11:11, What would you wish for?

11:11 I’d never been so driven.
11:11 Would you please just listen.

To the wishes and thrills,
Through the winter night chills,
Towards the hopes and the dreams,
Where happiness beams. 

To the list I have made,
Of the things I would trade,
For the life I would treasure,
And the things I do desire.

Yet eleven you are,
A minute you are,
A minute you were.
As seconds tick, moments pass,
And 11:11 you were. 

On the surface, this poem describes the clock on my iPod Touch. The inspiration was sparked by 11:11 in the night. As a common practice, many people wait for this minute to arrive to make a wish. This poem is a personal response to the general notion of that auspicious minute in the day. Essentially, the poem is a melancholy and cynical view upon the hope fabricated behind this minute. 

The main formal feature of this poem is apostrophe. As the time strikes 11:11 PM, I begin to address the time as a person who could supposedly listen to my wishes and hopes. In the second and third stanza, the poem illustrates the desire to gain certain objects and emotions. In the last stanza, the poem expresses the hopelessness as I realize how powerless time can be. In fact, time moves on much like everything else without granting any wish. In addition, time is referred to as a person to draw a parallel to the idea of loneliness. “Yet eleven you are, / A minute you are, / A minute you were.” In these lines, the poem mourns for the reminiscent memories.  As memories have become a past tense, one can only recall the wonderful experiences but cannot relive them again. In other words, time moves on and waits for no one, and one can only watch it pass by no matter what is done. 

OED #1 Word: Rove

In “Sonnet III: To a Nightingale,” Charlotte Smith expresses praise to and envy of the nightingale for its liberty to express its emotions at will.  Smith utilizes apostrophe to make as if she is talking to the nightingale to express her longings to release her emotions freely. As symbolism, Smith idolizes the nightingale as a poet’s inspiration from nature who sings “tales[s] of tender woe” in the night. In the first two stanzas, Smith asks the nightingale of the melancholy song the bird sings every night to the moon. She specifically inquires where this “mournful melody of song” is coming from. In this way, Smith implies in her communication with the nightingale that there exists sadness within the songs that the nightingale sings and also her sympathy with the nightingale’s sadness. Furthermore, Smith illustrates an image of the nightingale leaving its nest to sing “at dewy eve…to the listening night to sing [its] fate.” Later in the last stanza of the sonnet, Smith transitions her sympathetic disposition towards a more envious attitude with the nightingale’s ability to release its emotion in song. “Now releas’d in woodlands wild to rove [,]” the nightingale is free and could “sigh and sing at liberty.”

          The word “rove” in the context of Smith’s Sonnet plays a significant role in expressing the emotional liberty that the nightingale possessed that Smith wishes she could have. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the definitions of Rove is “to travel from place to place without fixed route or destination, especially over a wide area; to wander in an aimless or unsystematic way; or to roam.”  In the sonnet, the word “rove” appears in the tenth line as "Pale Sorrow's victim wert though once among,/Tho' now releas'd in woordlands wild to rove." In this line, the nightingale is released to the wild free to roam about anywhere in nature. As mentioned in the definition, the word also carries the meaning of wandering in “an aimless or unsystematic way,” which enforces the idea in romanticism of breaking free from reasoning and societal binds. In this sonnet, Smith embraces the nightingale’s fortune to be free of social regulation and rational reasoning even when the nightingale’s song indicated melancholy. Although she is sympathetic of the sadness that traveled through the melodies of the nightingale, Smith expressed that she would rather “sigh and sing at liberty --- like [the nightingale].”

The Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this blog was to provide students a platform to develop and ultimately share ideas of their own about the topics and readings throughout this course. Branching off of that basic function, I set out to create such a blog that would set a tone and atmosphere strongly relating to the theme of this course to the best of my interpretation to encourage and provoke thoughts and opinions about the pieces of literature that we may touch upon. From the beginning of the course, Lyrical Ballads by Cooleridge and Wordsworth, set a Romanticism ideology which attempts to challenge the benefits and convention of reason. By this overarching theme, Lyrical Ballads presented an unconventional beauty that is void of reason, symmetry and social regulation. Thus, rather than using a smooth and solid color background, I chose the template with a background of an old room with torn up wallpaper. In turn, the background embraces the idea of seeing the beauty even in the imperfection of a room that has been through much damage. The background is also masked with a transparent tint of dark gray as it sets a tone of a more gloomy setting as the poetry that the course has reviewed through so far were all commentaries on the negative aspects of society.

In addition to matching the overall theme of this course, I also desired to present the significance of literature in my life. As the title suggests, individuals can be powerful with words. Of the many experiences with literature and history, I realize the power and influence words can affect our daily lives. In hopes of getting to understand the various facets of such a broad and abstract subject, I wish to put forth a reminder of how powerful words can be on the very platform that is used to spark ideas and discussion about literature’s purpose and significance.

Welcome!

Hey, I'm Michelle and welcome to my blog!