"A Barred Owl"
by Richard Wilbur
The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”
Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.
The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”
Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.
"How I Discovered Poetry"
by Marilyn Nelson
It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne
by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen
the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day
she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me
to read to the all except for me white class.
She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder,
said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder
until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing
darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished
my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent
to the buses, awed by the power of words.
It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne
by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen
the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day
she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me
to read to the all except for me white class.
She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder,
said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder
until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing
darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished
my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent
to the buses, awed by the power of words.
Whenever I would try to write a poem something that I always struggled with would be the rhythm and flow of the lines. I'm sure there are different styles in pacing a poem but I found it interesting that, in the first poem at least, almost every line is 10 or 11 syllables long and I think this in part contributes to the steady but not monotonous speed of the piece.
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ReplyDeleteThe second poem is dark and is about a kid who has a love for literature and how reading a certain poem just shocked him and left him speechless. He connects with his teacher so she trusts him and believe's that he can do it. The first one is dark as well and plays with his fears. They both show the people in the poem in a dark place at one point or another. In the first he begins there and is scared, then in the second he is scared when he has to go and read a poem. They both show the power of words and hw in the first it sounds gruesome and in the second how it shows people are shocked.
ReplyDeleteThe first poem is what I think of as a stereotypical poem, with rhyming lines, short lines, and little-to-no punctuation. It uses the AABB rhyme scheme. The second poem, on the other hand, is closer to a paragraph/short story. There isn't any rhyme, there are full sentences, and it is easy-to-picture. However, they both spread a message about the weight words can have on someone, evidenced by the lines "Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear/Can also thus domesticate a fear" and "We walked silent to the buses, awed by the power of words."
ReplyDelete"A Barred Owl" is about an owl that can represent our darkest fears and anxieties. The poem showcases the power that words can have. It can transform a terrifying bird of the night into nothing more than a gust of wind. A child that was frightened can be appeased despite the presence of the fear because of the way words or used. When used correctly, they can have an impact on emotions and our well-being. This idea is present in Nelson's poem as well. She talks about how children in her classroom usually fail to pay attention when her teacher reads poetry. When she opened her mouth and let the words flow, the children are described to be walking back silently to their buses, "awed by the power of words." While the second is more direct in its message, they share the same theme. Wilbur's poem, however, has a drastically different tone; it is dramatic and fear-raising.
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ReplyDeleteRichard Wilbur uses rhyming in his poem A Barred Owl as a way to tie his poem together. Every two lines end with words that rhyme which helps the poem to flow together nicely. In the poem How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson, rhymes are not used but the poem still flows because of the story like characteristics such as full sentences. Something interesting about this poem, however, is that the sentences start in the middle of the stanzas causing the reader to have to keep continuing on throughout the poem in order to finally reach a resolution and a conclusion of a thought at the end of the poem.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Wilbur's poem was blatant in saying that words have the power to humble us and calm us in the sense that we don't have to recognize the fear that can be created behind them. We see the words, of course, and understand their meaning and implications, but we don't think about what they're actually capable of. Nelson's words had the power to silence a class of her peers in awe. "A Barred Owl" refers to this creature who is imposing; something that stealthily hunts and eats small animals in the dark. It reads like a lullaby, though, which is an important in considering how the baby was never afraid of this loud bird. Nelson was like the child. She was not afraid or bored with the words as the other children had been. She trusted them, not knowing that her words can be the same used by many terrible people. The power of her words is simply astounding in the fact that they can be used in so many different ways.
ReplyDeleteBoth poems center on the power of words. Words have the unmatched ability to evoke extremely specific thoughts or images such power is the focus of both poems. In "A Barred Owl" the author Richard Wilbur comments on the soothing power words and the usage of words to influence perspective. At first, the child was scared, the hoots of the owl were unsettling. In this case, the power of words was used to calm the child, to take a foreign, scary thing, and normalize it, to bring the calls of the owl into the realm of the familiar, the realm of the safe. In "How I Discovered Poetry" words are used to evoke feelings. We don't know what the words were but we can see the reactions to those words. In this case, words were used to amaze, to humble.
ReplyDeleteBoth poems deal with the power of words. Both tell stories of how words were used to brave the unknown, to comfort the nervous ones. In the second poem Nelson implies that she is nervous of speaking in front of the class. She implies that she is different than the class, both by skin tone and interest of the topic. However, she describes the effect of the words to be unifying as "we walked silent to the buses, awed by the power of the words". This subtle change in diction displays the power that words can have over people. The first poem also displays the power of words, but in a different manner. This first poem discusses how words can be used to terrify or to comfort. This displays the versatility of words, how they can be used to achieve completely opposite reactions. Combined, the 2 poems describe how words have the power and versatility to change minds.
ReplyDeleteI thought that is was very interesting how both poems dealt with the power of words and how the things that we say to people or are told from others can drastically change a situation. In the first poem we learn that a little girl is afraid of a hooting owl outside of her window. The comforting words spoken to her help her sleep at night when she thinks that it is just an owl asking "who cooks for you?" instead of an eery and ominous creature of the night. The girl was able to "domesticate a fear" by hearing the words of what the owl was saying so it didn't seem as scary anymore. The second poem is also quite interesting because it also deals with children but this time it is about a young black girl who is the best student in her class while all of the other white kids are zoned out from any sort of knowledge or care for what the teacher is talking about. The girl is given a poem to read that states different black steryotypes and racial slurs. In a way this awakens the rest of the children in the class ands they are obviously stunned by this poem for they quietly walk to the busses, "awed by the power of words". The rest of the white students learn about the type of amazement that poetry, writing and words can have on a person and they seem to become more in tune with their surroundings in class after they had heard these powerful words that the only black girl in the class spoke. In both poems the power of words completely alter the situation and switch the mood drastically.
ReplyDeleteBoth of these poems express the power and intensity words can bring to your mind. They discuss how words can put your mind at ease by "domesticating a fear" or having a classroom go silent. 'How I discovered poetry' talks mentions how Mrs. Purdy's poem the day before didn't leave most students in awe, which introduces the question of what was the difference between the two? Did the first poems words lack the amount of power that the second one did?
ReplyDeleteI expected there to be an softness to the ending of the first poem, since I believe it talked about a child trying to get to sleep and being spoken to by the owl. However, the words the poet used were not as soft as I expected. She used 'fear' but lightened it by putting 'domesticated' before. She always discusses a child's nightmare when saying "dreaming of some small thing in a claw Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw" It makes me curious as to why she decided to use these words.
I think what stands out most to me in these poems is how wildly different they are in a technical sense. It is quite blunt if I do say so; the first poem is very classic and traditional and the second one is far more modern. The first poem, A Barred Owl, resonates well with the type of poetry I am familiar with in writing and reading. It follows many conventional rules, being written in two sestets in iambic pentameter. It has an AABBCC rhyme scheme. It structurally reminds me more of Petrarch, but thematically, I find a more shakespearean vibe. The second poem, “How I Discovered Poetry”, is far more modern. It is free of any rules that restrict the meter or the ways that the stanzas are set up, going more for imagery and figurative language than rhyme scheme and tempo. I think what connects the poems both closely is exactly this, the technical differences, although I know Wilbur does not predate Nelson by that much. There is a touching effect and a depth to both poems, but how they achieve it, is completely different.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I noticed was that the forms of the poems were different. Wilbur wrote his work, “A Barred Owl” in a more ‘traditional’ AB form with two stanzas and rhyming. Nelson took a different approach in “How I Discovered Poetry” by writing full sentences in one long stanza. Though the forms of the two poems are vastly different, they both revolve around the theme of the power of words and the impact they can have on bringing different people together or tearing people apart. In “How I Discovered Poetry,” though it shouldn't matter, the author points out being different in the “all except for me white class,” the words of the poem that is read allows the students to come together and be “awed by the power of words.” Though they were put together differently, the message of the power and effect of words is the main focus in each of the poems.
ReplyDeleteI was very struck by “A Barred Owl”. I do like how the poem uses rhymes. Though rhyme poems can sometimes sound amateur, “A Barred Owl” allows for more of a connection to form between the reader and the story while giving off a more developed tone. The rhyming makes it seem almost as if we ourselves are reading a simple bedtime story and going off to sleep, which puts us into a similar place as the young child described in the poem.
ReplyDeleteThe two poems touched on the importance of words people say. How it can impact others in a genuinely positive way like in the first poem where it can calm down a child. But then in the second poem, the words seem to have a negative effect on the little kids. Though we don't word what the narrator said, we know it was powerful to the point that it affected the little kids all day. Young children don't usually understand the meaning of powerful words because they are too young. But in some instances where words do have an effect on them. It goes to show, that words you say can have an effect on people so you should choose wisely when it comes to your words.
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ReplyDeleteThe first poem is direct. While the lines rhyme and some of the words are less commonly seen, the phrasing is direct. In comparison, the second poem is more metaphorical, talking about wandering in clouds and soul kissing. However, the first poem is the one that tries to make a point, while the second is simply describing an experience. The first talks about the way words can be used to remove a layer of mystery from the world. It uses the removal of fear as an effect of the phenomenon, since we fear the unknown. The second takes its time with flowery language to let us understand how important a minor seeming event is to the author. If described directly, (I read a poem for the class after my teacher noticed me listening to one), it does not convey properly the feeling the author had while going through the experience.
ReplyDeleteRichard Wilbur conveys the idea of human fear and portrays that words can either amplify this fear or soothe it. We can see how the owl was used to as both, something that caused the fear in the child and then something that calmed the child down. This then relates to Marylin Nelsons poem as it demonstarted how the narrators words were so impactful that it caused for all the kids in the room to be ashamed of their actions. Both poems convey that the power of words is so great, that it can drastically affect a persons emotions.
ReplyDeleteBoth poems tell their stories using a very different structure. In “A Barred Owl,” Wilbur uses each line as a phrase, something that connects to the other lines but is distinct. Since he also rhymes in couplets, this strategy is more effective, since the rhyming words finish a thought, and don’t interrupt in the middle of a sentence. This line-by-line style works because Wilbur bounces around in the topics he discusses, from the owl to a child and back to the owl.
ReplyDeleteIn “How I Discovered Poetry” by Marilyn Nelson, a story is told, and time is linear. Since all the lines are very interconnected, and follow directly one after the other after the other, each line is just part of a sentence, only a partially complete thought. Unlike Wilbur, whose lines have a lasting finality about them, Nelson’s poem flows, each line a new wave lapping the shore. It appears to be a stream of conciseness-type format, and even has colons and periods in the middle of lines, which emphasize the childlike energy and reflective nature of the poem.
Both poems are united in that they discuss the power of words, the purpose of the story, the audience and the storyteller. An owl is no longer frightening when in is anthropomorphized, and is calling out human words into the lonely forest. Told by a parent, they wish to soothe the child and the dependence children have upon the parents allows the child to believe and fall back to sleep. A single black girl alone in a white class has power over a story that involves black characters, her history. The black experience is so much more powerful when told to those who don’t know it, by one who is absorbed in it.
Both poems discuss the newfound power of words in the eyes of a child. Everyone looks at the world differently and we can use words to change someones perspective completely or shift their emotion towards an issue. In both poems a child was used to represent the openness and accepting nature we all once possessed. As we discover the power of words we learn that we can choose to accept different people's interpretations and perspectives or rely on our own.
ReplyDeleteBoth poems focus on the mysterious power of words and their impact on young listeners. I think they are both trying to convey the same message and that is that children are always listening. For this reason it becomes the job of poets and teachers and writers to set good examples through their writing and teach valuable lessons. It’s clear that the author of the second poem was deeply affected by what she read in class as a child and so she became a poet. The girl in the first poem is awakened by the words of an owl, a figure left inconspicuous as the poem moves along to focus on the meaning of words. I love how the author describes how words are used by using the owl, stating “send a small child back to sleep at night not listening for the sound of stealthy flight or dreaming of some small thing in a claw borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.” Words, which can positively influence our lives as seen in the second poem, can also leave us vulnerable and exposed depending on what is being said, just like the prey of an owl.
ReplyDelete"How I Discovered Poetry" came off as quite chilling to me. Due to the author's fantastic narrative style, she makes it seem as though her teacher is fostering her budding love for poetry. However, when she has her read one that she's chosen "especially for her", it is actually extremely offensive and hurtful. This theme of childhood fear and impressionability is present in "A Barred Owl" as well, for the mysterious "owl" strikes deep fear into the hearts of the parents, but "domesticizes the fear" for the daughter, leaving her blissfully unaware of the owl's true message.
ReplyDeleteThe poems are similar in the sense that they both demonstrate the power words have on others, or in this case in the eyes of a child. In “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur, it is stated that “Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear, Can also thus domesticate a fear”. In this poem the owl uses his words to instill fear into a child and then with the use of words was also able to calm the child down. In “How I Discovered Poetry”, it is stated “We walked silent to the buses, awed by the power of words.” In this poem the students in a classroom were greatly impacted by a poem read aloud by another student. In both these poems there is a demonstration of the impact words have on those who hear them, read them, or speak them.
ReplyDeleteThese two poems speak about the power of words. In "The Barred Owl", Wilbur says that words can either make one afraid or calm, and in "How I Discovered Poetry", Nelson shows how words can also make one zone out or stand in awe. The rhyming in the first poem gives a soothing rhythm while reading it aloud, but so does the second poem. Nelson's poem reads more like a story, but her specific word choice provides the same rhythmic effect. The phrase "soul-kissing" in the second poem stood out to me because it is the most perfect phrase to represent Nelson's personal connection with the poem that goes far deeper than the mind. While reading, I did not catch on to Avery's point that both the receivers of words were children. Sometimes we take words for granted, but children find value in every word they hear.
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