assignment 12

1. After completing your rough draft of your research paper, choose a paragraph you’d like peer feedback about. It can be a paragraph you think is unclear, or maybe one you think need more information. It’s up to you which paragraph you submit.

2. Create a discussion board thread and post

the paragraph

. In your post, include:

the paragraph
1. where the paragraph belongs in your essay – is it the intro, from the bio, from the poem analysis, or the conclusion?
2. two or three questions you have for your peers – things you’d like their feedback about.

3. Reply to one classmate and provide them with feedback on their paragraph. Do not reply to a classmate who already has a response – choose a paragraph that has not yet gotten any feedback. For this discussion board, no post should have more than one response. If someone already has a reply, choose a different person to respond to.

Surname 2

Student’s name:

University:

Course:

Date:

Poetry

I love thee is a poem that Elizabeth Barrett Browning authored. She was an optional poet that helped change the phase of poetry on the female gender way before feminism. How do I love thee is sonnet 43 adopted from “The Sonnets from the Portuguese (Spacey).” This book that contains various sonnets was published in 1850. According to Spacey’s article, Elizabeth chose this article to showcase an impression that she had translated from the Portuguese. According to Spacey’s article, Elizabeth did this to avoid any controversies resulting from her work. This love sonnet was her dedication to her husband, Robert Browning, who was also a poet.

Concerning the article being looked into by this paper related to Elizabeth’s poem, the first lie that has been adopted by the is unusual. Spacy makes this claim because he thinks it has been asked in a controversial manner (Spacey). This is a perception that is with many scholars that come across the poem. He further claims that the poet has taken upon the challenge of explaining why she loved her lover. The first three lines of the poem are;

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height.

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sigh (Browning, 1-3)

Spacey’s article has provided an in-depth analysis of the poem that scholars can use to gather more information related to the poem. It can help us understand the poem better.

Works Cited

Browning, E. Barrett, “How do I love thee?” The Sonnets From the Portuguese. 1850

Spacey, Andrew. “Analysis of Poem “How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Owlcation, 5 Feb. 2017, owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-How-Do-I-Love-Thee-by-Elizabeth-Barrett-Browning.

1- William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 23rd, 1564.
Shakespeare started learning about classical literature in school when he was 8 years old. He
started a career acting and then moved onto playwriting and wrote lots of poetry. In this article I
found about William Shakespeare it says that he was “born at the right time” because “the arts,
in general, were flourishing” at that time and I think this describes his career because he was a
very successful man and his career defiantly flourished also. In 1613 Shakespeare’s brothers
passed away and 3 years later in 1616 on his birthday, Shakespeare passed. He wrote many
poems throughout the time he lived but I picked “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day”
and the last two lines of this poem stood out to me, it says, “So long as men can breathe or
eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee” (13-14) to me it means as long as
there are people to read this poem it will live on and so will you, and I think this is really sweet
and it’s beautifully worded.

2-In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, a small boy dances with his drunk
father whose “breath could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke 1-2). The poem can be interpreted
many different ways, but is most commonly viewed as either a joyful memory of a son dancing
with his father, oblivious to the fact that his father was drunk, or as a fearful memory of a father
unaware, or very aware, that he was handling his son roughly and hurting him while they dance
around. As Bobby Fong puts it, “the elements of joy… are balanced against the elements of fear”
(80). The narrator is likely an adult version of the child who, because he’s an adult, understood
that his father was hardly present in that situation, and whether he felt fear or joy in the moment
as a child remained unnoticed by his father who was likely too wrapped up in his own waltz.

3-In Sylvia Plath’s poem “Metaphors,” the speaker states “I’m a means, a stage, a cow in a calf./.
. . Boarded the train there’s no getting off./” (7 and 9). This has implications of worthlessness
outside of being useful to her baby, and that the speaker is stuck with her child and is anxious as
to what comes next. Many take what Plath writes and paint her as a caricature for what mental
illness does to someone, and she’s even often depicted as “crazed” or spoken of in diagnostic
terms. Reading through this it seems as though the speaker is depressed and cannot find her
individuality now that she is with child.As one scholar argues, “Several critics have attempted to
“diagnose” Sylvia Plath.. .Plath dealt with mental difference throughout her life; unfortunately,
she has been canonized by many psychoanalytic critics as an “insane” woman writer, and these
discourses have contributed to her commemoration as an angsty woman author who was “freed”
of her suffering through her suicide.” (Rovito 319).

4-The poem “this is just to say” by William Carlos Williams seems to be an apology from
Williams, to presumably his wife, for eating some plums that were in an ice box. The reader

knows its an apology thanks to the last stanza (9-12) which states “forgive me they were

delicious so sweet and so cold”. The poem is a rather simple straight forward one with not a

lot to find under the surface, yet people still try to find deeper meanings within the words.

Despite their efforts, it might just be that this poem is, in fact, just a simple apology. In an

article written by Williams’ own grandaughter she states “The story in our family goes that he
had been out on an emergency call (probably delivering one of hundreds of babies), came
home, checked the fridge and helped himself to some plums. Unlike most of us, he was
considerate enough to write a note to his wife so that she wouldn’t wonder what happened to
those plums”(Sinclaire 1). which i think proves that the poem is simply an apology for eating
some plums.

5- This Is Just To Say
In William Carlos, William’s poem “ This is just to say” offers itself a note left by the poet to his beloved
wife. The speaker states, “ and which you were probably saving for breakfast.” The writer assumes that
his wife was saving the plums ‘for breakfast. Williams desires to have his poetry be embedded into
reality, with strong images, and Even though the poet’s subject is straightforward with a short poem, this
poem still has poetic devices and expression. One scholar argues that “ the poet has merely stolen the
plums his wife was probably “saving for breakfast,” but as several of Williams critics have implied, the
subtext of the poem of long half-confessed adulteries.”(49) Williams’s poem is filled with desire as he
apologizes for eating the plums, and he asks his wife for forgives as he engages in his craving.

6-In the poem “Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath, a series of metaphors and imagery takes the reader
through the nine months of pregnancy through the eyes of a woman as she describes how she
viewers herself. Karen Alkalay-Gut views the poem not only as describing pregnancy itself, but
the monthly progression the body has when she says that “A line-by-line reading of the poem
reveals the development of carefully chosen and arranged metaphors” (190). This analysis
proved interesting to me as I had not initially come to that conclusion and it further supports the
importance of the number nine throughout the poem. The images created are both common and
obscure as they range from “An elephant” to “A melon strolling on two tendrils” (Plath 2, 3).
Then, instead of focusing on what happens to just the body physically during the pregnancy, the
mental state and future is brought into question as the poem ends with “Boarded the train there’s
no getting off” (Plath 9). This thought provoking line leaves the reader with what Alkalay-Gut
describes as a feeling of “sheer helplessness” (191).