Blog Assignment 2

John Donne's Holy Sonnets #14 really stood out to me in the reading for today. The author is speaking to God in a very personal way. He wants God to "batter my heart." This seems really interesting to me. The relationship that the author seems to have with God is very personal, and in certain parts of the poem, Donne sounds like he kind of wants God to "whip him into shape" so to speak. 

It seems like a lot of John Donne's poems are about love. This, too, also seems like a love poem. The way he chooses his words and "talks" to God is in a very private way- the way two people involved in a relationship would speak to eachother, or the way someone who is completely infatuated would speak. An example of this would be lines 12-14:

Take me to you, inprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Donne wants God to be his "one and only." He wants to focus his life on his God, and that is what is most important to him. 

He also speaks of the devil and how he tries to take over. The speaker says that he is "betrothed unto your enemy." By this, as I understand it, he is saying that he has sinned. He has done things that he knew were wrong, and is now asking for God's forgiveness: Divorce me, untie or break that knot again...

John Donne wants to be relieved of his sins, and wants to go back to living his life with God. 

Blog Assignment 1

Seamus Heaney uses a lot of different literary devices to really make the poem "Digging" work. In just the second line, he uses the simile "The squat pen rests; snug as a gun." He uses this to show how his short little pen has great importance- it is like his very-own weapon. 

Heaney also uses hyperbole a few paragraphs later when he says "Bends low, comes up twenty years away." I took this as meaning that his father, being a very hard worker, bends down (digging), and doesn't stand back up for a distance. Obviously it wasn't "twenty years," but a long time, none the less. 

In the following line he uses a synechdoche when he says "Stooping in rhythm through potato drills." We see in the footnote that potato drills are actually "small furrows in which seeds are sown." He uses the simple term "potato drills" to represent all of the lines of seeds his father has sewn. 

In the next several lines, Heaney uses a lot of useful imagery, speaking of how his father is gardening, and how his grandfather was better at digging than any man he'd ever seen. He talks about bringing him a bottle of milk, and really describes it in a colorful, descriptive way. 

In the last few lines of the poem, Heaney says:

"Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it."

In these lines, Heaney does a few things. The first thing that jumped out to me was the use of repetition from the first two lines. These lines are used to begin and to end the poem. 

The other thing I noticed was how symbolic the statement is. He compares himself to his father, and uses his father's talent at sowing in the fields in comparison to his writing. 

The spade to his father is equal to Heaney's pen. 

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Welcome to my first blog...