Blog Assignment - Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing It"

After reading “Facing It’ by Yusef Komunyakaa, I felt like I made an emotional connection to the poem. I have been to the memorial multiple times, so I understand the feelings he’s trying to convey. First of all, it seems to me that the speaker is a survivor of the Vietnam War. I can’t say this is Komunyakaa because he was just a correspondent, but it is very plausible. The memorial in itself is a symbol of the war and the people who were lost in it. The fact that he was reflecting on it means that the speaker was part of the war, evidenced by the fact that he almost expected to find his own name. There is also the part where he sees another man’s name and remembers how he died. I don’t want to say that this is an anti-war poem, but I think it forces people to look at the veterans of the war a bit differently. Even though it was an unpopular war, people still died. I feel like Komunyakaa was trying to get that feeling across when he wrote this poem. I personally feel badly for the speaker of it, because he seems to be haunted by the ghosts of his past.

Analysis of Christina Rosetti's "A Birthday"

"My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me."

First of all, I think it's fair to say that there are loads of similies in this poem. In the first stanza alone, every other sentence uses the words 'like a', comparing her heart to a bird, a tree and a shell. I also think that the speaker of the poem is a female. I can't say it is the poet, but it seems like it is about a woman who has finally found someone to make her happy. I get the feeling that it is not an outside factor that has brought all of this joy to her, but some inner peace. She never makes any mention of a man (or woman), so it's difficult to place the cause of her happiness on one thing.

Please bear with me now because I'm going to deviate a little bit and talk about symbols. To be fair, I'm really really bad at analyzing poetry. I'm also just going to ignore the first stanza because I can't find any symbols in this. The first thing to catch my attention was when she talked about fleurs-de-lys. That could be one of two things: the fleurs-de-lys is the symbol of French royalty as well as a flower itself. The flower represents female virtue and spirituality. I think with the way the poem is structured and the diction (words used) works, it's fair to say that she means the flower itself. At least, that would work for the first verse since it deals a lot with nature. The second verse does seem to deal more with rich and material things. All in all, I think the poem is really Rosetti talking about how she doesn't need anyone else to make her happy but herself. I also think it is about her loving herself. But, as I said earlier, I'm really bad at analyzing poetry on my own.

The Introduction - Thoughts

While I did read the introduction, I've found that I'm really bad at analyzing poetry. In a class setting I'm okay, but I feel really out of depth on my own. I've been in AP English all throughout high school and this was the one thing I've always had trouble with. I've tried most of the steps that the introduction mentioned before, but I still feel like I'm bad at it. I guess it comes with practice, but I feel like poetry should not always be analyzed. This does not really fit well with our class theme as a whole, but analyzing poetry kind of takes the joy out of it for me. As someone who performs poetry often I understand wanting to know the meaning behind the words, but I also like to take things for how they are. I guess that's just how I am. Hopefully this class will help me get better at analyzing.

Uhm, hi?

I guess that I'm just using this for English.