A Study of Reading Habits

A Study of Reading Habits
-Philip Larkin

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark
The woman I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
the hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.


This poem strikes me for several reasons. Philip Larkin's time period, 1919-1985, doesn't come to mind as the time when phrases like "crap" and "dude" were used. So I don't know if the meanings are somehow perceived differently back then compared to present day.

My favorite part of the poem is when he says "the dude who lets the girl down before the hero arrives." Larkin is generalizing so many works of literature here in this phrase and it makes me wonder if he is generalizing the rest of his examples as well. The transition between when the narrator used to read with awesome adventures and now when the stories are all starting to sound the same really took me as a surprise. However, I can relate to the narrator by saying that books used to be filled with stories and adventures, but then we grew up and so did our books.

"A Study of Reading Habits" kind of pulls the first part and second part together. As we age our reading habits change because the literature changes and so does our lives. The last line stumps me though. The narrator used to believe in books, but now he doesn't seem to care about them. Is he upset that literature is not the same for him anymore or does he think that all books are filled with pointless stories. Its hard for me to believe the latter because he used to have such adventures with books.

Acquainted with the Night

Acquainted with the Night

-Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain - and back in the rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchmen 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-by;

And further still at an unearthly height

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been acquainted with the night.

I love this poem for several reasons. The imagery used makes me feel like I'm out walking the streets at night with Robert Frost. Night is also my favorite time of the day, so that makes this poem enjoyable to read.

The style Frost uses to describe the night kept me guessing as to what he actually means. "I have walked out in rain - and back in rain." Is he saying that even when it is raining, he still enjoys the night or is he saying that it is always raining so he constantly walks in it? But after thinking about the poem as a whole, I was able to figure most of the poem. When he walks past a watchmen hiding his eyes, he means that he walked by a police officer of some sorts and did not care to explain why he was out at that time.

Frost was an American poet, but this poem makes me think of old London. The "luminary clock against the sky" makes me imagine Big Ben. It rests against the skyline as the source of time in the streets of London. Also, the reference to the watchmen reminds me of british soldiers. Maybe I am just confusing my revolutionary soldiers though. 

Night holds a beauty that only be discovered by going out and seeing it for yourself. It's more than just the lack of light; its the stars and moon, the night-crawlers and hidden details, and the mystery. Night is mysterious to us because we live during the day and sleep at night. However, I think Frost is saying that he lives at night, therefore he is acquainted with it.

A Chinese Bowl

A Chinese Bowl

-Katha Pollitt

Plucked from a junk shop

chipped celadon

shadow of a swallow's wing

or cast by venetian blinds

on tinted legal pads

one summer Saturday

in 1957.

Absorbed at his big desk

my father works on briefs.

The little Royal makes

its satisfying clocks

stamping an inky nimbus

around each thick black letter

with cutout moons for "O"s

curled up on the floor,

I'm writing, too: "Bean Soup

and Rice," a play about

a poor girl in Kyoto

and the treasure-finding rabbit

who saves her home. Fluorescent 

light spills cleanly down

on the Danish-modern couch

and metal cabinet

which hides no folder labelled

"blacklist" or "Party business"

or "drink" or "mother's death."

I think, This is happiness,

right here, right now, these

walls striped green and gray,

shadow and sun, dust motes

stirring the still air

and a feeling gathers, heavy

as rain about to fall,

part love, part connection,

part inner solitude

where is that room, those gray-

green thin-lined

scribbled papers

littering the floor?

How did

I move so far away,

just living day by day,

that now all rooms seem stange,

the years all error?

Bowl,

what could

I drink from you,

clear green tea

or iron-bitter water

that would renew

my fallen life?


This poem strikes me as something that I could imagine myself writing five years from now. Of course mine would not be exactly the same story line, but I can definitely relate to this poem. The narrator had grown comfortable in the home she grew up in with her father. She explains what her home was like before she left and then she says she wishes she could go back to then.
A part of the poem that sticks out to me is when the narrator explains what is not stored in the file cabinets. The expressions of "blacklist," "Party business," and "drink" could be anyone's educated guess as to what they mean. I would like to say that they refer to the father's occupation and personal life, but I cannot find any support from the rest of the text that agrees. However, the expression "mother's death" surly refers to the narrator's mother dying. What I find interesting about this is that it is referred to something that is not in the filing cabinet. Could that be saying that it is something that is out-of-sight-out-of-mind or is meant to be out in the open and not locked away in a filing cabinet. To me, these expressions seem like things that are kept in a box for a reason and act as they are forgotten.
A Chinese Bowl can obviously act as a bowl that the narrator picked up and has consistently used at home and away from home. I saw the Chinese bowl as something more than just an empty bowl, I saw it as an item that the narrator uses to connect back to home. She can take her bowl and use it as an escape from her new life and be transported to her life at home. She became so used to her life at home with her Chinese bowl, when she left, she had to rely on items that would remind her of home. 
Another thing I noticed throughout this poem was the repetition of the colors of green and gray. The author uses it to describe the walls of her home, the color of paper on the floor, and the type of liquid being held in the Chinese bowl. Are the colors being used as symbols for something else, or are they just being used repetitively? Either way, they definitely have some significance to the poem. Maybe they are the colors or the bowl.

Inoculation

Inoculation
-Susan Donnelly 

Cotton Mather studied small pox for a while,
instead of sin. Boston was rife with it.
Not being ill himself, thank Providence,
but one day asking his slave, Onesimus,
if he'd ever had the pox. To which Onesimus replied,
"Yes and No." Not insubordinate
or anything of the kind, but playful, or perhaps
musing, as one saying to another:


"Consider how a man
can take inside all manner of disease
and still survive."


Then, graciously, when Mather asked again:


My mother bore me in the southern wild.
She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived
to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave.




I chose to reflect on this poem because I will be presenting it on Wednesday, and poems always make more sense to me when I blog about them. It took me multiple readings before I even began to understand this poem. The structure confused me along with the syntax. This was the only way I was able to make sense of Donnelly's poem-

Knowing that Cotton Mather was a puritanical minister in the mid 1600s and 1700s, the first sentence involving sin makes sense. "Thank Providence" was another line that got me. I figured it was somewhat like the expression, "Thank God." Boston was full of the pox, but Providence was not, hence Mather not getting the illness. I love the way the poet describes how Onesimus' answer was meant to be heard. But I am not sure who says the second stanza. It would make sense if it was Onesimus, but the poet does not say.

Mather's question does not have a clear answer; however, when we think about what Onesimus actually says, it begins to make sense. He was born in the "southern wild" and he grew up with different illnesses all around him compared to the upbringing of Mather. Mather most likely grew up in luxury with doctors with herbal remedies and sicknesses being scarce. Onesimus "[took] inside all manner of disease and still survive[d]." He was in contact with illnesses as a young child and grew immune to most of them. So Onesimus possibly could not get smallpox once with Mather because he had already been exposed to it.

Something that stands out to me in this poem is the attitudes of the men towards each other. Onesimus does not come right out and answer Mather's question. Wouldn't most slaves at the time be afraid of their masters and just say, "I cannot get smallpox?" Also, when Onesimus does not give Mather a clear answer at first, Mather does not get upset. He "graciously" just asks again. What does that say about the two men's characters? Does it say anything about the time period? Or am I just turning a drop of water into an ocean?