External Form (Sonnets) #2: Sonnets by Billy Collins p.1035

I love how this sonnet makes fun of the structural forms of sonnets and the "stress" over sticking to the guidelines. "All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this one just a dozen," describes the typical fourteen line stanza of a sonnet. Collins sarcastically pokes fun of the typical themes of sonnets, "launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas" and the more intricate Elizabethan sonnets that "insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines." The irony throughout "Sonnet" is that is follows the fourteen line form of a sonnet and sometimes uses a rhyme scheme (see quote above).
The typical Petrarchan or Italian form of 8-6 line sonnets, Collin's notes at the end of his sonnet. "But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved." Ironically, Collin's last six lines ending not only his own literal sonnet but, his fake love themed sonnet he mentions in his octave, "where longing and heartache will find an end." Specifically targeting the originator of the Italian form, "tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed." These final words show that although Collin's clear message showcased his cynical view on sonnet writing and style. He would ironically and intentionally end up writing a sonnet, following the very guidelines of the poets whom he criticized.

External Form (Sonnets) #1: The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus p.1027

In the first eight lines or octave of this sonnet, the Statue of Liberty or "Mother of Exile" is described. In the sonnet, the Statue of Liberty is idolized into the "beacon-hand glowing worldwide welcome" between the "twin cities frame" a.k.a. Manhattan and Brooklyn, serving as the beacon of hope and symbol of freedom to all the immigrants coming to Ellis Island. The title "The New Colossus" draws connection to the "brazen giant of Greek fame,"referring to The Colossus of Rhodes, the 100-ft statue of the sun god Helios and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. This comparison shows the great symbol of power the statue is to the many immigrants "teeming (the) shore."
In the last six lines (or sestet) the statue of liberty broadcasts the message, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to all the tired and battered immigrants entering the U.S. This poem held such a connection to the Statue of Liberty that in 1945, all fourteen lines of the poem were engraved on the main entrance of the Statue. This 8-6 sonnet form is usually called the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. Named after the early master of this structure, the Italian poet Petrarch.

External Form #2: Sow by Sylvia Plath

God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid

In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.

But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door

To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot

For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling

In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must

Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,

Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat.

But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled

Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape

A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent

Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.

The stanzas in this poem i thought were very important. They were broken up so much that when you literally say the poem aloud, you're forced to pause. This i felt Plath did on purpose, to create a type of dialogue that a person would have to themselves, when sneaking up on a mysterious barn with a "sow" or female hog inside. Another interesting part of the poem is the title "Sow". The word has different meanings other than just female pig (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sow). "rows of molds in pigs bed" and "a kind of covered shed" relates to the setting of a barn with a "vision of ancient hoghood" hidden inside. The speaker of the poem is contemplating the image of the female hog inside the barn and inflating the image with fantasies of its grandness, "a monument, prodigious in gluttonies." The tone is wonderment from the mysteries of the symbolic "sow" around the corner of the barn doors. Plath chooses to change the typically "gluttonous and greedy pig" to a symbolic form of aspiration and interest to the speaker. Overall, i felt that this poem held many different interpretations and meanings in every stanza.

External Form #1: Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.


This poem uses the terza rima rhyme scheme like in Dante's, The Divine Comedy. The repetition of the beginning stanza's "I have" creates the authors tone of true factual statements. I thought the poems title suggests night to be dark and scary simply because of the phrasing of it "Acquainted with the Night". The word "acquainted" isn't as warm and inviting as "meet" or "became bffls with" (But this is just my opinion). After reading the poem a couple times I thought Frost used the night as an allusion for his inner soul or conscience. He lists the different directions he has traveled "in the night" and his reactions, metaphorically relating these paths to different tests of his soul, that he has endured. The "night" i felt was the ultimate metaphor for the strange and unpredictable ways of life. (Also literal, the night is dark, you can't see what's coming at you and in life you can't predict what's going to happen). I liked this poem because of its use of terza rima and its overall meaning towards a wandering soul.

External Form: Adrienne Rich

Poems by Adrienne Rich
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Rich.html

Reading "Terza Rima"
http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Rich/UB/Rich-Adrienne_10_Terz-Rima_UB_10-18-00.mp3

Internal Structure #2: The Victims by Sharon Olds p.1006

In this poem, the child of a couple divorced, re-tells their feelings once their father is left with nothing. "When Mother divorced you, we were glad." This sets the tone of a bitter child with deep seeded daddy issues. Systematically the speaker lists the crumbling of their fathers life, after the divorce. First, the family, "kicked you (the father) out" and "Then you were fired, and we grinned inside." This twisted enjoyment the child feel, amplify when they think of how bad their "ex-father's" life is now.

Although this poem seems like one massive block of poetry, it is marked by structure with the reducing of the father's life. Starting with the mother kicking him out, then his divorce from his family and finally his firing from work. The layers of this unknown characters life are being peeled away, as the poem progresses. "Now I pass the bums in doorways...and I wonder who took it from them in silence until they had given it all away and had nothing left but this." Summing up the disintegration of their father's life, by relating it to a bum's empty life, shows the true emotional anger and hurt the child still feels. With the beginning of the poem being in the past, it ends with the child seemingly in present day and safely without their father.


Sharon Olds on her autobiographical poetry:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9jFc9UyAbE

Internal Structure #1: Sonrisas by Pat Mora p.1005

Mora sets the poem of Sonrisas in, "a doorway between two rooms," this interesting place symbolises to me the door to two different places/worlds to the speaker in the poem. In the first room the speaker observes uptight women in "crisp beige suits, quick beige smiles that seldom sneak into their eyes." This observations sharply constrasts to the relaxed view of people in the other room. "laughter whirls with steam from fresh tamales sh, sh, mucho ruido (a lot of noise)", this atmosphere seem happier and more comfortable in the eyes of the speaker than the first one. Relaying these observations of both rooms over the noises of coffee being brewed, "i hear quiet clicks, cups of black coffee, click, click," Mora shows an example of the descriptive structure that is the base of her poem. The step by step way the speaker wanders around two rooms, describing the people inside and their movement, is the discrusive process of organizing the observations one by one. This was interesting to me because it a very limited point of view for the reader.

I also noticed how there were only two stanzas in the poem. This I thought was interesting because the speaker is meant to be "between two rooms." The first stanza is the observation of the people in one room and the second stanza, is the speaker observing the people in the other room. The different language used in the second stanza and second room, helps make the two rooms even more of seperate worlds. Throughout these observations, the speaker seems to be comparing and contrasting both worlds.

Definition of Sonrisas:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/spanish/sonrisa">sonrisa>