Week #8.
Reflection:
All three authors extended the metaphor of how a person or child develops through the tests of life. Experiencing is how we grow and mistakes and troubles are just ways for us to learn.
In "Miracle" by Harry Thurston, the narrator talks about how his young daughter wanting to pick a flower and he tells her not too. A toddler cannot understand how a flower can turn into a fruit yet because they haven't seen it happen. The daughter sees a flower and innocently wants to pick it. Confused when told not to, the father wonders if he has done anything wrong and realizes that there is beauty in a flower in itself. It has its own value that is worth acknowledging for. At the end the father is "awed by the miracle of what really happens." Just like the miracle of a flower turning into a strawberry, a young child can mature and ripe in " a few short weeks". The author is trying to point out that a child will learn and the parent does not have to protect them or teach them everything. Sometimes the easiest way to understand something is to just see for ourselves.
In "Packing for the Future" by Lorna Crozier, it describes the hardships of life that people may encounter and what objects to bring to prepare for them. Again the topic is on going through motions and experiences of life. On the journey of life, it is important to not only know where you are going but also where you came from. The narrator says to "carry that small thing you cannot leave", "the photograph that keeps you sane", "a ball of string to lead you out" in troubles. There sentences that include objects that refer to hope along the journey for example, "There may be high places you cannot go without the hope socks bring you. The way they hold you to the earth." Another one would be "Take the dream you've been having since you were a child, the one with open fields and the wind sounding." These are both encouragements to believe and hope for the best. While we walk through the hardships we will gain experience and develop character, so the narrator suggests to "leave room for sadness, leave room for another language", and perhaps to accept help from others.
In the last poem "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur, the narrator is in the house where he can hear his daughter writing a story on her typewriter. The story is the story of her life and only she can write it while the father can only wish her a "lucky passage". The father compares his daughter as a bird that was trapped in the room. He watched "through the crack of the door" the bird trying to free itself, "batter[ing] against the brilliance, drop like a glove to the hard floor". They waited for "the [bird's] wits to try it again and their "spirits rose" when he realized she could make it on her own. Parents often "forget" that their children have grown or need to grown on their own. However once they see maturity grow, they understand that everyone needs to live life for themselves.
Looking Ahead:
Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" is her angry thoughts about her father and her ex-husband and her nationality.
She was probably really afraid of her father because he was such an authority figure in her life. In the poem she said how she had trouble talking to him: "I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak."
In the poem, there is a lot of hatred towards her father as she said "[she] have had to kill [him]" but he died before she could. She also lived a very pressured life as she stars off the poem with how she has been living thirty years inside a black shoe that is tight and anxious. "poor and white, barely daring to breathe or Achoo." Later on the poem she describes how she "made a model of [her dad], a man in black with a Meinkampf look". She said "I do" howevever he turned out to be a "vampire who said he was [like her father,] and drank [her] blood for a year, seven years". She was disappointed in her father and lost all hope in men when her relationship with Ted Hughes went to pieces, therefore she wrote "If I've killed one man, I've killed two" referring to her hopelessness.
The details in the poem aren't always accurate because her father was killed when she was eight years old however the in the poem she said her father was buried when she was ten. There must be a reference to someone else that died in defeat when she was at the age of ten. I think Plath would disagree with Winterson's comment on the definition of autobiography because she did not think her life as being art, more of disgrace and disappointment, and certainly not about lies as the poetry is based on true events.
All three authors extended the metaphor of how a person or child develops through the tests of life. Experiencing is how we grow and mistakes and troubles are just ways for us to learn.
In "Miracle" by Harry Thurston, the narrator talks about how his young daughter wanting to pick a flower and he tells her not too. A toddler cannot understand how a flower can turn into a fruit yet because they haven't seen it happen. The daughter sees a flower and innocently wants to pick it. Confused when told not to, the father wonders if he has done anything wrong and realizes that there is beauty in a flower in itself. It has its own value that is worth acknowledging for. At the end the father is "awed by the miracle of what really happens." Just like the miracle of a flower turning into a strawberry, a young child can mature and ripe in " a few short weeks". The author is trying to point out that a child will learn and the parent does not have to protect them or teach them everything. Sometimes the easiest way to understand something is to just see for ourselves.
In "Packing for the Future" by Lorna Crozier, it describes the hardships of life that people may encounter and what objects to bring to prepare for them. Again the topic is on going through motions and experiences of life. On the journey of life, it is important to not only know where you are going but also where you came from. The narrator says to "carry that small thing you cannot leave", "the photograph that keeps you sane", "a ball of string to lead you out" in troubles. There sentences that include objects that refer to hope along the journey for example, "There may be high places you cannot go without the hope socks bring you. The way they hold you to the earth." Another one would be "Take the dream you've been having since you were a child, the one with open fields and the wind sounding." These are both encouragements to believe and hope for the best. While we walk through the hardships we will gain experience and develop character, so the narrator suggests to "leave room for sadness, leave room for another language", and perhaps to accept help from others.
In the last poem "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur, the narrator is in the house where he can hear his daughter writing a story on her typewriter. The story is the story of her life and only she can write it while the father can only wish her a "lucky passage". The father compares his daughter as a bird that was trapped in the room. He watched "through the crack of the door" the bird trying to free itself, "batter[ing] against the brilliance, drop like a glove to the hard floor". They waited for "the [bird's] wits to try it again and their "spirits rose" when he realized she could make it on her own. Parents often "forget" that their children have grown or need to grown on their own. However once they see maturity grow, they understand that everyone needs to live life for themselves.
Looking Ahead:
Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" is her angry thoughts about her father and her ex-husband and her nationality.
She was probably really afraid of her father because he was such an authority figure in her life. In the poem she said how she had trouble talking to him: "I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak."
In the poem, there is a lot of hatred towards her father as she said "[she] have had to kill [him]" but he died before she could. She also lived a very pressured life as she stars off the poem with how she has been living thirty years inside a black shoe that is tight and anxious. "poor and white, barely daring to breathe or Achoo." Later on the poem she describes how she "made a model of [her dad], a man in black with a Meinkampf look". She said "I do" howevever he turned out to be a "vampire who said he was [like her father,] and drank [her] blood for a year, seven years". She was disappointed in her father and lost all hope in men when her relationship with Ted Hughes went to pieces, therefore she wrote "If I've killed one man, I've killed two" referring to her hopelessness.
The details in the poem aren't always accurate because her father was killed when she was eight years old however the in the poem she said her father was buried when she was ten. There must be a reference to someone else that died in defeat when she was at the age of ten. I think Plath would disagree with Winterson's comment on the definition of autobiography because she did not think her life as being art, more of disgrace and disappointment, and certainly not about lies as the poetry is based on true events.