Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

“The Author to Her Book” compares Bradstreet’s poems to her children, establishing a central conceit in the poem, and bringing her poems alive. She is calling her poems “her babies,” which is made significant by the fact that she’s a woman. In the collection of Bradstreet’s poems that we read this week, it seems that she supports a feminist agenda, while also embracing aspects of a traditionally feminine identity. In “The Author to Her Book,” she is both embracing and changing our perspective on feminine identity. By comparing her poems to babies, she conveys how much she cares about them. This works, because traditionally, women were supposed to stay home and nurture their children. But by personifying her poems as her babies, she is demonstrating a use for her “feminine qualities” (writing poetry) other than rearing children. The story she tells begins with Bradstreet calling these poems “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain” (line 1). She continues to describe herself in self deprecating ways, and characterizes herself as insufficient in keeping her poems safe from the world. She explains all the things she tried to do to shape her poems into something great, but how in the end they would always be flawed. I think that this speaks to the difficulties of raising children, and her self-criticism embraces her imperfections. In the last lines of the poem, Bradstreet writes “If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none; \ And for thy mother, she alas is poor, \ Which caused her thus to send thee out the door” (lines 22-24). I’m not sure what to make of Bradstreet instructing her poems to claim they had no father. Is she expressing how inadequate men are at raising children too, or is she exempting men from the responsibilities of raising children? 

When initially reading this poem, I thought it had a mournful tone to it. The speaker appeared to lament on how time was fleeting and makes the message to treasure every moment. The narration then elaborates that to treasure love, one would need make out…a lot in order to do so. The juxtaposition in lines 33-36 ( “while the youthful hue / Sits on thy skin like morning dew, / And while thy willing soul transpires / At every pore with instant fires”) stands out to me by displaying youth as an example to experience drastic decisions in life. The pores with fires is another way of basically saying making love. He feels that if people don’t express themselves, they’ll die hiding their true emotions from each other, he may have experienced or seen this happen, and wants to warn readers about the finality of death. 

At the same time, though, how he uses imagery to vividly describe love is interesting. He unapologetically describes the process of having sex as a way of making a mark in the world. It feels very similar to the way Shakespeare wrote his “Make babies!” poem, but some of the differences I feel comes to tone: Shakespeare may have filled his poem humor in describing this, but Marvell’s way of expressing it here is blunt and more urgent. It makes me wonder whether the speaker in Coy Mistress comes across as more lustful or more desperate in his message.

For this week’s blog post I’m choosing to focus on the poem When I consider how my light is spent by John Milton. With some background research I determined that Milton had gone blind before writing this poem which was key to my understanding of it and the central theme. I interpreted this poem to be Milton grappling with his loss of sight and how this affects his ability to serve god. Milton opens the poem considering how his “light is spent”. To me in this poem light is an example of conceit where the author compares his ability to see to light. Thus, when he thinks about how his “light is spent” and his time in “this dark world” Milton is pondering his loss of sight and transition into life as a blind man. One thing I noticed within this poem is that Milton’s diction helps to communicate the emotions he experiences with his loss of sight. I found the word “lodged” in line 4 to be particularly powerful as it creates this feeling of being stuck. Through his word choice Milton communicates to the reader how he feels stuck with this now useless skill of vision that is lodged within him and disruptive.

Milton continues on in the poem discussing how he wants to “serve” his “maker”, which I interpreted to be god, but wonders if he even can or is supposed to with his loss of sight. Something that I noticed that was unique in this poem was the capitalization of certain words in the middle of lines. For example Milton capitalizes the words “Soul”, “Maker”, and describes god as “Kingly”. I noticed that all of these words had a spiritual connection, so by capitalizing them Milton places emphasis on his connection to god and makes religion a central theme within the poem. Within the poem I particularly love the line “But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, ‘God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts’”. I interpreted the “murmur” that is mentioned to be the lines of poetry before this line which are Milton’s train of thought. This line makes me think that this poem is Milton thinking out loud and vocalizing his internal conflict. In the end Milton comes to the conclusion that “man’s work” and “gifts” are not what god deems important, rather it is those who listen and serve him that he appreciates.

I found that this poem carries strong themes of faith, identity, and salvation which Milton communicates particularly well through his diction and use of conceit.

This poem, using the modern meaning of coy, fits into the carpe diem style of poetry as stated in footnote 3. The “coquettishness” of the speaker’s mistress speaks to the idea that sexual attraction is very playful and almost easy in young age. That is juxtaposed later in the poem when the speaker talks about the eventual death of him and his mistress, “Thy beauty shall no more be found,” basically saying that her beauty will run out with time and age. This connects to the main idea I found in the poem, the speaker essentially telling his mistress that they need to “seize the day” and focus on making the time they have now count so as to beat the clock. The poem does so by personifying the sun in line 45–also personifying the sun do to the link between time and orbiting the sun. To paraphrase, the speaker says in the last two lines: We can not make our own time, but if we slow down and stand still in these smaller moments we can make time run differently.

I think the underlying competition between the lovers and time is really interesting in this poem. Especially paying attention to the title, that the lover which the speaker talks about is (I assume) his mistress. This creates conflict between the lovers and their ages, that they are trying to fight against their age and what time does to them and their ability to love each other as young people do. 

Finally, I also think it’s interesting that the speaker sets up the poem by saying, my love for you is infinite–but we only have a certain amount of time. He uses hyperbole and metaphor to set up this argument, comparing the end of his love to the end of ‘recorded history’. The idea of fitting infinite into a finite space really intrigues me, especially that the speaker is almost denying that his love will ever end while arguing that their relationship and her beauty will; hence the style of the poem being a message about maximizing the day/’seizing’ the day. 

John Donne, in his Holy Sonnet #10 “Death, be not proud”, explores the power and limits of a conscious, devious character called Death, as if it were an entirely separate entity than the mere experience of death. Using apostrophe as his primary figurative language device., Donne argues that both the faith and willpower of humanity and the inevitability of death are stronger than personified Death. Since this poem originates from the set of sonnets that Donne uses to establish and question his relationship with God and Christianity, it is highly likely that this poem addresses the paradoxical relationship between Christ and Death. Specifically, it addresses the moral idea that Christ’s ultimate sacrifice implies the impotence of Death himself. Donne writes, “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” (Line 9). The examples of various beings that could overpower Death shows Donne’s point that Death is weaker than it seems. In addition, in lines 10-11, Donne justifies the statement from the line before by exemplifying the ways in which death is stronger than Death: “And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell / And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well”. At this point in the poem, Donne sums up his general accusation in line 9 with examples of all the ways that each of those beings is more powerful than Death. He associates “poison, war, and sickness” (10) with the idea of humanity’s own fate and destiny destroying itself rather than being actively manipulated or controlled by Death. Likewise, his conceits to Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection imply the indubitable power of kings, and the idea of “poppy and charms can make us sleep as well” is a suggestion that desperate men committing suicide is a defeat of Death, as well. 

I thoroughly enjoy this poem because I generally love apostrophes and pieces of work that address things that cannot actually understand and probably don’t exist. For example, immediately upon finishing this poem I thought of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. In his novel, ‘Death’ narrates a solemn and fascinating story of different people throughout World War II. Compared to the poem, however, Death is portrayed as an omniscient, unwavering, and unstoppable force of fate that is God, death, and life all in one; he is the reason for everything.

Given these two extremely different ideas of the power and control that Death has over humanity, it brings up a relatively interesting discussion question: 

If Death were a conscious entity, would it be “a slave” to humanity? Or would it be entirely omniscient and formidable? Are the forces that humanity plays in its own downfall a sign of Death’s impotence or his power?