"A Barred Owl"
By Richard Wilbur
The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”
Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.
Richard Wilbur, "A Barred Owl" from Mayflies: New Poems and Translations. Copyright © 2000 by Richard Wilbur.
"The History Teacher"
By Billy Collins
Trying to protect his student’s innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
“How far is it from here to Madrid?”
“What do you call the matador’s hat?”
than an outbreak of questions such as
“How far is it from here to Madrid?”
“What do you call the matador’s hat?”
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom
on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground and torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.
“The History Teacher” from Questions About Angels Copyright ©1991 by Billy Collins
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground and torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.
“The History Teacher” from Questions About Angels Copyright ©1991 by Billy Collins
The central theme of both poems is the innocence of children, how it is protected by adults through the manipulation of words. However, each author describes this occurrence through a unique form, emphasizing certain devices. “Barred Owl” has a AABBCC rhyme scheme that reads lyrically, while the blunt lack of rhyme in “A History Teacher” serves to make it read more like a story. The turn of “Barred Owl” emphasizes “Words” which reveals the conceit of the sonnet. The “owl” represents truth, which is labeled “odd” and said that it should be “rightly listened to.” In “A History Teacher,” Collins creates the sonnet into a storyline to relate to his readers that history is a story that can be told differently depending on the words used. The teacher names “sweaters,” “Chilly Age,” “Gravel Age,” “tiny atom” and “garden,” names which do not describe truth, but become reality for the “children” on their “playground” of life. The sonnets pose the questions of whether innocence is truly safety, for the world outside still exists in its real form, and whether truth is ever really truth once it is retold to the members of society in their early years.
ReplyDeleteBoth these poems deal with the idea of white lies, but take opposite approaches to the same idea thematically and structurally. In the poem “A Barred Owl”, a little girl is told that the calls of a owl are asking “Who cooks for you?” The lie in this situation convinces her that a harmless owl which she has misconstrued as a serious thread is indeed harmless. “The History Teacher” does the opposite. In order to protect the children the teacher twists serious issues into harmless acidotes, and it stead of comforting a little girl to sleep, spreads ignorance amongst his students. The settings also create an interesting juxtaposition as the fist poem is set in a home surrounded by dark forest while the second is in a community of white picket fences and gardens. In the scary setting there is no danger, but the idyllic one is paired with the dark side of history, which may be metaphorical for the blissful but dangerous nature of ignorance. This fits with the assertion that the students “torment the weak and the smart”, who may be influenced by their ignorance or are educated enough to recognize its danger. I found this to make for a reading experience similar to a pro-con breakdown on white lies, with anecdotal evidence provided on either side.
ReplyDeleteStructurally, these two poems differ substantially. “A Barred Owl” features a couplet rhyme scheme while “The History Teacher” has none, but does have a more complex stanza structure and more pointed use of line length with the exceptionally short line; “and the smart.” This method acts to draw attention to smart, the same way a break in rhyme scheme might in a metaphysical sonnet. However, the first poem is more structurally similar to a sonnet in terms of a shakespearean inspired rhyme scheme and a concise stanza structure, like in petrarchan sonnets. The beginning of the second stanza also seems to mirror the turn typical of the third quatrain in a shakespearean sonnet. Both however, have some recognizable aspects of a sonnet, but come at it form different angles, as in their thematic content.
My gut reaction after reading “A Barred Owl” is that the child heard something outside her window but the parents tell the child that it was just an owl. Though the sound was a boom, the parents use words to tell the child that it was something safer, like an owl hoot. After reading “The History Teacher” I had a similar takeaway. It seemed like lying to protect children was a common theme in both the poems. The imagery in “A Barred Owl” really stood out to me. The personification of the owl’s voice in line 2, “of an owl’s voice into her darkened room”, paints a more descriptive and vivid image in the reader's head to better set the mood and the tone of the poem. In both poems, the author is trying to protect the children with the use of words which only amplifies how important word choice is. In the first poem, Richard Wilbur uses an AABBCC rhyming scheme while Billy Collins doesn’t use rhyming in his poem. I realized that when reading the first poem for the first time, I was kind of distracted by its rhyming scheme but it made the poem flow better.
ReplyDeleteResponse: While the formatting of the two poems differs from each other, the subject matter of both of them is similar, despite not initially appearing so. The poems differ in their formatting and their writing style. “The History Teacher” doesn’t seem to be written with any sort of rhyme scheme, unlike “A Barred Owl” which uses a clear rhyme scheme (AA, BB, CC, etc.) and iambic pentameter throughout the poem. Although these poems are written in very different styles, the message and themes that the authors express are very similar. “The History Teacher” is about a teacher who attempts to teach his students a glorified version of history absent of any violence or mistreatment. “A Barred Owl” is about a little girl who is frightened by a strange noise while she is sleeping, and her parents have to comfort her by telling her that it is only an owl making the strange noises. In both poems, there is a person or group of people who are being shielded from the truth by “domesticating” their fears with words. It seemed to me that the authors, especially Collins, were criticizing shielding people from the truth, no matter how good one’s intentions are. The teacher knows deep down that what he is doing is wrong and that his students will not believe what he is telling them forever. Additionally, although the little girl in “A Barred Owl” temporarily feels safe, her parents cannot protect her from reality forever, much like the history teacher cannot do the same for his students.
ReplyDeleteThe more I read each piece, the more similarities and bridges between the two central ideas and themes I discovered. The first thing that stuck out to me was the common element of trying to shield children from the dangers and destruction of the world. In “The Barred Owl”, the author decides to personify the noises of an owl that have awoken a child. By giving a meaning to an otherwise unsettling voice in a, “darkened room,” they are able to, “domesticate a fear,”. As opposed to just telling the child that nothing was wrong, or telling the whole truth, there was a conscious decision to soothe the child’s worries in a gentle way. This is eerily similar to the goings on of the second poem, “The History Teacher”. As opposed to telling the truth of difficult topics in the classroom, the teacher chooses to manipulate their meaning, describing things like the Ice Age as simply, “the Chilly Age,”. While the intentions of the grown ups in either poem were seemingly good, it is undeniable that the authors’ respective messages struck home; it is undeniable that the children will eventually learn the real truth of the world, so it begs the question of whether or not lying is a valid form of protection. Structurally, however, the poems are quite different. While the first poem follows a fairly simple AABBCC rhyming scheme, the second does not, opting for varying line lengths and stanza breaks.
ReplyDelete“A Barred Owl” and “The History Teacher” after the first read appear to have nothing in common. One poem is talking about a girl who hears an owl outside her bedroom, and the second is about a history teacher who is trying to “protect his students innocence.” They also have different structures. “A Barred Owl” follows a very strict rhyme scheme”, while “The History Teacher” has no rhyme and is composed of many different stanzas and line breaks. After reading the poems multiple times however, I saw that in reality both of the poems were about preserving the innocence of the children, just in different ways. “The History Teacher” communicates this in a much more straightforward fashion, because the first line of the poem says “Trying to protect his students innocence”. The teacher knows about all the bad things that happen in the world, so if he can protect the kids from the bad things that have happened in the past, maybe that will preserve some of their childlike innocence. We know as readers that this is not the way a teacher should go about teaching their students, but we also know that the job of the teacher is to nurture and help the children grow up. It is hard to do that if they know all the horrible things that have happened in the past. Leading into “A Barred Owl” poem, the story behind it was much less straightforward, but after reading it multiple times it became much clearer. The child is scared of the sounds the owl is making outside the window, but if you just think about it in the way that the bird is just asking questions, it is much less scary. Both the stories have the same basic message, just created in very different ways.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I read “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur, what stood out to me most was the AABBCC rhyming scheme. However, after reading “The History Teacher” for the first time, I was struck by the teachers blunt lies to protect the innocence of his students. Since the poem did not have a rhyme scheme, I read it as if it were a story, and was able to focus more on the content rather than the structure. Although both poems had similar themes, it was much harder to identify the theme in “A Barred Owl” due to its structure. After reading the poems multiple times, I was able to see the parallels. A major similarity was the idea of childhood innocence that was the result of white lies told by adults. In “A Barred Owl”, the child was told that the owl was saying “Who cooks for you?” in order to calm the fearful child. In “The History Teacher”, an adult distorts the reality of many serious, historical events to make them seem harmless. Although this puts the kids at ease temporarily, it will only fuel ignorance and make the truth much more shocking when they learn it in the future. After all, it is impossible to shield children from serious information forever. Especially today with the ability to use the internet, a curious child could learn information online, from peers, teachers, and parents.
ReplyDeleteImmediately after reading the Barred Owl, I understood that a child was frightened by an owl outside of their window at night. However, from the line “Who cooks for you?” and forward, I didn’t fully understand from the first read-through. I had to read the poem a couple more times to realize that the parents told their child that the owl isn’t frightening, as it was merely asking the odd question of “Who cooks for you?” which reduced the child’s irrational fear by ‘domesticating’ it/the owl with words. With this poem following an AABBCC rhyme scheme, it took me a few reads to fully comprehend it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, on my first reading of the The History Teacher’s message, I understood the central point faster than that of the Barred Owl, as it was more straightforward and simplistic in its form. There were no rhymes, and the poem could be read as a story. However, though the writing was simplistic, its purpose was much more complex than it initially suggests. As commented upon by other students, after reading each poem a couple of times I realized how similar their themes were, regardless of their differing rhyme scheme and style. Both address attempts to protect children through lies meant to calm them. While the lie in the Barred Owl isn’t harmful as it simply gets rid of a child’s fear and helps them to sleep, The History Teacher’s effect on the children is negative. This leads to a moral dilemma: When is it okay to lie to a child?
Ultimately, little white lies with the purpose to “domesticate” a childhood fear such as the dark, or owls, are not morally wrong. What is wrong is to purposefully censor history to children, breeding a future of ignorance and hate such as viewed through The History Teacher. While the children went on to “torment the weak and the smart” after leaving the classroom, the teacher walked home through flower gardens and white fences peacefully. This represents how their teachings have little to no effect on the older generations/the teacher themselves, but negatively affect the future generation.
The central theme that these two poems seem to share is this idea of how impressionable children are and how much meaning they give words. In “The Barred Owl”, this young girl is frightened by the hooting coming from an owl nearby. Her parents tell her that she has nothing to fear, there being no need to go to bed “listening for the sound of stealthy flight/ Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw/ Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.” Children’s imaginations run wild when introduced to foreign concepts, frightened by the slightest abnormalities. This idea is expanded quite literally in Collin’s poem, commentating on how easy it is to manipulate children. I interpreted Collin’s poem as satiric, poking fun at how parents will tell their children false truths just in order to protect them from the world. He does this by altering history to make it more “kid friendly.” He also emphasizes how easy it is to change history, the true event lost in translation when falsities are all that are passed down generationally. In the last stanza, Collins writes, “The children would leave his classroom/ for the playground and torment the weak/ and the smart.” The children haven’t been taught the consequences of violence, so how are they to know the correct way to treat other humans? There is this idea that if children hear of violence, they will automatically become violent, regardless of their primal instincts as humans. Therefore, they should hear nothing of it. The truth is that if children are fed lies of peace, they will never learn the brutality of war, and in turn will be unable to stop the vicious cycle of history repeating itself. Collin’s poem ends with the teacher asking himself if the children “would believe that soldiers/ in the Boer War told long, rambling stories/ designed to make the enemy nod off.” He knows what the answer is, and yet he continues to manipulate the ignorant minds of the youth.
ReplyDeleteAt first glance these two poems may not seem to be very similar. While “A Barred Owl” consists of multiple pairs of rhymes following AABBCC, “The History Teacher” does not follow a similar rhyming pattern but instead is structured with many stanzas that follow different ideas. This second poem focuses on a multitude of ideas to create a point unlike the first which tells a story with each stanza adding another part. But the subject matter itself is very similar. Both poems emphasize the idea of protecting a child’s innocence by telling a few fibs. In “A Barred Owl”, the author tells the child not to worry about the boom she heard and told her it was only an owl. Although this was not true the point was to “domesticate a fear, and send a small child back to sleep at night”. In “The History Teacher”, the teacher lies “to protect his student’s innocence”. He does this by coming up with silly versions of historical events that have to do with their name. Although they aren’t true, the teacher fabricates the harsh truths of the world so his students could continue on with their lives and “would leave his classroom for the playground”. This author uses imagery to emphasize the children’s innocence. By portraying their life as simple as leaving to go play, the author shows rather than tells how the children continue to live on in their own little bubble, shielded from the harsh reality of the truth.
ReplyDeleteThe darkness behind protecting innocence is common between these two poems. “A Barred Owl” has a sinister underbelly that only reveals itself in the wording of the last few lines, “Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.” “The History Teacher” pictures a teacher explaining disasters and tragedies of the past as unassuming and harmless altercations unaware that after he concludes his teaching for the day, his students agonize their weaker and more informed peers, perhaps foreshadowing their future roles in the world. The teacher’s aim for innocence becomes a haven for ignorance in even the youngest. The rhyme scheme of “A Barred Owl” is AABBCC, consistent throughout, almost seeming to add a whimsical and childish mood to a poem that reveals darker visuals in it’s conclusion. In contrast to this, “The History Teacher” has no rhymes, openly revealing it’s meaning. Despite the lengths the teacher goes to to hide reality from his students, the poem blatantly discloses the truth to us, no rhymes to veil the poem’s darker intent, tragedies left bare and casually visible to the reader. The relaxed tone of the poem, evident in lines like, “The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as “How far is it from here to Madrid?” “What do you call the matador’s hat?” demonstrates how willful ignorance diminishes the tragedies of the past and paves the way for a cold indifferent generation, unempathetic to certain devastating realities of the past. In the lines, “Trying to protect his student’s innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just,” ending on the word ‘just’ within an unfinished thought is significant to the idea of reducing truth and tragedy down to meaningless occurrences that the students do not have to concern themselves with. The teacher becomes ignorant himself, through his sanitized lessons, of his students, who go off after their teachings and harm their peers without regret. Ignorance wounds every party involved. The rhyme scheme in “A Barred Owl” mirrors the parents attempt to comfort their daughter with lighthearted ideas about the owl, evolving awkwardly into their own knowledge about the brutality of the world, continuing the playful rhyme scheme. Innocence stripped from them long ago, a darker truth is trivialized by the parent’s wish to protect their daughter’s innocence in wake of their understanding.
ReplyDeleteAs most other people commented I saw in both poems that the theme of innocence was largely covered and the intrinsic irony intertwined into its description. The initial poem followed a simplistic rhyme scheme of merely adhering to AABBCC while the latter didn't use this yet merely described factual events. While both these poems follow different layouts and describe different events, the underlying irony of protecting a child's innocence through ignorance is shown prominently. In the description of the owls, the fears of reality such as being eaten by prey are disregarded instead addressed with "who cooks for you" while at the last the poem depicts the death of the owl. The latter poem details children's education of historical events through a childish portrayal and suppression of sadder facts. These positive intentions are then shown to be pointless as the children go out into reality and experience bullying without these filters. Ultimately, while both poems depict largely differentiating topics, the authors convey the same idea of the irrelevance of suppressing oneself from reality as the hard truth will come forth regardless.
ReplyDeleteAt first glance, “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins poems seem radically different – one about a screeching owl and a frightened child and the other about a weak history curriculum and playground bullying, but a closer reading reveals a common thread. These poems are both about the sanitation of difficult information. Ironically, neither the owl’s “small thing in a claw” nor the “Stone Age bec(oming) the Gravel Age” have any immediate impact on life as we know it, but both realities are somewhat distasteful and scary. “Domesticat(ing) a fear” and transforming a nuclear bomb into “dropp(ing) one tiny atom on Japan” desensitizes our sensibilities and normalizes the horrific. These poems skirt around their topic in the same way that they criticize our redacted and edited versions of the truth. Being able to “send a small child back to sleep at night” ultimately puts that child at a disadvantage when they are on “the playground and torment(ed).”
ReplyDeleteMy initial reactions are that these two poems could be about the innocence of children. The “Barred Owl” follows a little girl who is frightened by a loud boom heard in the distance. However, to protect her, her parents tell her it was simply an owl asking the question “who cooks for you?”. By lying, the parents are working to protect the innocence of the little girl. By eliminating the threat of danger in the boom and replacing it with something less threatening, like the owl, the girl does not have to be exposed to the troubles of the world and her innocence remains intact. Structure wise, this poem had more flow than the other sonnet and it followed a more traditional rhyme scheme (AABBCC).
ReplyDelete“The History Teacher” sounded less like most of the sonnets we have read in the class. It followed no rhyme scheme and was more straightforward. The context of the poem follows a history teacher who tries to protect the innocence of his students by making the history lessons he teaches less harsh. He changes “the Stone Age became the Gravel Age” and insists that “The War of the Roses took place in a garden”. He does this to make the reality of the past less frightening to the children so that they may retain their innocence.
My initial reactions are that these two poems could be about the innocence of children. The “Barred Owl” follows a little girl who is frightened by a loud boom heard in the distance. However, to protect her, her parents tell her it was simply an owl asking the question “who cooks for you?”. By lying, the parents are working to protect the innocence of the little girl. By eliminating the threat of danger in the boom and replacing it with something less threatening, like the owl, the girl does not have to be exposed to the troubles of the world and her innocence remains intact. Structure wise, this poem had more flow than the other sonnet and it followed a more traditional rhyme scheme (AABBCC).
“The History Teacher” sounded less like most of the sonnets we have read in the class. It followed no rhyme scheme and was more straightforward. The context of the poem follows a history teacher who tries to protect the innocence of his students by making the history lessons he teaches less harsh. He changes “the Stone Age became the Gravel Age” and insists that “The War of the Roses took place in a garden”. He does this to make the reality of the past less frightening to the children so that they may retain their innocence.
Wait please ignore that one- Anna
DeleteMy initial reactions are that these two poems could be about the innocence of children. The “Barred Owl” follows a little girl who is frightened by a loud boom heard in the distance. However, to protect her, her parents tell her it was simply an owl asking the question “who cooks for you?”. By lying, the parents are working to protect the innocence of the little girl. By eliminating the threat of danger in the boom and replacing it with something less threatening, like the owl, the girl does not have to be exposed to the troubles of the world and her innocence remains intact. Structure wise, this poem had more flow than the other sonnet and it followed a more traditional rhyme scheme (AABBCC).
ReplyDelete“The History Teacher” sounded less like most of the sonnets we have read in the class. It followed no rhyme scheme and was more straightforward. The context of the poem follows a history teacher who tries to protect the innocence of his students by making the history lessons he teaches less harsh. He changes “the Stone Age became the Gravel Age” and insists that “The War of the Roses took place in a garden”. He does this to make the reality of the past less frightening to the children so that they may retain their innocence.
- Anna
When reading the poems the first time through I saw an immediate connection, with both poems’ themes of sheltering and protection. They protect the children in both poems, “The Barred Owl” protects “a small child” and in “The History Teacher” he protects “ his students”. They both have different methods of doing this, the first one showing a more normal parental situation. Calming a child who is disturbed by noises outside, telling them that owl is simply asking “Who cooks for you?”. While the history teacher aims to cover up the harsh realities of the past by making them smaller and more comprehensible, along with taking away the upsetting elements so that they won’t bother his students. This includes telling them that “the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan”. The more that I read these poems, the more I understood where the protective figures in these poems were coming from. Children should be able to live comfortable childhoods with their innocence protected but it begs the question of when is the right time to expose them to the realities of life? Should these children be told what the ice age was or is it okay for them to believe “the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters”?
ReplyDeleteRather than using hyperbole, both of these poems understate the problems. As I have already listed, in “The History Teacher”, world events and global issues are brought down to easy to swallow to problems that protect the children's’ innocence. It is different from many of the other sonnets we’ve read in this way. Many of them are over dramatic and use hyperbole and other figurative language to build up the drama. These poems are also very different from one another. While “A Barred Owl” is a short poem that follows a simple rhyme scheme (AABBCC), “The History Teacher” lacks a rhyme scheme and is more blunt in expressing its message. “A Barred Owl” also has a softer more emotional feel, while “The History Teacher” has a comedical aspect that is more harsh.
I like how you pointed out that they understate the problems. I thought this was an interesting technique that actually makes the problems worse in our eyes
DeleteWhen I first read the two poems, I felt an overall theme of innocence and curiosity surrounding children. I thought the two poems were quite similar but as I analyzed it more, it showed different outcomes of attempting to soothe a child’s curiosity. The poem, “A Barred Owl” is written with simplicity and with a rhyme scheme unlike “A History Teacher”. Like Emma said, “A History Teacher” is told more as a story because when read it does not have much of a flow. In “A Barred Owl” the child who is terrified of an owl outside calling is alleviated of her fears after her parents tell her it’s the owl asking, “Who cooks for you?”. By telling a fictional lie, the child was able to overcome her irrational fears. Like Rian said, it convinced the child that the owl was truly harmless. This however, can not be applied to important events of history like in “A History Teacher”. Collins describes a history teacher who is constantly lying to his class, in order to protect them from the fears that would arise. However, by telling the children that the, “Ice Age was really just the chilly age… and the Stone Age became the Gravel Age”, he leaves his students ignorant. He leaves believing he is doing the right thing but “the children would leave his classroom… and torment the weak… while he gathered his notes and walked home”. Within the last stanza holds an ignorance of the history teacher as he walks past the “flower beds and white picket fences”, I inferred that within that beauty the decor, held darkness and violence. Both poems create a juxtaposition, Wilbur exemplified how all lies aren’t bad but Collins exemplifies the dangers of lying to a child for the sake of extinguishing fears.
ReplyDeleteI like how you viewed the teacher as being as equally ignorant. It was interesting how you included this juxtaposition in your response.
DeleteWilla I really like how you pointed out the ignorance of the teacher as-well. I thought the same thing. I found it odd that the kids were beating up the "weak" and the "smart" kids at recess, it just made them seem unprepared for the real world.
Delete- Anna
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhile the two poems seem very different structure and ending-wise, “The History Teacher” and “A Barred Owl” both describe trying to protect children from fear through the power of words. “A Barred Owl” accomplishes this is a more simplistic way. It rhymes in couplets (boom, room and heard, bird, etc.) while also having a simple storyline of comforting a child afraid of an owl through talking calmly. “We tell the wakened child that all she heard Was an odd question from a forest bird…’Who cooks for you?’ and then ‘Who cooks for you?’” This small white lie allows the child to feel safe again and go back to sleep. On the other hand, “The History Teacher” gets at the same meaning in a more extreme way. The poem seems almost satirical, as the teacher lies about important historical events in order to try and protect his students’ innocence. One example of this is when the teacher is thinking about his next lesson plan and wonders “if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
ReplyDeletedesigned to make the enemy nod off.” However, trying to shield them from the world in this way leaves everyone involved ignorant. Believing that there is nothing bad in the world and nothing bad could ever happen to them prevents the children from being kind to each other, and leaves the history teacher pretending that there isn’t any fighting or bullying happening on the playground.
After reading through A Barred Owl once, the poem portrays itself to be about a young girl who has a nightmare about an owl that was making noises in the night. Surprisingly, I didn’t notice the simple structure until the third read through. The AABBCCDDEEFF structure is simple yet helps the poem flow smoothly. After reading the poem multiple times through, I realized the true meaning of the poem being the way the parents change their child’s perspective into believing the “spooky sounds” she was hearing was actual just the owl asking the question “who cooks for you?”. This creates the sense of imagination and protection that parents take to protect their children from the horrors of the real world. The History Teacher is also a poem that deals with the sense of childhood innocence and purity. The poet jokingly uses similar words to change the ideas in the poem. At this age, the children are still unaware of our world and the tragedy that is within it. By changing these devastating events in history, the teacher is preserving their innocence and sense of childhood wonder. These poems both illustrate the struggle to finding a balance between knowledge and innocence. Children are the purest form of humanity, living without preconceived judgements or stereotypes we learn as we get older. However, both poems show how this innocence shields them from the truth and eventually we must discover the truth to solve the tragedies of our world.
ReplyDeleteWhile these poems are very different in terms of the nature they’re written in, the subject matter is very much similar. Children are the epitome of innocence, and to shelter them from the horrors of the real world, many adults chose to alter the truth to conserve their purity. In “The Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins we are exposed to two types of situations where elders are trying to protect a child’s innocence, but the end results differ greatly. A Barred Owl is an iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme of couplets throughout the entire piece. The main divide is between the two stanzas and the two perspectives of the owl and lurking danger. The first reflects on the events of sheltering the child, who is frightened, by offering a friendly image of the owl. A first person plural narrative voice is revealed at the third line, providing a soothing mood. The second stanza ponders the consequences of the first stanza. The tone is realistic and at the fifth line turns dark, revealing the owl as a predator. The child is now at peace, but the world is revealed as menacing. In The History Teacher, instead of an adult comforting a child, it is centered on a history teacher who is trying to find an easier way to explain world events to a young class to protect their innocence. Our work with Sonnets help us better explore modern poetry because we see where the form of a lot of modern poems stems from. It’s good to get a basic understanding and a literary basis which sonnets can provide.
ReplyDeleteLike many of the other responses have mentioned, I initially thought that these poems captured the innocence of childhood. When I re-read both "The History Teacher" and "The Barred Owl", I realized that both of them discussed relevant themes regarding censorship and its effects on children. In “The History Teacher”, the teacher falsely explains events in history to preserve the innocence and optimism of his students, such as “The Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age” and “The War of Roses took place in a garden”. Though “A Barred Owl” has a similar plot, the more sophisticated writing style shifts the mood of it, and perhaps the message itself. In contrast to “The History Teacher”, Richard Wilbur uses dark, vivid imagery to create a setting for his poem. In addition, it seems to end in a somber manner, describing how the child will no longer “dream of some small thing in a claw, Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw”. Despite the subject of the poem being a child, the haunting tone of it seems to appeal more for adults. In fact, its AABBCC rhyme scheme and personification of the owl makes “A Barred Owl” feel more Edgar Allan Poe-esque. Because “A Barred Owl” has a more mature style of writing, its message seems to be more about how a child can develop through lies. At the end of the poem, the main child overcomes their fears and matures mentally. In contrast, “The History Teacher” is written playfully, where the children end up growing more ignorant with their lessons, “tormenting the weak and the smart.” That being said, these poems explore the two different results of censorship towards children. As “A Barred Owl” demonstrates, lies can help a child advance, while “The History Teacher” illustrates how deceit can blind someone even more.
ReplyDeleteThe poem “The Barred Owl”, by Richard Wilbur, seems to follow the rhyming pattern AABBCC throughout while “The History Teacher”, by Billy Collins, does not seem to follow any structural rhyming pattern that I can see. The themes of these two poems do differ with Wilbur's poem having a fear component to it while Collins poem focuses more on sympathy. The idea that connects these two works is the idea of innocence and how older generations try to protect them. In Wilbur’s poem, the parents comfort a child who hears a noise outside and is afraid of what it might be. The parents tell her it is an owl to try and protect her from being scared. In Collins’ poem, a teacher trying to find an easier way of explaining harsh topics to the class. By doing this, the teacher is protecting them from the truths of our history which is not always easy to hear. These two poems hide the truth from children to try and perserve their innocence and protect them.
ReplyDeleteAn understanding of sonnets means an understanding of poetry as a whole, as all poetry has been derived from sonnets. Analyzing sonnets is something I find very difficult, but having that in my skill set helps to analyze all types of poetry. I am now able to analyze the rhyme schemes and deeper messages hidden in The Barren Owl and The History Teacher. Both Billy Collins and Richard Wilbur poses similar messages about education in modern day society, but use very different writing styles to do so. When it comes to literal differences The Barren Owl is in iambic pentameter. Both themes are powerful in their messages and writing styles. Both authors talk about society’s impacts on the wisdom and innocence of the youth, yet they have two different outlooks. The History Teacher shows what happens when people try to shield youth from the outside world and The Barren Owl expresses the hidden evil in the world. The two poems contrast each other and show a need for balance, but also the harsh reality of the real world.
ReplyDeleteBoth in Richard Wilbur’s poem “A Barred Owl” and in Billy Collins poem “The History Teacher”, the authors center around the theme that adults often attempt to protect children through explanations. “A Barred Owl” follows the rhyming pattern AABBCC, while Collins’ poem does not have any rhyming scheme throughout. Although the poems are similar in their themes, they do differ in their components. Wilbur makes use of rhyme schemes to portray a comical scene of a girl asking about an owl, and incorporates humor and dialogue throughout.Collins uses the perspective of the teacher through profound rhetoric and diction to demonstrate that teachers unintentionally provide false information to students.
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