Tom's Hardware > Forum > Old Man/Woman's Club > Other > Need some poetry help

Need some poetry help

Forum Old Man/Woman's Club : Other - Need some poetry help

Tom's Hardware: Over 1.4 million members in 6 different countries available to answer all your high-tech questions. Sign up now! Its free!
Ask the community Add a reply
Word :    Username :           
 
Flamethrower205   05-26-2003 at 05:37:31 AM

Ok, have to write a 5 page paper on a poem I choose, so something I know a little about is warfare, thus I chose "Fall 1961" by Robert Lowell, dealing with the construction of the Berlin Wall and the terrors of modern warfare. There are a few parts that are giving me trouble- anyone know of any criticisms on the poem/ place where they may have analyzed it (I have figured out a bunch but there are bits which don't quite click). Has anyone covered it already perhaps? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Hilbert space is a big place.

Add a reply
Sponsored Links
Register or log in to remove.
girlnamedlou   05-26-2003 at 10:19:16 AM
- 0 +

Well, being as how I love to research stuff...I thought I'd poke around. I've never read any of his work, though it sounds really worth the time to explore.

I found this <A HREF="http://www.lib.unc.edu/house/mrc/films/full.php?film_id=7886" target="_new">film</A> which sounds interesting. Maybe your library would have it or could get it through inter-library loan.

Good luck to you...
If you could send me the text for the poem I'd love to read it. :smile:

<font color=red>Ignorance never settles a question.
<b>--Benjamin Disraeli</b></font color=red>

Reply to girlnamedlou
dhlucke   05-26-2003 at 11:11:36 AM
- 0 +

My favorite poem...

Quote :

Robert Frost - Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.



<b>Is Nvidia cheating?</b>

<A HREF="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1086025,00.asp" target="_new">Extremetech says YES!</A>
<A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=9648" target="_new">Futuremark says YES!</A>

Reply to dhlucke
dhlucke   05-26-2003 at 11:12:13 AM
- 0 +

<A HREF="http://forum.poetryconnection.net/" target="_new">http://forum.poetryconnection.net/</A>

<b>Is Nvidia cheating?</b>

<A HREF="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1086025,00.asp" target="_new">Extremetech says YES!</A>
<A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=9648" target="_new">Futuremark says YES!</A>

Reply to dhlucke
camieabz   05-26-2003 at 12:31:30 PM
- 0 +

My favourite is William Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud".

Read that one on a summer evening. Lovely!

Even better...read it to a woman on a summer evening. Great Sex!!!

:lol:



<b><font color=blue>~ <A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=324&s=58e94ba84a16bedfebbf0f416d5bac48" target="_new">System Specs</A> ~<font color=blue></b> :wink:

Reply to camieabz
dhlucke   05-26-2003 at 12:34:19 PM
- 0 +

Ah! I'll have to look it up.

<b>Is Nvidia cheating?</b>

<A HREF="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1086025,00.asp" target="_new">Extremetech says YES!</A>
<A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.org/?article=9648" target="_new">Futuremark says YES!</A>

Reply to dhlucke
pike   05-26-2003 at 01:38:15 PM
- 0 +

We should start a "members poem thread" of some kind. I wrote one myself.

:)

<font color=blue>Violets are red and roses are blue but i have nothing to say so what do i do</font color=blue>

Reply to pike
pike   05-26-2003 at 01:45:24 PM
- 0 +

Ralf Waldo Emmerson:

If thou ship must sink
it is but to another sea

more...


:)

<font color=blue>Violets are red and roses are blue but i have nothing to say so what do i do</font color=blue>

Reply to pike
Flamethrower205   05-26-2003 at 06:46:23 PM
- 0 +

They had nothing sadly, this one is a hard poem to find!! I'm just scared to interpret something my way if it isn't blatantly obvious what it could mean since I see things totally different than my english teacher, and it's quite bad when you write a paper she disagrees with.....

Hilbert space is a big place.

Reply to Flamethrower205
Flamethrower205   05-26-2003 at 06:50:08 PM
- 0 +

Hehe, I carry one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's in my bag all the time- seems to be a good luck charm! Plus, half our english stuff has some sort of allusion to him (take a look at Dickinson for example- A Certain Slant of Light or perhaps Roethke's The Waking with the line shaking keeps me steady- to be unsettled is what drives us forward, and to be great is to be misunderstood).

Hilbert space is a big place.

Reply to Flamethrower205
girlnamedlou   05-26-2003 at 08:52:06 PM
- 0 +

It IS a hard one to find...hence my only contribution was the film.

Is it a long one? Can you write it out for us?

<font color=red>Ignorance never settles a question.
<b>--Benjamin Disraeli</b></font color=red>

Reply to girlnamedlou
girlnamedlou   05-26-2003 at 09:07:52 PM
- 0 +

I saw that it was written during the Cuban Missile Crisis...perhaps reading up on that would give you some insights?

<font color=red>Ignorance never settles a question.
<b>--Benjamin Disraeli</b></font color=red>

Reply to girlnamedlou
girlnamedlou   05-26-2003 at 10:45:08 PM
- 0 +

Okay...found something.
The following text can be found on <A HREF="http://www.fglaysher.com/NuclearA.htm" target="_new">THIS</A> site...which is a discussion about poetry in the nuclear age.

Quote :

Robert Lowell’s "Fall 1961" is more responsive than Rukeyser to the actuality of the threat of nuclear war. The historical background of its composition was the Berlin Crisis in late summer and early fall of that year. Lowell is, therefore, confronting, as uncharacteristic of him as it may be, an objective historical crisis that, as was widely feared, might very well have triggered a nuclear war:

All autumn, the chafe and jar
of nuclear war;
we have talked our extinction to death.
I swim like a minnow
behind my studio window.

Our end drifts nearer,
the moon lifts,
radiant with terror.
The state
is a diver under a glass bell.

The overwhelming pressure of the threat forces itself on the isolated speaker’s consciousness. The public discussion of the possibility of extinction has been too much in terms of abstractions, statistics, probabilities. Confronted with the objective threat, the individual is reduced to the small powerless figure of a minnow, which is absurdly seeking refuge from the blast wave behind the flimsiest of structures. The terrifying prospect of devastation is projected on and reflected from the moon, "while our end drifts nearer."
The powerlessness of the individual and of the mass of people is emphasized in the next stanza:

A father’s no shield
for his child.
We are like a lot of wild
spiders crying together,
but without tears.

The inability of the father to protect his child discloses the utter powerlessness of the individual to fulfill the most basic duty when faced with the devastation of nuclear war. The "wild spiders" suggest humankind’s ineffectuality and fragility before the immensely destructive force of nuclear weapons. As time runs out the "tock, tock, tock" of "the grandfather clock" marks the passing of lopsided historical time and the urgency of the crisis. Compared with the placid hopefulness of Rukeyser and Muir, Lowell’s suffering speaker offers a much more accurate mimetic representation of reality, of the stakes involved in the world outside his own mind. It is this poignant dramatization of every human relationship and facet of nature at risk that gives the poem its intensity. Most "studio windows" would be blasted out as far away as twenty miles. After the heat wave, the greatest threat to people caught in the open would be from flying debris from which almost nothing could "shield" them. One of the most common injuries at Hiroshima was lacerations from flying glass, which, because of reduced ability to ward off infection and to produce platelets, often proved fatal.



<font color=red>Ignorance never settles a question.
<b>--Benjamin Disraeli</b></font color=red>

Reply to girlnamedlou
Flamethrower205   05-27-2003 at 01:39:49 AM
- 0 +

Today I went over to a friend's house to do some video editing, and his wife has a PhD in English, so I asked her about the poem. That clock was used by magazines at the time where every time the arms race escalated, the hands came closer to midnight- the hour of doom. The spiders can be seen as creating an order for survival which is now destrubed for they are about frantically. Metaphorically a minnow he tries to take consolation in his own imagination (studio) but must look out the window and realizes that all he can do is "swim" ie he is powerless. This is later shown in the part wherethe hands of the clock seem to stay at one point, ie him trying to console himself that there is so much time till the end/ it will never come, but in fact they are moving to their extinction. This sound good to you?

Hilbert space is a big place.

Reply to Flamethrower205
Flamethrower205   05-27-2003 at 01:41:43 AM
- 0 +

Just to double check, is this clock thing true that they used it to show the upcoming doomsday?

Hilbert space is a big place.

Reply to Flamethrower205
girlnamedlou   05-27-2003 at 01:51:51 AM
- 0 +

<A HREF="http://www.thebulletin.org/clock.html" target="_new">ATOMIC CLOCK</A>


<font color=red>Ignorance never settles a question.
<b>--Benjamin Disraeli</b></font color=red>

Reply to girlnamedlou
Flamethrower205   05-27-2003 at 02:04:21 AM
- 0 +

*hugs Lou* THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!!! Now I have definite proof!

Hilbert space is a big place.

Reply to Flamethrower205
girlnamedlou   05-27-2003 at 07:29:53 AM
- 0 +

:smile:

You're welcome...good luck to you!

<font color=red>Ignorance never settles a question.
<b>--Benjamin Disraeli</b></font color=red>

Reply to girlnamedlou
Ask the community Add a reply
Tom's Hardware > Forum > Old Man/Woman's Club > Other > Need some poetry help
Go to:

There are 1259 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Forum map
Bestofmedia Forum ©
2000-2009 Bestofmedia Group
Page generated in 0.557 seconds
Please mind

You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months.
If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.

Add a reply Cancel
Sponsored links
  • Ask the community now
  • Publish
Ad
They won a badge
Join us in greeting them
How do I win badges?