A Study of Reading Habits by Philip Larkin

At first the title of this poem presents itself to be a boring manuscript of how to have perfect reading habits, and then the author turns it around to be a humorous poem about the different stages in a man's adolescense. The first stanza:
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size
This first stanza reminds me of the early ages of a boy. When the boy first learns to read comic books and such to escape his elementary school life and still remain cool in his comic book fantasies. The boy obviously ruins his vision from reading so much and to remain in his fantasies, which will play a bigger role later in the poem.
In the second stanza:
Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark
The woman I clubbed with sex!
I broke then up like meringues.
From this stanza it shows the middle aged man. The reading stages a teenage through early days of a man goes from another comic book-more mature of course, to books about women and sex I am guessing. The man is now learning to please a mate and by doing this it may include learning how to cook (meringues).
In the third stanza:
Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too similar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
This stanza is the elder years of a man. The midlife crisis stage. This stage is when the man forgets about stories and reading and is hopeless in his life. Instead he turns to alcohol- "Get Stewed." The midlife crisis man thinks books are a load of crap. Some may assume this is how most men end up, some do some don't.
This poem was interesting, I liked the unusual way the poem was opposite of the title.

The Writer by Richar Wilbur

This poem is about a father-daughter relationship. The poem is about the daughter’s life journey and how the father can only point her in the right direction, but can’t make her decisions for her. The narrator is the father of a girl typing a story. As the father stands outside the shut door of his daughter’s room, listening to her type, he wishes her luck on her journey. The daughter pauses suddenly and the father takes this pause as a rejection of his wish of her to do well in life, the daughter then types again and pauses again. The father at this point remembers a bird that was trapped in the room many years before. The father opened the window in a hope to get the bird out of the room, the daughter and the father both had to leave the room to prevent from scaring it. The bird eventually left the room and that is the end of the poem.
Wilbur uses three separate metaphors to enhance the poem's meaning. The first metaphor is the daughter's life journey being compared to that of a ship's voyage. The daughter's life is being compared to "heavy cargo" and the father wishes her "lucky passage" much like what sailers say when taking off on their journey. These expressions show how a journey at sea is like the journey through life. Another metaphor is “Like a chain hauled over a gunwale” which is what wilbur uses to describe the daughter typing on the type writer. The phrase is referring to when a ship sets sail and lifts up the anchor from the ocean floor, just like how the daughter metaphorically sets sail in life.
The third metaphor is in the title "The Writer". It is obvious the father is talking about the girls journey through life on her own just as she is writing the story on the type writer. The girl stops and has struggles with the story just as she will have struggles throughout her life. The bird is also referring to the girl in the poem. The father can only open the window and step back and hope the bird (girl) flies in the right direction.
That is how the poem ends, the father can only point his daughter in the right direction and wish her a "lucky passage".

The Gift by Li-Young Lee

This poem is about the relationship a boy has with his father and the boy's transitioned relationship he has with his wife. In the poem I think "The Gift" is the father's wisdom. The gift is received when the boy gives his father a kiss, and also the gift is recieved through age and growing up.
The gift is symbolized as the removal of the splinter. Through the gentle tenderness the father figure has when removing the splinter gives the boy the gift of knowledge of removing a splinter. However small that gift may be it is still a gift. When the boy grows older he thanks his father for giving him the gift of being able to remove a splinter- or the gift of wisdom, whether it is recieved through age or through the fathers kiss or both he has this gift and he shares it with his wife. The wife then also recieves a gift, the gift is not the same though it is a gift of relief not wisdom.
The part in the poem about death:
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I do not fully understand. From an educated guess I can conclude that the husband may be boasting about pulling out the splinter from his wife's hand, but I can not be certain.
The end of the poem is simply accepting the gift the boy (now husband) has recieved from his father. The boy has grown and matured. He is able to proudly identify with his giving father, rather than prolong his past identity as a receiving child.

Those Winter Sundays

I did some antecedant scenario for this poem.
Some of Robert Hayden's best known poems can me found in his collection A Ballad of Remembrance. Hayden was also the first African America to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
In my mind this poem was of realization. The narrator in the first stanzas does not realize that all the things his father does for him is out of love, he views the father as bitter and stern. The father does not ever show signs of affection and the narrator thinks that this means his father does not love him; moreover, he loves his work. The narrator then realizes in the very last stanza that the father shows his love for him through all those times he works in the cold and bitter days. The affection the father has for the narrator is shown through his actions not his words.

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High

This poem was a great analogy. The water is symbolic of the inspiration that comes from poetry. One can immerse themselves in water, just as they can immerse themselves into the "depths of poetry." If you simply look at the ocean, you cannot fully grasp the wonders that lie below the surface. However, even looking below the surface does not even give you the real experience of the ocean-you must become part of the ocean just like the speaker becomes a "part" of the ocean: "licked my fins, till they were hands again".

The speaker's initial reaction to how the students are going to react reminds me also of when you are presenting in a classroom. You hope as the teacher that students will be interested and engaged, but usually you think of the worst reactions-naturally.

This poem reminded me much of our ap literature class. When we get into the depths of the poems and when everyne expresses their opinions and veiw points its like we were at first packaged fish sticks and then we are all swimming together in the words of the poems. We all try and understand eachother's viewpoints as well which is a cool experience. Thanks for planning that Mrs. White :)
(even though it is a little scary getting in front of the class).

p.s. last week was supposed to be my "week off"
      I didnt know we were supposed to let you know until now so thanks :)

Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green.
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings,
None of them are strange
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

This poem is crazy. I don't exactly understand much of it at all. The title kinda gives away that the poem is a dream or a confusing form of imagination during the night (Ten O'Clock). I think it just shows imagination at work within a writer's mind. Its a very strange poem though I will give it that...

Unveiling

In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live
my aunts and mother,
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking besides
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad
for them, just left out a bit
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite yet ready
to learn.

-Linda Pastan

This poem struck me as though a child was thinking. When a child learns about death they don't think of it the same way as an adult, but also to recover for that a child is not given the same explanation as an adult would receive. A child usually thinks of death as a "trip" or a "journey" that the person who has passed is going on. That is what I see in this poem. The author speaks of their deaths as though they are in a secret place and the author feels "left out a bit" speaking of death as a mysterious secret. The secret is preventing the author from understanding the true concept of death. But, earlier in the poem the author talks of her previous life with these people as a child, so that is what I am confused about. If the adult is looking back on the childhood then why is the adult still viewing death as a child would? That's puzzling...