Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

I loved this poem. Truly. It speaks to me as a poem about the inherent rebellion of youth, as well as the inevitable understanding of mortality that accompanies growing up. The content and the form, in my opinion, both complement and contradict each other beautifully; while the poem itself is about scrappy, rebellious youths, the rhythm and rhyme of the pom is almost singsongy, with a consistent 3-syllable line structure, each its own beat. It feels smooth, casual, with lines like “we real cool”, giving it an almost conversational feel. The constant enjambment (or at least I think that’s what it is) pulls the reader through the poem, making each statement flow into the next, continuously. Each stanza descends further into debauchery, with the first describing the relatively innocent act of skipping school, and the last ending in death. The kids in the poem have seemingly adopted the “live fast, die young” philosophy, as each action leads to another. Where once they were simply rebellious, they are now delinquents, excempt from the rules of mature society. The alliteration also emphasizes words that create this narrative, with the vivid and slightly unconventional ideas like “singing sin”. The similar sounds give the phrase a lyrical feel, while also painting a picture of innocent acts perverted by rebellious youth. 

On another, slightly related note, I was struck by the tone of the piece. More specifically, the ways in which the speakers are quintessentially inhabiting the space of young-adulthood. They play at adulthood, mimicking what they perceive to be “grownup”. They “lurk late” and “strike straight”. They engage in activities that make them feel mature, when in reality, the entire poem speaks of an almost childlike immaturity. It seems as though they are in an elaborate game of pretend, with the light tone of the poem betraying how they don’t quite grasp the consequences of their actions— that is, until the very end. The last line is a sinister resolution, a dark and ominous realization of what is to come.

This poem is heartbreaking, to put it simply. There’s something so deeply profound and human about the experience of becoming aware of death, realizing that life cannot go on forever. Even though, at surface level, the poem is discussing the change of seasons, from spring to autumn, it is clear from the very beginning that the words represent a far deeper meaning. The speaker, coming from a place of age, experience, and wisdom, addresses “a young child” who is identified as “Margaret”. The girl herself represents a sort of spring, full of youth and blooming. She later becomes directly referenced in the place of spring, a conceit that develops as the poem progresses. The speaker describes the sadness of autumn, although to that point, I found it noteworthy that Hopkins, a British poet, uses the word “fall” rather than the more British “autumn”. Perhaps this is because the word connects to the larger theme, death, referencing the inevitable fall of each human life that the poem explores. It also explores the hardness that comes with age, telling young Margaret that “as the heart grows older/ It will come to such sights colder/ By and by, nor spare a sigh” (5-7). With each passing year, the heart will become more and more jaded as it begins to encounter loss, until it is completely unphased by it. In fact, the speaker ends the poem on an eternally tragic note, saying, “It ís the blight man was born for,/ It is Margaret you mourn for” (14-15). This is the encapsulating message of the poem— humankind was born to die, and it is youth, spring, that everyone yearns for.

On a separate note, the meter wholeheartedly confused me. I read somewhere that it was “sprung” meter, (which I thought was a funny play on the word spring, but probably wasn’t the intention of the author) and I couldn’t quite understand how the meter would be used in the poem. There weren’t any distinct, fixed rules, making the meter pretty hard to follow.

In his poem “Tintern Abbey”, Wordsworth uses one technical device I found particularly intriguing: he switches the places of people and the natural world, so that nature is personified and humanity is, effectively, nature-ized. Wordsworth describes himself as wandering “like a cloud,” and describes the field of daffodils as a dancing crowd of people. This switch, personification and de-personification, implies a kind of interchangeability; metaphors from either sphere can be applied to the other, because the human mind and the natural world are fundamentally entwined. Wordsworth describes the air as “living” and himself as “like a roe/ bound[ing] o’er the mountains”. Each adjective enforces this spirit of connectedness, and ultimately, I think, makes the poem flow conceptually. Even the poem’s title, “Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” reflects nature’s integration into the fabric of the human world— Wordsworth composes the lines adjacent to ruins of an abbey, a place of human residence and worship, ultimately overtaken by nature. The natural world has filled the spaces which humans once occupied, with the abbey becoming a sort of perfect metaphor for the connectedness between nature, humanity, and the reverent spirit with which Wordsworth connects the two.

At its core, “When I Consider How my Light is Spent” is quite a heartbreaking poem. In it John Milton, its author and narrator, grapples with questions of fate, faith, and purpose. As he slowly begins to lose his sight, he wonders whether he will be able to continue writing, and realizes the major capacity in which his life is about to change. The poem is something of a diary entry; it’s Milton’s inner monologue brought to life on the page. He uses the Petrarchan sonnet form, writing in an ABBAABBACDECDE rhyme scheme, and faithfully following the rhythm of iambic pentameter, except where most Petrarchan sonnets write about love, Milton writes about loss. One could argue, though, that it is somewhat of a love letter; the poem is littered with devotional language. God, the object of Milton’s ultimate devotion, features prominently throughout. At the risk of following a tangentially unrelated thread, the connection between sight and God, or light and sight, reminded me of something I had been learning about in my Art History class, of all places. We discussed the visual language of devotional images, and how to see was, in essence, to be touching with one’s eyes. When putting that concept in this context, Milton’s loss becomes even more profound— not only does he lose his sight but ultimately his ability to connect to God. As he loses his sight, he also must question his capacity to write, a skill he values both for its craft and devotional function. 

Of all our readings, I was most interested in the poem I Have a Young Sister. I was unsure of what specific type of meter the poem was written in, but I thought it could potentially be a trochaic meter, given when I read it out loud, I instinctively read it with stress on the first syllable and no stress on the subsequent syllable. As I read it, the overarching theme of this poem was the loss and regaining of innocence through youth. In multiple instances, the author uses the imagery of the natural world to convey a sense of hardening through maturity— a cherry developing its pit, a dove growing its bones, a briar becoming encased in bark. Each thing is delicate, sweet, and pure. As they and the author experience the world’s harshness, they become hardened and irreversibly changed in tangible and intangible ways. Yet, the poem describes a sort of idealism, the blissful ignorance of youth in the form of the “young sister.” She sees a world of cherries without pits, doves without bones, and briars without bark. In her naiveté, she encourages the narrator, her older sibling, to engage with and perceive things the way she does. To the narrator, it seems impossible. They cannot fathom life without its markings of unpleasantness. As the poem later points out, there is a state in which this vulnerability can exist, a quality that connects the sister to the dove without bones, the cherry without a pit, and the briar without bark: youth.