blog 9 option 1

First off, I have found that I have a hard time with analyzing pretty much any piece of literature. It just isn’t my cup of tea; I find it difficult so bear with me. Also sorry for the late post, half the outlets in my house went out last night and they shut off my router so I had no Internet until this morning.

Anyways, I did enjoy the two poems by William Blake, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” both question the creator, but in different yet similar ways. In one it is happy and bright, the other poem seems aggressive and more dark and heavy.

In “The Lamb” it seems more happy and bright, the author uses happier sounding words to describe the creation of the lamb. “Gave thee clothing of delight/Softest clothing wooly bright”(“The Lamb” 5-6). The lamb is soft and wooly, and it isn’t to be feared. The creator creates this kind, mellow creature because it has the power to do so. The author shows that the creator does have a good amount of power being able to do this, “Gave thee life”(“The Lamb” 3). The creator gave the life to the lamb, so the create has an immense amount of power. The lamb can also be seen as weak though, but as we see in “The Tyger” the tiger is powerful and feared.

In “The Tyger” Blake also shows the same power from the creator. “What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”(“The Tyger” 3-4). The creator has to be powerful to be able to create this powerful, feared and respected beast the tiger is. The poem seems a bit heavier with the use of words like “fearful” and also “burning bright” as apposed to the soft words used in “The Lamb.”

What I noticed is even though they are both written by William Blake, it also seems the narrator of the poems might be the same person; In “The Tyger” it makes a referral to the lamb, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”(“The Tyger” 20). There are also similar ways the author uses the word thee; he uses if often in both poems, so maybe it is because it is supposed to be the same person talking. 

Blog 8

I found myself draw to the poem “Here a Pretty Baby Lies.” I think I found this poem interesting because these four simple lines have a lot of meaning. The fact the writer can go from making you think of a sleeping baby, to realizing the baby is actually dead. He changes your whole perspective on this poem with the last line of the poem, “Th’easy earth that covers her” (Herrick). This line shows the baby is in fact dead and not asleep in a crib, the writer just chooses these lines perfectly. I didn’t, however, care too much for Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”. I am not sure why, I just couldn’t find myself to grab a hold of it, and I had a hard time understanding it fully. It just didn’t catch my attention, the wording or maybe the subject of it. I just couldn’t find myself too interested in it. Both these poems have no rhyme scheme, with when I always thought of poetry I thought it was a must to have rhyming lines, but both poets do not use one. They just write deep poems and put themselves into their work.