Rotation 3, blog 1

Mattie Cannon
15 September 2009


Rotation 3 blog 1:
“London” William Blake

-at time has a musical flow
“In every infant’s cry of fear,/ in every voice, in every ban”
-but other times it doesn’t have much of a flow
“But most through midnight streets I hear/ how the youthful harlot’s curse”
-has ending rhymes in each stanza, but every other line rhymes
“Street and meet” “flow and woe”
-some words that you may need to look up: hapless, chartered, manacles, blights
-a fair amount of punctuation and each stanza is its own sentence
-a dark tone: “how the chimney- sweeper’s cry/ every black’ning church appalls.”
-Pretty hard to read out exactly what Blake is trying to say – not straightforward



“Root Cellar” Theodore Roethke
-longer lines than most poems
-a lot of punctuation
-metaphors: “dank as a ditch”
-“hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.”
-roots ripe as old bait”
-personification: “even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.”
-“bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark.”
-some words that might need to be looked up: rank, lolling, obscenely, chinks
-more straightforward than the poem “London” but still leaves room for interpretation
-good imagery:
“Leaf- mold, manure, lime, piled against slipper planks.”
-the tone seems to be dark because it’s describing a root cellar and how the roots are growing through crates and every nook and cranny
Dark tone: “And what a congress of stinks!/ roots ripe as old bait.”




“Neutral Tones” Thomas Hardy
-end rhymes:
“God, sod” “day, gray”
-switches from first line in the stanza rhyming with last line in the stanza to à first line in stanza rhyming with third line in stanza
-metaphors:
“Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove”
“And a grin of bitterness swept thereby/ like an ominous bird a-wing”
-starts off the poem talking about standing by a pond with grey leaves, and ends the poem around a pond with grey leaves
-some words that may need to be looked up: Chidden, rove, tedious, ominous, keen
-tone: a little sad
-makes me feel that something happened to the one he loved and that love changed him for the worse
“Since then, keen lesson that love deceives/ and wrings with wrong, that have shaped me.”
-this makes me feel as if love has shaped him for the worse instead of the better
-you tend to hear love making you a better person, but I feel he has had the opposite experience
-a fair amount of punctuation
-At the end of each stanza is a period – no periods within any of the stanzas
-Lines aren’t too short, but not too long – a good length
-has a beat when read but at some points feels more like a story