Writing Prompt On So I Said I am Erza

The poem So I said I am Erza as written by A.R. Ammons is an interesting poem both in the way it utilizes the repetition of the line I am Ezra as well as the way the imagery is utilized in a way that makes the theme clearer in a sense. The poem is about a women named Ezra who seems to be of old age, this is based on her saying that her name had been much too repeated, which could also be interpreted to mean hat many people are or have been talking about her. Ezra is standing on the beach and shouting her name into the wind as it whipped around her and as the waves crashed along the shore. A big theme within the poem is the act of movement, the whipping of the wind, turning of the sea, leaping over swells. Another theme is the noise being created by the howling wind and the ocean, both of which help to swallow up the sound of Ezra shouting her name into the sky. She even describes herself as drifting with the wind and like the sand splashing along the dunes. All of this gives a very somber impression while at the same time portrays Ezra as someone who is enjoying the moment, almost as though this is the first time in a while that she has been alive.

Writing Prompt On Family Mattress

The poem Family Mattress by Rodney Jones talks about a mattress that has been within his family for generations. He describes it as a ship and uses a lot of metaphor with that to describe both the journey that the mattress has gone on as well as the way it is laid up now in the attic, additionally you gain a bit more of an idea about the mattresses importance from the way he compares it to a ship. Both the mattress and the ship share the idea within the poem of carrying him away, this is why he ends up making the comparison. This idea of him drifting away on it is not odd considering we say things like drifting to sleep. The third stanza of the poem has to do with the members of his family like his grandparents who had used the mattress before him, it is not completely clear to me if they died on the mattress but they did most likely die since he says that the weight of the mattress is the weight of their weightlessness, a phrase that seems to refer to them having died and as such no longer having weight since they have either rotted away or been cremate or perhaps the body is no longer the person once it dies. Regardless the poem is reflecting on the sentimental worth of the mattress as the author seems to be thinking of replacing it.

Writing Prompt On Another Lullaby for Insomniacs

Another Lullaby for Insomniacs is a poem written by A.E. Stallings which utilizes the pantoums form of poetry which works very well with this one since the repetition of changing lines help to create a sense of progression within the poem while still helping to hold together the roots that the poem present in the beginning. The poem is about sleep, describes as a women, who refuses to lay with you in bed the entire night. The poem indicates that the subject of the poem or rater the sleeper loves or needs sleep and yet he cannot make her stay with him because she is constantly going off wither other lover. This is probably an expression of the idea that insomniacs feel like sleep loves other people more than it loves them, an easy correlation to make with the poem and which helps to explain the idea of her never lingering or staying with you. The poem also uses a lot of imagery in describing the women who symbolizes sleep such as the moon-cold shoulder, distance in her eyes, no ring on her finger in order to give the impression of an aloof and distant women who isnt tied down but most importantly isnt died down to the sleeper.

Writing Prompt On Mad Girls Love Song

This poem by Sylvia Plath has a very dark and sullen tone to it that is one of the first things that is noticeable. The second thing that pops out is the line (I think I made you up inside my head.) which is repeated several time, the parenthesis around the lines are what cause them to stick out so much since they are not the most normal thing with poems. The repetition of those lines and the pattern of repetition within the poem help show that it is written in the villanelles form of poetry. This particular poem seems to be about insanity (as the title hints at) but is more specifically about a man that the narrator had fallen in love with but because of her insanity she is not sure if he is real or not. A common idea is that when she closes her eyes everything stops, that unless she is perceiving it, it doesnt exist. This is kinda like the existential philosophy that Berkley talks about where the perception of the thing is what allows for it to be in existence. The actual existence of the man whom she loves is never fully explained though, there is the implication that so much time has passed since she last saw him that even she isnt sure if he was every real at all or not. A scary thought, which the ones you care about dont exist except for in your mind.

Writing Prompt on Be Drunk

This prose piece by Charles Baudelaire tells the reader that one should be always drunk, that you should always be intoxicated and he even uses the phrase continually drunk he goes on to say that the real question of life is though about what to be drunk on, that a person is able to be drunk on things other than liquor. He specifically mentions poetry and virtue as things one

could be drunk on but the implication is that you can be drunk on anything that you want. The reason he gives for this is that you have to be drunk into order not to be the slaves of time, a rather interesting idea. It is unclear of if he means that it is a waste of time not to be drunk or if he believes the more likely case that being drunk wastes time and makes it so that it doesnt matter to us- we wont be staring at the clock thinking of when the hand will strike the final hour of our day. In the authors mind, time is something that threatens to destroy men, it is almost crippling. Though the exact nature in how time can do damage to you is still unclear.

Writing Prompt on Sestina dInverno

The poem seems to center on the city of Rochester, a place described as bleak and where fantasies dont survive. The description of the city is a very sullen and negative one, you imagine a place where little to no life can exist. This sestina utilizes the form in order to create a more orderly method of presenting the poem, however I do not feel as though it plays a big part in the development or rhythm of the poem as a whole. This could be partly due to the fact that the words are not utilized in any surprising ways but rather are more simply used to further the explanation of the desolate place that is Rochester. The city is implied to not have always been as bad as it is now, the author even says that at one point it was a utopian dream and hints at the idea that it was the city of Carthage since those are apparently the salt mines of the city. Carthage was the name of the city that opposed and almost destroyed the Roman Empire but was later defeated and had the very land salted so that no life could every life their again. Another key idea presented is that Rochester gets a lot of snow, snow that ends up being a bad thing. It seems as though this is a reference to the act of whitewashing or erasing things such as differences or ideas from existence but that could be a faulty extrapolation.

Writing Prompt on TheWaking

The poem, much like the title hints at, is about waking. However, this is of course used to symbolize something else, a new awareness of sorts. The author seems to be talking about his awareness of fate, of the future and of what is to come for him. However he is not charging head long into it either, this isnt because he is afraid though. He specifically says that he is not afraid, that he cannot be afraid which brings the interesting question of if he cannot be afraid because it is just something not to fear or if he cant be afraid because he isnt supposed to be afraid. A big part of the poem though is that this type of waking isnt something to be rushed, that it happens with time but that you can take it slow as you go where you have to go. The author uses two lines as refrains throughout the poem and each utilization of these lines take on a slightly different meaning, however the general idea of a person waking up towards something remains the same.

The tone of this poem is a lot slower than many others, not sad though but more contemplative. Further the poem has a lot to do with internal struggle and individual dilemmas, this is shown through the multiple utilizations of the word I throughout the poem. The entire first stanza starts with an I at the beginning. Overall the poem, while short, leaves a lasting and lingering impression and this is partly due to the fact that it is a very abstract poem that is not easy to make sense of in every case or instance.