"Stop All the Clocks, cut off the telephone"

"Stop All the Clocks, cut off the telephone" by W.H. Auden is a poem that the speaker uses imagery to set the tone for mourning of a loved one and wants life to stop. In the first line alone the speaker uses words like stopping the barking dogs and silencing of the pianos (2-3) to show the importance of silence as the coffin is brought out (4).

The second stanza the speaker implies that his loved one should be honored by having the airplanes fly over, doves wearing bow ties and the policemen to wear cotton gloves. The speaker wants is loved one to be honored and his death to be remembered.

"He was my North, my south, my East and West" (9) tells the importance of this loved one, he was everything to the speaker. The speaker also portrays that he was always there for him and now he gone.

The Last stanza describes how mad and angry the speaker has become. He shows hatred toward God the creator by putting out the stars, getting rid of the moon and sun. How can any enjoyment come from life now that his loved one is gone. Why not just be done with life all together.

Poetry-A Soulful Expression

Poetry is fascinating in that it is playing with language. It is acceptable in many forms allowing creative patterns, progressions, schemes. It can derive feelings, thoughts, ideas, understandings, confusion, concern, in a reader or writer that may have never came to awareness if it had not ever been read or written. As you write poetry you can discover things about yourself or others with clarity and depth through your playfulness, focus, and search for depth, as well as different perceptions and relations between subject matters. I think that poetry is yet another soulful release just as artistic and creative measures of any sort, dancing, music, or anything in which a person intentionally decides to look a bit deeper into themselves and pull something out into the open, often taking a risk. Knowing yes, not everyone will understand or accept this part of me I am offering/ sharing, but some one will or may and it is true to me and I am willing to show it in this unique and authentic way. The unique ways people can express themselves is a gift in which we should be willing to share, and the more we are willing to do so the better we will become at it and the more we will see we are able. Poetry is form of expression in a world which has many.

"Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone"

In the poem “Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone,” by W.H. Auden, the speaker tries to stop the world after losing a loved one. The speaker uses the word choices, such as “…muffled drum…” and “mourners come” (3-4), to give the reader an audible sound that is dark, hollow, and echoing; like the feeling of death.

The speaker is serious, sad, and uses a somewhat relaxed, formal diction. The speaker’s diction is formal, yet it is not too elaborate or complex for the everyday reader. It suggests that the speaker is smart, yet not proper more so than an average person. The tone conveys that the speaker has a mournful attitude towards the man who died. There is no shift in tone, showing that the speaker attitude is solid, confident, and unchanging, which may mean that the man who dies has been in the speaker’s life for a long time.

This grieving speaker wants to make the man’s death into a huge affair; hinting that this person may have been greatly important to not only the speaker, but also to many other people. In line 1, the speaker commands that all of the clocks and telephone lines be cut off. This is an unrealistic idea, one that shows the speaker may be so upset over this death that he or she is not thinking clearly.

The images in this poem also help to further a reader’s understanding of the situation that the speaker is going through. The image of traffic policeman stirs up the thought that so many people will be coming that traffic police will be needed, indicating that this person is important and well known. The white doves suggest that the man who died is a pure and kind person. The statement “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead” (5) suggests that this man may have been in the military, in which case the man could be given an honorary fly-by for heroic actions. The images of the phones not ringing, the clocks not ticking, the dog not barking, and the pianos muffled by a drum gives the reader an auditory sense of immense silence.

In line 12, the speakers says “I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.” This statement leads me to believe that the speaker is a woman, upset over the death of her male lover. “He was my North, my South, my East and West” (9) confirms that the female speaker is talking about her male lover. It seems that this male who died is an important person, or may just be very important to the speaker. She uses lines 9, 10, and 11 to show how important this man is to her. Using so many lines of a short poem to make the speaker’s immense love for the man clear emphasizes how important it is for the reader to know that the speaker cared immensely for this man.

The speaker seems to be realize that, without her lover, there is no reason to live and no happiness in life. She wants everything in the world to stop, because she has no one to share the wonderful experiences of life with. The last line, “For nothing now can ever come to any good,” sums up the message that this poem is suggesting; life means nothing without someone to love and be loved by.

An audible voice in "Suicide Note"

In “Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani, she wrote the suicide note of an Asian-American college student, who jumped out of her dorm room window to her death, into a poem. In the student’s actual note, she apologized to her parents for not maintaining a 4.0 GPA. Mirikitani made the student’s words audible. She was able to take the suicide note and write it as a beautiful, yet tragic, poem. A way the poem develops a sense of “an audible voice,” is that it is written in the first person perspective. It tells how “I apologize for disappointing you” (5-6), and “I will drop bone by bone, perched on the ledge of my womanhood” (30-33). The student’s true feelings are emerging in her note, and in the poem it is almost as thought she is reading it to me. I can exactly identify the thoughts she had when she wrote it. Because the words of the poem are a reflection of the student’s actual suicide note and suicide, it is chilling to imagine her reading it, though I can the sadness of it. Mirikitani did a great job taking the personal nature of the poem and making it relatable for other readers to “hear” the words as well.

Poetry Blog

My thoughts about this section are:
I'm not a huge fan of poetry. When it comes down to it, I simply do not understand the whole form and outline of poetry and how it works. The story "The Raven" does not seem like a poem at all, but more like a horror story. I think that for its' time, this poem was very well written, although it seems like more nowadays, its in the form of songs, lyrics, etc. On the topic of rap music, it seems like most songs- not only rap songs- have "poetry" based lyrics. There seems to be a lot of different types of "poetry" and all in different forms. I think it depends more on how the individual person sees poetry than how a book sets the standard for poetry.