Flourescence

The opening sections of the collection Fluorescence by Jennifer Dick are very though evoking. Books of poetry follow a few different patterns. There are epics like the Iliad that are an entire novel written in poetry, and there are books that are just many poems bound together in no particular order. Dick’s manuscript follows a different pattern that is very interesting. All of the poems in the book are her own work and flow like a story but are not tied together. Her poems follow a traumatic experience in her life that is not easily revealed to the reader. You move through the events leading up to whatever it is that left her so damaged into her horrific recollection of the event itself and through the aftermath. As the reader goes through this dick uses powerful metaphors and allusions to make the reader feel every emotion that she feels herself. Her work shows one of the most important things that a poet can have and needs to make their audience feel: Empathy. Empathy is the way that humans understand each other, the way we bond and grow, feeling each other’s feelings, seeing through each other’s eyes. That is the power of poetry, it is a tool that can make it easier for us to understand another person, give us a peek at who they are. Dick’s poems aside from being well written are an excellent medium of emotion, despite their depressing overtone.

Poetry Packet

The Shakespeare sonnets all were based on different aspects of love. Some of them were joyful and others melancholy. Of the sadder sonnets sonnet 117 is an interesting one. It is a repent for mistakes made the first line does an excellent job of setting the topic of the poem. Accuse me thus-that I have scanted all It shows that Shakespeare is sorry for something. He uses metaphor at lines 5 and 6 to tell the reader why he is sorry. 

That I have Frequent been with unknown minds,

And given to time your own dear-purchased right;

His apology is for cheating on his lover. Shakespeare's use of heavy metaphor and iambic pentameter force the reader to search somewhat for his meaning, another interesting example of his work is Sonnet 130. This poem is a satire of Petrarchan poems which over romanticized women with wild comparisons. The poem seems insulting until the couplet at the end of the poem. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare!

This poem attacks the false standards of beauty that others had set up while still saying that his lover is beautiful and exactly what he wants. Shakespeare's sonnets have a romantic feel but describe a great array of emotions typically the joy and sorrow that comes from love. He is clearly one of the greatest English poets of all time, obviously why his works have been studied for nearly five hundred years.