Uhhhh...

Uhhhh...

4 I have told you
2 that I
3 would not tell
3 him secrets

2 but I
5 did because he did
2 not know
3 how to be

3 a good friend
5 but please forgive me
2 i am
3 your best friend

As for my version of parodying William's "This is Just to Say", I followed the form, the number of stanzas, and the number of syllables within each line. Although, I did change the title's syllable count because I felt that 'Uhhh..' is used a lot during times of lying and doubt and it would be more effective. Along with that, I also chose not to use any punctuation because that is the most significant and noticeable feature of this poem. Other than the form, the original poem gave a sense of apology where I had parody also. Instead of apologizing for eating some one's plums, the person in my version is apologizing for spilling a secret to someone for a rational reason. My version mocks the original because it is more sincere than Williams'. I feel that my last line "your best friend" has a stronger sympathy towards the apology.

ctrl+C and then ctrl+V

Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza I.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thy happiness,--

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

The poet falls into a reverie while listening to an actual nightingale sing. He feels joy and pain, an ambivalent response. Consider whether pleasure can be so intense that, paradoxically, it either numbs us or causes pain. What qualities does the poet ascribe to the nightingale? In the beginning the bird is presented as a real bird, but as the poem progresses, the bird becomes a symbol.

The speaker opens with a declaration of his own heartache. He feels numb, as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his "drowsy numbness" is not from envy of the nightingale's happiness, but rather from sharing it too completely; he is "too happy" that the nightingale sings the music of summer from amid some unseen plot of green trees and shadows.

In the ode, the speaker responds to the beauty of the nightingale’s song with a both “happiness” and “ache.” Though he seeks to fully identify with the bird – to “fade away into the forest dim” – he knows that his own human consciousness separates him from nature and precludes the kind of deathless happiness the nightingale enjoys.

A Song of Sorrow and Joy

Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats utilizes nature as a way to create a fantasy he wishes to escape to. Keats expresses his thoughts on both the joy and pain of human life. He starts off telling us that he wants to forget the pain but yet he thinks about the happiness he has gone through too. Nature can be beautiful but yet it can be dark. Throughout this poem, Keats uses many nature-related colors like "of beechen green"(line 9), "and purple-stained mouth;"(line 18), "last gray hairs"(line 25), and "fast fading violets"(line 47). The green and the violet may represent a brighter joy whereas the gray and purple can be negative aspects of life. The "purple stained mouth" represents wine showing that drunkenness is his answer to avoid hardship and ache.

He also uses many history references relating to mother earth such as "One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:" (line 4), symbolizing the river of forgetfulness in Hades. A river is never ending and Keats would want to forget all about the ocean of pain in reality forever. Another reference would be "That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees," (line 7) which points to the Roman goddess of flowers that represents the blossoming of love and pleasure just like the old saying of "the birds and the bees" would also bring upon joy and love.

The focus of this poem is on a natural creature itself, a nightingale. Many people may think that it is a female nightingale that sings but it is the male that entertains us with its vocals. It seems as that Keats himself may be singing a song of his sorrow and delight. A nightingale continuously sings everyday of its life and Keats wishes to be the nightingale itself that sings a continuous song of joyful fantasy. A nightingale can also fly away just as John Keats wants to fly away from his problems and keep soaring for happiness.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

Langston Hughes's "Harlem: A Dream Deferred"

Hughes uses a lot of figurative language and imagery to express his thoughts about deferring a dream. As said in his poem, once a dream is put off, it is like "a raisin in the sun", "a festered sore", "stink like rotten meat", and the such. The meanings behind these similes are simple; putting off a dream will lead you to nowhere. Hughes is comparing dreams to negative objects saying that if you do not follow your dream, it will shrivel away like a raisin in the sun or be infected requiring more time to heal. More on, your dreams will fade away if you do not realize its importance in time or it will crust over to a hard shell of difficulty if it is left untouched.

I chose this image because it symbolizes the same meaning that a dream will seem so far away if people do not prioritize the importance of their dreams and let it shatter instead. The faded colors also blends with the poem because dreams will slowly fade away the more an individual gives up on it. In the last line, Hughes uses the metaphor "Or does it explode?" implying that if we all do not keep up with our dreams, it will explode and destruct our lives. In the picture above, the bottom has chains and the colors are more dark saying that a person can be trapped into the darkness and destroy his or her life.


Hughes uses many rhetorical questions in the poem but does not answer them. This is a good method to allow readers to analyze the message he is trying to portray. In this case, Hughes is trying to warn people that if they do not treasure their dreams, their future may not come out to be as desired. It takes effort to reach your dreams and nobody should ever give up on a dream.

Poetic Form

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

lines 87-95
(original)
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
woule it ahve been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'

(paraphrased)
Is it worth it all?
All the lunch or dinner dates,
with conversation between us two,
Is it worth
to pretend things are okay,
and hold in the pain
and skip all the conflicts
To say: "I am Lazarus, alive again,
come to warn you all."

In contrast with the prose I chose, the original words of this part of the poem tends to put a dramatic effect on the idea of rather love is worth everything at all. The prose version seems too bold and holds weak sentimental value.T.S. Eliot chooses more fancy words to describe components of a relationship such as dates and conflicts. The poet uses personification to inflict a stronger sense of hurt from Prufrock's love story. The word choice and comma pauses hint a portion of personal memory and brings the readers to have a more inner feeling for J. Alfred Prufrock.

This section accompanies Prufrock's story of his miserable love life of growing old. Without this portion, the readers would not know of the past experiences in the relationship of the love story. The past provides understanding to why this man would be in such hesitation, sorrow, and doubt. Most of the poem tells us about Prufrock but this section tells us about his partner and what love is like to him.

and i say...

it works!