Assignment #7 and Tone Poems

I thought that assignment #7 was a very cool assignment and I spent a lot of time trying out different these forms. I started with the homolingual translations and had a lot of trouble with it and after a few tries I moved on to attempt the N+7 style. Initially I forgot the exact rules for the N+7 and somehow thought that I was supposed to change the last word in each line of the poem to the word 7 words down from that in the dictionary. After doing one of my entire poems in this style....which was interesting, I figured out what I was really supposed to be doing and reworked it to follow the rule. After I N+7ed my own poem I then took some traditional songs and N+7ed them as well. I really enjoyed using this form on the traditional songs and did a lot of them that I did not even end up handing in. I really liked to see that changes that using this style had on these works. When changing my own poem there were a few changes that really made me laugh and a few that made me think of other possible directions I could have taken my poem in. When I worked with the songs it was fun to see how words like home could be changed to homicide and the word word to workaholic.
In class yesterday we looked at 2 poem Columbus and Musee des Beaux Arts both of which featured a discernible tone of the author in the writing which had a large effect on the poem. Of these two poems I really liked Musee des Beaux Arts and the way that the authors voice could be heard within it. I also liked how the poem set up its ideas about human suffering and how it is human nature that it often goes unnoticed in the beginning and then finished up referencing the Bruegel featuring Icarus as a sort of case study to the point that he was trying to make. The tone Auden uses in this poem is somewhat sad but also very assured as if Auden has learned from experience that this is the way that life is and although it is sad it has to be accepted. This poem is an excellent example of how the authors tone can be an extremely important aspect of a poem.