s sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” and shocks the teacher, showing that she actually has a great understanding and even possibly appreciation for old English and Shakespeare. These two seemed to mirror each other and through having the same sort of twist in a comedic sense in a situation many people can relate to, like a classroom, it clarifies the meaning and impact of the sonnet itself.

Emily Mayo

the “evil” within

In Natalie Diaz’s poem ‘My Brother at 3 AM’, Diaz describes her brother seeing himself as a devil and being horrified of himself. She displays the intense fear in him of this “hellish” version of himself. Diaz discusses in her interview that she always wants her poems to return to the body and in this poem, by having the twist in the end of the fact that the devil her brother fears, be himself, it symbolizes an evil within one’s self or somethings that is a part of a person that is viewed as evil by society and the world we have grew up in. Diaz states she wants to “return back to the body because as an indigenous person, as a Latina, as a queer woman, I haven’t been given the permission or the space, to be fully in my body.” Her poem enforces this idea by having the devil be a separate entity from the ‘brother’, but also the same person, or a part of himself. I feel that this poem especially can connect with the fact that she is a queer woman, because in society for the longest time being queer was seen as almost evil by society, especially by people who were very religious. I feel that the devil is a symbol for the part of either the brother or the author herself, that she felt she had to hide from society because she was led to believe it was evil and horrific. Also I feel that the fact that the brother constantly states “ He wants to kill me, Mom.“, could represent the fact that many people were killed for claiming having a different sexuality than society deemed acceptable or the fact that it this brother felt it could in a way ruin his life. I feel this devil seems to act as a symbol to display the part of us that we may be afraid to show because society has taught us that it is wrong, when in the big picture it is a part of us and nothing we should be ashamed of. I feel that is what Diaz means when she says that she hasn’t been given “permission or the space, to be fully in my body”, the “devil” within her is not acceptable by the standards society has put on us and how they feel things should be so she hides it and only displays it in her poetry. Many others feel this way and she beautifully explains how it feels to have to keep a part of who you are hidden out of the fear of the consequences that may come when it is out in the open.

Emily Mayo

The flowers amid the weeds

In December of 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, which was a horrific event in history and caused Americans to have so much distrust in the Japanese Americans, fearing that they may attack as well. So the Japanese Americans were taken from their homes and put into internment camps. They took to writing Haikus to explain the horrible experience they had after they were taken from their homes and forced into these camps. The one haiku that stuck out to me was the one that was written “Trefoil flowers bloom daily- I shall live positively” This one stands out to me because it shows that the person who wrote this is trying to look for the positive even though there is minimal good to look for. Trefoil flowers are the tiny white ones found in the grass that are very common and seen almost everywhere. They aren’t strikingly beautiful or have many colors, yet the speaker emphasizes them as a reason to look at life positively. The image of a small meagre flower that is very common gives the impression that though there isn’t much to be positive about, the author is looking for anything that they can to spark happiness. By also stating that these flowers bloom daily gives the impression of perseverance, and that the fact that they come up everyday so should the speaker. This haiku provides the impression of working towards finding any possible joy in such a terrible situation.

Emily Mayo

The Inferior Rose

When someone thinks of a rose, the first thoughts that come to mind are romance beauty and love. They are used to be given to another person on valentines day to show affection or planted in a garden to add beauty and something to admire. Roses are a symbol of beauty and fragility, yet certain poetry decide to turn the traditional views we have of something on its head completely.

I feel that the poem ‘Sea Rose’, better challenged the view of the traditional rose. The first line even starts off by contradiction traditional views in the first line, by stating ‘harsh rose. By calling a delicate flower ‘harsh’, it leads the reader into viewing this symbol as the opposite of what one may have previously thought. The author continues to refer to the rose using adjectives with more negative connotation tied to them, like ‘acrid’ and ‘thin’ to completely change the meaning of the symbol of the rose. The rose in this poem is even seemed to be the opposite of an actual rose structure wise as well, this rose has a “meagre” amount of petals and is referred to as a rose that is near the sea, which is where one would never find a regular rose. The poem also refers to the smell as ‘acrid’ which is the complete opposite of how many people view the smell of roses. By referring to a rose as the almost complete opposite of the traditional symbol, it makes the once symbol of romance and beauty, undesirable and inferior.

In the other poem ‘The Rose and the Poppy’ the traditional symbol of the rose is more enforced than challenged. They refer to the rose as ‘ravishing’ and continue to compliment it, making it seem beautiful and admirable. This is what I feel is closer to the traditional way people perceive roses and enforces the traditional symbol instead of challenging it.

Emily Mayo

Drunkenness

In using figurative language in poetry, instead of direct and precise words, an author is able to help the reader in visualizing what they mean as well as understanding the feeling and point they are trying to get across in certain lines of their work. In Hafez’s poem, ‘Ode 487’, the line that stood out to me the most was the line, “If you would reach your daily destination, /The holy city of intoxication.”. This metaphor creates the feeling that the act of getting drunk, resembles a journey. He also adds to the metaphor by stating that intoxication is a ‘holy city’, which to me gives the impression of a glorious and heavenly place, which is what he is insinuating being drunk is. By stating ‘holy city’ he only refers to the positive connotation of being drunk, which allows the reader to see his perspective on intoxication and prevent us from missing his point of the fact that he believes drunkenness is something positive. This start of the poem makes one realize that the whole poem is about Hafez and his drunkenness. Yet the other metaphor that stands out to me is where he states “Well, HAFIZ, Life’s a riddle – give it up: /There is no answer to it but this cup.” He uses a metaphor about life, insinuating life is confusing and hard to comprehend, but at the ends, claims the answer is in ‘this cup’. This poem starts off by insinuating that drinking is this wonderful journey, by using positive connotation, yet ends with a shift to claim that it is the only answer in life. In the end Hafez makes it seem like drinking is something he must do, in order to find the understand his own life.

Emily Mayo

Beautiful Chaos

In the poems ‘I sing the Body electric’ and ‘Song/of/to/my/your/self’ they have the factor of listing in common. When one thinks of listing, they associate it with organization , yet in these poems, listing seems to create the sense and sound of chaos. By poems normally being something that flows by using rhyme and similar sounds, the listing of words, that have no sounds in common, creates the feeling of looking back and forth, trying to find anything you possibly can in common. Yet by listing such different sounding words together, it makes one feel like they all have something in common, and that is the feeling that the authors are trying to create from this method. The author is trying to convey the message that though they are different, they all have something in common and are not as different as one may think. Through these chaotic sounding poems, it creates and conveys a beautiful message that may not need to come from the rhythmic and normal style of poems.

Emily Mayo

Rhythm and Meter

In the two poems, ‘Still to be Neat’ by Ben Johnson and ‘Delight and Disorder’ by Robert Herrick, there is a fascination with not being all proper and dressed in what would be considered, the correct fashion. Both seem to have heavy use of the iambic rhythm, which I feel is trying to convey the feeling of a natural wanting, like the disorder is natural and something that feels more real as well as something that is naturally desired. Though, they both have an iambic rhythm, I feel that in the poem, ‘Still to be Neat’, it starts of with more of a trochaic rhythm and works its way into more of an iambic towards the end, which gives off the impression that the second part of the poem is where the more real feelings come in by having more of a heartbeat rhythm. This is enforced by the fact that the first part of the poem discusses being “powdered and perfumed”and dressed as if one was “going to a feast”. Yet the second half discusses more of what seems to be what the author desires through using the word “me”, which is not seen in the first half and the line “Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;” refer to the more natural state of a person. In the poem, ‘Delight and Disorder’, it seems to be more of a constant iambic rhythm, yet it also is constant in the way it discusses prefering disorder over being proper, which the heartbeat like rhythm enforces by making the poem feel more natural.

I feel that the poem ‘Delight and Disorder’ better represents art because of the fact that it describe the fact that art is better when it is “disorderly” than when it is precise. Art is something that people use to get their emotions, feelings, or experiences across and the world around us and emotions we feel are not always beautiful and perfect, so by describing art as something that more disorderly than perfect displays art as something more real rather than something flawless and perfect meant just to please the eye.

Emily Mayo