Snow man by Wallace Stevens

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens is a poem where the poet puts the reader into a frame of mind; the snow man’s.  To “regard the frost and the bough,” as a snow man would experience it is an example. Those boughs “crusted with snow” to which the poet relays the world of snow man is a cold world a regular man, but a “crusted with snow” world to a snow man.  In the next stanza, Wallace Stevens uses the word “And” to bring the reader back into snow man’s world, “have been cold a long time” describing the space and time he occupies. The poet lets the reader know it is winter and he uses another “and” to continue the existence of the snow man’s world in which he occupies.  The inescapable sound of the wind, that snow man can’t escape from.  In the world of the snow man the “blowing in the same bare place” is every present and normal. I believe that in the last stanza the poet is referring to the “listener” as the person reading the poem and then he uses the word “and” to bring the reader back into to the snow man’s world.  But really, is there is something there? The last sentence contains three negatives which equates to a negative; suggesting nothing but is there “nothing that is.”

Abe

EE Cummings: Somewhere I have never travelled

This is one of EE Cummings best love poems. Cummings never gave a title to his poems and so editors have named it by its first line. This poem is about a man who describes how inferior he is to this woman, how he makes her feel, and how in love he is with her. It appears everything the woman does, woos him. It is a very intense and romantic poem. The tenderness and intimacy of the poem is amazing. When you read the poem you can feel his emotions through words. He uses analogies effectively in expressing his feelings for her.

 "you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

        (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose"

You don’t know really know for sure if it’s Cummings in the poem. But you can tell it’s definitely from experience. It’s hard to describe love like that without ever actually falling in love. I believe the place he has never traveled to is his inner love for this woman. This is first time ever going this deep into describing his love for her. The silence is in her eyes. I think he wrote down on paper what he felt when he looked into his lovers eyes.

E.E. Cummings- The Cambridge ladies who live in furnised souls- Mayra Toscano

 The Cambridge Ladies Who live in Furnished Souls by Edward Estlin Cummings

The poem at first was a bit different rhyme scheme than his other poems but I found it to be very distinctive. He quickly attacks the way they live their life and what they are accustomed to, which was really odd to me, but I found it to be infrequent. The way he described the characters was splendid. He referred to the Cambridge ladies as upper class, spoon-fed women with no worries. Cummins quickly points out they live in “furnished souls” stating they are well off women who have everything done for them, all emotions controlled and even their minds, perhaps. I feel like he was indicating they are not very open-minded. He states they “have comfortable minds” and “do not care” they are settled and accustomed to their own lifestyle, they box themselves in. Cummins effectively directs the ideas of furnished houses and essentially filled house with spirit and soul, in reference to attack their way of life and the way of life perhaps of many in the Cambridge area. While I was reading the poem, I felt like he was directing this to not only the ladies way of thinking, but to their “comfortable minds” which show their lack of individuality. It’s very amusing the way he experiments with the poem and I found it to be one of my favorites! 

E.E. Cummings - Buffalo Bill's - Melanie J.

Buffalo Bill’s by Edward Estlin Cummings

The poem goes on to tell us from the very beginning that Buffalo Bill (American hero William Cody) is ‘defunct’.  Cummings decided not to use the word dead because maybe it would have changed his tone at the beginning of the poem. He seems to just be having a simple conversation with the reader, in opposition to the tone a person would have when telling another a person that someone has died.  He then goes on to tell us that he rode a ‘watersmooth-silver stallion.’ When I picture that animal it is not your average horse. It’s a strong and powerful animal that takes skill to control. Followed by ‘Jesus” in line 7 lets me know that he is in awe – he is astonished by Buffalo Bill. Kind of like saying “Wow” or “Amazing.” So it starts off positive. Then leading into that Buffalo Bill was ‘handsome’ and ‘blueeyed’ reassures readers even more that yes – everything you think of this man it true. He sounds loved – even after death - even by this author that probably never met Buffalo Bill.

Cummings ends with the simple question of “I want to know how do you like this man, Mister Death?” It seems very sarcastic to me. Like it’s a question he doesn’t want to know the answer to. Because who really cares what death thinks? Buffalo Bill’s death happened but he will never be forgotten.

Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Charles Wales of Babylon Revisited is haunted by the shadow of his past mistakes in a life of luxury, but pursues a brighter future for his daughter’s sake. The reader receives glimpses of both his true nature the man he used to be through the reactions of old friends and acquaintances as he returns to France. Respected and liked by most, it’s Marion’s reservations that initially leaves reason to be suspicious of Charlie. As the story progresses however, we do find Charlie to be a truly changed man. He honors his one day a drink pledge, resists sexual temptation, and strives to satisfy the role of both parents for his young daughter. He desperately attempts to re-kindle, or perhaps kindle, a father daughter relationship in fear of having missed the opportunity. Before he can do that though, he must convince Marion that he is not the man that had his daughter taken from him before being promptly placed in a sanitarium. This proves harder than he expected as he discovers her true hatred of him when she blames her sister, his wife’s, death on him. Marion perhaps out of care for Honoria, or jealousy as her husband suggests, begins to withdraw more and more until she will not see him. Her husband is the bearer of a sad conclusion as he tells Charlie that she will not relent, but in the last sentence his thoughts are of himself rather than his daughter. To me, this ending seems to leave the story’s true ending to the mind of the reader.     

Response to "Babylon Revisited"

I'm quite surprised that the author of the blog post found little drama or emotion in this particular piece, but I'd be willing to bet their opinion of the story has changed since we went over the story in class. The title alone signified to me that the main character was visiting a place that was significant to him in the past, and while I didn't immediately understand the references to the characters Charlie was naming off, I was confident that the significance of these characters would be revealed to me as the story unfolded.
   I'll admit, I'm not exactly sure if this response is a response to the initial blog post or a response to the story in general, so I'll just do my best here.
   In response to the author of the initial post, it seems that the story may have been read in haste, as many assigned readings are. I, in fact, finished the story just before class today, but I found it engrossing, and I did find myself emotionally invested in the story and the characters. The author did a fine job of letting the reader know that the main character was re-introduced to a place that had great meaning to the life of the main character, and that the people mentioned in the initial conversation were as important to Charlie's experience in Paris as the backdrop was.
  At the time this piece was written, I think the intent of the author was to convey that Charlie was employed during the economic boom just prior to the Great Depression, but the job itself, in the context of character and story development, was of little importance. What was important concerning Charlie's livelihood was that he had been successful, and that he was no longer as financially successful as he once was. His success is also symbolic, as the sympathetic narrator states "It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always remember-his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont." In this, the author is stating that while one may be financially quite well off, the money and the extravagances that accompany such success may very easily avert one's eyes to what is truly important.
   To say that Charlie had a lack of emotional response is far too broad. If I were to guess, it seems that Charlie was continuing to own up to the negative effects his excessive year-and-a-half in Paris. The poorly timed visit of Lorraine and Duncan while Charlie was trying to talk Marion into giving him custody of his daughter, Honoria, was a wonderful metaphor for your past coming back to haunt you during a moment of intense vulnerability. After finding out that his tumultuous past, and the devastating reminder of that past (the unexpected presence of Lorraine and Duncan), Charlie lost his ability to talk Marion into giving Charlie sole custody of Honoria. But, in proving that he had indeed changed his ways, denying a second drink from the bartender proved that, while Charlie was certainly momentarily devastated, his desire to be reunited with his daughter far outweighed his fondness for drink.

Response to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited"

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited," a theme I noticed was the recurrence of past situations in the main character, Charlie's, current life. In the story Charlie is a former party boy who seemed to have a bit of an untrustworthy reputation among a few of his friends. He meets and falls in love, it seems, with a girl Honoria. Throughout the story he attempts to convince his friends that he is a changed man who is capable of being trusted with Honoria and living with her. Something I noticed and thought was a little ironic was that in every section of this story there seems to be an element of his past that comes up. For example, Charlie has trouble finding a restaurant that does not remind him of past drunken meals when trying to find somewhere to take Honoria for lunch. Throughout the story the hints of his past life remind him of his former lifestyle and of his previous failed marriage with his ex wife. In my opinion the central theme of this story is the inability to run from your past. It is fairly obvious that Charlie has not faced the demons of his past. This story emphasizes the incapability to move forward with your life when you have not faced the problems of the past.