Wallace Stevens- The Emperor of Ice Cream

Stevens' poem The Emperor of Ice Cream is a short, two stanza poem made up of two octaves. Stevens seems to be making an attempt to tell readers that no matter how good you are at something, humility is still the best attribute to have. The narrator of the poem is telling of taking people and putting them in situations they may otherwise be less likely to visit. For instance cigar rollers do not typically whip up curds in the kitchen, and when they do the results probably aren't tasty enough to be considered lustful. Whores usually try to work fast, so they can see as many clients as possible and make as much money as they can in a nights work. Yet the whores in the poem are slow to move and take payment in the form of cheap flowers. A dresser was bought, supposedly at a great price but is however lacking the knobs to open it. The girl sleeping in a sheet that she embroidered herself is covering her face instead of her feet, instead of just turning off the lamp. At the end of each stanza we see the phrase "The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream" repeated. This is a metaphor to say that when you feel like a king, the only mound you own is that lump of ice cream in your bowl.

The Wasteland

Like Joyce, Eliot proved to be difficult to follow at times, and yet at other times he was incredibly easy to follow. The Wasteland jumps around from perspective to perspective through the characters introduced throughout the poem. The poem itself is designed to be indicative of how people felt during, and around the first world war. The invention of Unreal City places a setting for Eliot's characters enabling them to have a sort of mysticism that wouldn't otherwise work in a more real world setting.

J. Alfred Prufrock

My interpretation of J. Alfred Prufrock is that the character is just getting back into the dating game. Whether he is a widower, newly divorced, or just gave up for a while and has finally decided to try to start dating again is never divulged. However the character finds himself going to a bar. The entirety of the story shows the man being nervous. He worries that he will have anything in common with the ladies, who the odds are good will be younger. That he will be able to even converse with them, due to the fact that they are probably interested in things he is not, such as the artist Michelangelo. His nervous fears get stronger as he gets closer. His fears manifesting with low self esteem to bash himself. Fearing people would laugh at his physical appearances such as his bald spot. In an attempt to ease his nerves the man visualizes what it would be like to have a woman in his life, ultimately deciding to continue on with his planned evening.

Sylvia Townsend Warner- King Duffus

In King Duffus Warner takes the tale of the Scottish king and adds her own perspective to the way it ends. Having been sick, almost to the point of death for nearly a year, it could be expected for any man to give up hope to be better. The description of Duffus during his sickness tells of him suffering of an unquenchable thirst (parching), maintaining a fever (scorching), of which probably left him bed ridden to the point of developing painful sores on his body (roaring). The king expects, and even wishes for death. The night they awake him to tell him that those who had supposedly cursed him were dead, and that he should grow to be better, the king can only be sad. His despair had grown into full delusions of being in Heaven. He had expected to die, expected to join Christ, longed for it even. Only to be left King in a sad little throne on a sad little hill. Realizing this he weeps.

H.D.-The Pool

In Hilda Doolittle’s The Pool, the narrator has found a creature in a tide pool that, to the narrator at least, was unknown to exist. The meat of this single stanza poem is derived of child like wonder and curiosity. The reader is able to almost remember this wonder, as they too curiously ponder on what this creature is that the youthful narrator is inspecting. Like all curious children, the narrator pokes the creature with a stick. Of course the only way to tell if you can agitate a creature is by poking it with a stick. Elated that the creature is both alive, and able to move the child captures the creature in a net, still quizzical as to what the creature is. There is no description of the creature other than referring to it as “bandied one” and referring to its agitated physical response to being poked as “quivering like a fish”.

E. L. Masters

Masters’ look into small town life isn’t the typical sunny side up, lackadaisical, happy go lucky view that most people tend to take when writing. Masters delves into the dirty laundry of the small town life. Showing to the reader what everyone knows through hushed whisper, yet refuses to admit as more than just gossip. In Elsa Wertman Masters introduces the readers to an immigrant woman working in a house for a man and his wife. When the wife is away, the man can’t keep his hands off of her, the end result is a child. Hiding her husband’s infidelity, the wife decides to adopt the child, since they have none of their own due to what I assume is because she may be barren, and say that it is her own. By the end of the poem Elsa admits that when seeing the child rally in politics as an adult she weeps, not from the power in his speeches, but because she wants so badly to scream out that he is her child. Masters only takes this story a step farther with the dramatic irony in Hamilton Greene having the now grown child talk about how much he is honored to have come from the family he did. That he inherited the very best of his mother and father, and do everything to honor them, as they have honored him.

Yeats-When You Are Old

Yeats tends to sneak religion into his poems. Here is no different. While I don’t feel Yeats actively cared about his reader’s lifestyles, or the condemnation of such. He wanted readers to be able to take a look back on their lives, and realize that of everyone they’ve ever known, the only person whose love was never fleeting was God. Yeats is hoping that being close to death will help encourage those who have strayed in their youth, to open the good book, and look upon it with the same wonder they may have as a child before straying. Yeats wants the reader to remember all the good times they’ve had with loved ones, be they friends, family, or lovers of both romantic and lustful variety. Yeats wants the reader to remember these times, think on them, and how only one person has every loved the reader for who they are, from day one, and will always love the reader, even after death.

Thomas Hardy- The Darkling Thrush

In The Darkling Thrush Hardy spends the majority of the poem setting a tone of gloom, surrounding a man whom I feel is falling into despair. The man has sought a walk through a wooded area one winter evening, as the sun is setting. Finding nothing in nature to cheer himself up, the man stops for a rest at the edge of the area. It can be believed that during his walk the woods had remained quiet, further reminding the man of death. As he stands there, taking in the winter world as a cold dead place Hardy introduces a splash of color into his grey spectrum. The man hears a thrush start singing. By the looks of the bird, its existence wasn’t the greatest as it looked small and underfed. The bird however continues to sing cheerfully, the source of the birds happiness the man could not determine. The poem ends with the man’s spirits somewhat lifted to the thought of a hope he could not conceive, yet the bird was apparently aware of.