Response to The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People

David Ferry composed an intensely emotional poem called "The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People," in which he delved into the heart and experiences of a deprived and scarred human being. Throughout the poem, he speaks in limited omniscient point of view to concentrate primarily on "the guest Ellen" who is just another street person among the crowed at this dinner. He continuously addresses her as such to keep her distant from the audience and merely a guest to demonstrate her feelings of being lost in a sea of these people like her. It conveys she feels alone and unnoticed. He utilizes a symbolism of the body while describing the people. He describes the "unclean spirits [that] cry out in the body," "being poor day after day in the body," and things done "by the father's body, to or upon the body of Ellen," to emphasize the distant relation Ellen has with everyone around her and to uncover certain traumatic events in her past that may have led to the ruin and scarring of her physical identity. Another repetitive motif in the poem is the enchantment and spiritual imagery he so often refers to. He states, "they are all under some kind of enchantment," and follows on to highlight  Ellen's enchanted, dream-like and detached state of mind. Ferry uses either "enchantment" or "unclean spirits" and "torment" at least once in every stanza which continues the flow of this uncertainty, detachment and raw misery of the street people, namely Ellen. He also describes her as a "prisoner of love," and "possessed one of the unclean," to reveal that she is a victim to some terrible fate and futureless life from which she is possessed and cannot break free. 
There is not much of a shift in the passage, except gradually growing from introducing Ellen as "a body" among other "bodies" to a deeper understanding of what's going on inside her and where these emotions and this detachment all root from. Ferry utilizes symbolism, figurative language, and mystical, enchanted imagery to express the thoughts of a woman, Ellen, who's as alone as one can be, and to depict the lifelessness and distance that many "street people" feel between them and the rest of humanity. Ferry bluntly and accurately portrayed the separation that lies between the poor and the not poor, but more so he reveals how one's circumstances (or a large group's) can lead them further away from the comfort and hope of community and into the hands of false reasoning and despair and utter emptiness.

Response to “Ode on Solitude”

Alexander Pope’s “Ode on Solitude” speaks figuratively and literally on the subject about the beauty of being alone. In the literal sense, he describes the peaceful lull one experiences when immersed in solitude, and how that is a fortunate thing to come by. However I believe his whole attitude and opinion towards solitude symbolizes his view on death, and how death is perhaps the best way to truly escape from the chaos of the world and people and everything else.

He divides his stanzas strategically to keep the reader following his thought process fluidly. The first two stanzas describe a hypothetical “man” who is happy, “content to breathe his native air, in his own ground,” and “whose trees in summer yield him shade, in winter fire.” This quiet, peaceful, natural imagery sheds light on both the comfortable sweetness of solitude in one’s home and also points toward being buried and being at peace in the “ground”. However then it shifts to a more general description of those who can find “peace of mind,” and quiet surroundings while the “years slide soft away.” His aesthetic and pondering diction here gives a more universal look at what it means to be at ease and unbothered, in one’s every day life, or after it. Clearly Pope is suggesting a permanent solitude in his descriptions and that this permanence brings forth true peace and freedom –and the reader must have death in mind, being the only real, permanent escape from the world.

         In the last couple stanzas, Pope talks about innocence, which I believe he suggests comes along with peace and aloneness and “meditation,” perhaps a true sense of self. Pope reveals he would rather be left alone in his life, “unseen, and unknown,” and “unlamented,” in his death so he can achieve his goal of a peaceful life and death and anything after. Pope utilizes peaceful imagery, whimsical diction, and an almost sinister tone in order to compare the great achievement of finding solitude in life with finally reaching a permanent solitude.