EDWARD!

I saved the best for last! "Edward." Although this poem is creepy and weird and hard to understand, I found it the most interesting by far. I'm going to start with his mother. When I first glanced at the poem, I felt empathy for his mother. I thought that Edward was an arrogant, violent jerk and his poor mother had to put up with such a terrible son. This is a perfect example of me being incapable of understanding poetry. However, after looking back at the poetry, I realized his mom is the bad guy!! Or...the bad girl? Yeah. Anyway, I understand that his mother convinced him to kill his father so that she may have possession of the property and money, but I do not understand why the son agreed to doing it. My best guess is that he was raised to believe his Father was some sort of monster, or bad guy who made his mother's life miserable. But at the same time, he addresses his father as "dear" and his mother as only "mother." Therefore, he must have had some sort of hint before killing his father that it was wrong. I think I understand majority of the poem, but this little detail still confuses me! Can somebody help me out?

Delight in Disorder

The diction used in the poem, "Delight in Disorder," helped create the image the speaker was trying to portray. In the poem, the speaker describes imperfections and disorder to be perfect to them. This opinion is clear in the line, "a cuff neglected, and thereby ribbons to flow confusedly" in which the speaker says that disorder in the woman's clothes pleases him. The broken rhyme scheme in the poem also represents disorder, and strays away from repetiton. Two words I did not know: Wantonness, meaning careless or reckless, and stomacher, richly ornamented garment, also add to the image of a woman dressed in a disorderly manner.

In many cases, this poem can represent the modern world. Disorder is a common theme in the lives of many people today. The style in women's clothing is often disheveled, and the chaotic, busy lives of adults and teenagers represents disorder as well.

Lonely Hearts

In my opinion, the tone in "Lonely Hearts" is satirical. When I read the poem, I found that the speaker was making fun of those who send their expectations for a partner into a newspaper to be published for the entire town. The speaker addressed the expectations as though they were desperate, and too picky for a match to actually exist. Also, most of the people that were described in the poem would be labeled as the "outcasts" of society, further satirizing those who set the expectations. Throughout the poem, the speaker uses repetition and rhyme to show desperation, too.

This poem is different than any other poem that I have ever read. Although satire is often found in poems, I have never seen a poet use a newspaper ad as the format for their work. I really enjoyed the change for once; every poem we have studied is beginning to run together in my mind.

Different views of immortality

In "Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead," the father's view of immortality differs from the speaker's view of immortality. In the poem, the father is not dead; however, the speaker writes the elegy to their Father to tell him that they are not ready for him to leave because he is afraid he will never see him again. This is where the variation in immortality beliefs can be seen. The father thinks that he will meet his son again in the afterlife and "wrap [the speaker] in his arms and laugh, the way he did when [the speaker] arrived on earth." However, the speaker believes that there is no afterlife, and that after the Father dies, he will never see him again. In the line "I can't just say good-bye as cheerfully as if he were embarking on a trip to make my later trip go well," the speaker makes it apparent that he is being pessimistic about his father's view on death. He is not convinced that they will see each other again. Therefore, this poem can be seen as an elegy because it is the speaker's way of coping with his thoughts of his father's death.