James Baldwin - Introduction and Biography

                James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York City on August 2, 1924.  He spent a great deal of his life overseas.  He always remained an ideally American writer.  It didn’t matter where he was working, he never ceased to reflect on his experience as a black man in white America.  In many of his literary works and public speeches, Baldwin spoke of the pain and struggle of black Americans and the saving power of brotherhood.  He was the oldest of nine children.  He grew up in poverty, developing a troubled relationship with his strict, religious father.  As a child, he cast about for a way to escape his circumstances.  At the age of fourteen he was spending a lot of his time in libraries and had found a passion for writing.  He followed in his father’s footsteps and became a preacher in the early part of his life.  At the age of eighteen he took a job working for the New Jersey railroad.  He then worked for many years as a freelance writer, working primarily on book reviews.  In 1948 Baldwin left for Paris, where he would find enough distance from the American society to write about it.  He wrote a number of pieces which were published in various magazines.  He finished his first novel in Switzerland.  Being overseas gave him a viewpoint on his life and an isolated freedom to follow his abilities.  His travels brought him even closer to the social concerns of present America.  In the 1960’s he returned to take part in the civil rights movement.  He traveled throughout the South and he began work on an explosive work about black identity and the state of racial struggle.  He was criticized for his peacemaker stance but he remained an important figure in that struggle.  Baldwin captured much of his anger in his books but he always remained a constant advocate for universal love and friendship.  In the last ten years of his life he produced a number of important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.  He turned to teaching as a new way of connecting with the young.  At the time of his death, he had become one of the most important and vocal advocates for equal opportunity.  He died on November 30, 1987.                                           

"James Baldwin - About the Author | American Masters | PBS." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. 29 Nov. 2006. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

Sylvia Plath - Daddy

     I really enjoyed reading the poem ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath.  The poem is an emotional text which reveals the nature of the relationship with her father as well as the impact that her  father’s death has had on her.  This seems to be a confessional poem about Plath herself.  I believe that the purpose of this poem was for Plath to express her emotions as she feels abandoned by her father after his death.  The title of the poem gives away the fact that her emotional growth has been stunted and that she feels like an abandoned child.  She uses this poem to state her strong emotions towards her father’s life and death and her devastating relationship with her husband.  The speaker in the poem is Sylvia who lost her father at the age of ten and she still adored him entirely.  She slowly realizes the hounding dominance of her father.  She compares her father to a Nazi, a devil, and a vampire.  This same conflict continues with her husband which led to a very short and painful marriage.  Sylvia clarifies her feelings of anger and hatred towards her father and husband.  Most of her life is troubled through poetic devices of graphic metaphors, imagery, rhyme, tone, and simile.  Throughout this poem strong metaphors are conveyed.  Shoes and feet are a frequent image in this poem.  They take on different degrees of meaning as the poem advances.  She compares herself to a foot that “lives” in a shoe, the shoe is her father.  The use of the adjective “black” suggests the idea of death and since the shoe fits tightly around the foot one may think of a corpse in a coffin.  Plath feels protected and smothered by her father at the same time.  The image of the poem helps the reader to relate to Plath’s harsh life.  This poem is a negative, dark poem.  At the end of the poem it is clear to see that Plath was able to resolve her conflicts.  She evoked a great amount of power within the poem to the readers.  The last line of the poem shows that she has finally reached freedom.      

Benosa, Raizsa D. "Poetry Analysis: Daddy, by Sylvia Plath - Poets & Poetry - Helium." Helium - Where Knowledge Rules. 20 Oct. 2009. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

Sylvia Plath - Lady Lazarus

     The poem “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath was an interesting poem but it was very difficult to understand.  In the poem she is comparing herself to Lazarus, giving the impression that her poem is about rebirth.  Through the title of this poem, she strongly suggests that her poem is from a female’s view, which faces death and rebirth.  In line 17 of the poem, she makes a reference to Lazarus by mentioning a grave cave that is very similar to the tomb in which Lazarus was buried and resurrected from.  Throughout the entire poem, she refers to the life of a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp.  She uses a simile and a metaphor when she says, “my skin bright as a Nazi lampshade...My face featureless, fine Jew linen.”  This is an example of the history of Nazis creating lampshades from the skin of a Jew.  Another  Jew reference is made using an extended metaphor when Plath says, “A cake of soap, a wedding ring, a gold filling."  All of these personal items were confiscated while the Jews were in the concentration camps.  It is very possible that she viewed her life as a concentration camp while she was in the hospital because the doctors had control over her every move.  Through her life she was dominated by the male population.  The male population  forced her “imprisoned” role upon her.  This poem is a riot against established social institutions and power politics.  The speaker in the poem is a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn.  The only problem is that she must die first.  She is a good, plain, and practical woman.  Throughout the poem Plath refers to her own attempts at suicide.  In 1953, at the age of twenty, she attempted suicide by consuming a huge number of sleeping pills and hid herself in the cellar beneath the house for three days.  She attempted it again by driving off the road but survived the ‘accident’ yet again.  This poem expresses the agony of being reborn.  It points to her frustrated attempts at suicide.                   

                        

Rukhaya. "Poetry Analysis: Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus"" Find Health, Education, Science & Technology Articles, Reviews, How-To and Tech Tips At Bright Hub - Apply To Be A Writer Today! 14 Sept. 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

Sylvia Plath - Introduction and Biography

     Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932.  Her mother, Aurelia Schober, was master’s student at Boston University when she met Plath’s father, Otto Plath, who was her professor.  In January of 1932 they were married.  Sylvia’s father taught German and biology, with a focus on apiology, which is the study of bees.  Her father died when she was eight years old because of complications from diabetes.  Otto had been a very strict father, his authoritarian attitude and his death drastically defined her relationships and her poems.  This is seen in her graceful and legendary poem, “Daddy.”  In her youth, she was impractically driven to succeed.  From the age of 11she kept a journal and she published her poems in regional magazines and newspapers.  After graduating from high school, her first national publication was in the Christian Science Monitor in 1950.  She enrolled at Smith College in 1950.  She was an exceptional student in college.  In 1953, she went through a deep depression and attempted suicide.  In 1955, she managed to graduate summa cum laude.  Plath moved to Cambridge, England after her graduation on a Fulbright Scholarship.  She attended a party and met the English poet, Ted Hughes in the early part of 1956.  They were shortly married on June 16, 1956.  In 1957, she returned to Massachusetts and began studying with Robert Lowell.  Her first collection of poems, Colossus, was published in England in 1960.  It was then published in the United States two years later.  She returned to England and gave birth to their two children, Freida in 1960 and Nicholas Hughes in 1962.  Her husband, Ted Hughes, left Plath for Assia Gutmann Wevill.  That winter, Plath went into a deep depression.  She wrote most of the poems that would comprise her most famous book, Ariel, during these times.  Plath published a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in 1963 under the alias Victoria Lucas.  During one of the worst English winters on record, on February 11, 1963, she wrote a note to her neighbor downstairs instructing him to call the doctor, then she committed suicide using her gas oven.  Her poetry is often associated with the Confessional movement and compared to poets such as her teacher, Robert Lowell and a fellow student Anne Sexton.   Frequently, her work is singled out for the strong connection of its brutal images and its playful use of sound repetition and rhyme.  Colossus was published while she was alive.  Plath was a productive poet.  In addition to Ariel, Hughes published three other volumes of her work retrospectively, including The Collected Poems.  The Collected Poems was the recipient of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize.  Plath was the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death.          

"Sylvia Plath." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

Randall Jarrell - A Girl in a Library

          The poem ‘A Girl in a Library’ by Randall Jarrell was a difficult poem to understand.  This was a great poem once I finally got the meaning of it.  This poem is an example of an American girl, a remarkable character piece.  In this poem, Jarrell uses both his own traits and his sense of common culture.  The girl is a college student, who is blonde and athletic.  This poem exposes attitudes that conflict in its description of a female student who is following a course of study that Jarrell clearly does not believe in.  This poem is both humbling and sensitive about its subject.  The girl is half asleep in a library where the books are largely beyond her understanding.  She is characterized as having more body than mind, less than a professor as she follows her education.  Her education is a degree in home economics and physical education.  She is far from the perfect student.  Her language is common and her goals are simpleminded.  She lacks the knowledge and the involvement to understand the life that she is living.  The young girl is ridiculed by Tatyana Larina, the woman from Alexander Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin, one of Jarrell’s favorite books.  The speaker in the poem engages in a conversation with Tatyana about the student.  The speaker is studying the difference between the refined and intelligent Tatyana and the real American girl.  It is the student’s healthy physical being that leads to the double vision of the poet, which is composed of friendliness and despise.  The intangible and anonymous speaker comments “This is the waist the spirit breaks its wrist on.”  In spite of her academic boundaries, her strength and her physical energy give her qualities of the fictional.  The double vision comes in an indirect contrast of the girl and her library setting.  She is studying but she lacks wisdom.  Education is lost on her.  The poem’s conclusion shows that she has her value as a female model, a luxuriance queen.  This was a very interesting poem but it was very hard to understand.         

Randall Jarrell - Losses

        I really enjoyed reading the poem “Losses” by Randall Jarrell.  I had to read this poem several times before I actually got the meaning of it.  I think that the poem is talking about the inevitably of loss and the nonsense of war.  It seems as though there are invisible tears sprinkled on the pages in which this poem was written on.  We cannot resolve the tragic and needless loss of life.  During wars, lives are basically sacrificed for nothing.  The soldiers don’t get a ribbon or medal for the courageous work that they do.  This poem leaves us to think about the craziness of political power and the price for it.  The rough rhyme scheme ridicules this uncertainty just like the awfully ordinary and separated acts of killings.  These acts are practiced on inhuman “targets” till boredom and then carried out against “targets” not people, over “cities” who ask questions, not the people.  They say that it’s “war” not murder.  This is how war is justified so that it makes it all OK.  “Acts” of war aren’t really “acts.”  There is no “acting” in war, it is very real.  Real people have died for “acts” of war.  Nothing is in our control.  Let this poem really sink in, let it filter through you.  This poem makes me feel depressed and remote.  The subject in this poem is on young men going away to fight in the war.  I believe that the theme in this poem is death.  The deaths in the poem are only viewed as statistics which we read about in books and see on TV. This particular death in the poem was too quick and too simple, it was a life of hopes and dreams wasted.  This poem questions the meaning of life and the reason for war.  There are some people in the world who want to die and commit suicide, just giving away their life.  The men know that they are going to die but they do not want to.  Going to war is all a big risk and then suddenly a mistake is made, and a life is all gone.  These young men may die for a cause but in the end what was the point in it.                                              

Randall Jarrell - Introduction & Biography

                Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1914.  He was a United States author, writer, critic, and poet.  Jarrell attend Vanderbilt University and graduated with a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree.  While attending Vanderbilt, he was closely acquainted with the groups of poets which made up the Fugitives group.  His work is not considered to have been greatly influenced by them.  He taught at Kenyon College from 1937 to 1939, where he met John Crowe Ransom and Robert Lowell.  He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942, the same year in which his first book of poems, Blood for a Stranger, was published.  He then left the Air Corps and joined the Army where he worked as a control tower operator.  This experience provided much material for his poetry.  His reputation as a poet was established in 1945, while he was still serving in the army.  His second book, ‘Little Friend, Little Friend,’ bitterly and vividly documents  the intense fears and moral struggles of young soldiers.  His other volumes that followed were all characterized by great technical skill, empathy with the lives of others, and an almost painful sensitivity.  After the war, he accepted a teaching position at the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro.  Jarrell is also highly regarded as a superior literary author and was considered the most clever and most feared poetry critic of his generation.  Jarrell’s reputation as a poet was not fully established until 1960.  He died at the age of 51 in 1965.  He was struck by a car and killed while walking along a road in Chapel Hill near sunset.  The coroner ruled the death accidental but Jarrell had been treated for mental illness recently.  He had a previous suicide attempt, leaving the truth of the matter in doubt.   In 2004, the Metropolitan Nashville Historical Commission approved placement of a historical marker in his honor, to be placed at Hume-Fogg High School, which he attended.                                       

"Randall Jarrell - Poems and Biography by AmericanPoems.com." American Poems - YOUR Poetry Site. Web. 09 Apr. 2011.

"Randall Jarrell." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 09 Apr. 2011.