Words wide night

The first line has a few inside rhymes, these are my favourite. First the o sounds,
then the ai sounds:
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
Then the alliteration: Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
Nice, huh? The s consonent and o sounds remind me of words of desire and longing.
The w consonant and ai sound stretch out the spaces making everything feel
unattainable.
The ah sounds in the second line sound like sleepy yawning and the ih sound like
the REM of eyelids and thought spikes, then a half rhyme of you and moon making
their connection you are as available to me as the moon:
and the distance between us. I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
The last line of the first stanza has that inside rhyme again room/moon maybe
theres a more technical term for it but I simply cant remember anymore. Despite
myself this line makes me imagine the room, a square white box in space slowly
rotating away in a lonely manner towards empty black space, away from the grey,
glowing, pitted surface of the moon. But I also know it means, these lovers anchored in
their rooms in different locations, spinning away day after day, never getting any
closer to the other. And I also think it is a play on the clich that people who miss each
other imagine the other looking at the moon too and missing them.
Phew, I think Ill only do that for the first stanza. Lets get on with the meaning of the
next stanzas.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
I think this is an elegant way to say bitter sweet, it is pleasurable a sensual word and
it is sad, a true and simple word nice juxtaposition. The next bit is the hardest for me
to get a hold of: theres a deliberate (I think hope it is not a typo! Did check several
versions online.) strange blip in the tense like a word missingin one of the tenses
(past, present, future). The reader wants to substitute it I am singing, I was singing, I
will be singingit is questioning where the lover fits into her life, like a daydream of
possibilities we all have of our lovers.
By this time I am beginning to think it is not just physical distance but emotional
distance which separates the lovers. (yes I am a bit slowww) it is:
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la.
Two people who should be together but arent create a (haha pun) tense situation, an
impossible song that not only is impossible physically to reach the ears of the lover
but also sounds like gibberish. She is almost saying, words are not enough and yet
proving herself wrong:
See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you and this
is what it is like or what it is like in words.
I really identify with this, I used to try and imagine the journey between my lover and I,
from one city round the world to another. Though dark hills makes me think sex and
intimacy, the secret psyche of another person we all want to know and connect with,
in a lover.

I just love that last line in its simple statement which offers itself up with such
vulnerability, somehow so irrevocable. The poem is an offering in itself. It is aware that
it is a poem if you want to speak deconstructively! The lovely w sounds are like
spread hands offering up this persons trust. If I were to offer someone words, it would
be a very high compliment so I take what she has said this way. Shes so
unselfconscious. In her love poetry, I see the influence of Adrienne Rich, who is also
gay, a pioneer in simple, beautiful (also physical and radical) expression of her love for
her lovers.
Part of the reason why this poem is so well known, is that it was on the Circle Line on
the Tube in London. That is where I saw it for the first time and it led me to seek out
and continue reading Carol Ann Duffys work. I met her at a Cheltenham Litfest
reading and she signed this poem in my copy of the book.
I saw a chapel
Summary

Blake here uses the example of a chapel to muse on religion in general. He

questions the existence of money and riches in the house of God, and reminds the
Church of Jesus's attitude toward the rich. After all, Jesus routinely castigated the
rich, providing regular verbal lashings of their coveting of material wealth and their
indifference to their less-well-off brethren. In the opening stanza, the poor are left
outside of the refuge, not even daring to enter. Blake argues that this is wrong.
Analysis

There is a dual meaning to this short and simple poem. One theme to be taken
away from I saw a chapel all of gold is the obvious comment on the falsity of
religion that Blake is making. In this reading, it is the serpent that is the one strong
enough to break in. The symbol of the serpent is not lost on any reader. Blake
almost rhetorically awards the serpent for his rebellious victory over the chapels
elite profligacy, despite his slimy length and vomiting poison.
The second meaning becomes almost as obvious as the first, once you know it is
there. The poem is stuffed full of obvious sexual images. In this analysis, the
chapel of gold is a representative for the temple of innocent love, the virgin
body. This holy place is soon defiled by a repressed villain who can no longer bury
his natural sexual drive. What begins with a beautiful image (line 1-2) is turned
into a metaphor of violence and ugliness as the speaker revolts.
The images given to the reader become more obvious once he/she is aware of this
undercurrent theme. The speaker stands outside the chapel weeping and
worshipping until he can take it no longer. A serpent rises[s] between two white
pillars eventually forcing its way inside. After his slimy length is set among
the rubies he vomits out poison onto the sacred bread and wine. In the last two
lines, the speaker is turned into a sty and laid down among the swine showing
a remorse and regret for the heinous intrusion just surpassed. The chapel here
carries two meanings. On the one hand it is exactly as it reads, representative of
religion, and Blake is condemning the opulence of the Christian church. A place that

should serve as a refuge to the poor and needy instead presents itself as a lavish
structure that is designed to keep the poor out. The second, and more bawdy and
disguised image of the chapel is that of a womans vagina. The speaker of the poem
uses the symbol of the church to represent his desire to love freely without guilt or
remorse. Instead of being invited to enter in he is taught not to dare, which results
in a vicious trespassing and contrite feeling of self-pity and shame at the end of the
poem.
This poem is quintessential Blake. It comes from one of his notebooks known as The
Rossetti Manuscript which was bought, twenty years after Blakes death, by Dante
Gabriel Rossetti from Samuel Palmers brother. The intellectual independence of the
work in the notebook was an inspiration to the nascent Pre-Raphaelite movement.
I saw a chapel all of gold was probably written around the time of Songs of Experience (1794),
and like The Sick Rose explores the human impact of social and religious systems
that simultaneously idealize and denigrate sexuality. The narrative is brief: mourning
worshippers stand outside a golden chapel. Without announcement, a serpent bursts
down the chapel doors, slides up the aisle, and vomits onto the altar, onto the
sacramental bread and wine. The narrator, appalled by this scene, turns away from it,
preferring to lie down among the pigs in a sty the abject state reached by the
prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).
What is Blake up to? The genital symbolism of the poem is clear: the serpent is
phallic, the chapel pristine and virginal. The event is a figuration of a transgressive
sexual encounter. The ejaculation of the final stanza could harldy be more offensive
given the context. When female sexuality is idealized, the poem suggests, repression
and denigration will follow.
To secular eyes, Blakes concern with the religious idealization of female sexuality may
seem a thing from another age. Not so the issues remain though the framework has
changed: in terms of (principally female) sexuality, religious idealizations have simply
been replaced with the idealizations of commodity culture. Christianity, Blake argues,
should mean human liberation, not dehumanizing repression. Idealization his work
asserts is a dangerous abstraction that ultimately leads to the denigration of all
those involved: subjects, agents, and spectators.

Analysis of Wilfred Owen's "Miners"

Wilfred Owen's Miners is about the colliery disaster at Halmend in January 12, 1918. The Minnie Pit was named after
Minnie Craig, the daughter of one of the owners. The pit was 359 yards deep, and was extremely profitable before the
disaster. On the day of the disaster there were 248 men working in the mine, and of those men 155 of them died from
cave-ins or inhaling poisonous gas. Among the 155 men that died 44 were under the age of sixteen. It took twelve
months to recover all of the bodies. This tragedy happened towards the end of WWI, and the effects were devastating
to an already poor people. Wilfred Owen enlisted on October 21, 1915, and due to his sheltered upbringing the effects
of the war were not entirely real to him until he was injured in battle. He was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital were
he was treated for shell shock. While he was there he met the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, and they became friends.
Owen suffered from horrific nightmares, which is symptomatic of shell shock; these nightmares greatly influenced his
writing. One image that was prevalent in his dreams was the mouth of hell. In this poem, the mine is the mouth of hell
and the miners are its victims.

This poem begins with an image of someone sitting in front of their fireplace listening to what the coal has to say.
Throughout this poem coal is personified; it is the speaker's story teller, and it feels sorrow. The speaker says that the
coal is wistful-feeling or showing a timid desire-of its origin in the earth.
The coal has memories, which something that is considered very human. The speaker waited for the coal to tell him a
story about nature before mankind existed. He expected to hear a story about leaves, ferns, and fronds-a usually large
divided leaf especially of a fern or palm tree-not a story about man. Fauns are a Roman god similar to but gentler than
a satyr.
In the third stanza, the speaker tells of other possible tales that he expects to hear from the coal. Time is also
personified in this stanza. I envision Time's cauldron as a macrocosm and inside of the cauldron are the microcosms
that make up the world. Time controls everything; it is there when life begins and it is there when life ends, it is
undefeatable. A phantom is typically defines as something that is apparent to sense but has no substantial existence.
Continuing on with my interpretation of Time's cauldron, the steam-phantoms perhaps mark the birth of a new life or
the soul leaving the earthly plane. Another possible explanation of steam-phantoms can also have to do with coal;
many engines used coal to produce steam-power, which propelled large vehicles such as trains. In this case, Time's old
cauldron would be a coal mine. Different elements from the earth combine together over a long period of time to
create coal, much like cauldrons were used to make food or as in common folklore to mix potions.
Instead the speaker got a story about the mine where the coal was originally found. The coal remembers the moans of
the miners who worked in the Minnie Pit; the forty-four boys and the 111 men who lay at the bottom of that 359 yards
deep shaft. The coal remembers the sleeping bodies; sleeping connotes that the miners were either dead or near
death. They "slept a wry sleep" means that the boys lay in a bent or twisted shape, their bodies were left contorted
from the blast. The men were left writhing-gasping for air, twisting and turning in pain.
The speaker shifts to first person as he recalls seeing the white bones in hot fragments of partly burned wood or coal.
This part of the poem can been seen as partly a flashback of his war service, and partly about what happened to the
miners in the Pit. White bones give an image of torn way flesh, and or decayed bodies. In both mining and war,
explosives and explosions happen and bodies get mangled. He recounts that there were so man bones and possibly
fragments of bones that it was impossible to tell how many there were. It gives the image of a mass grave where
bodies are dumped together in a big hole. The muscled bodies are charred, meaning they were burned by charcoal.
In this stanza, it is clear that the speaker is talking about the war. The "dark pits of war" are tunnels that were dug
under no-man's-land to the enemy trenches where explosives could be detonated to kill the enemy. The miners that
dug these holes were often killed in the tunnels beneath no-man's-land. Incidentally, no-man's-land is the area
between two opposing forces that belongs to no one, but is littered with the dead bodies of soldiers from both sides.
This place is where Death, which is also personified, believes peace lies. Death inevitably ends the war and thus the
pain and suffering that soldiers experienced during combat. WWI was a particularly brutal war; soldiers were not fully
prepared for what they had to face, in fact even seasoned military didn't know exactly what to expect.
People will live long lives in comfort due to the soldiers and the miner's sacrifices. Amber is a yellowish or brownish
fossil resin used especially for ornamental objects, and it is the color of resin. Ember is a glowing or smoldering
fragment from a fire. Life ember's can be interpreted as one's soul; these miner's and soldier's gave up their lives and
souls for the good of society. Their deaths changed helped to create a safer and better future.
In this last stanza, the coal and the speaker become one. Their stories are similar even though one of them is human
and the other is a mineral. The world will continue on for centuries because of the sacrifices that were made by the
soldier and the miners. The coals warmth will lull-soothe or calm-the survivors to sleep. The songs that are crooned
could be lullabies. The clich "out of sight out of mind" is the message of the last two lines; most people don't dwell on
the negative aspects of life, such as war and death. A lot of soldiers find it hard to come home from war, because they
have to reemerge themselves into a society that is not consumed with killing the enemy; they have a hard time
relating to others who haven't been through the atrocities that they have.
The Minnie Pit can be viewed as a mouth of hell. Men and boys died in there because man needed fuel and poor men
needed jobs. The miners working in the Pit were buried alive when the Pit collapsed creating a mass grave. The pain
and fear that they must have felt is unimaginable. War can also be seen as hell; societal conventions don't exist in noman's-land. You do what you have to do survive without knowing if you will even make through the day. Death is a
nightmare that never ends; once you experience death it is with you forever.