Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.

Another poet I enjoyed was Gwendolyn Brooks, so I chose her poem First Fight. Then Fiddle., which can be found on page 1026 of the Norton. Interestingly, this poem's theme is similar to that of Apostrophe to Man.

The rhyme scheme in this poem is somewhere between the Petrarchan and Shakespearean models, but when it comes to structure, it follows the Petrarchan model. Though the title of the poem says to fight first and then fiddle, the speaker dedicates the first eight lines to music. This is because the music is indeed more important to the speaker than fighting. It attests to the power of music that it can "bewitch" and "bewilder" and cause someone to "be remote / a while from malice and murdering." Brooks sticks to the sonnet form, but she tends to finish her thoughts in the middles of lines throughout the octet. This lends a different rhythm that mimics the liveliness and flow of music.

The subsequent six lines have a somewhat more "traditional" rhythm which corresponds more with the line breaks. This suggests the rigidity and structure of war, the topic of the last sestet. The shift from the octet to the sestet focuses the reader's attention to war and fighting, partially signaled by a change in diction. Compared with the "silks and honey" of the octet, the speaker's calls to "carry hate / in front of you" and to "win war. rise bloody" are drastically more violent and abrupt. The rashness of such orders as to "be deaf to music and to beauty blind" seem to suggest sarcasm, as it would not appear that she would actually want whomever she is addressing to do this. Taking this into account, the poem has an overall message of peace and that music and beauty are more important and vital than war. However, the last couplet alters this perception of the poem. The need to "civilize a space / wherein to play your violin with grace" speaks of the natural cycle of humanity, of which war, peace, music, and beauty are all necessary and natural parts.

Homo called sapiens

I really liked the sonnet I read by Edna St. Vincent Millay, so I looked at more of her poetry and enjoyed this one. It is called Apostrophe to Man and can be found here.

It is completely different from [What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why], yet it is just as striking. In the poem, which was published in 1934, Millay addresses all of man kind, on the brink of war. She uses a sarcastic tone to get her point across. Though she literally tells the human race "expunge yourself, die out," that is not what she really wants. She is commenting on the fact that the world is literally working to destroy itself. We develop new and more powerful weapons and vie to "put death on the market." She does not see the sense in this and in a way is daring man to keep doing all these things and to see what will happen. The last line, "Homo called sapiens" is mocking. Sapiens roughly means "wise." With this she wonders, if we are so wise, then why do we do this to ourselves?

Millay also uses juxtaposition and contrast to add to the power of her poem. The best example of this is the phrase: "Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies / The hopeful bodies of the young." The actions of mankind kill its own young and wastes the potential of its younger generations. The contrast between "the hopeful bodies" and the nameless, insignificant "putrescent matter" drives her message home.