John Keats relies on rhythm, on the consistency of a star’s presence in his poem, “Bright Star.” He eloquently depicts the star’s eternal nature and steadfast presence in the night sky. The main theme of this poem is whether one lives eternally in bliss or “swoon[s] to death.” Keats vividly illustrates himself lying in his lover’s lap until death takes him away. While doing this, he wishes for eternity, to lie with his lover for eternity. Even as he craves an eternity of this bliss, he realizes that to live a short life in this moment would serve as an adequate life. This correlates to the ideology of Phillippe Petit, the man who danced across a tightrope strung between the world trade towers in 1974. He felt no fear in plummeting to his death during his light waltz across the wire because he thought it beautiful indeed to die in the throes of one’s passion. Keats ends at this same thought in his final line, that eternity pales in comparison to the bliss of lying with his love.

The use of the sonnet allows Keats to discuss the qualities of a star and then relate it to himself. He relies on the Shakespearean form of a sonnet for his poem, and he utilizes the Volta, which lies prevalent in all sonnets. The shift between the star and himself serves as the Volta of the poem. Keats discusses an object strict in its presence, steadfast in form, reflecting the form of the sonnet. He parallels the form of the sonnet and the nature of a star, in order to emphasize how he wishes to remain steadfast but not isolated. The gravity placed on his desires for eternity contrast his final understanding of death. Keats struggles throughout this sonnet with the idea of leaving his love, but ultimately finds solace in the beauty of their brief moments together.

Weren't You Duped Yesterday?

The smartest characters in movies always give off an apathetic air, or that their emotions are self-contained and controlled. In Ocean's Eleven, Brad Pitt constantly stays in control and the viewer watches him with both awe and an understanding that he is in control. That is how the narrator in "Muckracker," by Cate Mavin feels. She calls out to the reader, appearing insecure, but says as her final statement, "I have no loyalty and I have no pride." How interesting! She tells the tale of her abusive, frail, and spiraling relationship with a man with conviction and multiple analogies.

The message of this poem boils down to the power of words and their voracious nature. Her lover's words entangle her and pull her into his web of manipulation while she herself manipulates the reader. She pulls the reader in, asks for their sympathy, gives airs of insecurity, and then confesses her apathy towards the reader and her lover. The poem almost seems like an experiment in the manipulation of words. This connects with Nabokov's, Lolita. (Sorry! It just keeps connecting to what I read.) The narrator of the novel, H.H., invites the reader's pity by creating a double, a man worse than he. The narrator in Muckraker uses much of the same stratagem, creating a lover worse than herself, one who manipulates and ignores her, enticing the reader to sympathize with her.

The aspect of this poem that draws the reader in is its fascinating nature. The narrator migrates through several extended analogies: comparing the relationship between the her and the reader to a lascivious encounter, her relationship to a trip to the dentist, and his voice to sandpaper. The salacious metaphor hints at her desire for the reader to form a passionate connection with her, read the story voraciously and then move on to the next item in the day's agenda. All the similes magnify her situation: the disparity in her relationship, her desire for a symbiotic relationship between reader and writer.

She closes with a dark and bold statement, "If you can't trust people, you can't trust books, since books are people and people are books." Can books be trusted? If people are flawed, than books must be flawed. What this narrator has yet to accept is that in the weakness of man there is great power. In the acceptance of a fallen soul, one can finally move towards healing. Therefore broken writers are filled with insight, even if they cannot always be trusted.

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Tarantino

The mediocre diction and lack of punctuation in “Hazel Tells Laverne” contrasts the typical image of a princess. Although the typical story of the princess and the frog centers around an impoverished, attractive female, her speech rarely matches her status. This poem uses the dialogue this character should possess. The other device Machan uses in her poem, is the deviation from the classic story. She replaces the romantic dreamer with a realist and portrays the frog as an outrageous lunatic.

Machan utilizes the monologue to portray this moment as dramatic but also lackluster in comparison to the classic fairytale. The narrator, a maid cleaning the bathroom, speaks quickly with poor grammar and seems to have little control over what she says. She appears to have no filter. One reason Machan uses no punctuation to make this poem one great breath of words, as if the maid talks in a rush and takes not a single pause.

If Machan had told this tale from an observer’s standpoint, the listener would shudder and shout at the maid’s missed opportunity. When the maid herself tells the story, then the listener understands the ugliness of the frog, its sudden intrusion on her responsibilities, and his obscene request. Without the emotion and reasoning of the speaker, this story would annoy most listeners. Her passionate and quick telling of the story portrays the rushed and horrifying nature of the circumstance. Few people would, if put in the maid’s shoes, actually kiss the frog.

Machan carefully handles this traditional story and morphs it in a manner that does not outrage the listener, reminiscent of Tarantino’s modern retelling of the murder of Hitler in The Inglorious Basterds. Both grab a hold of the reader with familarity, weave them into the protagonists story, and then surprise them with the ending. Only with the ethos of their narrator can they achieve this feat.

"Why prolong the story?"