Monday, February 28, 2011
O How Symbolic The Bar Is
Art VS. The World
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Plato's myth of the cave as artist's life
Artists create works that bring humanity closer to the fullness of life. Artists make songs that celebrate the feelings that we all hold in common, that return us to some magical place or time in our lives. Artists draw the pictures and take the photographs that transport us to the most perfect parts of the earth, real or imagined. Artists write the stories and the characters that are so real we find our understanding of what it means to be human forever altered, our understanding of life enlarged. Without art, we would be less fully alive, less fully human, and less fully endowed with an ability to appreciate the subtle colors, flavors, differences and commonalities we encounter.
This need artists have to create, and our need to be exposed to, and absorb their creations, gives birth to one of the great paradoxes of life. Artists may well be born, not made, but they are hardly sprung forth fully formed from some mythical forehead. More likely, a given person may have more or less need to exercise the imagination and powers of expression than his or her peers, which leads to that person finding a mode of expression which speaks to- or through- them. The artist then spends many hours and years honing and perfecting the skill set employed in the expression of their chosen medium. After all, in the end, art is metaphor, and if the artist hasn't learned to "speak" his language with perfect facility and the largest vocabulary possible, the metaphor of his or her creative expression is going to become muddled in the transmission from creator to audience. Passion will drive a true artist forward, and the urge to make more perfect the artistic expression will compel the artist to engage ever more in the art, which leaves less and less of the parts of life not concerned with art accessible. The artist is consumed in his or her passion, and the "real" world becomes only a faint, flickering shadow play on the wall of a cave of the artist's own, accidental creation.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tennyson Prompts
2. Tennyson wrote "Crossing the Bar" three years before he died, and he meant for it to be the last poem in every volume of his published works. Look at the imagery (the descriptions) in the poem, which function as symbols. What are the symbolic of? Be specific.
3. Like Browning's "My Last Duchess," Tennyson's "Ulysses" is a dramatic monologue. The poem begins with an introspective, interior monologue, but then Ulysses turns to speak to his crew. How does the poem's tone and rhetoric change after this? Why is this important?
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Restoring Hope
"I love thee freely"
The Greatest is Love
Elizabeth Browning definitely put a lot of emotion and power in her poetry. Reading one of her sonnets from Sonnets from the Portuguese you can just feel the emotion and love that she had for her partner, Robert Browning. Trust seems to be one of the underlining characteristics of her sonnets. To love someone is to put all of yourself into the relationship and give them your heart, you accomplishments, as well as your failures and trust that they will hold on to them. Sonnet 43 was my favorite out of all of them because I felt as if it were the easiest to read and the one I could relate to the most. Love is such an amazing feeling that so many people in the world feel, yet everyone may feel something totally different and independent from anyone else’s emotions; although being equally powerful. Line 11 in sonnet 43 stood out to me the most: “I love thee with a love I seemed to lose” I feel like she is saying that she did not know she had the ability to love someone such as she loved Robert. Maybe once before she had loved someone or something a lot, but loving him brought back a love and emotions that she had almost forgotten she had. Sometimes after going through a lot of pain and hurt loving someone is hard, but once you let the pain and hurt go loving them is the easiest thing to do. It’s amazing how much joy love can bring into a person’s life.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
"I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!"
True, Unconditional, Pure Love
His resentment down on paper
Wordsworth received a job and a title and became a church goer, got into politics. That was treason in the poetry world "I guess", so what would I do if my writings had me able to become worthy of the queens court? What would I do in another time so far in the past when titles and money were thrown at me? Would I turn it down? I think that there would be a day when I would think that this particular road is easier and better To just grow up."Get A Hair Cut And Get A Real Job".
Since Browning liked and admired Wordsworth's early writings he appointed himself the chosen one to slam his conserveted choice in his elder years. Well I like a dramatic poems but this one is pretty outrageous.
This poem has only 2 stanzas and 16 verses in each. The rhyme scheme is abab throughout, it is a angry poem, when I read it over and over, you could feel the anger you can see it being read to an audience.
Browning's sonnets on love
How do I love thee?
"Let me count the ways"
In sonnet 21, the speaker encourages her lover to tell her over and over again that he loves her, even though in the beginning she recognizes that it seems very silly and girlish. However, the more she thinks about it, she realizes that no one ever complains about too much of anything in nature, ("Too many stars... Too many flowers"), and this justifies the repetition for her. This resembles the beginnings of a relationship, the need for fairly constant reminders of how much you care about someone, because you haven't quite made it to the point yet where "I love you" goes without saying.
In sonnet 22, the speaker tells of how content she and her lover are together, that nothing anyone can do can tear them apart ("what bitter wrong can the earth do to us, that we should not long be here contented?"). She has such a faith in their love that she would rather them stay on earth "where the unfit contrarious moods of men recoil away and isolate pure spirits" such as she and her lover than to move on to Heaven where she believes their relationship would thrive in perfection. This sonnet moves from the new, exciting beginning of the relationship to marriage; making the commitment with your love and being ready to face life's challenges together.
In sonnet 32, the speaker begins to have doubts, not about her feelings, but for her husband's. She worries that his love for her came too quickly, and "quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe". Then she turns on herself, putting herself down by stating that it is very hard for her to believe that someone like her husband could ever love someone like her, comparing herself to "an out-of-tune worn viol" and he to "a good singer". But she soon realizes that by doubting herself in this way, she is also doubting her husband, when she should be entrusting herself to his talent, "for perfect strains may float 'neath master-hands, from instruments defaced". This represents a stage of doubt or questioning that even the most perfect of relationships tend to go through. It would be hard to find anyone, even someone claiming to have a fairy-tale relationship, that would claim to never have had doubts in their relationship on some level.
In sonnet 43, the speaker tells her lover of all the ways she loves him. You can tell that their relationship has evolved in many ways, because she is doing more than just telling him she loves him. She is explaining how she feels the love she has for him. Even deeper than an emotional level, she loves him on a free, pure, and soulful level. She loves him as fervently as her childhood faith, and "with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!" Basically, she loves him with everything she has and has ever had. This is the deepest and most basic level of love anyone can experience, and I think few people every truly get to this point in their relationships.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Lessons of Love
Next, I agree with Browning’s idea when she states “Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;” in Sonnet 32 simply because I have seen this happen quite often in relationships. Some people have the tendency to jump into relationships or “fall in love” before taking the time to truly get to know the other person and this usually results in the couple moving too fast and often breaking up sooner than if they would have took things more slowly. Then that couple usually ends up disliking one another because their feelings or pride may have been hurt. Of course this is not the case for every one that chooses to “quickly love someone” but I think you can see what Browning meant when she claims that “Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe.” Therefore, in that line alone, one could learn that love is not supposed to be rushed and cease but taken slowly and cherished while you have it.
Prompt for Thursday
Thanks.
same stuff, different day
This is signifigant because these are the same sort of problems women faced in the Victorian era when attemptng to fulfill their greatest potential, made only slightly newer by the passage of well over 150 years. No matter how equal we suppose ourselves to be, how modern our family lives, it seems still to be the female who must pay a heavy price for refusing to be circumspectly satisfied by staying quietly within the domestic sphere. The danger Martineau addresses on page 1589, that of being socially shunned if one does not seem to be conforming to the proper code of feminine acivity, is still a possibility. Anecdotally, professional women who happen to be mothers are not invited to socialize with "the mommy crowd." It seems a bit absurd. We might not expect high-achieving males to have a lot of buddies who are unemployed, but we as a society would definitely reward the high achieving men and (at least) socially punish the unproductive. Yet as a society we tend toward rewarding the "unproductive" female who stays home to care for her family as a good wife and mother, and socially penalize the high achieving female. Maybe in another 150-200 years this will change. I won't hold my breath, though.
Monday, February 21, 2011
No Movement
Women: How Important are They?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Back to the Victorians...
The reading you are doing sets the stage for what was a very tumultuous time in British history. Industrial and scientific "progress" meant that the whole face of Britain was changing at incredible speed, and British imperialism and colonization meant that the empire was spreading not just across Europe but across the entire globe. Many of the conflicts, tensions, debates, and questions that arose during Victoria's reign are similar to questions that have arisen in our own time. For Tuesday, then, I would like you to pick one topic or theme that is introduced in the reading and then find a contemporary parallel. Please be specific both in your selection from the reading (use a page number) and in your example.
The Picture Painted
Dreams
A Different View
John Keats: It's a Hard Knock Life
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter"
when death is knocking at my door
Leaving this earth before your work is finished
when I die will I leave a trace of me behind
When I have fears that I may cease to be: John Keats is reflecting what will it mean if I can not write poetry or worse if I do and no one reads it. If it becomes to late and I die will their be a master piece that people will read and make me immortal or will I die without fame and fortune and I cant write poetry because i cannot think clear. Writing is his profession and is made clear but a writer is not recognized in till his or hers work gets published and read, and Keats fear in this poem that his work will never be read and that he will never be famous for being a writer and if he dies before then it would really suck. He writes as though he will never be able to capture the forms in nature with his pen, and he carries this cloudy doom to love and he will not feel or experience it to. Deep very deep, sad poem mortality is not a happy subject so you are prepared to be sad. I do not care about fame and fortune their was a time in my life when I did but I was arrogant young and hungry now not so much. I am old and chose to go back to school.
I do not see any humility in this poem its all about me me me I did not like this piece for that.
This is a lyric, Keats is the one speaking to the reader it has a abab rhyme, and probublly the fear of all writers.
Living Forever
The reason that this hit home for me is because I feel that everyone experiences these moments in their life when they think about losing all that is precious to them. It is hard to express in words the painful emotions that one has with these feelings because it feels like if you somehow lost everything precious to you that nothing is worth living for in the first place. I feel like Keats does a terrific job of summarizing this feeling (through his personal feelings) in a sonnet.
"Thou wast not born for death"
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
John Keats Prompt
Because I won't be in class on Thursday, I am not going to give you a specific prompt or list of prompts to respond to. I want to leave it open this time. Please write something insightful about one of the poems or several of them. You might relate Keats's work to what we have read so far, or you might apply the lines to your own experience, or you might go another way entirely. It's up to you. I only have one request: please write something interesting and thoughtful. :)
Have a great week.
Coketown in 2011
three hundred years in thirty
My grandmother was born in 1938 in Cherokee, NC. Her family had no electricity and water came from a hand-pumped well. they had a horse and a hand-made cart that my great grandmother, a widow, delivered milk, eggs, and vegetables to better-off neighbors on while my grandmother cut wood and cooked for her two younger brothers.
While my great-grandmother has passed on, my grandmother, who is now in her early seventies, is a small business owner who runs her own restaurant in Kingsport, TN. She is in the bloom of health thanks to medical improvements which allowed her to undergo microscopic surgery on a shoulder injury caused by years of heavy physical work that would have been crippling to a generation before and testing and constant monitoring of blood pressure and cholesterol. She is inseparable from her cell phone, which she uses to keep up with family that was too far away to hear from more than once a year or so in her youth, and she uses a laptop connected to her home computer to keep her profit and overhead on track. On a good day she runs out of some food stuff and can make a quick car trip to Sam's club and pick up safe, hygienically sound ingredients until her delivery arrives by truck. She keeps up with the latest advances in restaurant safety at special classes.
This is change on the order of what was seen in Victoria's reign. Railways then equal private vehicle ownership now. Universal compulsory education has its like in the availability of community colleges and vocational-tech schools funded to be available to the children of even the poverty stricken, or even the parents of those families. The telegraph, widely available printing press, and intercontinental cable can be likened to the Internet, cellular service, and cable news television. We are truly living "the life of three hundred years in thirty."
Media for the Masses
“The most significant development in publishing from the point of view of literary culture was the growth of the periodical.” (pg 993) The Industrial Revolution brought about many changes especially with the printing press. With a more readily available and cheaper way of producing literature, the exchange of ideas and knowledge could be had by any one. And in our time the same could be said about the Internet. It is open to all. And everyone can read and or comment on anything their hearts desire. As with the advent of publishing, the Internet has opened more opportunities for the free exchange of ideas. For example protests are becoming more organized through the use of social networks. Especially with the use of Smart phones, they are more able to mobilize large groups with the press of a button. Logistical data is just a Tweet or a Facebook update away. These technologies put the ability, even more so today, to act in the hands of everyday folks.
Just as in the Victorian Age with the printing press, the New Millennium technological advances are used by the masses to spread the ideals of each of those time periods. Granted it happens in the blink of an eye now. Both of these time periods are filled with people questioning the ideals of the “status quo,” trying to indoctrinate others to what they see wrong with society at large or to engage them into thinking about their situation or the plight of others. The only difference between then and now is that now our conversations are instantaneous rather than taking months for someone to write and publish their retort. Both technological advances provided an open forum for the exchange of different viewpoints and ideals. And in both cases the public at large has accepted this exchange with open arms.
The Cup Cake Factory
Monday, February 14, 2011
Can the Victorian Age be linked to today?
During Queen Victoria’s reign, numerous changes took place including the Industrial Revolution and overall social reform. Moreover, this was a time of technological, political, socioeconomic, and religious reformation. It was also a period of great literature with authors such as Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens. Not to mention, page 980 states “Changes in the reproduction of visual images aided in making her the icon she became” which is yet another reason why Queen Victoria is quickly identified with a time of transformation.
Next, some American’s would quickly link Obama’s presidency to “change” especially since this was his slogan and enforced the idea throughout his entire campaign. First and foremost, Obama is a democrat which can be argued as a modest or an immense change for the White House since it had been ran by a republican for the last eight years. Next Obama can be associated with change in our country since he has vowed to cut taxes, end the war in Iraq, and attempt to break America’s dependence on Mideast oil. Not to mention, in his first 100 days of office he began to repeal and revoke policies that are identified with the Bush administration as a form of change. Finally, Obama played a major role in the health care reformation in the United States in 2010 as we all probably know.
Ultimately, Obama has not brought about an immense reformation like in the Victorian age, nor do I mean to bring about a debate on politics (and whether Obama has actually made a difference in our country), but I think one could easily unite the two periods (and their leaders) together under the idea of “change.” Lastly, I just realized that the two time periods are similar because not everyone (in the Victorian age and now) sees the multitude of “change” or “progress” as a good thing.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Prompt for The Victorian Age
The reading you are doing for Tuesday sets the stage for what was a very tumultuous time in British history. Industrial and scientific "progress" (I put this word in quotation marks because not everyone saw the changes as a good thing) meant that the whole face of Britain was changing at incredible speed, and British imperialism and colonization meant that the empire was spreading not just across Europe but across the entire globe. Many of the conflicts, tensions, debates, and questions that arose during Victoria's reign are similar to questions that have arisen in our own time. For Tuesday, then, I would like you to pick one topic or theme that is introduced in the reading and then find a contemporary parallel. Please be specific both in your selection from the reading (use a page number) and in your example. In other words, avoid being abstract; don't just speak in generalities about "change" and "lots of things."
For every rhyme, there is a reason.
Immortalization is impossible..even for the "King of Kings."
Ozymandias: Why speak in such a way?
effect of agelessness.
Prideful Ozymandias
Shelly’s poem “Ozymandias” is written from an interesting perspective. The speaker of the poem is not the one who saw the crumbling statue of the king in person. I think she starts the poem like this so she can illustrate how word about the statue goes down the line. First it talks about the traveler, then to the sculptor that made the statue of King Ozymandias, then to the King himself, and lastly to the king’s people. The point is that his people are no longer there and neither is his land. The only thing left of him is his crumbling statue and the boastful words that were written with it. No one pays any attention to the broken statue that was once, obviously a very long time ago, a mighty king nor to the words that used to be of importance to the entire king’s people. None of that really matters to the world around the statue anymore.
Legacy of Time
Shelley uses a third person point of view in the telling of the story of Ozymandias as way showing how far the “King of Kings” has fallen. The lines, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” (Lines 10&11) in conjunction with the speaker’s telling of the story are the extremes of the poem. The words etched on the pedestal are filled with, pride, and ego. While the “traveller” tells the story of this broken statue of a nameless king lying in the sand that no one has heard of. The statue is one way that Ozymandias beats his chest for all to see how powerful he is. But the “traveller” shows us another side, the lost and forgotten great king an oddity from the past. The moral of Ozymandias (the Greek name for Ramses II) is that it doesn’t matter who you are that eventually time will erode away your mark left on the world. No matter how great or not so great one is we are all the same in the end. Eventually our legacy will be covered by the sands of time. Maybe one day to be found again and looked upon as some kind of curiosity of a past long forgotten.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Importance of Unimportance
"I met a traveller from an antique land.."
Third hand of the story
We change as the wind blows
This is a poem written as a Hey you know what? it is a poem of thought about the make up of human beings, who we are and what we do everyday, and how we change in a spicific moment in a given day, which is a gift. How we react with everything not just nature itself but human nature as a whole. When we wake up it is a new day and the only thing that is going to bring me to a negative moment a BAD day is me. I can mutate and I can breeze through the day with happiness and helping out when ever I am able, or I can focus on the woe of life forcing my way through it going across the grain all day long looking for that one person that will cross me, or I can drink the orange juice in the morning and mutate to the lighter side in life.
It is always the same we go to bed we wake up but the bottom line is did i open a door or hold a door for a person. The world is the same and will go on but here now why not try to mutate to the live, love and laugh side, before we know it we are our parents on the way to being our grand parents.This is a lyric poem it sings it needs to be sung and in the third stanza I think this is to poin out how easy it is to get caught up in the negative but we can mutate right out of it. The choice is mine. It is a ABAB poem through out a rhyme in every line, it tends to say that man kind is not the be all end all we are just an insignificant grand of sand on a big beach. WE CHANGE AS THE WIND BLOWS
Desiring Peace
Can it be? to live forever!
O, for the peace of the grave!
This theme is very evident in Mary Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal". And although Shelley was not immortal herself, she may very well have felt that way after outliving not only her husband, but both of her children. In the story, the man watches as his wife ages without him, and then takes care of her when she is on her deathbed, all the while wondering if he truly is immortal. And while Shelley didn't necessarily have this same experience, she may have begun to wonder herself if it were possible to be immortal, or half-immortal after outliving her children. Who, after experiencing that would not be jealous of the dead? As in the story, the man cries out, "Death! mysterious, ill-visaged friend of weak humanity!" Instead of learning so much more from the world by living forever, it is only possible to learn "new forms of sadness".
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Prompts for Mary and Percy Shelley
2. Shelley might have started "Ozymandias" like this: "I am a traveller from an antique land." Why do you think Shelley frames his sonnet like he does, in the voice of someone who heard a story from someone else? Why do we get the story third hand?
3. "Ode to the West Wind" is written in terza rima. In this form, which uses 3-line stanzas, the terminal word of the middle line becomes the rhyme for the first and third lines in the subsequent stanza. The last stanza is a couplet that takes its rhymes from the terminal word of the middle line in the penultimate (next-to-last) stanza. "Ode to the West Wind" is composed in five terza rima sections. Remembering what we have discussed in class about the relationship between form and content, talk about why you think Shelley may have chosen this form. Is there something about the content that lends itself well to the inter-linking rhymes and short stanzas?
4. Mary Shelley outlived Percy by many years (after he died in a shipwreck). She also outlived two of her children. How might these events have influenced “The Mortal Immortal?” Use specific examples.
Thanks. See you on Tuesday.
Some Things Change Some Stay the Same
you've come a long way, baby-but you're not there yet
An example of the things that are not part of our lives as modern women is the need to pretend to be athletically and physically weak. Most modern marketing in the western world shows women with healthy, well developed bodies (with the admitted exception of fashion marketing, but even that has been trotted out as an example of archaic and abusive body imagery by both public and expert medical audiences). Strong, accomplishment-oriented women are now the norm in both real life and the media. This accomplishment also applies to educational norms as well in our modern age. Women in the current era, at least in western society, have recently been outstripping men in many cases in the academic world. Of course, women do not always receive equivalent pay or recognition for these accomplishments, but in general we find that this is something that our society feels that we should be working towards.
One problem that we do still see today is the unrealistic expectation put upon women to present themselves as perfectly charming and beautiful. Even in our our modern, "enlightened" American society, where women are expected to achieve physically, academically, and professionally on a par with their male counterparts, we still expect those women to be fashionable, with hair coiffed, shoes carefully chosen, and makeup flawlessly applied. We also expect that they will be attentive mothers, perfect housekeepers, and the sort of wives who add cache to their husband's career while managing social lives and charitable works of their own. This tendency to create an unrealistic image of what woman "should be" goes from one extreme to the next without ever abandoning the idea of a being who is at base, at all times, oriented toward an appearance. Try to remember the last time you saw a diet soda commercial specifically targeting a male audience, or a laundry detergent commercial. Recently we have begun to see personal hygiene products directed toward men, but where the same product aimed at a female audience would feature a woman whipping her head around to display a head of enviable hair, the male version shows a man being practically raped by a group of strange women without a hint of self control.
As I write this I am sitting here watching a special on the morning news about some supposed predilection women have for purchasing footwear. I think I have to call shenanigans on this one. While women have historically been encouraged to "cultivate a fondness for dress," I find it unlikely in the extreme that there is anything organic or natural to the kingdom fauna in women's desire to purchase shoes that throw the visual spotlight onto their reproductive faculties. More likely this is a mindless slavery to an artificially created modern archetype that was already being developed in Wollstonecraft's day of absurd corsetry and continues into our own marketing-driven visual-imagery based consumer society.
Monday, February 7, 2011
A Feminine Revolution
Not perfect....but getting better
Gothic Ancient Mariner
Saturday, February 5, 2011
We've come so far..or have we?
With that said, I felt as if Wollstonecraft’s argument about women not being independent was somewhat outdated. Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that this was an issue in the author’s lifetime and I respect her for bringing the problem to everyone’s attention. Luckily, in today’s world, women are very independent. Obviously they can vote, own property, work, and even raise children on their own.
Prior to reading Wollstonecraft’s piece I assumed her work would simply be about women’s struggles and the injustices they faced in the 18th century. Moreover, I was just expecting to read about outdated issues such as women being subservient to their husband and not allowed to vote or own property. However, some of Wollstonecraft’s arguments were surprisingly and extremely relevant to today’s time. She makes the statement “..men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers…” I feel as if this proposal is still an issue in today’s society. It appears as if women are solely judged on their looks and viewed as sexual objects more today than they have ever been. This is a dilemma because women who are viewed as sexual objects are valued for their bodies and not their minds which somehow makes them less of a human being. Ultimately, I didn’t expect such a relevant issue to be discussed in the reading.
Overall, it’s very true that women’s rights have come so far in the past 200 years. In fact, I feel lucky to live in this century where women do not have to face major inequalities like they did in Wollstonecraft’s time. But, I can’t help to feel as if some inequalities still exist. Just a few of these include women exclusively being viewed as sexual objects (as I mentioned earlier) and I recently discovered the statistic that women make seventy-five cents to every man’s dollar but that’s an argument for another day.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Prompt for "A Vindication of the Rights of Women"
For Tuesday, I would like you to think about how far we have come in the past 200+ years. Which of Wollstonecraft's arguments seem outdated? Which of them seem just as relevant, perhaps even more relevant, to our own time?
I'll see you (and copies of your explication) on Tuesday.
Coleridge and Wordsworth.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Losing Faith and a Gothic Tale
I do consider “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” to definitely be a gothic poem. Coleridge uses a fantastic story with a ghost ship navigated by “Death” and “Life in Death,” a ship being sailed by a dead crew without wind or sail, and man doomed to walk the earth as penance for the death of the “White Albatross.” But there is also an underlying religious theme. The “White Albatross” representing Christ/Christianity which leads the through the fog and mist and the crew must have faith the bird will guide them safely through this time of uncertainty. The “Ancient Mariner, “whose faith begins to waver and kills the “White Albatross,” is a representation of the doubt that people have within us. With the death of the “Albatross” the fog and mist clears as if it is an awakening to which doesn’t last long. Soon the wind stops as does the sea, “Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, / ’Twas sad as sad could be; / And we did speak only to break / The silence of the sea!” In this part of the poem the tribulations begin with the ship beginning to rot and there is no fresh water to drink. As a punishment the crew forces the “Ancient Mariner” to wear the “Albatross” around his neck which I think has a correlation with the wearing of the crucifix. And along comes a ship with the hope of redemption. The “Mariner” realizes that the ship is moving without wind or wave and once in view sees the ship for what is truly is. With “Death” at the helm and “Life in Death” at his side, the “Ancient Mariner” realizes the end is near. But the two ghosts play a game to see who will get the souls of the ship. “Death” wins the souls of the crew and “Life in Death” wins the “Ancient Mariner’s” soul. And he is therefore forced to roam the land telling the story of his digressions, which is another use of a gothic literature theme” The Wandering Jew.”
so intense. so small. so drunk.
"drunk enough on earth's liquors to relish the prospect of the knife." Lain Sinclair
Kubla Khan was pretty intense for me. I pictured huge overbearing parts of nature that leave you breathless and feeling small. As a child, I played in the mountains and on the rivers and I have felt these feelings; like I am so minuscule compared to this vast world. For instance Coleridge wrote, "measureless to man," twice and I think there was a reason for that. The rhythm and rhyme automatically make me respond to this poem because it is so lyrical and as humans we have an intrinsic nature to be attracted to that type of sound. When reading aloud to myself I got caught up in the melody of it and the scenes it portrayed placed me back into a memory of my own. I believe you could analyze Coleridge's Kubla Khan to death but the beauty of it lies in it's first read, in your natural response and the vast "Paradise" it places you in. Also, it kind of takes you into the intensity of the world because it is so mesmerizing and wondrous that you could forget about the power it holds and how it can't be controlled. I believe in this poem he's realizing how scary and intimidating it is. We're so small in this world and people want to try and destroy it or bend it to their will but the earth holds it's own weapons; this poem says a lot about that I believe but that's just my take on it. You can't get too drunk on the earth or you'll wish you hadn't.