It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.
I question this statement. In order to create one fantastic, startling "image" in a lifetime doesn't one also have to go through trial and error, therefore producing work in volume is unavoidable?
Criticism is not a circumscription or a set of prohibitions. It provides fixed points of departure.
I think what is being said here is that criticism isn't a way to define a work of art but rather an entry point into a broader conversation, if you allow it to be.
Whether or no the phrases followed by the followers are musical must be left to the reader’s decision.
I like this point. The process of reading poetry and literature in general is an individual experience. As a writer you accept that and know the reader will take from your work what they want and leave what they don't.
Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide! Archives
Thinking back to the "picture pride of Hollywood" after reading this final verse, I think Frost is saying that although the relationships made on the basis of a thing as shallow as hollywood is still worth while.
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Is frost commenting on the picture perfectness of Hollywood? And the doubt that should accompany it from outsiders perspectives
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth
The contrast made between white, satin, and cloth with the word rigid really makes the beginning of this poem interesting for the reader.
And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.
Again with the pattern and it's violence. The narrator is explaining the control and authority that exists within the pattern and she sees this "woman" within the wallpaper who is trying to escape it. The narrator is undoubtedly seeing herself in these walls.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still.
Could the pattern potentially represent the system of society which the narrator is forced to exist? The controlling husband, the isolation, the restriction from writing. It seems that she is primarily concerned with the pattern within the wallpaper and it's effect upon herself. During the daylight hours the narrator notices the quietness of the wallpaper but during the night, away from the watchful eyes of her husband, feels free enough to observe its intricacies.
I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.
Here the narrator is recalling the emotions which arose as a child from gazing at "blank walls and plain furniture"... and now as an adult, the chaotic patterns of the yellow wallpaper is causing her much discomfort. Im wondering is there a connection here?
By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks.
This is a powerful way to demonstrate the disconnection that the white lens through which colored people are forced to see themselves creates.
It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea
This experience reminds me of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. He relates "And so i have often lived through that hour, that day, that week in which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into another; for I did indeed pass into another world. From that time I looked out through other eyes, my thoughts were colored, my words dictated, my actions limited by one dominating all pervading idea...". Here, Johnson is stating that even as a young boy he realized that his experience is filtered through "the distorted influence which operates upon each colored man in the United States"
physics stark mad in metaphysics.
I like this one. Adams does a great job of bringing out the potential risks and rewards that appear in times of discovery. Is he urging us to find a balance?
They felt a railway train as power, yet they, and all other artists, constantly complained that the power embodied in a railway train could never be embodied in art. All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres.
This makes me think of the difference between mechanical power, natural power (earth), and creative power and the potency which they hold in our society. This all becomes clear when we consider the ways in which we educate in America. Art and creative expression is often neglected... Adams seems to have predicted the power of all forces and the human battle to balance it all out.
He cared nothing for the sex of the dynamo until he could measure its energy.
Is Adams valuing energy/force over sex here? Avoiding the complexities of sex when considering the implications of force and power... dismissing the idea of sex altogether, as he says America has.
From my car passing under the stars, They Lion, from my children inherit,
These two lines together created an image that was yet to be seen in the poem thus far. Here it’s a more personal and delicate piece of the story that Levine has included into the harshness of the rest of the poem.
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
The start of the poem makes me think that Levine is using Lion to describe some position of power. The language used in the opening stanza really draws the reader in and using words relating to the working class creates an image that power is maintained through suffering of those below.