Lovely Literature

This poem has some awesome imagery in it and it's very easy to make a mental movie in your head while reading it. Plus, the fact that it is a more recent poem [at least after 1947] makes it more relatable at times too. The woman in this poem is somewhat pining but more reminiscing on the old days with her ex-husband. They were "...waking like inmates/who beat the walls. Every night," that they were together the last year before their divorce. They sound like the kind of couple that gets on each others' nerves so often but it's worse when they are apart. "Bad when we're together, worse when we're apart" type situation that I'm seeing here. The fact that they still keep in touch means there are feelings of some sort that still linger. I know that if I ever got a divorce, I feel as if I would keep my distance as much as possible unless there were still lingering feelings.

The "unshredded pictures" that are spoken of give off the image that once they divorced the woman went kind of crazy and threw her ex's stuff away and damaged it. Typical girl response...not gonna lie...burning all the pictures and giving everything away. Hey, sometimes you just have to do away with the painful things. BUT she still kept some of the pictures unharmed. I don't think it's healthy to completely forget things that happen in your life, especially the bad because they tend to make you a better person and you learn more lessons from them. This is another of my favorite poems this quarter.

This poem freaks me out but it might be my favorite poem that we've read all semester so far. The speaker seems to have had a breakup with his lover and he is still pining for her. She has found another man and portrays herself as perfectly happy with him rather than her ex. The tone of this poem is rather bitter with many hints of vengeance in it.

The speaker is still alive, but he speaks as if he were dead. He says that one night when his ex believes that she has nothing to worry about because she is safe with her new man, he is going to come into her room in his ghostly form and haunt her. Her man of course won't do anything because he is asleep and thinks she is being crazy. The ghost man just wants her to feel pain. While this probably isn't the nicest or most mature way to end a relationship...many people tend to feel like this after being rejected for at least a little while. I feel like he is just threatening her the whole time saying that he will haunt her forever once she thinks she is rid of him. She must have done a number on this guy.

My favorite lines are "And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected, thou,//Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat, wilt lie/A verier ghost than I." This reminds me of when you wake up after a really bad dream and you're freezing but you have this crazy cold sweat going on that you can't control. Whew he sounds like some kind of nightmare. I'm glad he's not my ex...