E.+Hentschel

= We Wear The Mask = = By: Paul Laurence Dunbar =



We wear the mask!
== ==== Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872 and died on February 9, 1906 at the young age of 33. His father was an escaped slave who served in the Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and Massachusetts Colored Calvary Regiment during the Civil War and unfortunately his parents ended up being separated in 1874. He was always very involved in school and was a very intelligent young man. He was the first African-American poet to receive national recognition and really focused his writing on being an African American and hope/effort for them to achieve equality in America. ==== ==== Dunbar’s poem talks about people wearing a mask while the world and others look at you and make judgments. The main point that he makes in this poem though is “let them only see us, while we wear the mask”. The main ambiguous part of this poem comes into play when considering exactly what Dunbar meant when he says “we wear the mask”. According to information about his background he did have problems with alcohol and may be referring to his alcoholism as the “mask” that he wore. Personally I believe that this poem was meant to be interpreted through more of a racial lens. He really stressed a hope for African Americans to achieve equality in America throughout his life and I believe that the color of skin was the mask that is keeping equality from being reached. People are people but during this time some could not look past the “mask” of skin and as a result African Americans were being held back from achieving great things. ==== = =

= Desert Places = = By: Robert Frost =



To scare myself with my own desert places.
==== Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California and died on January 29, 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts. Though he is known as one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century and had many accomplishments throughout his life, he also encountered a great deal of loss when it came to his family life. Frost struggled with the death of his father around age 11 and the death of his mother nearly fifteen years later. He had been very close with his sister as a child but as he grew up their bond weakened and when she had to be institutionalized in 1920 he blamed himself. Though he married and had children, his family problems were far from over. His wife had bouts with depression and died in 1938 which was just about two years before his son committed suicide and ten years before he had to put his daughter into a mental institution as well. All of these personal tragedies account for most of the reason why a lot of his writing can seem very pessimistic in tone. ==== ==== The literal interpretation of this poem is that there is man outside looking at snow falling in an area that is completely empty except for a few shrubs. The ground is completely covered with snow that is fresh, all of the animals are hiding away in their little homes and everything around him is lonely and expressionless. Frost uses the rhyme scheme AABA and imagery to help the reader capture a full understanding of what he was trying to say. One of the ambiguous parts of this poem I thought was when he states “A blanker whiteness of benighted snow with no expression, nothing to express”. I think that he could have been talking about himself and how perhaps he doesn’t know how to express himself anymore. Throughout the poem he talks about snow and how it covers the ground leaving it to look like a huge blank area and I believe that he is alluding to how he feels inside. Frost encountered many tragic events throughout his life, all of which took a very big toll on him and I believe as a result he had a hard time keeping an identity. He says at the end “I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places”. This is the point at which I believe he lets the reader know that you can be surrounded by empty places but that cannot compare in any way to feeling empty within yourself. ====

= ** A Bird Came Down the Walk ** = = ** By: Emily Dickinson ** =

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Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 and died on May 15, 1886. She was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts and lived a very private life keeping in touch with people through letters. Two common themes found within her writing are that of immortality and death which just goes to show that she was somewhat of a morbid person in general partially due to the death of close relatives throughout her life. She was an amazing poet but unfortunately she was not recognized for it until after she had already passed away when her sister published most of her works. It is said that fewer than a dozen out of the 1800 total poems she wrote were actually published while she was alive. =====

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This poem is literally talking about someone watching a bird as it eats a worm, moves for a bug, and drinks some dew all without noticing that a person is watching it. Later the person tries to offer crumbs of food but the bird merely flies away. The entire poem itself is ambiguous in meaning because it could be interpreted that Dickinson was using the story with the bird as a metaphor for humans. There is a lot of personification and imagery in this poem along with alliteration. It is easy to see that the bird was given characteristics when she writes “A bird came down the walk”, “He drank a dew from a convenient grass, and then hopped sidewise to the wall to let a beetle pass”. By stating that the bird “came” down the walk it could be seen as comparing it to a person who walks down a sidewalk. Then when talking about him drinking the dew, she writes it so that it could be compared to a person drinking from a glass. The third instance is when she says how the bird let the beetle pass, making it seem as though this bird has some kind of manners or something. She later describes the beauty of the bird as it flies away after she tried to feed it crumbs for quite a few lines. I think that perhaps she is making it a point to compare nature and beauty in some way. Though most of her poems seemed to death with a kind of morbid idea whether it be death or something else, this poem is actually not as dark and dreary. =====

= Huswifery = = By: Edward Taylor =



That I am Clothed in Holy robes for glory. [[image:edward_taylor.jpg width="211" height="311" align="right" caption="Edward Taylor"]]
Edward Taylor was born in 1642 and died in 1729. He came from a Puritan background in England and later came to the United States in 1668. Upon coming to America, he attended Harvard for three years and later become a pastor and physician in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1671. He was very dedicated to serving the Lord and much of his time was spent on studying and learning about the Lord’s Supper. He was a very traditional writer and his main goal was to serve and honor the Lord. Most of his writings went undiscovered until Thomas Johnson found them in the Yale University Library where his grandson Ezra Stiles had placed them. “Huswifery” is one of his best known or quoted poems that he has ever written. I found this poem to be quite modernistic in nature because of its lack of ambiguity. One of the main points of modernism is the fact that they believe that there is one big truth and that it can be understood by everyone. This poem is very straight forward in meaning and I believe could even be looked at as a sort of prayer. Taylor says, “Make me oh Lord thy spinning wheel complete” which asks for guidance from God on how to be a vessel and how to serve the Lord. Taylor uses a specific rhyme scheme which I believe makes the poem even more powerful when it is read. He uses a metaphor with a spinning wheel and spool of yarn to convey his desire to be used by God to glorify his name. When reading this poem it makes me think of a particular story in the Bible that dealt with Samuel. In the NIV Bible, Samuel 3:10 says “Then Samuel said, ‘Speak for your servant is listening’”, and in the same way that Samuel called himself a servant of God Taylor’s poem is asking how to be a servant as well. Other things that came to my mind when I was trying to grasp the whole meaning of this poem were two songs, “Lord Prepare Me” and “Lord I Give You My Heart”. The first is a rather old song and the chorus of it says, “Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary pure and holy, tried and true and with thanksgiving I’ll be a living sanctuary for you”. I think this is exactly what Taylor was trying to convey when he says “And make my soul thy holy spool to be”. The second song “Lord I Give You My Heart” is a song version of a prayer asking for the “Lord, [to] have your way in me”. Though I believe “Huswifery” is modernistic in the sense that it lacks ambiguity, it goes against the thought that nothing exists beyond the physical world. This poem as a whole really reflects Edward Taylor as the religious and dedicated person he was.

= = = Grass = = By: Carl Sandburg =



==== Carl Sandburg was born January 6, 1878 and died July 22, 1967 at his home in North Carolina. During the 1920s and ‘30s he was one of the most widely read poets and two out of the three Pulitzer Prizes he won were for his poetry. He spent a lot of his time as a young man traveling and working and was a member of the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. The combination of these experiences greatly influenced both his political views and writing. “Sandburg believed that the people themselves rather than a cadre of intellectuals acting on behalf of the people, would ultimately shape their own destiny” (182). ==== ==== This poem literally talks about the grass growing over and covering up the battlegrounds where the bodies of dead soldiers were. Then at the end it talks about how in the future people will come back to those same battlegrounds years later and ask about the importance of where they are. Imagery and personification are the two poetic devices that Sandburg uses in this poem. The visual of dead bodies being piled on top of each other really creates a vivid image in the reader’s mind and the entire poem is told through the grass’s perspective as if it were a person. I believe that Sandburg was writing this poem as a result of his experiences during the Spanish American War. He was trying to illustrate exactly how things looked at the end of a day and wanted to show that even in times of death something good can begin in place. Though the fields are covered with men who lost their lives fighting, the grass covers the pain that was felt there and brings a new kind of life. When I read this poem, it makes me think of another poem that deals with battle as well. “In Flanders Fields” was written by Dr. John McCrae and though this poem is actually from the point of dead soldiers it still has a very strong influence on any reader. I believe McCrae wanted to write this poem as a way to remember those who have lost their lives fighting and to help us never forget their sacrifices. ====

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