"The Quiet Life" is a direct espousal of the founding American ideals independence and simplicity. Pope writes about how a man who lives simply is the most content, how happy one is when his "wish and care is a few paternal acres bound". He laments that we all cannot live quietly and reap the bounties of our own labors, have our "own flocks supply [us] with attire" as it were. the last this A. Pope asks for is a quiet death with no-one to weep for him, he wants to live inconsequentially with no worries outside of himself. Thats what he really wants for us all, small, self-contained universes that we can thrive and be happy in. I think that this dream is the dream of the yeoman farmer and the founder's framers, that everyman would have his own piece of land and his own problems. I feel like Thoreau would have liked this poem quite a bit.
My second poem is "Mexicans Begin Jogging" by Gary Soto. I picked this poem because it talks about a culture and a lifestyle that is very different from the one A. Pope writes about. Soto's world is full f worry and hardship, working in factories, and running from ICE. The world south of the border of just above it is much different from the quiet farmlife of the North.
No comments:
Post a Comment