Walt Whitman is cool though

Sometimes with One I Love
Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs).
by Walt Whitman

            "Sometimes with One I Love," that's is an interesting title because it is not definite that the "One" is a human, although it is probable. The first line of the poem has several emotion words in it, "love", "rage", "fear", and "love" again. The fact that love is used twice while the others are just used once, hints towards the fact that this poem focuses more on the love aspect of this problem. Even though Whitman is saying how it makes him angry or fearful, he is still mostly saying that he loves the other person. The denotation of the word rage is: angry fury; violent anger; a fit of violent anger; violence of feeling; desire or appetite; a violent passion. And then the denotations of fear are: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc; concern or anxiety; reverential awe, especially towards God. First looking ant the word "rage", Whitman is most  likely using the 'violent passion' denotations because he is talking about having an extreme unreturned emotion for someone else, and when he feels that that is not going over too well, he becomes violent. Then with fear he is using the 'a distressing emotion aroused by impending pain'. Whitman feels like he is just going to be hurt by this guy, so he is trying to protect himself by becoming violent. He does not want his heart to get broken, so his brain is taking drastic measures to ensure that that does not happen. Then, the word "effuse" has denotations, when used as a verb, of: to pour out or forth; shed; disseminate; to exude; pour out; to flow through a very small orifice. In this situation, effuse is being used in the 'flow out' sense because Whitman's love for this man is just flowing out of him, its just out there for him to take, he is opening himself up and making himself vulnerable for this guy, so he has to use his violent passion and his fear of pain to protect himself from the misery of being turned down and embarrassed. Then in the next line, it as if Whitman has received some sort of reassuring message from his partner as he says "the pay is one way or another". This could just mean that they both love each other equally, but more interestingly it could mean that both Whitman and his partner are feeling this sense of worry and nakedness about their love. As Whitman was gay back when it was completely not okay, this worry of pain makes a lot of sense because if his partner was not actually gay, then a lot could go wrong for Whitman. However, in the second line he seems to have confirmed the other guy's feelings, allowing him to calm down just a little bit. Then in his two lines of parenthesis, Whitman gives a little back story on the first two lines. In his third line, Whitman still makes it seem like the other guy does not return his love, which contradicts the line before it, but it is probable that his lines are telling a story over time, so the third line is just a recap of what happened before the second line. And then on the last line, Whitman is simply explaining how and why he wrote this poem. By using the word "yet" Whitman is creating a feeling of triumph. He got over all the fear and anger and anxiety and he was able to create something beautiful out of it.

"The Strength of God" compels you to read this post

The Strength of God. What is that story really about anyway? It can not just be about how peeping on naked women is bad, because that would be too easy. After reading the story about five times I have accumulated a lot of thoughts and a lot of annotations, so I have some ideas about what its all meant to say. Firstly, Reverend Hartman's name has to have some sort of deeper meaning in it, whether Hartman means something of its just an allusion to something, I am not sure, so I looked it up. Hartman does not have a dictionary definition, however it does have origin definitions. In German, Hartman means a hard, brave, strong man, and in English it means strong and brave. This is interesting because Reverend Hartman does not appear to be very brave or strong. He gives in to temptation several times and then completely in the end on page 151. He also does not seem very brave because all of his sins are committed in the dark, solitary, secluded bell tower of his church. He does not do anything that is admirable, which is a denotations of brave, he simply watches a naked girl, punches a window, and rambles to George Willard. So Reverend Hartman's name is the opposite of him, interesting to know. Another part of this story worth analyzing is the fact that his wife's father was an underwear manufacturer. We did not get to discuss this in class and that made me pretty bitter. The denotation of underwear is clothing worn next to the skin under outer clothes. Next to the skin feels extremely intimate, something that Reverend Hartman and his wife are not. And also, since this book has an obvious theme of weird pedophilic type situations, I also see a uncomfortable inappropriate possible relationship between Hartman's wife and her father. She is described as being nervous, which could be attributed to her being abused as a child. Also she married a Reverend, someone safe, someone she knew would not hurt her. So this connection changes how I view the story a little bit, it becomes a little more ironic. The man that she thought would be good to her and just good in general, turns into a creepy peeping tom who ends up punching a window with his fist (pg 152). The fist is connotated as powerful, angry, violent, all words that would also describe an abuser. I think this story has an underlying story about Reverend Hartman's relationship with his wife, whether is was abusive or not, it was still most likely not right.

Dear Reader
"Baudelaire considers you his brother, and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words."
-Billy Collins

       Billy Collins is my favorite 'AP Lit Worthy' poet so far because he is not only frequently extremely sarcastic, but his words are also often beautiful. Okay now to delve into the so called meaning of this poem. The very first word is Baudelaire, the name of the late and great poet Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire was a modernist who also translated Edgar Allen Poe's work to french. Collins' poem reads "Baudelaire considers you his brother", the denotation of the word brother is a male offspring having both parents in common with another offspring; a male numbered among the same kinship group, nationality,race, profession, etc; an associate, a fellow member, fellow countryman, fellow man; brothers, all members of a particular race, or of the human race in general. So, looking at this definition, Baudelaire could either be feeling close to the reader, related in some war familiar way, or he could just be stating the obvious fact that both he and the reader are, presumably, human. In the context of this poem, I believe that the first connotation of a closeness is more likely to be the intended meaning. The next part reads "Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book." Now this line has a pretty obvious depressed, anxious tone, as if Fielding is worried about abandonment or abuse. The denotations of "to call out" are an act or instance of calling out; an order to report an emergency or special work, especially at an unusual time or place; a letter, number, or other device for identifying or calling attention to a particular part of an illustration; a challenge to a duel. Now, one of those definitions feels particularly relevant to this line of the poem. For the calling to report an emergency, that is like Fielding calling out to the readers to tell them that the story is not yet over and it is important that they read on, or Fielding could just be calling out because he feels very anxious about nobody reading his poem, so he feels that them leaving or closing the book is an emergency. So with this phrase, Collins is trying to show the tenderness of a poet and how sensitive they are to the readers, they need the readers, without the readers they are nothing. Then Collins' last line about himself describes the readers as ghosts (so far they are brothers, necessities, and now dark silent figures standing in doorways), which is detonated as the soul of a dead person; a mere shadow or semblance, a trace; the principle of life; a red blood cell having no hemoglobin; a fictitious employee. That last definition seems to be the most relevant. In the poem Collins' is saying how sometimes the poets have to imagine people reading their works, even if no one is, even if the people they are thinking of are just ghosts, the poets still need to believe that someone is out there reading it. 

"The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye."

             Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth have something very important in common, they were both romantic writers. As evidenced in Shelley's Frankenstein and Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", romantic writers have a focus on nature, how it affects humans, how humans affect it, and even just how pretty it looks.  Interestingly, Shelley's father was a friend of Samuel T. Coleridge, who was a founder of the Romantic era along with Wordsworth, so even from birth Shelley was thrown into and influenced by romantic writing.
             The main point of this blog is to discuss the significance of Shelley's usage of "Tintern" in her novel. She quoted the lines that can be seen above during a scene where Victor Frankenstein is fondly describing his best friend Henry Clerval. These lines are fitting for Clerval because, as Victor says, "He was a being formed in the 'very poetry of nature' ... The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour" (135). It is so very fitting for Clerval to be described by lines from one of Wordsworth's poems because Clerval is a true romanticist and Wordsworth was one of the Fathers of Romanticism. In fact Clerval is so in love with nature that Frankenstein says, "[Clerval] felt as if he had been transported to fairy-land and enjoyed happiness seldom tasted by man" (134). This line reminds me of Wordsworth and the way he describes his feelings towards nature when he was younger. He enjoyed the heck out of nature and that is exactly what Clerval is doing. I think that Shelley molded Clerval, although I am sure that she had the idea of Frankenstein's best friend from the beginning, to be like Wordsworth. Growing up with her father knowing a man who knew him must have put some sort of awe or reverence for him or even just knowledge about him into her. Not to mention that her father was her school teacher also, so he probably taught her a lot about Wordsworth and Coleridge. Shelley may have wanted to honor him in some way, so she included his poem as a direct indicator that Clerval is Wordsworth.
             The line "Haunted me like a dark passion" could have also been an allusion to Frankenstein, especially since he and Clerval are doubles of each other. He had a passion for science and it turned dark after he made the creature and then the creature haunted him. "the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood" these are several locations where scenes in  Frankenstein occur. Victor sees the creature climbing up the rocky mountain and most of the creature's story takes place in a depressing forest. Maybe Shelley after reading this poem, Shelley's idea for her novel was strongly influenced by these lines. That could be another reason why she would want to use his poem in her novel, because he was a great inspiration for it.
               So basically I think that Shelley included these lines in chapter 18, not only to show that Clerval is an embodiment of Wordsworth, but also to honor the poem and the poet that influenced her novel.