Miss Emily's Facebook

Networks: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
Sex: Female
Hometown: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
Relationship Status: It’s Complicated
Looking For: Friendship

Activities: Not paying taxes.
Poisoning others.

Interests: Not paying taxes.
Poisoning Others

Favorite Music: Slow Jams

Favorite TV Shows: The Simpsons (makes me think of Homer)

Favorite Movies: None.

Favorite Books: Romeo and Juliet

Thesis

Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” makes use of Holocaust and Nazi imagery in order to compare her struggles with the men in her life to the struggles the Jews dealt with during Holocaust.

Parody

Our discussion in class about “The Wild Swans Skip School” parodying “The Wild Swans at Coole” by William Yeats and “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks got me thinking about the effects of parodies. Are parodies a good or a bad art form? Are parodies all in harmless fun or are they offensive? Parodies usually take the core and structure of something and then switch it around. They usually are used to poke fun of a certain subject but, at times they are used to pay tribute to something. The first person that comes to mind when I think of parodies is Weird Al. I remember a minor controversy involving a popular rapper at the time. Coolio had a song out called “Gangster Paradise” that he took very serious. The rapper put a lot of his emotions into the song and so when Weird Al parodied it into “Amish Paradise” that’s when the controversy started. Weird Al did offer an apology to Coolio and the two did end being okay with each other. There are some that view parodies as humor and some that see it as being rude and offensive. I’m one of the people that view it as comedy. I think parodies are hilarious and I love being able to see, read, and hear them.

My Bad.

My Bad

I have taken
your girl
she was at
your mom's house

I think
she was probably
waiting
for you there

My bad dude
she is amazing
so sweet
and all mine

For my parody, I chose to tell the story of me taking another person's girlfriend. I tried my best to imitate the form given by "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams. There are minor changes here and there but all in all I kept the structure in tact. The syllables in each line of my parody are the same as the syllables in the original poem. I think it's a pretty shady thing to do and I don't condone doing something like this, but I just thought it would be funny for this assignment. My poem has nothing to do with the plums mentioned in the original poem but it does relate with the theme of asking for forgiveness from someone. The speaker in the original is asking to be forgiven for eating the plums but it seems like the speaker is trying to rub it in by saying how great the plums were. In that way, it doesn't seem like a very sincere apology. I did the same thing by saying that although I'm sorry for taking his girlfriend, I'm still going to rub it in his face by saying shes amazing and sweet and that she's all mine now.

Daddy Imagery

Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" is a poem that certainly contains a great amount of imagery. Holocaust images are used to describe her father and her lover. This demonstrates her disdain for them because when you compare someone to something as grim and terrible as the Nazis and the Holocaust, it shows how much you despise something. She uses words that inscribe emotions felt when talking about the nazis such as "swastika", "panzer-man", and "facist". For this a poem, the image of someone being tied down comes to mind. The image i chose is an image of someone with their hands tied together by a rope. I chose this image because to me, it represents the idea of being controlled by someone that the poem conveys. Plath is controlled by the men in her life and her life is greatly influenced by them. Both her father and her lover have done her wrong and she hates them for doing so. The picture relates because the men in her life are tying her down and controlling her life.

Free Response

Our discussion of My Last Duchess caught my attention in class. The poem is mysterious and the question of whether or not he killed his wife kept crossing my mind. To me, the poem feels like its a murder mystery. It's gives off the vibe that he killed his wife and he's proud of it even though he really can't say much about it. I remember reading this poem in high school and it caught my attention then as well, so I was really excited about hearing more about it in class.

Poetic Form

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73”

The second quatrain in prose:
In me you see the end of a day
After the sun sets in the west
The night then comes and takes the light away
Sleeping marks the end

Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare is composed of three quatrains as well as one couplet for a total of 14 lines. There is an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. Each of the three quatrains talks about a different subject even though they all have something in common. The first quatrain describes a season coming to an end while the second and third quatrain describes a day in addition to a person’s life expiring.
The form of the sonnet is intricate to the meaning of the sonnet because transitioning from one quatrain to another enables us to see changes in the duration of something’s existence. The season is considered to be a long amount of time, while the day is relatively shorter, and then we have the fire which has the shortest existence of the three. All three quatrains deal with something that must eventually come to an end. What poetic form accomplishes that prose does not is that with poetic form, you're able to play around with words (rhyme for example) while in prose, things are stated in a more straight forward and formal way. In poetry, you don’t have to follow the rules of grammar and punctuation. You’re free to express yourself without any boundaries. When writing in prose, grammar and punctuation is a must in order maintain the structure needed.