What can I say ... it's grading week.
I'm a little freaked out about H1N1 too. Students are dropping like flies. I'm washing my hands like crazy.
So I apologize that this week I'm coasting, and even with the coasting, I'm not on time.
Metaphors
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
I like this poem by Sylvia Plath for several reasons:
1) It's clever. The speaker is pregnant and reveals this *secret* through these riddles, nine of them, each line with 9 syllables. It's fun wordplay. As I told my Tuesday class, some people send out ultrasounds to make an announcement. If you're Sylvia Plath, you write this little stanza.
2) It's happy. Plath isn't really known for her happiness or her maternal responsibility or her stability. In this poem, there is a glimmer of happiness about the child to come. (Sadly, Plath's son John just took his life this year. He was a professor in Alaska. Makes one think about the genetics of suicide. Her daughter Frida is still alive.)
3) It's lovely. The phrase "ponderous house" seems especially appropriate when I think of pregnancy.
One sidenote: young people no longer know what happens when one eats too much unripe fruit. We live in a time of such pickiness/produce availability, that when I ask them about the second to the last line, they truly have no idea what happens to one's belly. Furthermore, they cannot understand why someone would eat a bag of unripe fruit. Even if we factor out the exaggeration factor ("a bag"), the idea of eating unripe fruit for any reason is absolutely beyond them. Many of them have never known hunger.
5 comments:
I'm a riddle in nine syllables! Even though, you know, I didn't break the riddle. OH I'M A TERRIBLE POEM READER. But I do love it --- ESPECIALLY with your explication. I think about Plath's son's suicide perhaps a bit too much. So horrifying -- and he was so FAR from the literary/loud life of his parents. A demon you can't outrun, perhaps? I hope not. I've missed your posts so much --- very glad to see you back.
Ooh, I did love this one. And I didn't get it either, Elizabeth (though I did count the nine syllables in each line).
Good observations about the unripe fruit . . . maybe you should assign "The Long Winter" to your students.
My word verification: psyclu
I think I should have called a psychic for the "clu" to this riddle . . . er, something like that.
I second Becca - require "The Long Winter" of your students (that is if they manage to stay well) - I mean how many times have we quoted that to Graham??
I've had one student with a confirmed case of H1N1 and all around campus in bathrooms and such are big warning signs -- if you have fever and chills, and body aches, and a sore throat - you could have the flu. Also you might have ... a myriad of symptoms which is so broad you think ... how can anyone tell if it's H1N1 vs. a cold, the season flu, a run down virus of some kind?
I was so put off by some nitwit including Sylvia Plath's poetry in a Holocaust anthology (I was an undergrad) and couldn't comprehend why my classmates were discussing her SS father's black boots and how hard that must have been for her - a violent father (and a Nazi no less).
WHAT??? I responded -- what are you talking about ... this woman is an American? Loser editor - just because someone uses Nazi in a poem doesn't mean it's Holocaust literature. (As you can tell I'm a professor of Holocaust Studies and feel very - passionately about this.)
You do such a nice job of explaining poems - certain former professors of mine (you know some) were LOSERS at this and for a while turned me off to it. You have such a love of literature that it's contagious.
Sorry for the mammoth post!
I wrote a little poem when Miles was to be born. Only mom even got what it was about. OOps for my talents.
That's funny Marni. It reminds me of when my sister in law wore a tshirt that had a drawing of an open oven with a bun in it. It took our family FOREVER to figure out what was going on....
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