Ozy in a Nutshell

Ozy in a Nutshell

Out there in
the desert
lies an old
broken statue

and the guy
was supposedly
important a
thousand years ago.

Now there is
sand rubbing up
against
his shattered
visage.

This parody combines the storyline of "Ozymandias" and the form of "This Is Just to Say." The form copies the three stanzas and short lines of no more than three words. "Ozymandias" was shortened to fit inside the stanzas. I picked the main points of the poem to incorporate into the limited amount of space given by "This Is Just to Say" while still getting the main theme across to the reader.

Ode to a Nightingale

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

This ode was inspired after Keats heard the song of a nightingale while staying with a friend in the country. This poem was also written after the death of his brother and the many references to death in this poem are a reflection of this. Among the thematic concerns in this poem is the wish to escape life through different routes. Although the poem begins by describing the song of an actual nightingale, the nightingale goes on to become a symbol of the immortality of nature.

The poet suddenly cries out "Away! away! for I will fly to thee." He turns to fantasy again; he rejects wine in line 2, and in line 3 he announces he is going to use "the viewless wings of Poesy" to join a fantasy bird. In choosing Poesy, is he calling on analytical or scientific reasoning, on poetry and imagination, on passion, on sensuality, or on some something else?

He contrasts this mode of experience (poetry) to the "dull brain" that "perplexes and retards" (line 4); what way of approaching life does this line reject? What kinds of activities is the brain often associated with, in contrast to the heart, which is associated with emotion?

In line 5, he succeeds or seems to succeed in joining the bird. The imagined world described in the rest of the stanza is dark; what qualities are associated with this darkness, e.g., is it frightening, safe, attractive, empty, fulfilling, sensuous, alive?

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I chose a picture of a sun in the desert for the line from Hughes's "Harlem": "Or does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" This picture was significant because a desert with footsteps pertains to a feeling of hopelessness. The sun beats down on the barren land where nobody wants to be. The raisin is much like the desert floor being soaked in the sun in that little or no life can survive there. The life has been sucked out of the dehydrated raisin and not much remains within this once life-filled fruit. A dream deferred is much like this raisin and desert floor because not much remains of it. The dream has almost no hope of being revived and made a reality. Much like the desert, there is virtually no way to bring back a life filled land.

The Art of Writing

In the poem, "Harlem," the use of similes gives us the essence of what a dream deferred looks like. The first encounter with a simile, a very famous comparison to a dream deferred, is the line, "Does it (the dream) dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?" (lines 2-3). This shows that the dream dries up when it is put off too long, and could be a reference to the dream shifting to something different entirely (grape to a raisin) or that it just runs out of life. The poem gives us vivid imagery through simile by making an indirect comparison to a grape. A grape would represent something full of life, whereas the raisin shows something that is drained, however not useless. The raisin does not necessarily mean that the dream completely dies, but that its purpose has shifted. So the dream is not completely lost, but rather it has changed. The effect of the simile gives us an image to relate a dream deferred to, hence allowing for a better understanding of what Langston Hughes was trying to communicate by asking the question "What happens to a dream deferred?" (line 1). Through the use of similes and symbolism he portrays a dominantly sad outcome for what happens to that dream.
In the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, there is a strong allusion to past events that the narrator is mentioning in this poem to her deceased father. In lines 57-60, the narrator says "I was ten when they buried you/ At twenty I tried to die/ and get back, back, back to you/ I thought even the bones would do." This allusion is to a specific past that she and her father had that contains underlying emotions not fully expressed in the poem. We can only see that she is bitter about her father's death and still holding on to him (however, the end of the poem is her "release"). Her bitterness is towards those who have buried her father. Later we learn that "the villagers never liked [him]/ they are dancing and stamping on [him]" (lines 77-78). This is because of her father's highly racist past that seems to plague her throughout her life. Some earlier lines also make known her own racial bitterness: "I began to talk like a Jew/ I think I may well be a Jew" (lines 34-35). This allusion allows for a very emotional story to unfold as the poem reads on. If it were just the narrator speaking about her father's death and racism, the story would be out right bland. With the allusion, however, the story is gripping and keeps an element of mystery about the poem. We do not know what the father's full story, we just know that he was obviously a very racist man. He could have been a Nazi soldier or just a common racist man. The narrator alludes to something in the second to last line, "They always knew it was you," which makes it seem like he performed a terrible act. We can suspect some of things that he might have done, but that just adds mystery to the story through creating a shady character. Plath effectively created a poem that tells a story without giving away all of the details through the use of allusion.

Poetic Form

Sonnet 73 Shakespeare

"In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by"

You see in me a glowing fire
Where the ashes of my youth lie
As on the deathbed where it will expire
Dying by what it was previously nourished by

The poetic form of this quatrain slightly enhances the meaning of the poem. If written in simple prose, seen in the paraphrase, the section simply displays a dying man's fire becoming extinguished. Shakespeare's conveyed meaning is very similar to the paraphrase. There are no meanings that can be realistically interpreted in any other ways. However, there are some symbols that can potentially hold two different meanings. In the second life, the ashes could be a symbol of either the end of his youthfulness or possibly bad decisions that he made in his youthful years. The third line is about the fire dying down and ending and the fourth line consequently explains why. The fire becomes "Consumed by that which it was nourished by," pertaining to the wood that turned into ashes that eventually will put out the fire. Once again, the poetic form enhances the meaning very little. The symbolism of the "ashes of youth" determine how the fourth line is read. If the ashes are simply his youthful years, then he is dying most likely because of his old age. Yet if they are mistakes, then the fire that is his life is consumed because of past mistakes or from a certain condition possibly. Symbolism is the main literary device enhanced by Shakespeare's poetic form, primarily seen through the "ashes of youth."

This is the third and final quatrain of Sonnet 73, which leads into a heroic couplet. It brings together the idea of Shakespeare expressing his pitiful state in the previous lines and connects it to the couplet where we learn that the man whom Shakespeare wrote to still loves him regardless. In the first and second quatrains, a concern of loneliness and death is recognized. In the third quatrain, this becomes a reality for Shakespeare. His death is encroaching and his youth is over, and he expresses this to the man. The heroic couplet tells us that the man still loves him, and brings resolve at the end of the sonnet.

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