RESPONSE ANALYSIS (Poem: Out, Out)
In response to the students analysis of the poem, I should say that those are individual perceptions. All of them strongly valid. However, some of them deviated from the main idea of the poem as they saw the wood and the saw as representation of a undiscriminated deforestation. Some held and discussed that for several lines. Again, I consider that was not the intention of Robert Frost. Further down in the responses, I noticed the students turned to analyze the poem with more emotivity. I must say. Likewise, the first student declared he liked the vivid language and the preciseness of the words.
By these last words from the first student is where I totally agree as I felt sadness, fear and expectation. The words And the refrain of “The saw, snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled” really made me shivers. It rumbled into my ears. I imagined the child being hurt to death. I imagined how a life could end in the fullness of youth at the unjust expense of innocence, weakness, and a life to be full of chances.
Robert Frost’s narrative and descriptive poem, free verse. Did really hit with realism and straight forward message the heart and imagination of the reader. As for me, it caught my full attention by describing the setting and time: such as woods, mountains, and sunset. It depicts the life and its hard moments as being in a valley of sorrow when sun sets and life ends.
THE READING PROCESS
Reading is oriented to criticism. Reading is not just simply decode those letters or marks in a page. But it goes beyond the sight. Reading demands interest, emotion, sense, understanding and the evaluation of the motivation concerning the author, the message and the reaction or impact reflected in reader’s mind. Reading influences and creates discussion.
I invite you to check the following infographics
FILL IN GAPS
To fill the gaps, simply, concerns pure reasoning, questioning by inferring a imaginary situation that hypothetically or theoretically might offer the best of unexplained or not mentioned aspects in a logical sequence of events. Also, should we mention that the lack of some descriptive information might be considered as a gap. For instance, in the ‘out, out’ poem You should wonder. How old the boy was and why he was doing a man’s work. Certainly, fill in the gaps represents somehow the reader’s interest and the author’s goal through the message. It is important to mention that those gaps detected by the reader and probably intentionally left by the writer are normal as to fulfill the objective of the message is to portray relevant information only.
TEXT AND POEM
As you have seen reading process has to do with cognitive perception captured in the page. The writers intention and reader perception. The understanding relies on assumptions, memories and/or preconceived attitudes. The text then represent the arrangement of the codes, the organization of words. In the other hand, the poem is the abstract photograph of the text that artistically has been formed.
In the following picture what for you represents the text and what represents the poem?
EFFECT AS MEANING
The effect has to do with meaning that text in the poem, while you being focused, makes on you. That deals with the response you take towards the effect that in this case the ‘out, out’ poem cause on your senses. Your senses are connected to previous experiences and or the opinion or consideration of a certain act. You can see, for instance, how horror captivates the reader by realizing how the boy is hurt to death by the saw.
American Poet , 1942 till present. She is the first american poet to win the T.S. Elliot prize and a Pulitzer prize in 2013.
ANALYSIS / RESPONSE
This free verse and meditative-narrative poem brings to discussion how a mother and her children were victims from physical abuse from a man; the Children’s father.
He is compared side by side with President Nixon in two ways. The failure of Nixon was to fail to rule a country. So does this so called head of a family did too. Now his children hate him. They are still recalling the moment he was kicked out as it was enough from abuse. They grinned inside their hearts as the american people did in 1974 as well, when president Nixon resigned the presidency.
This son or daughter recalls how powerful he was at work, the assets he possesed and kind of life style he had, but probably his ego had brought him down , and lost everything; leaving this man in misery. Now, he is being demanded to pay for his actions, by sharing a wish for his annihilation. However, there is a sudden slight change in the Narrative and he is called Father with capitalized “F”. That could indicates recognition and forgiveness.
If you pay attention to the text of the poem you can ask yourself some questions: who are really the victims?
Is the mother and children ?
Or is it just the mother ?
Or is it the children suffering from memories and lack of forgiveness?
Is the father a victim because of his past actions?
Poetry 