Poem #1 “For Your Love”:

In this poem, I only used words from the last two sentences of my chosen books (Candide and Nightwood) and last two lines from my chosen poems (Incubus, I Prize the Memory, 833). Since my overall framework discusses individuals losing their loved ones, I decided to choose words out of only two sentences from the end of a text, as a way to illuminate that during a loss of love, there are two lovers who reach the end of their relationship:

Eyes bloodshot, crying

A reservoir of tears

For your love

 

Passed upon your way

For your love

 

Roamed America

On foot

For your love

 

Your love,

A thrust of sword

Through the heart

 

We must give up,

You said.

Lost all your love

Expelled from your love

 

Lying here, crying

For your love

 

Poem #2 “Loss”:

Lastly, I created a freestyle poem as a way to end my creative piece signifying that once a person overcomes the pain from losing a loved one, a sensation of acceptance and happiness overcomes them. This sensation allows them to finally feel “free” instead of feeling confined in a cycle unbearable pain:

Your laugh echoes in my mind

Your touch lingers onto my skin

Your love was nothing but toxic flames

Burning up from within

 

The intoxication of your love

Has left me clinging on for more

Just as you surrendered and disappeared

Leaving my mind and heart to go to war

 

As I sit here and mourn

Over the absence of your beautiful body

I know one night this tragic voyage

Will finally allow me to breathe, to embody.

The Notebook of a Return to Native Land seems to be a difficult read to me in general because the author relates ideas that I never would expect to be related. For instance, one part that confused me was when it stated, “I declare my crimes and that there is nothing to say in my defense. Dances. Idols. An apostate. I too” (Cesaire 19). The reason why this confused me was because random words were thrown together and I could not find the relevance and the correlation between these words and what the speaker was saying. In this quote, the speaker talks about how s/he admits that s/he committed crimes and there is nothing s/he can say to defend his/herself. Afterwards, the speaker says words such as “dances” “idols” and “apostate” which I could not understand. The notion of comparing ideas together reminded me of the Surrealism Introduction text by Andre Breton since he stated that if the relation between two realities is distant yet accurate, the image will be stronger. However, for me, it was difficult to create a strong image in mind since I could not relate the ideas “dance” “idols” and “apostate”. I had to reread it a couple of times and look up the word “apostate” to slightly understand the sentence better. Once I realized that an “apostate” is one who rejects a religious belief, I put it into context and interpreted the speaker to not really believe in religion or stopped believing in religion after realizing all the sins committed. Another way to deal with the difficult of the passage was to read the sentence that comes before or after. I read the sentence that comes after: “I have assassinated God with my laziness with my words with my gestures with my obscene songs” (Cesaire 19). Through this, I guessed that the idols might refer to a type of God that this person might formally worship since s/he has now “killed” God with his/her sins. As a result, I interpreted these sentences as the speaker having committed so many sins and realizing it, that s/he decide to renounce the idea of religion in general.

Once a poem is written, one person in particular is not responsible for it. Instead, any reader that comes across the poem is now responsible, which includes the writer itself. As a reader, it is his/her responsibility to analyze the poem and give his/her own insight on it. Individuals all come from diverse backgrounds and have different mentalities. Thus, there is no “correct” interpretation of a poem. Howe mentions this herself in her commentary when she states that, “Emily Dickinson suggests that the language of the heart has quite another grammar” (13). The language of the heart refers to one’s own thoughts, emotions and interpretations. It is referred to as another language because people translate their own thoughts into ideas similar to how people translate languages. Essentially, this is what happens when a writer is establishing a poem or when a reader is interpreting a poem. In both scenarios, these individuals are responsible for their own judgement. Howe clarifies this idea once more by asserting, “My voice formed from my life belongs to no one else” (13). Her ideas were influenced by the events and people in her life and only she is responsible for them. As a result, when it comes to analyzing a poem, the reader has a duty to give his/her intake on it because s/he is responsible for his/her judgement.

There are various differences between satire and parody. According to Oxford Dictionaries, satire can be defined as the use of humor, irony or ridicule to criticize people’s stupidity. Parody, on the other hand, can be defined as an exaggerated imitation of an artist’s style. The main distinction between these two is that a parody is more of an imitative work while satire uses humor to shine a light on the flaws of mankind. While a parody focuses on bringing humor to the audience, satire does more than that in an effort to improve humanity.

A contemporary example of satire would be in an episode of Simpsons when Homer becomes an astronaut and travels to another planet. As the spaceship is traveling away from the Earth, Homer stares at his home planet in awe saying that “It’s beautiful” and that it’s the “Giver of life”. Right after he says this, he pulls out a bag of chips that he “smuggled abroad”. Once he opens the bag of chips, all the crumbs scatter around and put the equipment in danger. As a way to resolve this problem, he eats up all the chips with pride. This is an appropriate example of satire because the director uses humor to address a serious issue: obesity. Homer is a symbol of a typical American figure that disregards obesity to consume unhealthy food. Obesity continues to dominate American culture while Americans continue to ignore it. A contemporary example of parody would be Shrek. In this movie, there are several scenes that prove Shrek is a parody. For instance, in one scene Fionna sings to the birds which imitates Disney’s film “Snow White” because Snow White herself would sing to animals. Lastly, many fairy tale characters show up to Shrek’s house and all converse with one another in a humorous way. Thus, there are significant distinctions between satire and parody even though they both use humor to communicate to the audience.