Trifles

waahhh waahhh wahhh women don't get enough respect. that what they should change the name of this play to. Clearly the sheriff and the county attorney are arrogant and stupid. But i just can't stand the way that the play tries to use this to portray all men. Men are practical, and if it was not for our right-brained ways, society would be doomed. I was watching Dr. Phil the other day, yes, i enjoy watching people worse off than myself. Anyway, he was explaining how men are linear thinkers and women are more circular thinkers. Not necessarily bad either way of course, but i'm just tired of men being made fun of for the way we think. Like those stupid commercials that stereotype men doing stupid things. How would women like it if we stereotyped all women as emotionally unstable and naggy? not a great way to sell products now is it. What women fail to realize however is that by buying into this anti-men crap, they are actually falling for the stereotype that was possibly even developed by a man who is marketing products to women. I guess what i am saying is i wish that we could embrace the way we think and be glad that we are different instead of criticizing each other. Its not like we can change each others brain structure. F Trifles, and yes, worrying about your freaking fruit when you have murder charges against you is retarded. Shame on Mrs. Wright.

Lonely Hearts

So i hope that Wendy Cope was making fun of personal ads here. If not, it's pretty pathetic. Its very rhymy which is nice. I like the repeated line at all the end of them. The truth is, these people should probably just be saying in their ads "I'm washed up and nobody wants me. I'll take anyone that doesn't have expectations as high as mine." The last stanza is really funny, yeah, who knows where it may lead? probably a rape in a dark alley. Cope is probably trying to just make these people see how pathetic these ads really are. I would not doubt it that most of these are real ads that were just changed a little bit for rhyming sake.

Rites of Passage

Reading this poem, i just say to myself "Awwwwwwww." Its like the little boys think they are men. Olds describes the boys as men many times throughout the poem. That is how the boys portray themselves. The poem seems to be mocking leadership, interesting for a 1983 poem. The Cold War is still going on strong. The boys unite together with a common hatred. They could easily kill a two year old. Kind of like the United States and Russia during WWII. Hey we can sit here and argue over who is better, or we can unite together and easily kill the Germans right? Of course we all know how that turned out, as soon as WWII was over we were fighting Russia's allies all over the planet for 50 years. Also i noticed she said the boys saw each other as small in each other's pupils, as if to say the boys were insecure, not confident, in their own toughness. And that is what had fueled their hatred in the first place, insecurity. I also like at the end, she adds: they are playing war... to celebrate my son's life." lots of irony here she is using. The 6 and 7 year old boys being talked about as if they were men, generals, but at the same time being described as having the fragility of balsa wood. The irony that they are playing war to celebrate the boy's life.

The One Girl at the Boys' Party

First of all, this is the most sexual poem I have ever read in my life. Granted I am no Robert Frost, I can catch a sexual innuendo when i see one. There are many sexually descriptive words used in the poem that are just down right dirty. The boys "tower and bristle" and the girl is "smooth and sleek." the boys "strip to their suits" and her body is "hard." just to name a few. Finally the last few lines seem to be describing some orgasmic scene. Hardly appropriate for a little girl that is wearing a swimsuit with "hamburgers and french fries" printed on it. I don't know about you guys, but i'm picturing the girl from little miss sunshine. I know you're probably thinking wow Bryan is such a pervert but i swear i don't go scanning these poems to find this stuff. It just springs out at me... that was a poor choice of words. So this is a bit of a sensitive subject, a young girl starting to become a woman. I'm not sure that Sharon Olds did this subject a lot of justice, portraying in such a perverse way, especially in the time period that this was published, the 1940s. As my father always tells me, "they never used to put that kind of stuff on television!" everyone time we see a maxi-pad commercial. Ah, the good ole days when we didn't talk about this stuff. So kind of a touchy subject in a time period where this stuff wasn't talked about. It must have been pretty controversial.