2007-09-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Part 1

After reading this poem I came to the conclusion that syntax and punctuation are extremely overrated. Even though Cummings uses erotica vocabulary such as “electric fur” I felt as though the poem illustrated a beautiful and loving relationship. The fact that the author does not abide by formal punctuation rules adds much more spunk and excitement to the poem. The lack of formal punctuation and unusual syntax illustrated a picture of there being no rules in love either. This poem constitutes a lot of imagery and was very enjoyable to read.

Part 2

The use of lowercase letters adds a deeper meaning to Cummings writing style. His form is intended to illustrate a picture in the readers mind. Looking closely at the poem I noticed the word I is never capitalized although certain words are. My interpretation of this is the author was putting less emphasis on his own feelings since the poem, or the actions in the poem are about two people, not just the speaker. Another notable characteristic in Cummings piece is his sentence breaks. One word in line one carries over into line two and the sentence ends. With this, line two can take on a whole new meaning. “body. It is so quite a new thing.” I am not exactly sure why the author chose to separate the two words you and body however, it may have been done to give line two a different meaning that it may have had with out the word there. I also found it interesting that the sentence that begins in line 5 runs on to line 14 and does not contain a period. It is evident that Cummings did not follow the traditional punctuation rules. This run on sentence may illustrate how in the heat of the moment there are no breaks during his love making episode.

2007-09-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed reading Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. It was an imaginative poem written very interestingly. The poem delivers a little bit of history in that it was titled after the emperor of the Yuan dynasty, but it is mostly scattered thoughts illustrating the author’s mental state. It is said that the author was opium induced during sleep, and the poem was inspired by a dream, hence the appropriate subtitle “A vision in a dream”. The secondary title seems more appropriate because after the second stanza Kubla Khans name is no longer mentioned and collectively the poem is not about him. It seems to be about nothing other than scattered images.

The opening descriptions in the poem describe Kubla Khan’s summer palace and the beauty, pleasures and greenery. However, as the poem continues into stanza two it encompasses a much tenser feel as Kubla begins to hear ancestral voices brining prophecies of war. It is thought that before the last stanza the author was interrupted and the remaining visions from the opium induced dream were lost. The descriptive images in the former stanzas of the poem do not have an obvious correlation to the last stanza of the poem. The last stanza which was written post interruption is a description of an Abyssinian maid singing and playing the dulcimer on Mount Abora. The only possible conclusion I can draw from this is that he is reiterating a kind of paradise that he initially spoke of in the first stanza. One contradiction I picked up on was the description of the pleasure dome. In stanza one the author describes the pleasure dome as sunless where in stanza three he calls it “a sunny pleasure-dome”. Overall, the poem is interesting in the language it uses and the images portrayed to the reader however it is a poem with countless interpretations.

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