"My Papa's Waltz" Response

When I first read this poem in the 7th grade, I actually didn't think it was about the little kid getting abused; I interpreted it as him and his father playing around the house after dinner. But after the whole class shared their interpretations, most of them thought it was about the boy being hit, and that's when I realized that the poem actually did sound like it was about something more negative and dark than just lightly playing around.

Today when I reread it again, the image of a kid being hit by his drunken father in the kitchen came to mind instead of playing around and breaking things by accident, like it did last year. And today I'm not sure how I didn't see all this when I was in seventh grade. This is where I believe rereading literature more than once in different perspectives and with more than one idea in mind can add more sides to it and even help you understand the text more. Not just in poetry, but in any kind of writing it's best to not just think one-dimensionally about what you're reading, even if a text may seem like it's simple and straightforward at first.

I actually think that both points of view, being abused or playing, can work out in interpreting the poem, even though right now my interpretation is still the poem being about abuse.
 

Response to Poem Read in Class

The thing about the poem The Starry Night is throughout the poem it seems depressing, but at the same time somehow strangely comforting; it talks about death and dying in a place meaningful to someone, but this place is also calming since the place the author is talking about seems nicely peaceful; under the big stars, in a small little town, with a giant tree - this place means a lot to a person, so why wouldn't they want to spend the last moments of their life there, if they want to die?

The poem brings out the beauty and meaning to people in simplicity like stars in the night and small towns in the middle of nowhere. The poem isn't just about dying; it expresses many emotions at once.

"The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips"

I think this is an example of the author relating to nature more than human-made places such as towns. It'd be more peaceful to die in nature than in, say, her house or other unnatural place.

"into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry."

Another example of nature; in this stanza it is described as "that rushing beast of the night", which doesn't portray nature as peaceful in that line at all. Yet still, the first two stanzas, the one before this, all end with "Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die", and so the mix of emotions is set throughout the poem.


At first I actually didn't think this poem made sense at all, but as we went through it in class, it began to all make much more sense to me.

Poem on Starry Night Over Rhone

The houses in day mean little,
As the grand stars of night have truer meaning

Burning bright
Like a million little suns in darkness

Tonight as you and I walk among the shore
Gazing at those great spots of fire

Illuminating against ocean and tide,
Life is simple wasting time with you and the stars

Shh,
It's getting late now

But we can still walk on the shore
We can gaze at those stars forever.

Interpretation of the Starry Night Over Rhone by Van Gogh

 

This is Van Gogh's painting Starry Night Over Rhone, similar to his painting Starry Night, but still different.

Here, you see a couple holding hands, walking on the beach at night. The sky is three different colors; three shades of blue. The shining lights of the buildings are all aligned with the stars. Above the stars the sky is a dark black, and below it's a light, friendly shade of blue.

Van Gogh probably painted this when he was in the asylum, along with Starry Night. I think the stars above the lit houses mean that any ordinary-seeming person has the chance to do what they want in life and have dreams to look up to, which would be why the stars are directly aligned to the houses, and even the houses themselves are lit up on the inside. This could have served as self-inspiration when Van Gogh was in the asylum.

The part of the paining with the couple holding hands was probably drawn because Van Gogh must have felt loneliness when he was locked up, and (going back to self-inspiration) the couple also seem to be looking up at the stars. I think this means he had hope that once he got out of the asylum he wouldn't be so lonely anymore.