an attempt at poetry.

i. A moment in  my life

This is the part where theres no looking back,
Sounds are unkown,
Slight panic attack,
The buzzing gets closer and you're in the zone,
"Alirighty, all done" you finally hear,
This tattoo is legit, lets go have a beer.

ii. Something I love

With a sparkle and statement,
Jaws drop to the pavement,
A million brands a million shades,
Its no wonder you've been around for decades,
Fierce, angry, classy,
For you I'd walk from Cali to Tallahassee!
Beauty competition, you abolish,
I love you so much my red nail polish.

Women in Sexy Clothes.

Rosy Arevalo

English 495 ESM

Professor Wexler

February 4, 2012

Women + Sexy Clothes = Men Who Write Great Poetry

Men are just always looking for new ways to describe and admire a woman’s body. In Robert Herrick’s poem “Upon Julia’s Clothes” the reader gets a more suggestive look at how a woman’s silky outfit can trigger a man’s intense desire for her. Alongside the overall idea of the poem, there speaker gives Julia’s outfit more power than the body that sports it. From a reader response view, as a woman it is always just grand to read or see how a man’s imagination and sense go wild from just the simple sway of a silk dress on a woman’s body. Of course these are all surface ideas that pop out of the poem right away; the speaker, word choice, tone, line length, and audience also reveal more than just a woman in sexy clothes.

Nowadays, it’s rare and almost impossible for a rap song to not discuss in full detail a woman’s physique, but most importantly, what she’s wearing.  This Herrick poem is the rap song of its day. We can dive right into this from looking at the first three lines of this piece: Whenas in silks my Julia goes, /Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows / The liquefaction of her clothes! (Herrick). The speaker has an eye, or better yet both eyes, attentively focused oh the silk that Julia is wearing. Immediately it activates a thought in the speakers mind about how great the movement of this dress is on her. We can say this because of the word “liquefaction” and the manner in which it flows. Both are very interesting ways to describe the movement of the silk. This is where we can gather that Herrick is not giving the credit to Julia’s body in the silk clothing, but instead to the clothing itself. In L. E. Semler’s article “Robert Herrick, the Human Figure, and the English Mannerist Aesthetic”, Semler perfectly explains how for Herrick it is not just clothes on a woman: “The reader cannot interpret the motion of the clothes as simple action because they are not depicted objectively. Instead, the depicted clothes function as a mirror of the poet’s interpretation of the real clothes. Thus, in the poem, the poet’s interpretation is more of substance than the clothes themselves” (Semler). The silk is more than just an appearance to the speaker; it is the matter of the silk which is of great importance here.

As seen in the first three lines of the poem, the tone and word choice continue to shine in the last three lines: Next, when I cast mine eyes and see / That brave vibration each way free, /-O how that glittering taketh me! (Herrick). The speaker is clearly infatuated with the sight of the silk clothing on Julia. Sight plays the important role in this poem. Plato was a believer that sight and dependency on it only weakens man and steers him from the truth. Herrick just captures what a true feeling can be experienced only through sight. Aside from maybe just touching the silk, one cannot extract as much as Herrick has in this poem without the usage of sight. The “brave vibration” and the “glittering” of the silk convey such a vibrant picture with an intense feeling from the speaker. A man without sight would envy this man’s capability to see such movement and shine from a silk outfit on Julia’s body. 

The tone of the entire poem resembles that of a teen-ie bopper/fanatic tone which is a mildly obsessive one. The lines are short and every third line ends with and exclamation point to complete the excitement the speaker is feeling as he watches Julia’s silk outfit. There is the obvious sexual and erotic tone as well. In Moira P. Baker’s article “The Uncanny Stranger on Display”: The Female Body in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Love Poetry” she explains the male experience when reading this poem. “For the male reader, the experience of the poem, with all its teasing ambiguities, all its dual referents, invites an erotic response” (Baker). This poem is an invitation from Herrick himself to his male readers for a sexy response. Males, however, are not his only audience. Women are also part of the audience and there is pleasure in knowing the power that silk outfits on their bodies have over men with sight.

            It is a passionate and daring act to be a man who can express so much passion and obsession for a woman’s silk outfit, and it is even more daring to be the woman who gets to initiate that. Without either men or women, the world of erotic poetry would never exist and what a shame that would be. 

     

              

  

 

Works Cited

Baker, Moira P. "The Uncanny Stranger on Display": The Female Body in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Love Poetry." South Atlantic Review 56.2 (1991): 7-25. Jstor. Web. 4 Feb. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3199956>.

Semler, L. E. "Robert Herrick, the Human Figure, and the English Mannerist Aesthetic." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 35.1 (1995): 105-21. JSTOR. Web. 4 Feb. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/450992>.

Five year olds and iPads

Don’t these kids look like they’re having the time of their life? My name is Rosy, and my passion is young minds in the classroom. Within the last ten to fifteen years, social media has boomed in the United States. New fads are never shy to make their way into the classroom, and with that new methods of teaching are inevitable. We don’t have to say goodbye to our beloved books, but we do have to welcome technology into our classrooms.