week one. post two.

So, I cannot get an indent to work. Until further notice, an asterik will indicate a new thought.

*When I first put in the link of "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound, I simply rejected the site seeing only two lines and an author's name on the entire page. After I googled the poem, I finally saw that the poem only consists of two lines- a mere fourteen words. The title alone suggests that the person in the poem was in a subway station which are known to be busy and filled with people. The words "apparition" (line 1) and "black" (line 2) usually symbolize death or something "ghastly" (line 9), a great adjective that Plath uses in her poem "Daddy" meaning pale or deathlike; while a word like "petal" brings to thought ideas of life and color; a stark juxtaposition in such short lines. From this, my understanding is that someone took time to just people watch, my favorite thing to do at the mall. Possibly thinking that everyone would look the same, this person was in shock when he or she found that each person was full of life and unique amongst a crowd that was so dull and monochromatic when looked at as a whole. Like flowers, the people in the station are different colors, shapes, and sizes although they are all on the same "bough" (line 2) or branch.

*The other poem, "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year" by Raymond Carver was a little easier to grasp because it was not as abstract. It was also easier to relate to Slyvia Plath's poem entitled "Daddy" merely because they both addressed parental disappointment. Taking apart Carver's poem stanza by stanza, I see in line one the character is somewhere different from where he grew up, maybe even coming home for the holidays since he places his time near the holiday season. Reading on, I see the father's timidity portrayed by his "sheepish grin" (line 3) of his catch illustrating his lifelong goal "to be bold" (line 10). The poem gets better with the last stanza and takes a tonal shift. Until this point, as the reader, I was not aware of the problem within the relationship of father and son. In lines 13-15, the son states "Father, I love you, yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either, and don't even know the places to fish?" With these few lines we learn that father and son are both alcholics and simply put the son is upset that his grandfather taught his father such manly things, but his father never taught him. This is the story for alot of people and it is really sad because one can tell the compassion the boy has for his father.

*The father-son relationship is strong, but one maybe even stronger is that of one of a father and his daughter. In Slyvia Plath's pefectly titled "Daddy" she mentions the same feelings of Carver's character. Plath's character felt scared of her father, more than she even feared God. These poems are all written beautifully.