When we were first introduced to Zampano at the beginning of House of Leaves, I immediately connected him to Homer. Blind poet who writes this epic, monstrous work – especially one so rooted in Greek mythology – he has to be Homer! But then as the book progressed, I got struck by his similarities to Jorge Luis Borges, who was… Read more →
I don’t even know how to begin describing House of Leaves. It’s really disturbing, but not in the way I found Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy” disturbing way back in January. It’s more like a super long episode of Unsolved Mysteries, down to the lack of any satisfying resolutions/conclusions. I guess Johnny Truant describes my feelings as a reader best when he… Read more →
Going through drafts of “Pygmalion’s Bride,” I was shocked to see that in one draft, she characterized Pygmalion a “woman-hater.” While Duffy uses strong language throughout the poem, I was surprised that Duffy was so blunt with such a harsh description. I then found a memo she wrote to her self. In this memo she wrote a brief description of… Read more →
When going through the drafts of “I Live Here Now,” I was struck by Duffy’s initial emphasis on “invention.” The finished poem is already based on the idea of “invention,” emphasized by the dollhouse/miniature descriptions like “doll’s mirror,” “cotton wool on pipe-cleaners,” and “Pincushion Hill,” and of course, the speaker admitting that he “invented” the world. Yet in the earlier… Read more →
When reading the second half of The World’s Wife, I was surprised “Eurydice,” did not precede or follow “Pygmalion’s Bride.” To explain my surprise, I must first confess that I love Ovid’s Metamorphoses – in my opinion, it is the greatest work of poetry ever composed. Because of my love, I thought it was pretty clear that Duffy specifically draws… Read more →
Since snow seems to be on everyone’s mind this week, I thought “Stealing” would be an appropriate poem to blog about (38). In class, we discussed how there might not be some “higher” ultimate meaning to poems, and that’s how I chose to interpret the poem – I don’t think that the speaker or the stealing is necessarily metaphorical or… Read more →
Question 11 of the Reading Group Guide asks a very interesting question: what is the significance of the lines “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages.” The lines come from Cymbeline, which is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. When this quote first appears on page 9, Clarissa does not contemplate on it for very long. She… Read more →
While reading the assigned section of Mrs. Dalloway, I became alarmed as I reached a familiar-sounding passage. Septimus at one point says “I leant over the the edge of the boat and fell down…I went under the sea… and as before waking, the voices of birds and the sounds of wheels chime and chatter in a queer harmony…” (69).… Read more →
After reading it twice, I found Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy” to be a very disturbing story. As we discussed, for this class we are looking for patterns and “screwing around”. So I decided to go back and find the main instances I was “disturbed” (I’m defining “disturbed” as finding something so exceptionally weird/gross that I had to pause and think about… Read more →