Rotation 8, blog 1

“At North Farm” John Ashbery
-the first line is made up of iambs = iambic heptameter
-the lines are pretty long for a poem  almost like prose
-made up of two stanzas
Euphonic: “the streams run with sweetness, fattening fish”
-“that the dish of milk is set out at night”
I’m not sure if this is an understatement or if there’s a hidden meaning behind it: “hardly anything grows here” and then the next line is “yet the granaries are bursting with meal”
-the first line seems like an understatement, but I’m not positive because it seems like there is a meaning behind the line
Visual imagery: “birds darken the sky”  gives off a spooky or chilling feeling
“The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish”
“The sacks of meal piled to the rafters”
Gives an array of settings: “Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes”
 Strange that it is such a various number of settings, but I think that here the author is trying to emphasis how far this person is traveling
-no rhyme scheme
-some punctuation
-no words that need to be looked up
-even though there aren’t any challenging words in this poem, it isn’t exactly clear what the author is writing about exactly  did a good job of hiding meaning behind word choice
The last three lines in the second stanza: “That the dish of milk is set out at night, / that we think of him sometimes, / sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?”
-First line makes me think that the author is talking about a car
-then the second line makes me think this cat is dead or lost, but is still thought of sometimes
-then the last line makes me think that maybe when they think about the cat, it isn’t really that important to them sometimes, but other time they really miss the cat, which goes along with the “mixed feelings”


“The Donkey” G.K. Chesterton
Personification: “When fishes flew and forests walked”
Words that needed to be looked up for their multiple meanings: errant, parody, scourge, deride
Has an interesting rhyme scheme:
First stanza: A, A on the 2 and 4 lines  thorn, born
Second stanza: B, B on the s and 4 lines  wings, things
Third stanza: C, C on the 2 and 4 lines  will, still
Fourth stanza: D, D on the 2 and 4 lines  sweet, feet
Simile and visual imagery: “And ears like errant wings”
Shows how this person is strong: “starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb/ I keep my secret still.”
-these two lines show how even if you starve this person, if you torture them, or mock them, they don’t care
-this person won’t tell you their secret
“I am dumb” is showing how even if you do all these things to the person, your degrading them so the author is saying “I am dumb” but really the author doesn’t think this, she is just trying to show how strong she is
Hyperboles: “When fishes flew”
“…when the moon was blood”
-made up of iambs
-First line is iambic tetrameter
-made up of four stanzas
-punctuation is used at almost the end of every line
-chose diction that was more challenging than previous poem, but still had really good imagery overall



“Titanic” David R. Slavitt
This poem is pretty sarcastic
“We all go: only a few, first-class”
-making a joke about how everyone eventually does die, but only a few get to die “first- class,” as in only a few will get to die in a famous tragedy or be well known after they die
Makes dying not seem so bad after all: “We all go down, mostly/ alone. But with crowds of people, friends, servants, / well fed, with music, with lights! Ah!”
-these couple of lines adds to the joke: makes dying seem kind of fun if you’re with a group of people
-who would want to die alone, when you can die with all of these people, and then be famous afterwards
“The cries on all sides must be a comfort”  stating that even if your suffering, you know that everyone else is too so in a way it’s a comfort because you know you’re not going alone
-made up of 5 stanzas
-seems more like a story or prose when read aloud  lines are pretty long for a poem
-no words that need to be looked up
-not vague at all in the sense of what the author is talking about
-does a really good job with diction choice and using this to create the tone of the poem
Tactile imagery: “the cold/ water is anaesthetic and very quick.”
In the beginning of the poem, the author talks about if tickets were to be sold again for the same passage that the Titanic took, people would still most likely want to buy them
 This is kind of a weird assumption, but rings somewhat true
 I can definitely see people buying tickets for this
In the third stanza: “And the world, shocked, mourns, as it ought to do/ and almost never does”
-shows how the author believes that most people don’t mourn over things that are tragic
-author obviously feels that people should be more sympathetic
-the second line shows how the author also feels that people don’t really care much about others, except themselves
Overall, poem seems to be pretty sarcastic, but at the same time seems to have a cold shoulder towards the Titanic