Interpretation of Beauty Ideals

William Shakespeare is a poet who when thought about we think of love and undying passion. His sonnet “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun”, follows the proper format with three quadrants and ends with a rhyming couplet. The tone of his sonnet compared to his other poems has a tone of irony, the opposite of the eternal love poems that we are used to him writing. Dominant themes in this sonnet include a male speaker expressing their love/lust for a woman. Quite seemingly objectifying her physically and spiritually. However, when reading the last two lines of the poem, “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare” (lines 13-14) I realized that the poem doesn’t talk about objectifying a woman. Rather the topic is that women shouldn’t fall under beauty ideals.

Now answering the question if the meaning of Shakespeare’s sonnet was transformed or enhanced by Catherine Tate’s classroom performance. I believe that it was transformed because at first, the poem seems to be calling the speaker’s mistress plain, “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks” (lines 5-6). Especially since the speaker is a man, that detail further reasons that he is simply comparing women to beautiful symbols and placing her beneath them. Yet when Catherine read the sonnet with an angry and loud passion, the sonnet for me was transformed. That loud passion and fast rapid pace gave it an uplifting tone as if she rejected those comparisons and beauty ideals. I felt it more empowering for women when she read those metaphorical lines with a disregard for them. Since already in the video she seemed to not care for Shakespear, she chose the perfect sonnet to prove that she disregards what he tries to portray.

The sonnet written by Shakespeare and Catherine’s interpretation has one overall similarity that makes either way read correctly. The similarity is that they both reject the beauty ideals that women “have” to fall in. Through Shakespeare’s last rhyming couplet, we as readers understand that his love wasn’t rare, it was simply real because he didn’t care that his mistress didn’t look perfect rather to him she already was. For him, this sonnet would’ve been read in a slow pace and softer tone just as the rest of his poems. However, Catherine read the sonnet with confidence and pride as if the comparison she read were beneath her and all women, ultimately rejecting beauty ideals.

~Jeshua Rocha

Escaping from reality

The poem that I decided to choose was Ode 487. This poem was about trying to use alcohol as an escape while acting on lust and desires. This poem talks about how acting out on your heart’s desires, under the influence, can give you immense confidence. To describe his emotions and environment in HAFEZ  line 4, “The harp and flute were up and in full swing.” This allows us to get a feel for how the alcohol was making him feel very warm and happy and almost gave him a sort of ecstatic energy boost. This also symbolizes that alcohol can evoke many different emotions, and it can get very chaotic. In this poem, the man is rejected, and in a way, his delusions fade due to him not getting what he wants, and he feels defeated, but then there is a sort of acceptance at the end of it all, understanding that things happen in life and that he needs to move on. He then realized that he could escape with alcohol and that, in the end, life doesn’t always turn out how you want. He chose to deliver figurative language in this poem through metaphor, symbolism, and personification.

After reading this poem , I noticed three types of figurative language That took place in this poem. Line 1, “The harp and flute were up and in full swing,” is a metaphor for how a hangover feels. The singing is a metaphor for the headache and pounding that could happen after drinking. Another metaphor that I noticed was in lines 8-9: “If you would reach your daily destination, The holy city of intoxication.” This is a metaphor for his trying to completely escape. He wants to be at a certain level of intoxication that makes him feel like he is on a different plane to satisfy his goal. HAFEZ also uses personification in line 4 “The harp and flute were up and in full swing,” which gives the harp and flute personification as if the objects could get on a swing. Lastly, I noticed that he used symbolism in line 25, “In the good ark of wine; yet, woe is me!” Wine and the feeling of intoxication symbolize Noah’s ark, a place where he feels safe and can drown his sorrows in, and it makes him feel some form of contentment with everything or it was supposed to. As for the question, I don’t think this would be accepted because this seems to be an act of love and not love at all. His partaking in the drinking of wine states that he is not in touch with the Islamic beliefs given, as the drinking of alcohol is discouraged. In a way, his relating the good ark to wine also hints that he is not quite a believer in the practices. However, on the women’s end, her rejection. could symbolize the fact that she was rejecting the worldly desires. However, overall The love does not align with Islamic spirituality because there was only lustful intent behind it.

Victoria Sasere

We both are penitents

Ode 44 tells a story about love, drunkenness, and Islam. Overall, I believe that the poem portrays an acceptance of Islamic spirituality.

In the first stanza, I distinguish between the Tenor, which is ‘She’, and the Vehicle, which includes ’tilted glass’, ‘verses on her lips’, ‘Narcissus-eyes’, ‘wine-red lips’, and ‘a dewy rose’. I deliberated extensively whether to assign ‘she’ or ‘her lips’ as the Tenor, but ultimately, I chose ‘She’ for the Tenor because I believed that this first stanza praises her beauty. ‘Tilted glass’ came with ‘with,’ so I regarded it as a Simile. Additionally, since ‘and’ connects ’tilted glass’ and ‘verses on her lips,’ I considered ‘verses on her lips’ as a Simile as well. ‘Narcissus-eyes’ describes the characteristic of her eyes, hence I thought it a Simile. As for ‘wine-red lips,’ it signifies that her lips are as red as wine color, so I considered it a Simile too. Furthermore, ‘a dewy rose’ is preceded by ‘as,’ so I interpreted it as a Simile.

In the second stanza, I considered ‘he’ as the Tenor and ‘churl’ and ‘a double traitor’ as the Vehicle. In fact, this part took me a long time to interpret because it started with ‘I’ but had ‘he’ appearing in the middle. Therefore, I regarded ‘He’ as representing an Islamic person. As another Tenor, I considered ‘we’, and ‘Drunkards’ as the Vehicle. Here, the author mixes ‘We’ and ‘I,’ which I saw as a clear indication of drawing a line to distinguish between an Islam puritan and oneself. Since ‘churl’ came from the sentence ‘he surely were a churl,’ I considered it a metaphor, as it describes the same subject, and ‘a double traitor’ was also seen in the same light, hence I thought it’s a metaphor too. Additionally, ‘Drunkards’ is a word immediately preceding ‘we,’ so it’s a metaphor. Consequently, I,’ or ‘we,’ describes how love and wine are perceived slightly differently between us and the Islamic person, but nonetheless, we are destined under God’s privilege.

In the third stanza, I saw ‘Hafiz’ as the Tenor and ‘poor penitent’ as the Vehicle. Although I also considered ‘wine and woman’ as the Tenor, when I observed the exclamation ‘Oh! HAFIZ!’ at the beginning of the stanza, I felt that ‘Hafiz’ should be the subject because the author emphasized this word. Regarding ‘poor penitent,’ since it’s preceded by ‘this,’ it indicates that the author equates ‘Hafiz’ with ‘poor penitent,’ making ‘poor penitent’ a kind of metaphor. In the last stanza, by directly addressing ‘Hafiz’ and asserting that we are both penitents, it implies that we will not live too humbly.

As the overall content of the poem portrays both the Islamic person and oneself as penitents before God, it is evident that the poem embraces Islamic spirituality.

Jisoo Jang

A Trip to the Ocean

Sun falls over hills

Colder and colder we get

Bike paths branch outwards

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Small spikes line the ground

Bikes were not meant for this path

A new flat tire

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A large cold window

Pressing my face against it

A small barrier

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The same scenery

Concrete castles and car lots

I need to see water

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Light brings forth new scenes

Beyond the manmade tunnels

The ocean is there

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Birds watch the tide crash

Devils battle with lost souls

Angels just look on

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Resting against sand

Tide recedes another day

A new metaphor?

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Review:

The Haiku form was a type of poetry that I always found fascinating yet was unable to write anywhere close to decently. My default form of expression and writing tends to be more free verse, with long and detailed explanations and the formations of images that help me and the reader set the scene or tone of a poem. Haikus on the other hand, take those same gigantic prose blocks that I commonly write and condense them down to extremely small three-line poems, paring down language to the point where every syllable is accounted for. Because of this, while I found Haikus, a form that condenses so much imagery and metaphor into so little, an impressive yet daunting shift from my comfort zone that I chose to abstain from.

This all changed once I came into contact with the Haikus of the Japanese American citizens during their times spent in the internment camps that we read for class: The choice of words and images that they used in each of their poems were extremely creative and left vibrant imagery. In addition, their poems were left abstract enough that different readers could have different interpretations of what they were speaking about and what aspects of the internment camps were being described in each poem, which led to a lot of interesting discussion and commentary on people’s individual values and how that applies to how they interpret each poem. The most important aspect of the Haikus, however, was that all of them, despite being from different poems, came together within the anthology to tell a single story about life within the internment camps. It really opened my eyes for how small lines with few words can come together to tell a greater narrative that captivated me on how the Haiku form can be utilized.

This was the aspect that I wanted to bring to my adaptation more than anything else, so I chose to write multiple short Haikus that come together to form a larger story, a single journey that the speaker goes on between all of the separate small poems. Each poem can stand together on it’s own, but all of them have a new meaning when they are read together. Another aspect that I tried to interpret relates to the multiple forms of interpretation that can be found when reading these poems, where I kept metaphors vague but images strong, the rest is up to the reader to come up with how those images and metaphors relate to their life experiences and their ideas. Everyone will have slightly different views on what some images represent (such as the tide), but that is the beauty of creating small yet packed poems that the Haiku form allows for.

Sky Miller

My Luve Has Thorns

A Melancholic, Black Rose

O my luve is like a melancholic, black rose 

That’s newly died in December;

O my luve is like the moans 

That ring at night time.

So despicable art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve, am I;

And will luve thee still, my dear,

Til the seas flood us all.

Til the seas flood us all, my dear,

And the rocks crumble wi’ your gaze

I will love thee still, my dear

While the quicksands sink.

And fare thee well, my only luve!

And fare thee well awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

Though it were no smile.

Traditionally love poems have idealized the woman of desire for the male speaker. She’s described to be beautiful and often inflicts no harm. Her raw beauty in these poems is eternalized forever. This is admittedly why I chose to focus on Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose”. Instead of merely focusing on all of the positive elements of this heroine in the original poem, I chose to bring out the sinister side of her existence. I wanted to portray this supposedly perfect woman the speaker is in love with, as a dark mystifying temptress who causes pain and suffering everywhere she goes, not something to be obsessed with.

I feel as though within “A Red, Red Rose” the overwhelming love for this woman is obsessive. The kind of love for this “rose” is blind to her faults and true character. She is not depicted for her personality or charm, but her outward appearance. Roses often are a symbol of love, romance, or something that you’d give as a romantic gesture. And a black rose, for example, would be given somewhere like a funeral, where it’d represent loss or death. Burns predominantly focuses on the deep red color, of the rose, often associated with love and overwhelming passion, whereas I focused on the rose being black. It has a negative connotation. 

The woman in the original poem’s genuine character underneath the pretense is not as endearing and charming as presented. In my rendition, the black rose represents a completely different symbolic alternative. It is inspired by the deep love for a woman described to be just as perfect as a rose is. Furthermore, in my first stanza, I use the month of December to depict winter rather than spring as it was in the original poem. This is because I wanted to depict the end of this cycle and call attention to how roses die in the wintertime. In comparison to how they often bloom in springtime around June as represented in the original poem.

Robert Burns in “A Red, Red Rose” crafted the poem with free verse. As it contains an ABAB rhyme scheme with variations in the first 3 stanzas not rhyming the 2nd and 4th lines. This means that it does follow a regular or consistent meter pattern. My piece does not follow this scheme exactly as I wanted to focus more on the imperfection of this love rather than the rhyming pattern too closely. The similarities between my rendition of the poem and “A Red, Red Rose” are that they are different in many ways. My piece is focused on this dark twisted love implementing the symbolism of a black rose, meanwhile, Burns focuses on an obsessive idealistic love with the use of a red rose. I strayed from Burns’ rhyme scheme and pentameter since neither my poem nor his follow a traditional sonnet form. Therefore, I wanted to experiment with this idea.

Both poems focus on the imagery of this rose. With Burns focusing on the characteristics of a bursting love and passion, and mine focusing on how it is a morbid obsession. I found this fixation on the rose very interesting, so I desperately wanted to stay true to that just with the variations in wording. The key differences are that it goes from the pleasant sense of stability the author feels around this rose or woman, to the crumbling and devastating nature of her existence. The relentless dependency on her despite how much damage and hurt she brings. Roses though fragile, possess thorns that make them hard to touch without causing pain to yourself. With the vehicle of the rose to the tenor of the love for this woman, we can see that it is an unreliable tale of this woman. Despite this obsession, I can appreciate the poem’s elements and nevertheless think that inevitably it is well-written and truly a tale of devotion.

The Struggle Is Real

“The Tired Worker” tells a story of a tiring, nonstop lifestyle of a person whose every day life consists of providing with the little income they have. Similarly, “Outcast” describes the inner thoughts of a worker who shows awareness of being under the control of ‘the western world’, more specifically the big multimillion companies that ‘run’ the country. Both these poems tell the same story but from a different perspective because the central points lead back to the common man that feels they have no control of the world around them. Rather, they bring light to the reality of being caught up in a system they must follow without question just so they can provide and survive in society. Claude McKay’s poems “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker” both go hand in hand in relaying a very powerful message of what it means to feel hopelessness and despair. in a typical working class where no amount of accumulated money can bring comfort or relief.

Throughout “The Tired Worker”, the character uses many exclamation points to display frustration to the audience of how exhausting their every day life is. People don’t willingly focus their every day lives on working, its the helplessness of making money so they can ensure comfortable survival that forces them to stick with this cruel routine. McKay does a very good job in communicating this message because the first person point of view allows readers to step into this individual’s shoes and see the world with their lens. “Outcast’ was filled with various metaphors for the reader to pick through in order to truly understand the message of ‘hopelessness’. In the poem, McKay brings up “the western world” (Line 6) to explain why there is desperation and exhaustion, and who is actually responsible. To readers like me, the western world symbolizes the large companies who’s main focus relies on modernizing the world to make the most amount of money. Ideally, these companies hope to one day achieve globalization and make immense profit in the long run. In all of this chaos, common workers like those in “The Tired Worker” and “Outcast” get left behind or don’t receive the credit they deserve. They helped bring those companies to where they are today, and where they will be in the future, but unfortunately they all get neglected.

Claude McKay’s poems agree with the hopelessness and despair workers feel.

Simranpreet Kaur

Angels? Not To Us

Throughout history, and even throughout the art in time, angels have alway been depicted as being white, and to this day it is rare to see an angel that is depicted as being a person of color. In the poem Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Reservation by Natalie Diaz, she uses a metaphor to compare the white men and the angels, she explains how an “angel” in its literal definition, “a spiritual being believed to act as an attendant, agent, or messenger of God, conventionally represented in human form with wings and a long robe,” has never grazed the path of a Native tribe. Instead of Natives seeing that spiritual being that is supposed to represent all these great things they got colonizers who came and ruined their society, took away their freedom, and tried to abolish their culture and take everything they had built from them.

Diaz uses the structure of an Abecedarian poem, a poem that follows the alphabetical pattern (A, B, C…) in this case taking every line of the poem and having it follow the alphabet, to write the message of how these “Angels” have come and marginalized the Natives if her tribe. In the interview “Back to the Body: An Interview with Natalie Diaz” she emphasizes how the “The alphabet is a body, that is carrying our bodies.” Natalie explains, about her students, that she “wants them to write all the iterations of a letter. Now we just have the letter A or the letter B, but I want them to paint with a big brush and India ink, and suddenly to realize, Oh this is an art form.” She sees the alphabet as a very important thing as it is a means to express one’s true self and it has the ability to represent your body and soul. This means of writing, with the alphabet being such a big part in expressing one’s self and Diaz believing that it a way that she has found to connect herself back with here body because words can carry so much weight, and the fact that this poem emphasizes on the true nature of “Angels” and how then Natives are better off without them, “we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and ’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens” allows us to understand that there is a sense of connection to the body once again, knowing their true worth and knowing that they don’t need the help of white people in order to establish a good life for themselves, they know who they are and they know their worth.

This poem does an amazing job with tone, as I interpret this poem, I sense a stern and hostile tone towards the “angels.” Diaz is standing up for the Natives that had their lives destroyed by these white “angels” she exclaims “Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians. Remember what happened last time some white god came floating across the ocean?” By saying this Diaz clearly alludes to the English colonizers who came to America and took Native land because they believed in “manifest destiny,” in other word they believe that it was their God-given right to take that land. The Natives were quite literally silenced by these white “angels” during this period, being killed and forcefully removed form land that rightfully belonged to the them. “You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.” But at last Diaz proclaims that the “angels” were full of B.S. and that the Natives weren’t in need of them, telling the Natives that they no longer should be silenced and should no longer surrender to these “angels”

Guadalupe Lemus

Flying on the Reservation

The poet Natalie Diaz explains in her interview the importance of the body and a sense of self was to her and the people around her, saying that “Things like pleasures, and the autonomy of pleasure, and ecstasy- those things weren’t allowed for us. We weren’t supposed to fulfill those things. So for me, it’s always about trying to come back to the body, trying to say- How can I constantly return to the body, even when it’s uncomfortable, so that I have the possibility of those things?” Diaz exclaims the constant denial of her self identity and place of belonging from outside forces, either politically or culturally, that keep the people in the reservation trapped. In both of the poems “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Reservation” and “My Brother at 3 A.M.”, Diaz demonstrates the emotions and systems of oppression that befall her and her people, as well as commenting on way to break away from those entrapments through community and understanding and fighting for the self.

The poem “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Reservation” utilizes a lot of vivid imagery in the very beginning of the poem, showing the various wildlife around the reservation, while commenting the lack of “angels”: “Angels don’t come to the reservation.\ Bats, maybe, owls, boxy mottled things.\ Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing-\ death. An death\ eats angels, I guess” (1-5). Diaz makes the comparison to all of these animals to mean death, which would usually be seen negatively, as she is commenting on the cruel land her and her people have been forced to reside on, but there is some positives, as this “death” keeps away angels. And angels don’t “fly” near the valley.

Angels and religion are utilized a lot within this poem, but angels are most notably a vehicle for whiteness and the white race, shown in one key section of the poem: “It’s no wonder\ Pastor John’s son is the angel- everyone knowns angels are white.\ Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians.\ Remember what happened last time\ some white god came floating across the ocean?” (15-19). This section is obviously a reference to Manifest Destiny and the early colonialism of the American settlers, who used their faith and destiny as pretext for conquering and displacing countless Native Americans, almost completely slaughtering them before eventually putting them into the prisons they called “reservations”. There, the Native Americans were left alone to die of disease, poverty, and addiction.

What’s most interesting about this section is the first half of it, referring to the Christmas pageant where the church holds plays. Here, Diaz comments that only the pastor’s son gets to play the angel because he is white. This not only comments on the feeling of superiority that the church and white people have in general have towards Native Americans, but also showing a clear connection to the white race and these “angels” Diaz mentions. For Diaz, these “angels” were nothing more than conquerors, marauders that came in and took control of everything they could see until nothing was left. She wishes that the angels would leave them alone and stayed up in the “heavens” where they resided, because the last time that they came to the reservation, they put her and her people there in the first place.

What’s most interesting about this poem, however, is the heavy usage of enjambment in this poem, most notable in the lines: “I haven’t seen an angel\ fly through this valley ever. Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though-\ he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical\ Indian. Sure, he had wings,\ jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars.” (5-10). Each of the words that are enjambed in these lines hold extra weight in this poem, words like “fly”, “Gabriel”, “Indian”, and “jailbird”. There is a clear comparison between the angel of Gabriel and that of this person named Gabe, who is an “Indian”. While Gabriel doesn’t fly around the valley, Gabe does, yet his version of flying is certainly different than the typical symbols of flying, especially in the context of “angels”. Yet, the heavy enjambment of “fly” and “jailbird” are highlighted so well in my mind. They are emphasized to such a degree that there is certainly a connection between these heavily enjambed lines. In this case, Diaz is using the symbol of flying and movement as a call to return to the body and community. Here, the man named Gabe is painted in a very negative light: He’s a criminal, steals cars, is seen as a “typical Indian”, and leaves behind children everywhere he goes. This is a commentary on the heavy cultural scrutiny that Native Americans face not only from outside forces, but have been conditioned to put on each other. It is a clear overlook of the struggles that this man named Gabe has faced. No one considers how he ended up that way, only the outcome.

Yet, unlike Gabriel and other “angels”, Gabe does fly around the valley, closer than any of the people who thought they were “helping”, like the pastor and his family. Unlike the “angels”, Diaz does not wish that Gabe doesn’t return to the valley, for Gabe is not some outsider, but a part of the community, and that community is what will be needed to deter the “angels” from causing more harm.

Sky Miller

What is He O,?

Poems can be read either metaphorically or literally. The poem at hand, “My Brother at 3 A.M.,” is an example of a poem where it can be read either metaphorically or literally. I believe the poem is meant to be read metaphorically. This poem discusses the idea of a mother witnessing her son transform into a demonic image. For example, this can be seen through the quote, “He sat cross-legged, weeping on the front steps. Mom finally saw it, a hellish vision, my brother. O God, O God, she said,” this quote signifies for the idea of how the son transformed into a devil. All of the three poems show how the social identities have been silenced. The mother and Pastor John’s wife did not believe their sons when they told them that there are religious metaphors coming to life.

A Return to the Body

Natalie Diaz’s poem “My Brother at 3 A.M. is, I believe, meant to be read metaphorically. The way I read it is that the speaker’s brother represents an oppressed minority while his mother represents the majority. The back and forth is the majority not seeing the plight of the minority despite it being pointed out, something that is not uncommon in real life. The sores on the lips represent the injuries the minority has suffered over the years. The ending represents the majority finally waking up to reality and recognizing the horror.

This signals a return to the body in depicting authentic human vulnerability. The speaker describes their brother’s distress in unflatteringly blunt terms and doesn’t sugarcoat anything. For example, “He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps” creates the image from the beginning of someone who is weak and helpless. Additionally, the poem ends with the brother’s concern accepted and legitimized by his mother, allowing him “to be fully in [his] body”; the mom goes from asking her son what drugs he is on to repeating “O God” with him. Finally, the aforementioned metaphorical meaning accommodates marginalized or silenced peoples by demonstrating that that fact can be challenged and changed; this is a poem about one person or group growing to understand and empathize with another.