"To Earthward" Analysis

“To Earthward”

Analysis

Love at the lips was touch

As sweet as I could bear;

And once that seemed too much;

I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,

The flow of- was it musk

From hidden grapevine springs

Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache

From sprays of honeysuckle

That when they're gathered shake

Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those

Seemed strong when I was young;

The petal of the rose

It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt

That is not dashed with pain

And weariness and fault;

I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark

Of almost too much love,

The sweet of bitter bark

And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred

I take away my hand

From leaning on it hard

In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:

I long for weight and strength

To feel the earth as rough

To all my length.

To Earthward by Robert Frost is one of my all-time favorite poems, and especially my favorite poem by Robert Frost. This poem demonstrates the idea that attraction and love change over years. We begin with a young bitter love, and develop to a love that is an escape from life. 

The poem splits in the middle, where the first four stanzas are about the past. It is unclear if the past is the long past or the speakers lost youth. But the speaker presents the past clearly in the first four stanzas because he is speaking about what he thought “then.” The first stanza of the poem, “Love at the lips was touch/As sweet as I could bear,” explains that our young love is very simple. The act of kissing is simple, and the art of kissing is so sweet. Frost uses alliteration in the words “love” and “lips” to suggest the image of kissing, without using the actual word “kiss.” The last two lines of the quatrain, “And once that seemed too much; I lived on air,” allows Frost to emphasize that the kisses were perfectly sweet, but the narrator didn’t need sweets to feel the person’s love, because all he needed was air. This idea parallels to the idea that breathing the same air as a lover is equivalent to the sweetness of a kiss. 

In the second stanza, Frost is asking the reader a question. He is asking the reader this question, allowing him to recall the smells that were in the air. The contrasting smells of musk and honeysuckle create a sense of presence in the situation.  The imagery used of the flowers, dew, and sweets emphasizes the youthfulness in the narrator, and the specific desires in young lovers in the beginning of their inexperience in romance. 

The latter four stanzas are about the present, presenting how the speaker feel about love “now.” Frost’s words become a little more dark in the next three to four stanzas. The quotes, “petals of the rose...stung”, “dashed with pain”, “weariness”, “fault”, “no joy”, demonstrate that love was not as sweet as it was in the beginning. However, the phrases that Frost use are no elaboration on events that have happened. “Petals of the rose...stung”, suggest that such a sweet object or person, could be very wicked at the same time. These stanzas full of bitterness represent adult life, and adult love, and the difficulty that presents itself during this time. In the last two stanzas, Frost changes his tone again, and the last stanza suggest the image of a lying person. 

  Throughout the poem, the speaker is not interacting with another person, but rather with the physical world. Love is represented by tangible beauties on the earth such as honeysuckle, grapevines and rose petals, but also more complex ideas such as burnt cloves, bitter bark, and the roughness of the earth along its length. The last few lines of the poem are confusing, unclear, and open to interpretation, whether they refer to sexual desire, or the wishing of the grave to open. 

Keeping Up with the Kardashians Analysis

When someone asks me what my favorite TV shows are, I always spout out a list of reality shows, and in return get a look of disgust, especially when I say “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” This show films the daily lives of the wealthy Kardashian family members living in Los Angeles, California. My dad finds disgust in this show, but I don’t see how it is any better than his favorite show American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars, where results are completely rigged in the competitions. 

Many people would assume that I watch the Kardashians because I’m jealous of their lives, or that I crave to be them. However, I watch this show because I find fascination in other peoples lifestyles, whether it be learning about a family struggling with poverty in Africa, or the Kardashians striving to succeed in Hollywood. 

Most viewers cannot relate to the Kardashians because they struggle with “rich people problems,” having to deal with finding better producers, finding the perfect scent for their fragrance line, or choosing between two different $4,000 shoes. But that is where the humor in the show is to be found, in their extreme lifestyles. The public gets so offended by the Kardashians, but why can’t they just ignore them, instead of going out of their way to trash them. The public obviously does demonstrate some interest in the Kardashians because they have had interviews with large names such as Oprah and Ryan Seacrest.  

The Kardashians came into the spotlight originally because the father, Robert Kardashian, was the lawyer who represented O.J. Simpson. Kris Jenner divorced Robert before his death of cancer in 2003, and has since then, remarried to olympian Bruce Jenner. The show Keeping Up with the Kardashians is not the reason the family is famous. They each have different careers and lives, but come together on the show to present the importance of family. Through marriages and remarriages, there is a hugely extended amount of people on the show. In a recent interview on “E!”, the family was interviewed about what it takes to pull together the show. The youngest sibling Rob, emphasized how they must put their entire lives on camera, not hiding anything. When they put everything on camera, they put EVERYTHING. You learn about marriages, sex life, pregnancies, fertility issues, and basically everything a typical person would keep to their immediate family only. However, this is a career for the Kardashian family, and by signing with a TV producer, they are committing to an exposed life. Just like when a CFO signs commitment papers to a business, he or she is promising not to steal money from a company, and realizes this job could cut out family time. With any job, there is liabilities and consequences. 

On the “E!” interview, the three Kardashian sisters were asked how difficult it was to put their entire lives on film. Kourtney emphasized that this show is part of their lives, and you have to put everything out there realizing people will judge you, but others will become even bigger fans. Taking this into my own life, I have to consider that any decision I make could be judged by others, but although one choice may cause people to dislike me, it may cause others to like me even more. 

Kim Kardashian, possibly the most famous sister of all has had the most public humiliation in the whole family. First off, her sex tape was leaked, and sold to a producer for $1 million, and she maintained a marriage for only 72 days. Kim has become a controversial subject for the media in that she is pregnant with Kanye West’s baby, but is not officially divorced from her ex. Many people judge her for getting pregnant while not being married, but society must realize that not all lifestyles are the same. 

You can assume that the way people act as they mature, is due to the way they were raised. I was not born into a wealthy Los Angeles family, nor was I raised in poverty. I was raised in a middle-class Dallas family, therefore I act accordingly. My actions represent how my parents raised me, and the lifestyle I grew up in. Media and society should take interest in the different ways families live in the world, rather than discriminating against any person who makes more than a certain budget. 

The Cove

  

       

       The other day, I had the opportunity to watch an extremely interesting and shocking documentary, The Cove. It was produced in 2009 and was filmed in the years leading up to 2009, taking place mostly in Taiji, Japan.  In this documentary, a group of American Environmentalists traveled to Japan to capture footage of mass dolphin killing taking place in a cove in the town of Taiji. 

In this small cove, a group of fisherman trap the migrating dolphins into nets. They have two choices once they have captured them: they keep the attractive ones, selling them to aquariums, museums, or other aquatic zoos for about $150,000 each, and they kill the rest with spears and knives, leaving the water completely red and bloody. The dolphins that they kill are getting sent to markets to be cut up and sold to be eaten. But what the public does not know, is that the dolphin meat contains extremely high levels of Mercury, leading to huge numbers of Mercury poisoning amongst the population. Also, the population has no idea about the way the dolphins are being tortured and killed because the cove is kept completely off limits. There is supposed to be absolutely no filming in the cove, so the activists set up high definition cameras hidden in rocks and trees in order to capture the footage for the film. The activists took a huge risk going to Japan trying to prove their point. If they had been caught, they would have gone straight to prison. 

This documentary is calling out to us, to attempt to make change and make a difference. However, as this issue is taking place in a foreign country, it is difficult for us to make an immediate difference, and save the dolphins instantly. Seven years since the documentary has been filmed, and five years since the movie has been produced, the mass killing of dolphins in Taiji is still taking place. I find that it may be extremely possible for more of United States citizens to be informed of the dolphin killing than Japanese citizens. The fact that the government is not willing to tell their citizens about how they are killing their food, and the mercury that is contained in their food emphasizes the idea that the Japanese government may have many more hidden secrets. The mercury is causing extreme birth defects in children, and the government has no explanation to the people who are having to deal with the mercury effects on their or their children's bodies.

In America, majority of our fast food and frozen food products are made from Pink Slime, a completely artificial meat product. However, our society is completely informed of the artificial meat we are eating, and they still eat it. Although it is an not an equal comparison, I wonder if the Japanese government informed their society of the dangers of the dolphin meat they were eating, if they still would. 

The treatment of the dolphins is completely unneccesary, and unfortunate. Dolphins are not meant to be killed and eaten, they are meant to live in the wild. Leading to the issue of Sea Worlds and other aquatic zoos. Dolphins taken into Sea Worlds is almost equilavent to killing them. In this envrionment, they live a very stressful life. Dolphins in the ocean travel about 40 miles a day, compared to a zoo where they are in a tiny swim tank until they die. This could easily be called a method of torture. So just like the Japanese culture, Americans are also uninformed how they are indirectly torturing the dolphins in zoos and Sea Worlds.

The dolphin issues are expanding greatly, and the best way for us bring the torture to a halt, is to continue informing. 

The Farewell Analysis

The Farewell by Edward Field

Analysis

They say the ice will hold

so there I go,

forced to believe them by my act of trusting people,

stepping out on it, 

and naturally it gaps open

and I, forced to carry on coolly

by my act of being imperturbable,

slide erectly into the water wearing my captain's helmet,

waving to the shore with a sad smile,

"Goodbye my darlings, goodbye dear one,"

as the ice meets again over my head with a click.

The poem “The Farewell”, by Edward Field presents an issue the speaker has with trusting people too easily. He explains that you could place all your trust in someone, and in return get nothing back. But at the same time, he emphasizes that to gain trust, you have give back trust in return. 

The symbol for trust in this poem would be the ice. Ice is very fragile, and can be broken easily just like trust. The act of “stepping out on it, and naturally it gaps open” demonstrates the idea that trust can be easily broken. As the narrator continues to walk on the ice even though it is cracked, he is showing the extent to which he always trusted people, no matter what, even if the trust was cracking just like the ice. 

The free verse used in the poem allows the story to flow, and become more realistic than poetical. Diction in this poem presents words that might have detached connotations. For example, "coolly," "erectly," and "sad." "Coolly" could cause a reader to think someone is acting cold, or standoffish to another person. "Erectly" presents the idea of an angry person standing up stiffly. "Sad" has an obvious connotation.

            The quote, “my act of” suggest that the narrator may feel punished by his trait of constant trust in others.  This trait may be considered a flaw because he is trusting an instinct that he does not so much appreciate. The entire poem most likely represents a metaphor, showing the symbolic idea of “walking on ice”. The speaker is willing to trust someone even if he knows the trust may not be there. Throughout the poem, the author is using imagery to present the frightening and stressful situation he was faced with.  The easily visible images were a person walking out onto the ice, only for the ice to break, causing the speaker to fall into the water below. As the ice cracks, and the speaker falls in, he has a "sad smile" on. Most likely, he or she wasn't sad that he or she was about to die, but is sad about the betrayal of the friend. 

The first time I read this poem, I was amused by the attention it draws from you in the very first read. The last 3 lines of the poem are most striking to me, in that he is completely shutting himself out from the world. He can no longer place trust anyone, because anything he trust he has put out is unworthy. “They say the ice will hold”, suggests that the speaker believed his friends who said the ice will hold. “They” are then the result of his slip into the ice water. I really enjoy this poem, and feel that it is well-written. The author is successful in evoking emotions from the reader, and causing the reader to think about how much trust we place in others. I can take from this poem that sometimes things happen to us without warning, and they may just cause everything to fall apart.