“Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred Tennyson blog #3

In this poem, there are four stanzas, each containing five lines.  The last line in every stanza ends the same saying “…the days that are no more.”  This is repeatition throughout the poem.  There is no rhyme scheme, but all lines are capitalized and there is punctuation in every line.  There is some alliteration.  One example of this is the second line where he says, “Tears from the death of some divine despair.”  He also has some similies, like when he says, “Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail.” 

I love this poem!  It is beautiful and I can relate so much.  I often get a deep-down feeling of sadness and rememberance when I think of my past and some things I wish were still going on or I still had.  I can look at something and get instant flashbacks to something and feel a longing for wanting to be in the moment again.  Other things make me feel sad because of what happened in certain situations or times in my life that I wasn’t so proud of. 

His words are so simple but at the same time, they are so deep.  He is trying to relate to many people with different levels of intelligence who have all had these days of feeling sad about the past and how it is only the past.  He must have wrote this while having one of these days, and if he wasn’t then he was after writing this.  This was a very deep, but simple poem and the thing that made it so great was the fact that it is true and sad.

“I Cried at Pity — Not at Pain” by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson does a great job at expressing her thoughts.  I think this poem is talking about a child passing and Emily putting herself in this child’s shoes because she feels dead inside.  She constructs this poem with some stanzas having every other line rhyme and some stanzas having no rhyme scheme whatsoever.  She has a good mix between strong descriptive words and short thoughts with simple words.

Emily, from what I know from Kristin Ozzello and various projects I’ve seen about her, she seems like such a sad person.  I would hate to feel dead when I was still alive.  That must be the worst feeling ever.  To feel like nothing in your life makes you feel alive.  Everyone has felt it, but hers seemed to go on for her whole life.  This reminds me of the book I am reading right now called The Color Purple.  In this book, the main character, Celie, has a life full of pain and suffering.  She could count the good days shes had on two hands, if even that, and has lived a full life of being treated like it didn’t matter if she was alive or not.  As the story goes on, it gets a little better, but not great.  The whole time I’ve been reading this book, all I have thought is how could someone live this kind of life and not go crazy?  It hurts my heart, as cheezy as that sounds.  I think of all the true stories just like Celie’s that happen every day.  It makes me sad that we live in a world where people could be so horrible to other people to make them feel dead inside.  Or even really dead.  It makes me really think if it is worth it to grow up and have a family and bring someone into this life that could be put in a situation where they could be a victim of the many horrible things that goes on in this day in age.

That last thought takes me into another thought.  Why does the news and media and everyone only advertise tragedies?  Nobody wants to turn on the news anymore because of all the bad things.  Why don’t we show the world how good the world is?  Its almost like saying that there is more evil in this world than good.  This has to stop somewhere. My boyfriend and I were talking and we figured out that he is a realist and I am an idealist.  This means he looks at facts and I still try to find the good in things.  I told him I didn’t think this was a bad quality, and he said he agrees and that we need more like me in this world to still have faith that good will be back in the lead someday.

“Joy in Death” by Emily Dickinson Blog #1

In “Joy in Death,” Emily Dickinson uses proper punctuation.  This is a short poem and is almost like a conversation between two people narrated by another person.  There is no rhyme scheme, and her sentence structure varies from line to line. 

She is straight forward in this poem.  There is little room for any misinterpreting or confusion.  She says what she needs to say and nothing more.  This was most likely a quick thought she had, and since, if I’m not mistaken, she wrote poems often, probably didn’t have to change it into poem form.  It was probably already structured perfectly when she wrote it down. 

The thought in this poem is a very good and firm thought.  She is saying that if someone dies, why should we be sad when heaven is happy.  She says “A soul has gone to heaven”  and then says something like that should be good news.  It really should.  If a person is suffering or is in pain enough where they should die, then shouldn’t they get the award of heaven.  Sometimes this senario doesn’t fit, but sometimes it does.  Like in cancer patients.  The death of someone who has suffered and suffered should be able to enter heaven with no more pain and have their loved ones be happy.  They should do it because it is a way of showing the person that was in so much pain that they loved them and are happy that they can rest well and no one has to suffer anymore. 

Even though the people still alive should be happy, that is easier said then done.  Even though they are happy the pain is gone, they have to live with the fact that they will never again, as long as they live, be able to feel the presence of the late person.  It is almost too much to handle when I think of someone I care so much about passing and never being able to feel their touch or hear their voice, until I am released to heaven.