Poems Response 3

Order Description

Read and analysis the poetry of “About the Poet” and “Epigrams: On my First Son”, then write a reading response. *(NOT SUMMARY)* about your feeling, opinion, are there any connection between the poems? or what do you think, or what interesting to you, or what did you understand from the poetry, or anything you want to write about. *(BUT BE SPECIFIC AND QUOTE FROM THE POEMS)*

Epigrams: On my First Son by Ben Jonson : The Poetry Foundation

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173720

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Epigrams: On my First Son

BY BEN JONSON

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.

Seven years tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

O, could I lose all father now! For why

Will man lament the state he should envy?

To have so soon ‘scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,

And if no other misery, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, “Here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”

For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.

About  the  Poet

Elizabeth  Willis

About  her:  the  air,  warm  as  fact.

An  imaginary  boat  heading  off  to  hell,  her  foot  pushing  it  offshore.

The  sunlit  bank,  a  mirage  of  the  perfect  past.

She  was  barking  at  the  waves,  thinking  they  barked  first.

But  this  was  not  a  river.  It  was  Thursday,  a  word  cast  in  lead.

Her  eye  had  turned  the  water  into  sky.

The  poet  is  a  trespasser.

The  poet  is  the  king  of  Rome,  New  York,  with  one  foot  in  a  boat  and  one  against  the              snowy  shore  of  reason.

Wondering  if,  like  a  boy,  she  could  go  there  for  a  season.

[2015]