homework for Jan 15th

After reading the poems for this week, I thought the one I connected with the most was "A Call" by Seamus Heaney. In A Call, I saw the speaker as maybe just the author recounting an event to the audience, who could be an interviewer of some sort, about a call he made to someone. In my interpretation, I saw this as a call to his parents when he was maybe college aged or beyond. I may have made this interpretation because, of course, I am in college and can relate to calling home only to have my mom tell me how dad is outside and having to go fetch him to talk. I felt like the author's tone was a little torn though since he mentions the nice day and the calmness of the wait as the woman goes to get the man but also there are references to death and the "grave ticking" of the clocks. It made me wonder, though, why the author would go from visualizing this man being happy to be gardening while sad nonetheless to thinking of death due to clock ticking. I liked that the author made this poem have no rhyming scheme. I feel that, if he had made it rhyme, some of the great visuals he gives us would've lost some of their vividness.

The other poem I enjoyed was "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I missed the fact at first but, after looking back, I noticed that this was an Italian style of Sonnet due to the 8 lines being grouped together with the rhyme scheme of abbaabba. For a lot of the poem, you could see a definite religious background in the speaker whether they were the author or not. He talked very literally about how God made the earth so wonderful and yet mankind has made it less awesome in the way that we use it. There really seemed to be disgust that many people have moved away from God to deal with their own lives. Apparently even when the world needs help, mankind won't go back to God. I interpretted that when I paraphrased line 4: "Why do men then now not reck his rod?" Now, I know the book says that this is in reference to God's punishment but I couldn't help but think of the Psalm that discusses God leading us and the rod and staff comforting us. Due to this, I saw the line more as "Why won't the world remember God?" That, of course, could be completely wrong. I still like the thought that I got from the poem where even though man turns his back on God to focus on his own life, God is still there replenishing the earth's awesomeness and waiting for mankind to come back to religion.