Blog Post #12: "Five Flights Up" and "Five AM"

Paired Poetry Essay: “Five Flights Up” and “Five AM”

While Elizabeth Bishop and William Stafford both personify the harbingers of morning in their poems “Five Flights Up” and “Five AM,” the two poets discuss the morning from very different perspectives. Bishop’s use of antithesis, which ironically plays on her envious attitude towards morning, and personification contrasts Stafford’s pairing of personification with enjambment, which illustrates his beloved unfamiliarity with his surroundings. Stafford discusses the rejuvenating properties of morning, while Bishop’s frustrated attitude towards the morning marks the persistence of her troubles through the morning's dew.

Bishop creates a quietly distant interplay with the morning in “Five Flights Up.” In discussing the morning as an uninvolved, removed observer, a clear distance is created between her and what lay outside her window, perhaps from “five flights up.” Bishop’s distinct use of personification creates this “distance,” allowing everything that she sees outside to act in an understandable, human way. After recognizing the distant question of the bird and of the dog, Bishop personifies the coming day which possibly answers these questions, “simply/by day itself.” (ll. 8-9) In allowing the day , not herself, to take action in answering the questions of the morning, Bishop further removes herself from the events unfolding before her, from the events she has difficulty relating to; she is almost jealous of the simple beauty of morning, a simplicity she doesn't feel in her own life, self-sufficient and sure of itself. The bird that Bishop watches from afar, and “unknown” bird, “sits on his usual branch.” (L. 2) Bishop’s use of antithesis here reinforces her removal from the morning. Bishop recognizes that this spot is frequented by a bird, but it isn’t until this moment that she questions “who” the bird is; although she sees him time and time again in his “usual” spot, Bishop observes this bird from afar, and all it ever can be to her is a discernible stranger. Just as she knows the morning is answering the questions of the bird and dog, but fails to understand the answer, Bishop’s unfamiliar familiarity with this bird further removes her from her observations. Though the morning is so simple, so honest, so rejuvenating for the bird, Bishop can’t escape the troubles of yesterday from five flights up.

In “Five AM,” William Stafford takes a clearly different attitude towards the morning. His use of personification is limited to the opening and closing of his poem where he describes the rain touching his face and “the early morning breath[ing].” (L. 1) Between these distant, removed observations, though, Stafford contrasts Bishop by stepping back from his observations and generally discussing humanity. His observations of the morning are more concrete, more significant than Bishop’s distanced encapsulation in her observations; this allows Bishop to divert from his immediate surroundings and contemplate their relevance, their significant in the world beyond his scope, the world beyond Five AM. Staffords use of enjambment adds to this contemplative attitude towards morning; by stopping mid-line in the middle of his poem with lines like, “People in every country who never…” allows for breaks in his pacing (L. 9). This pacing, which like Bishop’s is slow, includes breaks, pauses, which suggest a turn in Stafford’s thought from the immediate to the worldly. Clearly, Stafford’s attitude towards the morning is more interested, involved, and contemplative.

While Bishop envies the simple, routine morning from her place of grief, Stafford contemplates the overarching significance of morning, Bishop looks at what morning is while Stafford considers what it means.  

Blog Post #11: Compare and Contrast Poetry Essay

William Blake's Poems "The Chimney Sweeper," convey an augmentation in the speaker's, a young chimney sweep, understanding of his parents' betrayal. Blake traces the boy's growth out of innocence and into a ",'heaven of [his] misery.'" in his use of lists and counter-point discussion of light and dark, black and white. This listing and reliance on binary oppositions, which demarcate a transition from immaturity to sobering maturation, illustrate Blake's increasingly bitter attitude towards the chimney sweep's situation.

Both Blake's 1794 and 1789 poems "The Chimney Sweeper," demonstrate a natural organization and trail of logic, following a path very similar to that of unfettered human thought. The tone behind this organization, seen clearly in Blake's lists, however, is drastically different between the two poems. The 1789 poem structures lists in an expected manner - point one, point two, and point three - which is very similar to the type of speech used when speaking to other people, people like "Dick,  Joe, Ned, and Jack," (11). The expected, calculated speech reinforces Blake's notion that the boy's are disillusioned in thinking that "if all do their duty, they need not fear harm." (24) The 1794, in contrast, is less measured and more emotionally driven. In describing the parents' false sense of reassurance, the boys cries, "[they] are gone to praise God & his Priest & King," (11) Blake's use of polysyndeton at this point in the poem illustrates the boy's bitter frustration about his parents' own disillusioned thoughts of innocence. The transition from the 1789 poem to the 1794 poem clearly marks a growth in the boys thinking, an evolution from innocence into understanding.

The binary opposition between the colors black and white is present in both of Blake's poems, but their connotations are vastly different. In the 1789 poem, the color white is clearly symbolic of hope, rebirth, and cleanliness; the words "naked and white," are the two most pertinent examples of this notion (17). The Angle is described as being a "bright," figure who come to tell they chimney sweeps of all there is that lies for them beyond the pains and labors that they face in the "dark" world they live in (13). This is a clear slight towards truth, however, the honest realization that the boy comes to is not quite as bright. (STOP)

Paired Poem Essay Reflection:

This prompt was our first exposure to a poetry compare and contrast essay, and it was not as intimidating as I thought it would be. Reading pages 41 through 57 before writing this essay was helpful in understanding how to organize my thoughts and approach the paired poetry essay, specifically regarding the writing of the thesis. When this type of essay was introduced, I was worried that it would be fat too easy to fall into the trap of working just with surface features and basic details without elaboration; especially when the amount of material we are working with doubles in quantity, it can be significantly more difficult to pull out and original, nuanced argument. While originality isn't necessarily immediately aligned with success on these essays - I'm sure they have been many original responses to this prompt that couldn't have scored higher than a two - it is always reassuring to feel like you are solving a puzzle when writing an essay; putting together the hidden, nuanced parts of an argument is really almost like a game, with time, your own knowledge, and your preparedness competing against you. Specifically, on my first draft of this essay, I did not win the battle against time. Unfortunately, this immediately drags down the value of my writing; although I felt confident in the thoughts I had and the way I was going to relate them, by not finishing, my trail of logic was hazy and my support was severely lacking. This mistake would likely result in my essay scoring a two. The first body paragraph still provides some support for my argument, but it is incomplete which significantly hurts the value of my writing. One significant goal that I need to set for myself is regarding time; I've noticed that, even though I now better understand what an effective, efficient thesis looks like, I spend too long on this part of the essay, trying to perfect it to set the right initial impression of my writing. In the future, I need to spend no more than five minutes writing this part of the essay so that I can move on and actually write an entire essay in the time provided. I know that once I address my time-management problems, it will be much easier to break into the 7-9 essay score range. Hopefully, my revision of this essay will allow me to tie together the thoughts and evidence that I was unable to work with because of time constraints.

Paired Poem Essay Revision:

William Blake's Poems "The Chimney Sweeper," convey an augmentation in the speaker's, a young chimney sweep, understanding of his parents' betrayal. Blake traces the boy's growth out of innocence and into a ",'heaven of [his] misery.'" in his use of lists and counter-point discussion of light and dark, black and white. This listing and reliance on binary oppositions, which demarcate a transition from immaturity to sobering maturation, illustrate Blake's increasingly bitter attitude towards the chimney sweep's situation.

Both Blake's 1794 and 1789 poems "The Chimney Sweeper," demonstrate a natural organization and trail of logic, following a path very similar to that of unfettered human thought. The tone behind this organization, seen clearly in Blake's lists, however, is drastically different between the two poems. The 1789 poem structures lists in an expected manner - point one, point two, and point three - which is very similar to the type of speech used when speaking to other people, people like "Dick,  Joe, Ned, and Jack," (11). The expected, calculated speech reinforces Blake's notion that the boy's are disillusioned in thinking that "if all do their duty, they need not fear harm." (24) The 1794, in contrast, is less measured and more emotionally driven. In describing the parents' false sense of reassurance, the boys cries, "[they] are gone to praise God & his Priest & King," (11) Blake's use of polysyndeton at this point in the poem illustrates the boy's bitter frustration about his parents' own disillusioned thoughts of innocence. The transition from the 1789 poem to the 1794 poem clearly marks a growth in the boys thinking, an evolution from innocence into understanding.

The binary opposition between the colors black and white is present in both of Blake's poems, but their connotations are vastly different. In the 1789 poem, the color white is clearly symbolic of hope, rebirth, and cleanliness; the words "naked and white," are the two most pertinent examples of this notion (17). The Angel is described as being a "bright," figure who comes to tell the chimney sweeps of all there is that lies for them beyond the pains and labors that they face in the "dark" world they live in (13). This is a clear slight towards truth, however, the honest realization that the boy comes to is not quite as bright. Blake's 1794 poem contrasts the white of the cold, winter snow with the the chimney sweep, a "little black thing," dressed in the garments of death (1). Although pure and fair in contrast to the suit-stained sweep, this bright snow does not yield the joyous, enlightening truth that the first poem seemed to promise; the blinding white of the snow is more reminiscent of "a heaven of [the sweeps'] misery." (12) The boy, here, is implicating God in his suffering, tainting the purity and promise that the color white carried in Blake's 1789 poem. When the sweep was young, too young to even speak his own trade, "'weep! 'weep," he saw the world through suit-stained rose colored glasses (3); the transition, then, into the 1794 poem clearly delineates his stark realization that he has lost his faith.

In the 1789 and 1794 poems "The Chimney Sweeper," a young sweep, disillusioned by the thought that work will equate to safety, "Arbeit macht Frei," serves as a mouthpiece through which author William Blake demonstrates his bitterly resentful attitude towards the decrepit situation for young chimney sweepers in the 18th century. Blake's contrasting somber and bitter tones between the two poems illustrate the boy's transition from vain hopefulness to resignative animosity.  

Blog Post #10: Mythology Presentation

Blog Post #9: A witch? Which witch? Fairy Tales and Poetry Presentation

Blog Post #8: Ode on a Grecian Urn (John Keats)

Poetry Project Reflection: Ode on a Grecian Urn, by John Keats In our first full project as a group (the Falling Leaves), we created a performance music video to better understand the inherent nuances in classic forms of poetry. In these videos, we made choices regarding the visual elements, music, and reading of the poem the we felt best reflected our interpretation of the shifts and purpose of the form. After beginning research on the ode form, we quickly found that this project was not as simple as putting a dramatic reading of the poem to some music. While the Ode itself dates back to ancient Greece, John Keats used a modified version heavily inspired by sonnet-form to maintain the appreciation of a single object or idea while adding his own stylistic touches to the actual writing of the piece. Similar to "Yellow," by Coldplay, our style inspiration for this project, Keats speaks directly to the object, the urn, about which he speaks. His use of apostrophe is a defining characteristic of this ode and when Keats finishes speaking to the urn in the last two lines, the inanimate object to which Keats was chatting metaphorically speaks, leaving the reader with two of the most widely debated lines between scholars of poetry. While it was difficult to fully understand the ambiguous nature of these lines and other parts of the poem, by pushing ourselves to develop our own understanding, meaning, and interpretation of the poem before looking for outside resources, Alex, Alex, Dan, and I forced ourselves to make bolder conclusions in our analysis and interpretation of the text. While this was frustrating at first for some of us, taking a step back allowed us to focus less on what the "correct" answer is and more on what "an" answer is. Upon later cross-examination, we found that the meanings we found in Keats' writing lined up well with those devised by experts in the field. What we relied on mostly for this conclusion were the tone shifts (specifically the Strophe, Anti-strope, and epode in an ode), the literary devices used, and historical context surrounding Keats' writing of the poem. We dissected and looked-over these elements very closely, but by working in a group, we were all able to add little bits of the poem's meaning to the incomplete puzzle that we are all able to make on our own. I was also surprised in my group's ability synthesis these smaller elements and stay organized in the process; Maybe it was the 12 google docs, but given the time restrictions we all had over the course of this project, I think we handled such an involved task well. Specifically, we didn't have time to film either in class or outside of school, but we were able to all record our respective parts in a certain space in our homes. This actually fit well with our stylistic choices, as we were going to have the listener, "the urn" follow around various speakers through the poem. I know that by the next project, I want to have everything finished about one day sooner to give use time to run through the presentation and make sure it is coherent, clear, and clever.