“Holy Sonnet 10” by John Donne
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/death-be-not-proud-holy-sonnet-10 In this poem, the author talks about death as though it is a person. He understates death’s power and says that death should not feel honored by those who call it “mighty and dreadful,” because it is not. Donne says that even though death thinks that it has slain so many, no one really dies when they meet death. He compares death to sleep and rest, which are two things everyone needs and brings people pleasure. The best of people realize that death only stops the soul from suffering and that death brings us pleasure ultimately, not pain, therefore they wish to go quickly. Donne describes death as a slave to others such as “fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.” Death is limited to certain powers and even the reader can control death. John Donne goes back and compares death to sleep once again, but this time to a short sleep, almost a nap. He says that after one dies, they wake up happier than before and “wake eternally.” Once one has moved on to eternity, death dies and is no longer there. The speaker in “Holy Sonnet 10” is a person who is confronting death and not afraid of it as showed by, “canst thou kill me” (line 4). In the start of poem the speaker is confident in the fact that death isn’t as powerful as people say it is, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee // Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so” (lines 1-2). Towards the conclusion of the poem, the speaker gives off an arrogant tone of victory as death is not everlasting, it is temporary and will die with the wake of eternity (lines 14-15). This poem has important allusions to Christian values and ideals. The description of death being essentially killed by the afterlife, as in heaven, follows through with the tone of being victorious right at the end. Figurative language is key in this poem because the whole idea of death is being personified as the theme of the poem. “Holy Sonnet 10” by John Donne relieves some of the stress put on people over death. Donne describes death in a way that it seems like just another person who has to worry about dying itself. This poem was interesting in its use of figurative language and message through tone.
2 Comments
Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast by Hannah Gamble
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56059 In this poem, Hannah Gamble uses figurative language to describe sexual desires. She has very subtle ways on making simple encounters seem sexual and in a way forced. The sexual innuendos give a sense of yearning that could be stemming from a lack of sexual intimacy in the author's life. The whole poem dances around sexual ideas except for the last two sentences of the first stanza that talks about the beautiful climbing plant, which I cannot figure out how to piece into the poem. The end of the middle of the poem talks about her need for more than two hands and and one mouth to make and finish breakfast, essentially another body. Hannah Gamble describes “the man in the bakery who eats egg after egg after egg,” which is just gorging and not slowing down to savor the taste or even enjoy the eggs. This further exemplifies the “gorging” aspect of some people’s sexual desires. The man described as in “every love scene” says to the woman “open your mouth,” which is altogether rude and too abrupt to be conceived as an endearing act. It seems as though the woman of this poem romanticizes everything a man does towards her, whether it be degrading or disrespectful. Hinting at the underlying sexual meanings, as a woman I personally would never give in to the sexist and forceful acts described. I found it interesting that the author describes wind chimes, which are typically symbolic of peaceful, calm times, as “some gray woman with failing arms dropping a pan full of onions and potatoes.” It gives a harsh feeling towards the morning in the poem and can even be argued that they “gray woman” is not old as one might think off the bat, but actually depressed and seemingly gray. This gray woman could be a subset of the author’s feelings or just a metaphorical sense of what unhealthy physical relationships can do to a person. Most People Would Rather Not by Hannah Gamble
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/56477 This poem is a “meaningless” poem that does not have a set plot as compared to the last poem I read by Hannah, Growing a Bear. It does not have as many hidden meanings behind it as the other poem and I found it more difficult to read. This poem talks about nature at first with describing the smell of flowers that fills the air. Then it continues on to describe a river where she sits uninterrupted and watches debris flow over her. She describes the river as a not too cold unimpressive river where she has no sense of growing older. She humbles herself by the river and flows on with her thoughts. I took this poem as her indulgence in the idea of depression and how the sadness weighs upon her. The first part of the poem does not really set up the main idea of the poem. It is not until about the fifth stanza that she admits the desire to “be lying on the bottom of an unimpressive river.” The next few lines bring in an outside perspective where she describes the sticks and leaves flowing over her and her watching from underneath. This almost gives me the sense that she is outside a glass wall looking in and only observing with no interference. The first thing I thought of while reading that imagine this is something to what heaven is like which gives me the idea that that is how she imagines her life. “The water’s not too cold. It doesn’t feel like being dead,” is a hypocritical statement in my opinion because it contradicts with her previous underlying statement of depressed tendencies. The next stanza talks about not feeling old or fetal which refers to the non aging aspect of the mind in life. The first stanza of the poem reinforces the “decaying” feeling that Hannah has as it talks about the browning flowers. This poem could represent the modern society and how people mostly sit back and watch rather than taking action on opinions or ideas. I saw the narrator as a lazy person who stays out of the way of a changing world and rather focuses on themselves than the environment or economy. Hannah brings in unimpressive vs impressive “rivers” which is a metaphor for life in general as a whole. Unimpressive rivers like the narrator is in is a slow meandering river that has no set “final destination” whereas the impressive rivers are speeding on to the ocean drop off. The narrator feels that there are more impressive rivers and is content with her basic, unambitious life. Growing a Bear by Hannah Gamble
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/56478 This poem is about the speaker, a married man presumably in his “over-the-hill years”, yearning to fabricate a bear out of just simple “fertilizer, chunks of raw meat, handfuls of blackberries, two metal rakes, and a thick rug,” the normal qualities and characteristics things you think of when first thinking of a bear. This poem brings in ideas such as “midnight occupation,” “wrong kind of shadow,” and “cold nights like these… forbidding as it should be,” to give the reader a suspenseful and dark spirited feel to the poem. When reading I kept picking up hints of Hannah’s distasteful feelings towards marriage and growing old. She brings in elements such as the speaker wanting to shower with his wife, yet the wife having no desire to and the fact that she goes on with her life by herself and he “ just happen[s] to be next to her.” This gave me the feeling that Hannah believes marriage becomes less personal as we grow older and that sometimes, growing old together makes couples grow apart. This poem contains the contrast between young and old. The themes behind this poem lead me to believe that the “bear” is a metaphor for an affair. An affair is forbidden and normally done as in secret. She includes the sections about “it’s nothing you’ve done,” referring to his wife. She also writes that, “Past the age of college athletics, most friends don’t even know what each others’ bodies look like, flushed, tired, showering, cold.” This sentence brings back the young vs. old contrast and also makes me think about the intimacy behind an affair. When Hannah Gamble wrote this poem she was a young adult. I think this poem was her way of exploring growing older and the idea of marriage. This poem had underlying meanings that made me have to think in a different way than just at the surface of the meaning of the poem. Leisure, Hannah, Does Not Agree With You
By: Hannah Gamble https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56060 The repetitiveness of the word disgust in the poem is powerful. It stimulates the feeling of hatred that the author has inside of her. Hannah Gamble is a poet who is not afraid to write her feelings and put them into words in a way that makes you understand where she is emotionally. Personally, I can identify in this poem with never being content. In my head, nothing is ever good enough for myself. I constantly nitpick every little thing about my life. “I have enough regrets to crack all the plumbing,” is justifying this underlying feeling of self pity. This self pity stems from her own judgement of herself and denotes that this judgment is worse than any judgment that could come from her readers. The poem starts out with inanimate objects, such as the house and tent, and abruptly transitions into intangible things, such as her name and wholeness. The last few lines of the poem do not stick with the pattern of “My ___ disgusted me…” but instead switches to the expression of how she is explicitly feeling and what is happening to her. The last line of the poem, “I’m whole only in that I’ve built my person from every thought I’ve ever loved,” is the realization that even though life is hard, with love there is wholeness. Her torn view between her own pride and sense of self can be seen throughout the poem. |
AuthorI am Ashlyn BLUEberry and welcome to my literary thoughts. |