Thanksgiving Pie Poem

Pie
Thanksgiving
Turkey
Birds
Trees
Leaves
Pilgrims
Indians
Cowboys
Hats
School
Geometrey
Circles
Circumference 
3.14159265
Pi

A Work of Artifice

I think this poem is definitely about female suppression. The bonsai tree, being the woman.  Hair curlers..."domestic"...attractive pot...bound feet...
http://images.lovelovechina.com/Foot_binding.jpg
Well, that's a gross as it gets.
But what I really liked about this poem was the title.  Artifice is a clever trick or cunning.  It was very interesting that she used that as the title.  It's not just about how woman are turned into a beautiful, tiny tree, but how they are tricked into it.  Woman are made to believe foot-binding is the beautiful thing, or that hair curlers are necessary.  The "gardner" uses tricks to create this idea, saying that the woman is weak and coy, and she is lucky to have a simple life, or "pot," there for her.  That she should be happy for what she does have.
In class, people considered the gardner to be men.  I think the gardner can be more woman then men sometimes.  At least in my life time, woman tend to be the ones expecting other woman to fit into the potter.  Don't get me wrong, men also expect women to have the correct look, but it seems women create this look.  Many women expect others to be the beautiful, simple things to be looked at.  So I see it as a more universal thing, seeing woman as things that need to be controlled.

Toads

Well, I think it's pretty obvious that the "toad" is the burden of working.  The burden of working six days a week just to pay the bills.  I liked the use of the toad because they are ugly and gross, but necessary.  I thought this was a really cool poem, just the basic story of it.  A man is basically working away his life, and he wishes he could have the courage to quit. But I thought the thought process of it was interesting...how he knows he could make it after quitting, people do it all the time, but he doesn't want to give up the security of the job.  That giving up his job is what "dreams are made of."  I also thought it was interesting that some of his nerves come from not wanting to live the kind of life where he swoons his way into getting what he wants.  Philip Larkin, the author, worked as a librarian for a large portion of his early life, which makes this poem easy to see where it came from.  Personally, being a librarian doesn't sound like the most exciting job there is, so he was probably frustrated with his constant, repetitive work.  Because he ended up writing, I assume librarian was not what he wanted to do...but that being a poet may have seemed like "living off his wits."  Like, maybe writing wasn't a honorable job to him.
I was really confused on the last stanza though.  What are the two things he could lose?  "One bodies the other,"
confused there too.  But that's all.

Curiosity

This may be one of my favorite poems so far.  The idea that "curiosity killed the cat is...almost of good thing," I really liked.  "Face it. Curiosity will not cause us to die-- lack of it will." really showed this idea too.  If you're not curious and not really living life, then it's practically like you dead.   It's...if you don't live excitingly, are you even living at all.  Why not enjoy life and be curious?
Then he takes his analogy even farther as to compare cats and dogs, which I really loved.  It's just so true that dogs are very dependable, loyal, sweet but maybe even boring.  But I don't think it's necessarily so bad, ad Reid writes it as a bad thing.  I think some people can live dependable, boring lives and be really happy and truly live.  Not everyone needs to be or should be a cat.  (But the curious cat seems to be much more fun and fulfilling to me)
But still, the last few lines, great lines.


Oh and Mrs White, I forgot last week we had to post if it was our week off....But it was. :D