Well, i have chosen to not write about Turn of the Screw, because it is not too interesting to me. Instead, i will be extending on the topic of poetry. A lot of you might be sick of poetry because it's sooo hard to understand. personally, i choose to believe the opposite. i LOVE poetry because of it's abstract nature. And also you can't really be wrong (unless you're just making something up that makes absolutely no sense at all). The essay we had to write last Friday was on the poem, Icarus. I looked online, and couldn't find the poem we read in class, although there were many about Icarus. If Ms. Arko would be so kind as to post a link to the poem along with my blog that would be quite helpful :)
When i was first reading this poem, i had to read it many times to think about what the main point of my essay would be. After i thought about it for a while, i began to focus on the rhetorical question embedded within the poem: What was he doing aging in a suburban community" (or something along those lines). This made me parallel the question to another: What was he doing flying so close to the sun? i mean, he made wings out of feathers and wax and told specifically told to NOT fly close to the sun by his father. I believe this question satirizes the earlier question within the poem. when i was writing my analysis, the words flowed together so nicely, and it was almost as if i wasn't even writing an analysis; it was more like i was writing a story of my own. I realize that's somewhat of a confusing concept, and i didn't know how to word it, but that's the best I've got. After turning in my paper and the bell rang, i talked to some people, and i said, "Man that seemed really easy to understand..." and others would say they had no clue what they wrote down. so maybe it's just me. i have no clue. maybe "abstract thinking" is just my niche. What did others focus their essays on? i'd be interested in knowing if you remember!
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Here is the poem. :)
ReplyDelete"Icarus" - Edward Field
Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.
“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?
And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,
Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.
The most prominent thing I focused on in my essay was the satire of of the suburban community. I really liked how Edward Field came forth with it; Icarus, having survived being plunged into the sea, wishes to be dead instead of serving various communities and riding commuter trains like every Joe Schmoe. I think that it highlights the mundane realities that so many people experience every day, and that it can even drive a Greek hero to be suicidal.
ReplyDeleteI agree on both counts; Turn of the Screw sucked and Icarus was a great poem to read. In fact, I was reading the poem for about half the period before I even started writing because I liked it so much. The poem made a strong point about the constricting nature of modern life. A man whose only crime was having the audacity to dream is crippled by the reality of his humdrum life.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read over the poem, the meaning of it didn't jump out right away. In fact, I even perused through the stanzas at least two more times before my mind finally started to wrap around the meaning. I interpreted Icarus as a modern man who had the chance to go all out on a dream of his, but instead backed out. Now he wishes that he had kept going with his dream, even if it killed him because then he wouldn't be living his banal life.
ReplyDeleteCadie Engelking
ReplyDeleteI don't see what's so bad about poetry either. In poetry the possibilities of meanings are endless and up to your own imagination if you please, or you could choose to deeply analyze the poem to try to understand what the author had in mind. But i guess it may depend on someone's personality if they really get poetry and enjoy it. Some enjoy the lengthy novels (not me :p ) and others love poetry. For me its easier to break down and make sense of. For my essay i focused on the irony of the 'continuance' of Iracus' life because that's what really stuck out for me, and i think that's important in poetry is to focus on what it means to you.
I agree with Conner, I like poetry beacause its abstract and there is always lot of different ideas to write about when doing an analysis. However, Icaurs gave me some trouble. I think it may be the fact that i have class 8th hour and am kind of burnt out by then.
ReplyDeleteI think the aspect I focused on the most was how this man's dreams were crushed by flying too close to his "sun". I went into detail about how this person went from being highly successful to "ageing in the suburbs". I inferred that the guy was somewhere on the highroad, and was on his way to success, then someone told him about his "sun", which ultimately led to his downfall.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm not usually much of a fan of poetry, I really did like Icarus.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the whole concept of taking an old Greek story and adapting it to the modern day world was a really cool idea.
I personally wrote about how when we are young we all have dreams, yet it seems our society discourages these big dreams and encourages the ordinary and the average. Even at the expense of our happiness.