P and G- it begins!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you check this!

Greene actually wrote the book when he was in exile in Mexico due to a libel suite by a young Shirley Temple. Greene wrote an unfavorable review of her performance in a magazine and as a result, faced legal actions. Since the crime was "severe" he was threatened with jail if he was to return to England. As a result, his publisher financed his trip. Most of the characters in PandG are based on real characters who he met when he was there. Please make sure that you research the political background of Mexico during this time before you read tonight. Thank goodness for the internet!

Contemporary Poetry

I chose "Coloring" by Ronald Koertge because I thought the juxtaposition within the poem was a very different technique. In this poem, Koertge contrasts the childish art of coloring with all of these terrible things like gangrene, sores, nausea, and the Ku Klux Klan. Each color is made to represent a different one of these terrible things. In doing this Koertge employs color imagery so that the diseases and groups he talks about fit the colors; sores are red, the Klan's outfits are white. The use of this juxtaposition bridges two stages of life. As one grows older, the colors one puts on the paper begin to mean more than just random choices. This is why in the third stanza, Koertge stresses that no one has ever majored in coloring in college or won any prizes as an adult. These sort of phrases are hyperbolic in the sense that they take this childish activity to a highly adult level. At the end of the third stanza, the phrase can't see you now is repeated three times in order to stress the point that this idea is so ridiculous of regressing to childish behavior and we would never hear these sort of excuses. In the fourth stanza, he then goes on to explain the cause of this loss of innocence. He blames the whole thing on puberty. He says that this stage in life opens up our view of the world for what it truly is.

The second poem I chose was "Forgotten Planet" by Doug Dorph. In this poem, flashback, hyperbole, simile, and repetition are used to explore a child's imagination. The first stanza, starts in the present and then flashes back to her own childhood. There are many enjambed lines here which give the poem a narrative feel. He is telling us the story of his childhood. There is then a simile; comparing her father's bulk to that of gravity. The last line of stanza two is a hyperbole saying that she can reach out and poke the sky with her finger it seems so close. He then goes onto say that he has lost this imagination as he has aged and enjoys seeing it through his daughter. His daughter reminds him of this imagination which is why he uses the simile at the end of stanza three that says he spies like a voyeur through his daughter's eyes. In stanza four, he repeats the phrase "On Plunis" making Plunis the place of his imagination. He can go there to be happy and to escape the stresses of his real life. On Plunis, he can be a child again and everything can be ok.