Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Plants, Animals, and, (Almost) Humans (Animals (Animal Poetry (The Fish by…

- - - - "Because your people arrived, we are relearning what it means to be a healthy thriving people. ... We saw them as people and gave them the Preserve when they still tried to kill us as worms." (Butler, 25)
    - - "But they usually take the men to leave the women free to bear their own young." (Butler, 21)
    - - "He had done it three times in his long life. Three clutches of eggs, three times being opened up and sewed up." (Butler, 22)
  - - - When does Ava stop being perceived as an android and start being seen as a human? Where does the line between humanity and robot get drawn? #
  - - - "Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?" (Ishiguro, 254) Madame refers to the clones as "creatures", refusing to acknowledge their humanity and separating them from herself.
    - - "Ruth shook her head. 'It does sound a bit weird. But it'll probably go away." (Ishiguro, 129)
      - "It's just that sometimes, every now and again, I get these really strong feelings when I want to have sex. Sometimes it just comes over me and for an hour or two it's scary." (Ishiguro, 181)
    - - "Others argued back that they'd use for models people at the peak of their health , and that's why they were likely to be 'normal parent' age." (Ishiguro, 139)
    - - "By then, of course, we all knew something I hadn't known back then, which was that none of us could have babies." (Ishiguro, 73)
    - - Miss Lucy to the students: "Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs." (Ishiguro, 8)
  - - - the "other": The interviewer and Senguji discuss what makes us human. At what point do we stop becoming human when we replace our flesh with cybernetic parts?
- - - - Sea Rose by H.D.
        
        Sexuality & Gender: H.D.'s poem is about how women are products of their environments. The sea rose is acted upon harshly and isn't as beautiful as a spice rose, but is tougher and more admired by H.D. #
        
        Metaphor: The "sea rose" H.D. refers to is a metaphor for women who have been battered and gone through tough experiences. The "spice rose" refers to sheltered, groomed women. #
      - In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound #
        
        Metaphor: Pound compares faces in a busy subway station to flower petals on a fallen tree branch.
        
        Dehumanization: The people in this poem are being estranged. They're just faces, not whole bodies. #
    - - Form: Tommy Pico is an NDN writing poetry. He acknowledges that many NDNs that write poetry write about nature. He refuses to do so because he does not want to play into that stereotype of his culture. #
        
        "I can't write a nature poem bc it's fodder for the noble savage narrative. I wd slap a tree across the face, I say to my audience." (Pico, 2)
        
        "This white guy asks do I feel more connected to nature bc I'm NDN" (Pico, 15)
      - Gender & Sexuality: Tommy Pico continuously addresses his dating and sexual life in New York City. He is a queer American Indian and this affects many of the interactions he has.
        
        "oh, but you don't look very Indian is a thing ppl feel comfortable saying to me on dates." (Pico,14)
        
        "Last night I had a dream that I was a ghost who gave blowjobs and that is pretty much the experience of dating in the city" (Pico, 20)
    - - Sexuality & Gender: H.D. is displeased by man's interference in nature. She thinks that a completely natural garden is more beautiful than anything that has been carefully maintained. H.D. was also a feminist. This poem could be her way of saying that she is tired of women being compared to delicate flowers and that she believes they can also withstand "harsh winds" like men. #
    - - Metaphor: Williams is comparing a woman's body to a Queen-Anne's Lace flower. He also uses the color white as a metaphor for purity/virginity/innocence and purple as a metaphor for passion/desire.
      - Sexuality & Gender: Williams uses white and purple (purity and passion) to make comments about the woman he is describing. Wherever, "his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish". Wherever this woman has been touched by a man, presumably romantically or sexually, she is no longer white, no longer pure.
    - - Do the trees speak back to the wind
        When the wind offers some invitational comment?
        As some of us do, do they also talk to the sun?
        I believe so, and if such belief need rest on
        Evidence, let me just say, Sometimes it’s
        An earful
        But there’s more.
        If you hear the trees in their easy hours
        Of course you can also hear them later,
        Crying out at the sawmill.
        
        Anthropomorphism: Mary Oliver proposes the thought that not only can trees speak to one another, but they can also feel pain, just like people. # #
    - - Metaphor: The observer in the poem compares the men working in the fields to Grim Reapers which creates a dark atmosphere surrounding the harvesting of plants.
      - This poem comments on how machines make working less intimate and personal. Since it is machines harvesting the plants in the second four lines, no one notices the injured field mouse.
  - - - Frank Oz said that he casted Levi Stubbs as Audrey 2 because he wanted, "an edge, a real black man who was real street."
- - - - What does it mean to be civilized?
  - - - "Starts kissing Martin on the hands, then on the neck, crying all the while. Then it turns--or does it?--and he kisses Martin full on the mouth--a deep sobbing sexual kiss." (Albee, 49)
      - "...his dick was rising to the baby in his lap--his baby; his lap. And when he realized what was happening, he thought he would die; his pulse was going a mile a minute; his ears were ringing--loud!" (Albee, 50)
    - - "MARTIN. You know, your own sex life leaves a little to... BILLY. At least what I do is with...persons! STEVIE. I said, all right, you two! BILLY. Goat-fucker! MARTIN. Fucking faggot!" (Albee, 23)
  - - - Imagery: Moore's imagery in this poem is very prominent. Using specific images, she reveals her feelings towards the ocean and the cliffs nearby.
        
        "The water drives a wedge/of iron through the iron edge/of the cliff;" (Moore, 18-20)
      - Metaphor: The images in Moore's poem are metaphors for different things. The cliff might be a metaphor for humanity. It take constant abuse from nature (the ocean in this case) but it stays strong and endures. #
      - Metaphor: The sea creatures in the poem may represent all different people coexisting in the world.
        
        Lines 16-18: "the/turquoise sea/of bodies". These lines make it seem as if the creatures are more human than animal.
    - - Metaphor: The jellyfish that Doty describes are actually metaphors for language, specifically figurative language. He uses them to describe both his frustration and fascination with how humans need metaphor to describe and make sense of many things we encounter.
    - - Metaphor: The horses in the poem represent Harjo's multifaceted personality. In the end she accepts that she has "horses she loved" and "horses she hated" and that "these were the same horses".
      - Form: The poem is written in the style of a traditional American Indian chant. She uses nature and animals as a medium to connect with and reconcile with her identity. #
    - - Figurative Language: To create her vivid imagery, Bishop uses language that compares the fish she caught to something of a warrior #
        
        Through this figurative language, Bishop also brings up the moral question of whether she, and humans in general, have the right to hold animal life in their hands? She catches this fish, like many others have before, and can either kill it or toss it back into the ocean. In the end, she decides to do the latter. #
        
        "Like medals with their ribbons/frayed and wavering" (Bishop, 61/62)
      - Imagery: Bishop describes how ugly the fish she caught is and how she knows it has been caught and thrown back many times.
        
        "Here and there/his brown skin hung in strips/like ancient wallpaper,/and its pattern of darker brown/was like wallpaper:" (Bishop, 9-13)
        
        "a five-haired beard of wisdom/trailing from his aching jaw." (Bishop, 63-64)
    - - Form: The erratic spacing of Cummings' poem elicits the feeling of watching a grasshopper jump, look like nothing in the air, and then reform as a grasshopper on the ground. This is a very effective way of writing about an animal since it forces the poetry to become closer to its subject through spacing and rearrangement.
  - - - "...a little half-trained female chimpanzee is waiting for me and I have a good time with her, ape fashion; in the daytime I don't want to see her, because her eyes have that deranged look which bewildered trained animals have..." (Kafka, 88)
      - What does it mean to be civilized? Especially in this case, what does it take for humans to view other people (and other species) as civilized beings? #