miss emily is facebooking.

Name : Emily Grierson
Sex : female
Relationship status: complicated
Interested in: men

Activities: china painting and teaching young girls the art of china painting.

Interests: staying at home, visiting with my cousins, different poisons fascinate me.

Films: Nosferatu.
Books: Frankenstein, Dracula and anything by Edgar Allen Poe!

Favorite quotes: “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity”
-Edgar Allen Poe

About Me: I am quite a homebody. I don’t really much but stay at home with my servant. I
don’t have many friends, but might like a few more. I should mention that my
father died when I was younger and I have had a hard time with it, even into my
later years. Oh, and I had a fiancé, but he umm, well…he disappeared.

Wall Posts:
friend: let’s go shopping this afternoon! You never come out of the house…
Emily: well…I guess. I mean I have been meaning to go to the market and grab
some arsenic for all of those pesky rats….
friend: but I was over at your house the other day and there weren’t any rats…
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I thought that it would be fitting to put a lot of different gothic elements in Miss Emily’s facebook page. It gave the feel of the southern gothic genre that “A Rose for Emily” actually is. For her relationship status I put that it was complicated. Since she was never actually married and we know how she loved sleeping with the corpse, I decided that “complicated” summed it all up nicely. Also, for favorite films I put Nosferatu, which is a 1922 film depicting Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Dracula is the epitome of gothic literature and the film versions do amazing jobs at interpreting that gothic element into visual art. Also, the conversation is a subtle way in which Emily is saying she needs arsenic to poison rats, however she is really using it for her ex-fiancé.

a thesis...

Langston Hughes' poem Harlem, is an expression of what he believes happens to a dream that goes unaccomplished, and yet by comprising the poem with questions, he is inviting the reader to use their imagination to decide for themselves what exactly "happens to a dream deferred."

a parody involving the mundane

Thought I’d let you know

I wore your shirt
today
the one that
you said I

could not
wear because it’s your
favorite
I promise

that I will
wash it and put it
back in
your closet

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In my parody of Williams’ poem, I chose to imitate his form, including number of syllables and lack of punctuation, and also the mundane subject matter. In “This is Just to Say” we get the impression that this is a note that the speaker left for a significant other or a roommate. The parody that I constructed is very much a note that I would leave my roommate, and likewise that she would leave me. We constantly borrow each other’s clothes and, at times, we borrow things that we are not supposed to. By leaving her this note I am, hopefully, avoiding the wrath of my roommate that will eventually occur. In Williams’ poem, the speaker asks for forgiveness for eating the plums, how sincere this apology is, is open to interpretation, but the words are there. In my poem I tell my roommate that I will wash it and put it back in closet. This is to hopefully gain some points and take away from the fact that I took her favorite shirt. I do not perceive my parody as mocking Williams’ poem, but hopefully, an imitation that was assembled in a flattering way.

basic instincts.

In class we discussed whether or not Andrew Hudgins’ poem “The Wild Swans Skip School” is mocking Yeats’ poem “The Wild Swans at Coole” or not. In Hudgins’ poem, he is challenging the common romantic view that people associate with swans. He does this by breaking down all of the “fluff” that Yeats has in his poem to the basic instincts of birds. The most recognizable line in which he does this is when he says “We have mate.” In Yeats’ poem, he says that the swans are “lovers” and each has their pair. By Hudgins calling the swans “mates” instead of “lovers” as Yeats does, he makes them more animal-like and less romanticized. The swans, which are the speakers in Hudgins’ poem, are telling the audience that they are not all that they want them to be. In the end, they are just birds with basic survival instincts to “beat wings” and “have mates” and even to “fly ‘way.”

a difficult thing to endure

I have chosen to examine a couplet from Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem.”

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

The first line in the poem states “what happens to a dream differed?” giving us a clear idea of what the poem is about (postponed dreams). As we read through the rest of the poem we know that the speaker has a negative connotation towards these postponed dreams. He uses multiple questions and similies in order to leave the answer to his dream deferred question open ended and open to interpretation. In lines nine and ten, Hughes does not pose a question like throughout the rest of the poem; he gives us a suggestion of what a deferred dream could be related to. He calls it a “heavy load” that “sags.” This gave me images of high school with my fifty pound backpack dragging me down as I hiked the one hundred or so stairs to get to homeroom every morning. My backpack was a “heavy load” and was burdensome and painful and most of all obnoxious. This got me to thinking about what Hughes was trying to convey through this couplet. To me, he is saying that delayed dreams will weigh on your mind for as long as they go unaccomplished. This eventually becomes tiring and discouraging to one’s morale. It is also referring to the little voice in the back of your head saying “what-if” and reminding you of what could have been. Deferred dreams are difficult to deal with especially when they “sag like a heavy load.” Hughes is attempting to encourage us to go after our dreams because if we do not, we will forever regret it.

the duchess and dorian

The entire time I was reading “My Last Duchess “I could not help but think of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” The way in which the Duke concealed the portrait of his former wife was what first made think of Wilde’s novel. In Browning’s poem, the Duke is consumed with guilt with what he has done. He may not admit to this guilt, but it is unmistakably there. In the poem, the Duke is determined to have control. He wanted to control the conversation, just as he wanted to control his wife and when he failed to control her, he had her killed. It is the guilt of this action that causes him to hide the painting behind the curtain. We talked in class about how it is possible that the Duchess, even in her portrait form, might be controlling the Duke. I agree with this. The Duke rants on and on about her and her flirtatious ways, and in the midst of his rant he inadvertently admits to her murder. The Duchess is gone, and yet he cannot stop talking about her and what she did while she was alive. With regards to “The Picture of Dorian Gray” Dorian hid the portrait of himself while he lived a life of debauchery. All of his aging and the sins he committed showed up on the face of the portrait and not on his physical being. He hid his guilt away in the painting and never looked upon it. Of course, it all caught up with him and (spoiler alert!) he eventually looks upon it, attempts to destroy it and it, in turn, destroys him. The portrait had control of Dorian as the portrait of the Duchess has control over the Duke. Also, the way in which Dorian attempts to hide his guilt by covering the painting, is the same as the way the Duke attempts to do the same thing by covering the portrait of the Duchess.

a loss of eloquence...

I have chosen to examine lines 43-46 of "My Last Duchess"

True text:
…Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands
Then all smiles stopped all together…

In prose:
…oh sir, she smiled all of the time
Whenever I passed her she smiled, but many passed her
And received the same smile. This became frequent. I ordered it
And all of her smiles stopped all together…

Translating a poem in prose can be difficult, but it is necessary to truly appreciate the beauty of true poetic form. In Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” his use of form is exquisite. The entire poem is comprised of rhyming heroic couplets and it is in iambic pentameter. When reading the true text of the poem there is passion and feeling behind it. You can tell that Browning was trying to convey, subtlety of course, the fact that that Duke was a jealous creature and had his wife killed because of her flirtatiousness. This is the art of poetry; the play with words and the clever use of grammar and the ability to convey strong emotions and situations with the fewest words as possible. While reading the prose, the same basic idea is achieved, however, the eloquence and true art of the poem is, quite literally, lost in translation. Writing in prose is a great tool to better understand what the poet is trying to say, but it is in no way as expressive and articulate as the true text of a poem.