Daddy
By: Sylvia Plath
This poem depressed me so much. To think that any girl could feel so much resentment and hatred towards her father is devastating. You can tell by reading downt hruogh the poem that at first, she suppressed her anger. Then, it seems to me, this poem was sort of like a childish outburst. Just the language Plath uses, i.e "gobbledy-goo", suggest the poem is a very juvenile tantrum of sorts. I'm not too sure what to make of this poem, is it to be taken seriously or not? The tone of the poem is ovbious, but I guess it confused me a little. The whole German, Nazi, Jew references seemed very unclear to me. Was Plath trying to say that she was a like a Jew and her father was like a Nazi? Is that how she felt or is that how things really were? Ack!
My Father Moved Through Dooms of Love
E.E. Cummings
There is an obvious cycle of emotions in this poem, they're changing with the seasons. It seems like this peom is a truibute to the strength of his father. It's a wonderful thing to be able to overcome the "dooms of love." We all know how hard a broken heart is to mend. I'm not exactly sure what happened to his father for him to be grieving so much, but I do know that if my (future) child wrote a poem like this about me, it would be flattered. There are some truly beautiful sentiments in this poem. The last two lines are my favorite:
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
The following poems can be found here, and in Fifty Years of American Poetry.