Same Old, Same Old

Inspired by Claude Mc Kay’s “The Tired Worker”

By: Sofia Garcia

5-star review

When one first reads Claude Mc Kay’s “The Tired Worker”, it is difficult to decipher the poem’s meaning. “The Tired Worker” seems very personal. He writes about his daily routine. If we think about it, we can all relate because where we think about it or not, we all have a daily routine that we are stuck just like Claude Mc Kay’s speaker.
            Such a relatable theme can apply almost one hundred years from when the poem was written. This relatable theme makes it easy to make a comic to show to the modern world what Claude Mc Kay’s poem means. I could have written a sonnet to explain a sonnet, but that wasn’t very fitting in setting. Free verse was a better fit because it fit the comic’s story board. Not only that, but it breaks the format which is like breaking the routine that Claude McKay alludes to in his poem “The Tired Worker”. I also break a grammar rule. Instead of using capital “I” to refer to myself use lowercase “i” for the sake of break the normal use of “I”.

I like to think that my poem is the modern version of Claude Mc Kay’s “The Tired Worker”.   Claude Mc Kay talks about his routine and talk about mine. The words are the twenty-first century version of a stressful daily routine and the pictures are 1930’s version of a daily routine. I put them together on the same page to show that much hasn’t changed about how Americans go about their daily lives in 90 years. Our heads still spin when we plan out our day and realize how many things, we have to do that day. I do know that we are stuck in a cycle that I would like to end, but I point out that the problem with that is that humans are creatures of habit. We have the weekend to forget about the cycle. I create a paradox which I don’t directly state. The weekdays may be a tedious cycle, but the fact that pretend that we don’t have a tedious weekday cycle on the weekends is also a routine. Going out with friends or family on every weekend is fun but it is another cycle. You can also think of it as the week is one big cycle: you grind on the weekdays and you have fun on the weekend. Mind blowing, isn’t it?

TA for One Day

Sofia Garcia

All right lets get started on grading these blog posts. Based on the rubric, I gave “Tropic Shadows” an A+. I gave “White Americaaaaaaaa” and “The Great Divide” an A-. The blog post that was the most persuasive and original was “Tropic Shadows”.

Reflecting back to the debate from last class (November 20, 2019) the paper had what the judges and the questioner (me) wanted. It was essay length. That’s fine, but not exactly necessary for the blog post to be that long. The person had a thesis and they had evidence to support their thesis which included quotes from the poems that they cited along with their own overall effective analysis of the quotes that they used in their blog posts. The person also made a connection from the poems’ rhyme scheme to their interpretation of the poem. This alone made a difference between the winning team and the losing team of the debate. The conclusion the person summarizes their analysis which gives the reader closure.  

Trapped in the Western World

sofia garcia

McKay’s “Outcast” represents the hopelessness and despair of the working-class speaker in “The Tired Worker.” In both of the sonnets, the speaker is taking about being tired of being trapped in a life style they do not want to be in, and there is no way out of it.

In “The Tired Worker” McKay is about how the average worker is tired about their daily routine and they finally get to rest after such a long day. However, in the volta of the poem, the poet speaks about how they dread that the next day they are going to do this over again because they are aware that this life style is a trap.

In “Outcast” the speaker is tired of their current situation. They want to go back to their country and go back to the life style they once had in their native country. The speaker is longing to go back to their, “soul would sing forgotten jungle songs” (line 3). They want to get out of the trap of the western world’s daily routine, but that is merely impossible.

Redundant Poetry

Sofia Garcia

In just fourteen lines a sonnet manages to contradict itself. This form of poetry seems pretty redundant because it just answers itself. It is as redundant as one asking a question and one answers it almost immediately

Some may argue that it is self-awareness, but I don’t see that anywhere especially with the skit. Catherine Tate’s character and David Tennant’s characters are a metaphor for what happens in a sonnet, but not just any sonnet; they represent how Shakespeare mapped out his sonnets. They are ague with each other trying to make a point, but then they wind up contradicting each other.

This skit is just a modern version of how to interpret the layout of Shakespeare’s sonnets. In the skit, the student tries to get the teacher to admit that he is Dr. Who. He denies it throughout the entire skit. She annoys the crap out of him and he pulls out whatever device and flashes her with it. She turns into a figurine which proves that the teacher is indeed Dr.Who.

To put it into context, William Shakespeare compares his mistress’ beauty and the features that make her beautiful to a number of things in his “Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”, and then he finishes the sonnet by saying my mistress cannot not be compared to anything because I think she is too good for those things to be compared to her.

Who’s really running, the drybacks or the wetbacks?

Sofia Garcia

Sometimes as a reader one does not stop and think, “Would the poem’s meaning change if I heard a recording of rather than me reading it in my head?” When and if that idea ever comes to mind, one brushes off almost immediately because one thinks, “Seriously, what difference would that make?” For those that think that, that is not true. Javier Zamora’s “To President-Elect” redefines that.

Zamora’s written version of the poem and the oral version are so different. In the written version is shorter and it feels like he left so much content out. In the written version he left out the part where he says in the oral version, “If you call us illegal, call us wetback, we’ll end in putasos. If you call us alien, you are equally fucked.” He might have left that part out because of the profanity, but those words and this phrase just make his message to the president-elect that much more powerful. One may think, he could have added that phrase without the profanity.

To put into perspective, have you ever compared an explicit version of a song to the clean version? Some of the time it loses a part of its meaning. That is what it feels like when comparing the oral version and the written version. The “explicit version” is the oral part. Zamora expresses how much trouble the border patrol are going to get into if they mess with those who are trying to cross the border, and those who have crossed the border. The written part is the clean version. Zamora’s speaker tells their experience, but when have any mention of the border patrol they call them drybacks and how the border patrol reacted during that scene.

In the oral version Zamora had a fighting attitude while he was reading his poem. While he was writing the poem, the reader does not know what Zamora was thinking other than what he wrote. While reading the poem, he might have improvised and said what he was thinking making it sound like it was part of the poem.

In both versions he seems to be getting back at white people who call immigrants wetbacks by calling white people drybacks. It seems to be an insult. It almost highlights what they went through to cross the border whether it was going over the wall under the wall via tunnels, or through the wall through the holes in the wall that Zamora mentions.

Zamora shows that immigrants will not be running form the border patrol and he means it in the oral version, and in which he taunts the border patrol, and basically tells lets them know they are catching any immigrants; they worked way too hard for that kind of thing. In the written version Zamora tells the border patrol, “We will outsmart you and make into the United States no matter how, but we will find a way in.” Although the difference in meaning may seem minor between the two versions, it just is not the same.

Clean Christians Go to Heaven

Sofia Garcia

George Herbert incorporates art into his poems “Easter Wings” and “The Altar”. With the text, he creates images. “Easter Wings” when it is on its side, it looks like a pair of angel wings. “The Altar” looks like the one we would see at a Catholic church for example.

Both of these poems sounded like prayers first of all. “The Altar” starts with in line one, “A broken ALTAR, Lord” (line 1).The first word in “Easter Wings” is “Lord”. To my experience, one of the first words in a prayer is “Lord”. This already indicates to me that these poems carry a Christian message.

The altar in the poem “The Altar” represents the speaker’s heart that they have prepared for the Lord. It is not a perfect heart according to the speaker but, “thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine”(line 15). As a practicing Catholic I am told at church that we have to prepare our souls for when we go to heaven (as best we can because we are human, and we make mistakes).

In “Easter Wings” all humans are sinners no matter how wealthy they are. Lines five through nine talk about how Easter is a time for redemption of ones sins. Easter is Jesus’s resurrection from the dead which means he is going to save his people from sin alluding to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when the snake tricked Eve into eating the apple and then give some to Adam which is known as the “original sin”. Because it is the time when people redeem their sins it is a time of joy. If one does not have sins one gets to go to heaven (I mean who wouldn’t be excited for that).

I am undecided about which poem offers a more powerful Christian message. Ultimately, both touch upon going to heaven. Going to heaven is the ultimate goal of a Christian. Both poems express the same idea, but I don’t feels like one is better than the other at the moment.

So,You Thought We Were Talking About Real Roses?

By: Sofia Garcia

Symbols are a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract. Common objects such as a rose can traditionally signify love, or can it? Poets enjoy playing around like that. They can take a symbol so common and often simple, but make so complex. “Sea Rose” by H.D. and “The Rose and The Poppy” by Adrianna Puente both mention roses in their tittles and their poems. In neither poem does the rose symbolize love.

Adrianna Puente’s poem directly states that this poem’s rose has nothing to do with love, romance, etc. By saying, “Nor am I a symbol of romance” speaker is letting the audience know “don’t even think about depicting this as a love poem”. The rose Puente talks about in her poem is the exact opposite of what it traditionally symbolizes. The rose does not exist it is only a poppy putting itself down by comparing itself to a rose in every other stanza. The poppy is personified, and we can see this in the first and second stanzas which start with “I am” in which the poppy is talking and comparing itself to a wilted rose. We can infer the poppy is comparing itself with a wilted rose because in line 22 the poppy says, “we each wilt between dried petals”. “We” is referring to both the poppy’s petals and the roses petals.

In “Sea Rose” by H.D. the rose she talks about in her poem is not a symbol of love. The speaker in the poem is talking about an actual rose. Someone or something is being compared to a rose. H.D. is using the beauty of the rose in lines five and six, “more precious/ than a wet rose.” The poet uses lines H.D. is not using the rose as a what it is traditionally represent, but she is going with its physical aspects of the rose instead.

Adrianna Puente’s poem is more effective in challenging the traditional symbol of the rose.

Woman and Wine

By: Sofia Garcia

We use figurative language on a daily basis without realizing it. Figurative language are words or phrases that are not meant literally. There are many different forms of figurative language. The most commonly known names of these are similes, metaphors, hyperboles, and personification. The others that we use widely, but the names are not common are onomatopoeia, metonymy, and synecdoche. Honestly, I could go on forever naming types of figurative language, but I am not going to. I will just focus on those that I have previous knowledge on.

The poem that stood out the most that put figurative language into context was Hafez’s “Ode 44” which was translated from Persian to English by Richard Le Gallienne. Since this poem is translated from Persian to English some of the original meaning may have been lost. Additionally, some lines such as the very first line, “Last night, as half asleep I dreaming lay,” (Hafez, line 1) sound strange in English. I am very unsure of what that line is supposed to mean.

In the third line in order to describe the woman’s lips the poet uses a synecdoche to say there is “tilted glass, and verses on her lips;” in other words, he is admiring the woman’s lips. He continues to admire her most importantly her face in line 5 using the metaphor, “Narcissus eyes…Filled with frolic to her wine-red lips” (Hafez, line 5). One can assume he is comparing her to wine in all aspects so far in this first stanza. Admiring this woman is the speaker’s way of showing her love. So far, one can also assume the narrator enjoys wine. In the second stanza, the poet literally refers to wine as the poet says he, “drank whatever wine she poured out of me” (Hafez, line 12.) He extends the metaphor between the woman and the wine by saying that the wine is out, “Of Heaven’s own vine” (Hafez, line 14). His love for that woman is of high quality like wine “Of Heaven’s own vine” (Hafez, line 14). He continues to provide proof of his love by saying, “Drunkards we are by divine decree” (line 20). He can mean this line literally or it can be a metaphor conveying to the reader how much he loves this woman. Putting the third stanza into context, it also seems like the poet is saying that his love and the woman’s are pure because they are drinking Holy wine, literally together and whatever sins they both had were forgiven. In other words, by drinking Holy wine they repented all of their sins. It has a both a figurative sense and a literal sense. One can literally repent their sins, but not by drinking holy wine or by so called holy wine like the poet. Hafez ends the poem by complimenting the woman’s “knotted locks, filled like a flower with scent” (Hafez, line 27) which is a simile. Overall, the poet seems to demonstrate his love through compliments to his significant other.  

poetry that leaves you gasping for air

By; sofia garcia

In poetry, there are rules. Some poets follow the rules of rhyme and meter while there are others that could care less about those rules. Those rule breakers created something called free verse. They try to fool their readers by claiming they are writing “free verse”, and that of course is matter of opinion. Free verse just means the poet made up their own rules to write their poem.

Whitman in his poem, “I Sing the Body Electric” he uses free verse. He writes in run-on sentences which contain very little punctuation, and literally leaves the reader breathless. There is no name for that, but it inspired poet Luis Alberto Ambroggio to write “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/ to/ My/ Your/ Self” and “Song of Myself:  Walt Whitman in Other Words” which are just as breathless as Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric”.

Surprisingly enough, Ambroggio actually writes in “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/ to/ My/ Your/ Self”, “In everyone’s Self,/the poem’s universal soul,/in each innumerable Walt Whitman,/cosmos without rubrics,/”, in which he references Whitman which led me to assume that he was Ambroggio’s inspiration to write theses poems as long as the tittles themselves.

When Professor Humberto Garcia, read “I Sing the Body Electric” to the class, he was out of breath by the time he was finished reading it. In contrast, when Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Christopher Merril, and Sholeh Wolpe read “Song of Myself:  Walt Whitman in Other Words” they sound like they are reading a book to the audience. The three narrators have their breathing composed.

In “I Sing the Body Electric” Whitman talks about how his poetry affects the body and proceeds to break it into parts in his poem. He goes on about this without stopping. He even says it in his poem, “I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with/my poems and that they are my poems” (Whitman lines7-8). This poet believes that poetry should reach every country so he goes on to list every country. It leads Ambroggio to have the same rhythmic enumeration. On the subject, translator and poet Sholeh Wolpe says that when you translate poetryyou get “into the bone of poetry.”

Your mind is a canvas

Sofia Garcia

During the scan of their poems, “Delight in Disorder” by Robert Herrick and “Still to be Neat” by Ben Jonson, I picked up that both poets were speaking about women. Robert Herrick describes how a woman makes feel in the last two lines of his poem, “Do more bewitch me than when art/Is too precise in every part” (Herrick). He describes the woman with simplicity as if someone was explaining the way looking at a hamburger makes them feel (that is of course if they enjoy hamburgers). Even his style is simple which shows by his use of iambic tetrameter throughout the entire poem. Seemingly he doesn’t change patterns to keep that effect of simplicity. Similarly, Ben Jonson also uses iambic tetrameter as his rhythmic pattern.

When Jonson describes the woman, he is writing about he directly addresses, “Lady, it is to be presumed, /” (Jonson). Both poets seem to see the actions the women are preforming as art forms. Their word choices are the ones that bring these simple actions from written words to a vivid image in your head. The way they look such as when Ben Jonson describes the way the woman’s “Robes [are] loosely flowing, hair as free (Jonson). In Herrick’s eyes, “Ribbons to flow confusedly/…In the tempestuous petticoat;/” (Herrick). Herrick saw beauty in this. It is not neat like Jonson’s view, but they both had different views on how the ordinary views they had and turned them into something so artistic. For poets like these our mind is their canvas because their written words come to life in our minds.