And I Have Known the Arms Already, Known Them All

After analyzing this poem with the assistance of the "Prufrock Analysis Worksheet" I realized that this poem is far more in depth then I thought before. There are far many more metaphors than I had originally thought. The amount of Imagery is also much greater. The man uses thses things to describe himself through out the poem. He speaks of his insecurities and his fear of growing old. He speaks of hope and want and knowledge. He speaks of a great time in his life that he is afraid will end and after this great time in his life he won't know what to do because he had had his whole life planned out until this point. He also makes several alusions to other literary works.

One Man, One Love Song

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Throughtout reading this poem there was a great sense of self consciousness and fear of being judged by others.There some great metaphors including one describing a cat walking around a house. At first I thought it was a dog protecting the house then I realized that it was a cat with the lines "The yellow fog that rubs its back on window panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes." The color yellow can be associated wiht cats because many cats eyes are yellow in color. Also a cat will normally rub against someone or somehting when it wants attention. After this line I realized thios was also a metaphor for the person who wrote the poem. He wants to have attention, but is afraid of what 'they' might think of him.

On the Inside

Immigrant Blues

People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.

It’s an old story from the previous century
about my father and me.

The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.

It’s called “Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”

It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,”

called, “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”

Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.

But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?

You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.

If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.

It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening

called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”

called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,”

called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”

How can one describe what it is to be inside? It is the very act of tearing open the skin of an object and looking at the guts. The inside is what is truly there; this cannot be tampered with by any outside forces. This is what is going on in someone’s mind in someone life. It may be concealed by a skin that keeps all of what is on the inside away from the world. The truth is on the inside. The truth is what can be found when one tears away a layer like one tears apart an onion.

Far, far away

The Distances

Henry Rago

This house, pitched now
The dark wide stretch
Of plains and ocean
To these hills over
The night-filled river,
Billows with night,
Swells with the rooms
Of sleeping children, pulls
Slowly from this bed,
Slowly returns, pulls and holds,
Is held where we
Lock all distances!

Ah, how the distances
Spiral from that
Secrecy:
Room,
Rooms, roof
Spun to the huge
Midnight, and into
The rings and rings of stars.

This Poem uses a lot of IMAGERY; it paints a clear picture of the house and the hills and the children sleeping. Each thing is described to form a picture. The poem is done in FREE VERSE and changes STANZAS after the LINE "Lock all distances." After this change in STANZAS the direction of the poem seems to change direction. It no longer speaks of the Image that we have just made in our minds as readers. It changes perspective and describes the distance that comes out of secrecy. It speaks of spinning away from this house toward the stars. Also, there is an ALLITERATION when he says "Rooms, Roof." This emphasizes the way that one exists the room and reaches out and away towards the stars.

1st Entry 2/11/08

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

"I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means."

The truth is that there is no right answer in poetry.

This poem describes many different ways of analyzing poetry. It describes the way one person may look right through a poem and find no significance in it at all. It describes how some may see or hear what the poem is trying to say. It describes those who are only skimming the surface, not really taking in the information. Then it describes those who over analyze and try to force a meaning into it. Many people do not see the true meaning in poems they just try to take all the literal meanings of the poem. But the truth is that there is no right way to analyze poetry.