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Week 8 Blog
Part One: Reflection
Te extended metaphor that flows through both Cozier and Wilber's poems of “Packing for the Future: Instructions” and “The Writer” lies with the battle amongst ourselves as we find ways to express our unique gifts that call us on this journey of life. Cozier highlights the variety of things that one should carry with them in life such as, “heavy socks, velvet bag, tin box, leather satchel, photograph, and a ball of string”. The purpose isn't so much utilitarian, but a reminder of being true to oneself and having the courage to face the unknown on your path less traveled. Wilbur focuses on the passion and will his daughter exhibits in expressing her thoughts and emotions onto paper through the story of the starling. The bird is caught in the room , which causes it to bang up against the walls searching for it's exit. While exhausted, bloody, frustrated and tired, the starling doesn't quit on itself and neither should Wilber's daughter. Both poems express the value of harnessing the gifts locked inside each of us that provides true happiness and beauty in the world. As Wilbur writes:
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage
Part Two: Looking Ahead
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. In 1932, she was born during the depression in Boston, Massachusetts of Austrian and German immigrants. Her father, Otto, was a professor of biology and German at Boston University and married one of his students, Aurelia, Sylvia's mother, which was 21 years younger than him. Three years later, her brother was born. Only five years later, Otto would die a week before her 8th birthday due to complications from an amputated foot from diabetes. He would miss out on Sylvia's first poem being published within the following year. This deeply effected her life and she became very distant towards her Unitarian Christian religion upbringing. In one of her last prose pieces, Plath commented that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth".
As she made her way through high school and then Smith and Newnham College, her development as a short story writer and poet flourished, but so did her depression. Her first attempt at suicide came at the age of 15. While she sought out medical help, which encompassed erroneous electric shock therapy, it was not enough to keep her from finally ending her own life in 1963. She left behind two children ages 3 and 1, and her ex-husband Ted Hughes, which was a poet in his own right. Almost 20 years later in 1982, Sylvia Plath became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for “The Collected Poems”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
One frequent remark throughout Sylvia Plath's poem “Daddy” lies with her father, Otto, amputated foot that caused his death. The following lines describe the death she felt inside from his passing and her obsession with writing:
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
The isolation caused from finding the right words to place on paper must have caused her “Achoo” syndrome. Isolation and depression becomes a deadly combination of suicidal tendencies and eventually her death. The unfortunate circumstance of having her father die just shy of seeing her gain recognition for her work is painfully revealed in the following lines:
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal.
The aspect of Sylvia's father that confused me was her lengthly description of how tormenting he could be in “Daddy”. Aspects of Nazi Germany in relation to Hitler's domination and hatred highlights Otto's persona while Sylvia places herself in a helpless victim role such as the Jews in “Dachau, Auschwitz, and Belsen”. This abusive relationship is best described in lines 47-50:
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
Even though Sylvia felt great sadness towards her father's behavior, she felt worse not having him in her life and he became the source for her suicidal tendencies and eventual death with lines 57-59:
“I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back, to you.”
Te extended metaphor that flows through both Cozier and Wilber's poems of “Packing for the Future: Instructions” and “The Writer” lies with the battle amongst ourselves as we find ways to express our unique gifts that call us on this journey of life. Cozier highlights the variety of things that one should carry with them in life such as, “heavy socks, velvet bag, tin box, leather satchel, photograph, and a ball of string”. The purpose isn't so much utilitarian, but a reminder of being true to oneself and having the courage to face the unknown on your path less traveled. Wilbur focuses on the passion and will his daughter exhibits in expressing her thoughts and emotions onto paper through the story of the starling. The bird is caught in the room , which causes it to bang up against the walls searching for it's exit. While exhausted, bloody, frustrated and tired, the starling doesn't quit on itself and neither should Wilber's daughter. Both poems express the value of harnessing the gifts locked inside each of us that provides true happiness and beauty in the world. As Wilbur writes:
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage
Part Two: Looking Ahead
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. In 1932, she was born during the depression in Boston, Massachusetts of Austrian and German immigrants. Her father, Otto, was a professor of biology and German at Boston University and married one of his students, Aurelia, Sylvia's mother, which was 21 years younger than him. Three years later, her brother was born. Only five years later, Otto would die a week before her 8th birthday due to complications from an amputated foot from diabetes. He would miss out on Sylvia's first poem being published within the following year. This deeply effected her life and she became very distant towards her Unitarian Christian religion upbringing. In one of her last prose pieces, Plath commented that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth".
As she made her way through high school and then Smith and Newnham College, her development as a short story writer and poet flourished, but so did her depression. Her first attempt at suicide came at the age of 15. While she sought out medical help, which encompassed erroneous electric shock therapy, it was not enough to keep her from finally ending her own life in 1963. She left behind two children ages 3 and 1, and her ex-husband Ted Hughes, which was a poet in his own right. Almost 20 years later in 1982, Sylvia Plath became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for “The Collected Poems”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
One frequent remark throughout Sylvia Plath's poem “Daddy” lies with her father, Otto, amputated foot that caused his death. The following lines describe the death she felt inside from his passing and her obsession with writing:
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
The isolation caused from finding the right words to place on paper must have caused her “Achoo” syndrome. Isolation and depression becomes a deadly combination of suicidal tendencies and eventually her death. The unfortunate circumstance of having her father die just shy of seeing her gain recognition for her work is painfully revealed in the following lines:
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal.
The aspect of Sylvia's father that confused me was her lengthly description of how tormenting he could be in “Daddy”. Aspects of Nazi Germany in relation to Hitler's domination and hatred highlights Otto's persona while Sylvia places herself in a helpless victim role such as the Jews in “Dachau, Auschwitz, and Belsen”. This abusive relationship is best described in lines 47-50:
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
Even though Sylvia felt great sadness towards her father's behavior, she felt worse not having him in her life and he became the source for her suicidal tendencies and eventual death with lines 57-59:
“I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back, to you.”