I am not sure about everyone else but I found this assignment very hard. I am not a reader of poetry and find poetry very hard to follow. As a reader I need everything spelled out for me word for word and poetry leaves too much for me to fill in.
A Paraphrase of “Home is so Sad” by: Philip Larkin
A home is sad because it is exactly the way it was when you left when you return. Nothing is changed, all the mess is still there waiting for your return. A home is so comfortable because it is your own. Everything is left just the way it was when the last person left home, shaped to the comfort of them before they left. The home is the same as when you left is as if it did this to make you happy, to make you feel back at home as soon as you enter it. Without anyone to please it seems to wither. A home has no heart so with no one to please it goes back to being exactly what it was the moment it was left. It is you home and joyous to have you in it. When you look around you can see how your home use to be and how it is today. You notice more of what could be, should be and use to be while looking slowly at the changes. Looking at the décor in your home you can see the comfort that it provides. The comforts were put there by you but it is the home that keeps it all in one place to create you a home. Looking around sometime can be sad though because you see the past to the present and what should have been done and has not been. The music that is still out from the last time the piano was played, and the vase sitting on the table with withered flowers that need to be thrown out.
(Poem From Kennedy Pgs.789-90)
I am not sure if I did this correctly but I tried my best. I enjoyed this poem because its title makes it seem like it is going to be about a sad place. However when I read it I see a happy, maybe stressful, but still happy place. I don’t think of things that are comfortable to be sad so it kind of threw me off.
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Hi, Carmen. I think you did a great job paraphrasing this poem! There definitely is both a comfort and a sadness to the images. It seems like the sadness is the absence of the people. It makes me think of my visit to my great aunt's apartment in Philadelphia after her death. All her things waited just as she'd left it, but no one would be coming back. :( Nancy
ReplyDeleteReading just your paraphrase, I would have to say that it sounds as if a spouse has died, perhaps the wife. Upon the husband's return, maybe after the funeral, is when the ultimate sadness and grief sets in. Their home is no longer a home but an empty house full of reminders. -Shellye
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