Samples of outstanding essays from the Personal AnthologiesLinda Andros on Sharon Olds' "The Waiting" Back to 397 Main Page Linda Andros on Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" Tedd Magsig on Langston Hughes' "Ballad of the Landlord" |
Linda Andros on Sharon Olds' "The Waiting"The setting of this poem is the father’s house. Place details are sparse, barely enough to be define the setting and yet they add to the overall meaning of the poem by helping the reader to understand things that are not specifically stated. We know that the poem takes place in the father’s home because in line two, the daughter emerges from the “guest room.” That statement of place allows us to assume that she doesn’t normally live with him and is probably there to care for him during his illness. The hallway serves the function of distance between the father and daughter. Even though she is close to him, the hallway helps us see that he is dying alone. In lines 3-5 the poem describes the place the father is sitting, a wingback chair, “his head calm and dark between the wings.” We can almost see the wings transporting him between life and death. Because we learn in line 8 that he “sat and stared at the swimming pool” we can assume he was sitting in front of a window. The window itself is liminal, a threshold. He is waiting on the threshold of death.In the body of the poem, Olds, shows us what that waiting was like through the actions of the father and daughter. These actions move us in slow motion through a 24-hour period. The first two lines begin early in the morning and tell the actions of the daughter. She would “get up”, “come out” and “look down.” Her actions in the poem are all geared toward the father, emphasizing him as the most important character in the poem and conveying the tenderness of the daughter. Lines 3-12 tell what the father was doing during the hours that elapsed after he got up and before she got up. They show us a man who is strong in the face of death. Line 10 uses the infinitive “to approach it” (death). He may have been waiting, but he was not shrinking from death. The actions (which are ironically non-actions) in lines 5-6 and 13-18 show us a man who is already still, already something like the way he will become in death. The similes woven into this passage work together with the verbs to help us see the father like a statue. In lines 5-6 he sat “unmoving, like something someone has made.” In line 13, “he would not turn,” lines 14-15 “he is “holding still, as if a piece of sculpture.” Line 17 tells us that “he would wait with that burnished looked-at look” until his daughter came. Then comes a slight movement with the verb slew in line 19. I think the daughter felt relief at this point that her father had not died while she slept. Lines 22-29 are actions that describe what happens as the day progresses. Here, verbs tell what the father did: swallow, spit, nap, woke, and what the daughter did: give, empty, would be there, sit. These mundane details show his dependence on his daughter and his vulnerabilities. The verbs that Olds uses to describe what the father is and is not doing show the reader a picture of a waiting man as they move us through the narrative. Time in the poem is slowed down by waiting, waiting for death and waiting for his daughter. The details of his day and night make them move slowly, the way time passes when you are watching the clock or when you are completely involved in an important life changing experience while the rest of the word goes on as usual. The poem takes place in the past, but does not tell of one particular day. It refers to something that happened over and over again during the time that the daughter cared for him. The circular motion of the poem emphasizes this feature. The poem begins and ends with waiting (title and last line) and it begins and ends at the same time of day, a 24-hour cycle. It begins with a phrase about time, “No matter how early.” Even though references to time are sparse, they keep the action of the poem moving forward. The poem begins “early” talking about “dawn” and the “graveyard shift.” Words like “by then” and “now” signal a time transition in the poem. The poem draws to a close in line 29-30 the “next dawn” at the same time of day that it began. Lines 30-34 contain a simile that effectively concludes the narrative as he waits for death “as if /waiting for his daughter.” (764) Back to top |
Linda Andros on Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"This poem is written entirely in iambic trimeter, which is an effective choice of meter for a story about a waltz, which is a three-count dance. It provides organization to a chaotic scene and is an essential ingredient to the effectiveness of the poem. Unlike many poems where the meter is downplayed or contains frequent substitute feet for variety, the meter in “My Papa’s Waltz” calls attention to itself in a way that enhances the reader’s experience. The meter is very regular, regularity that I think Roethke purposely crafted, because the meter beats time in the background and helps the reader see the frenzied dance of the Papa and child and feel the rhythm as they whirl around the kitchen. There are only a few places where the meter deviates from the norm. Lines 2 and 10 create some variety by ending with a substitute foot, a spondee with an extra unstressed syllable on the end. Line 12 has just the extra unstressed syllable on the end and line 14 begins with an anapestic foot. The repetition of the trimeter over and over with little variation is an important part of what makes the poem an emotional experience for the reader as well as for the speaker. The poem is written in the ballad form, again consistent with its musical overtones. Each stanza is a quatrain that contains one complete sentence, end-stopped with a period so that it distinct from the other stanzas. Each stanza starts out with information about the father and ends with the response from the son. The exception to this pattern is in stanza 2. This stanza starts out with information about both dancers and ends with a response form the mother. As with the meter, the form of the stanzas helps to organize these chaotic bits of information into a sense of the characters. The end-stopped final line in each stanza in addition to the stanza break provides a needed interruption in the tension of the story, as the reader feels almost breathless reading about the waltz and wondering if it abusive or fun for the child. The lines in this poem are relatively short. This is one of the reasons that Roethke has had to choose his words carefully. When lines are short, there are no words to waste. One example of his carefully chosen words is the verbs in the second stanza. The verbs romped, slid, and unfrown render specific actions that create a vivid picture of the rowdy scene. Even the mother’s face is described with a verb instead of an adjective. Another reason for careful word choice within the line is the end rhyme. Some of the rhymes, like breath/death (stanza 1) and knuckle/ buckle (stanza 3) are perfect rhymes and others like dizzy/easy (stanza 1) and pans/countenance ( stanza 2) are slant rhyme. These slight variations keep the rhyme from becoming too predictable and stale. Roethke has carefully chosen the final word in each line, not only for rhyming sounds, but also to highlight words that are important to the poem, words that he wants to emphasize. For example in the first stanza, just looking at the last word of each line (breath, dizzy, death, easy) gives significant clues to the meaning of the stanza. In addition, breath and death are opposites of each other, which draws attention to the contradictions of the scene. Except for the first stanza which has three end-stopped lines and only the first line enjambed, the stanzas all have end-stopped lines second and fourth and enjambed lines first and third. None of the stanzas are enjambed. This adds to the choppiness of the poem, which coincides with the feel of the action. While the ballad form, end rhyme, and strict regularity of meter and line length can become boring in the hands of an unskilled poet, Roethke has made them fresh and alive in this poem. The regularity adds to the overall rhythmic feel of the poem that is a dance. (665) Back to top |
| Tedd Magsig May, 2003. used with permission Essay on the narrative behind “Ballad of the Landlord” by Langston Hughes“Ballad of the Landlord” is a poem written in free verse with four lines per stanza for the first section of the poem, and also in the transition stanza, before the form switches to three line stanzas in the last section(s). The most prevalent metrical units are iambs. The narrative behind “Landlord” is a chronological account of an Afro-American tenant who, after protesting to his landlord about his rent and the condition of his apartment, is arrested, assumed guilty of assaulting the landlord (and accused of being “un-American”) and then given a jail sentence illustrating both the lack of rights black tenants (or black citizens in general) have when there is a conflict with white society and also the prejudice that occurs when there is a conflict: surely the black tenant was the one at fault and surely he was behaving in a manner that was unacceptable towards mainstream (white) American society. Hughes cleverly details the chronology of the piece (which illustrates the ironic turn of events as the poem’s plot progresses) by putting the first part (first five stanzas) in the tenant’s voice (first person, present tense). Hughes places the narrative (of this section) in African-American vernacular to define who the speaker is, and where he fits in society (especially at this time, in an urban area in the United States, in the segregated forties). Hughes, by offering no other identifying characteristic (name, age, etc.) is also giving the narrator a universal voice for all African-Americans. His vernacular is the only identifying trait he has in this part of the poem, but there is no mistaking his identity.The first two stanzas are expositional, detailing the setting and situation through the narrator’s discourse. In the third and fourth stanzas the conflict is introduced with the tenant’s reaction to the landlord’s threats of eviction and disconnection of utilities being stated. It’s interesting that the landlord’s voice is invisible (the landlord is the one who “threatens” first) and only the tenants “word” indicates this part of the argument ever occurred. This is a brilliant ploy by Hughes, suggesting that there is no evidence the landlord ever threatened the tenant with anything. Finally provoked, the tenant makes a grave error in the fifth stanza by suggesting fisticuffs. As soon as this potential threat is revealed, the entire form of the poem changes. We then hear the landlord’s actual voice for the first time. Hughes uses italics to offset the landlord’s cries, which ironically have nothing to do with the argument of inadequate housing, inflated rents, or unfair treatment. Instead the landlord speaking in first person, present tense utters a cry of nationalistic rhetoric: Police! Police! Come and get this man! He’s trying to ruin the government And overturn this land. Notice, again, that “on paper”, the landlord never directly addresses the tenant. The vernacular has now changed, clearly showing the landlord belongs to a different demographic than the tenant. This is the transitional stanza; from this moment on the tenant has no voice. The last three stanzas are only three lines each, which increase the “speed” of the poem, indicating the action is occurring at an accelerated pace. Now the syntax is gone, there is a third person narrator detailing the events that are rapidly and methodically transpiring. There is no humanity represented in any of the processes stated in the seventh and eight stanzas, just cold, stark facts. It reads almost as if a rubber stamp is detailing each part of the process. In fact the whole process seems mechanized, like a machine is performing these tasks: Copper’s whistle! Patrol Bell! Arrest. Precinct Station Iron cell Headlines in press: Hughes is suggesting this is a standard procedure: a well-oiled machine that handles these situations so often it is like assembly line procedure. Finally, in the final stanza, the outcome of the two “process” stanzas is stated, in newspaper form as a headline. Hughes uses “therefore” symbols which underlines this episode as an example of a common procedure suffered by African-Americans on a regular basis: “man threatens landlord therefore tenant held no bail therefore judge gives negro 90 days in county jail.” Notice how any first person persona has been removed from the conclusion of this poem and notice how the “therefore” conjunctions work, suggesting there is no alternative to the outcome. The original vernacular has now been completely erased and replaced with headline jargon. This is a statement in itself; that the simple act of defying unfair conditions results in incarceration and front-page news. It’s the transition -- going from the original narrator, his voice, the pace of his discourse, and the original situation, transformed into this ironic and terrible outcome void of anything that is human -- that make this extremely well crafted work really interesting and engaging. 808 words Back to top Back to 397 Main |