For the most part I am terrible at interpreting poems and class on Friday definitely let me know that I am worse than I thought. The Underground Stream was the most confusing poem out of the James Dickey poems for me to interpret. I think this was because we didn’t have the end of the poem to let us in on the details about the brother but regardless it was difficult to understand. Hearing the ending of the poem gave me a better understanding of why the poem was written and how it should really have been interpreted. Let’s see if I understand this a little bit better.
The poem is about the guilt that the narrator has concerning his brother’s death. When Dickey describes this smile and the long and drawn out journey that it takes makes me think that maybe it took the narrator a long time to finally be able to get over the death of his brother and also finally be able to smile. It kind of shows the reader that he is not completely over the death of his brother and that he feels guilty about something concerning the death. The smile is portrayed as being mysterious which helps the reader to understand that the smile was hard to reach and that the narrator has nothing to smile about anymore. The overall tone of the poem is gloomy and melancholy. Towards the ending of the poem the tone switches from gloomy to more intense tone. We as the readers can see that the narrator is beginning to realize that his brother is dead and he shouldn’t be feeling guilty about his death in any way. Once I finally understood all of the subtleties and just what exactly the poem was supposed to mean, I actually liked it. I like the overall subject of the poem because everyone can relate to it. I felt the same way that the narrator felt when my grandfather died.

I, like most likely everyone else in the class do not understand poetry. I really can’t interpret what the poet is trying to say and when I do it is always way off base and doesn’t make sense, but I’m going to take a stab at some of these poems just for fun.
The first poem, Sleeping Out at Easter discouraged me from reading any of the ones that followed, but here’s how I interpreted it and please don’t poke fun. There was a common reoccurrence of the word light so I knew that there was something there to be interpreted.
-Line 2 “This forest is drawing a light.”
-Line 10 “A light has told them their song.”
-Line 19 “A light should come round the world,”
-Line 33 “For the King’s grave turns him to light.”
-Line 46 and 48 “For the King’s grave turns you to light.”
I saw this light as representing a calling, or something that needs to be accomplished by someone. The calling I thought could have been a need for a change in the way a person lives their life. For instance line 39 states, “Of a father returning from darkness,” and I saw this father figure as being the person who saw this “light” and turned his life around. He changed his lifestyle and in a sense went from bad to good. Another thing that was repeated numerous times was this talk about the king’s grave. In line 48 it says, “For the king’s grave turns you to light.” I couldn’t figure out what it could possibly stand for but I know that whatever it is it helps people change their bad behavior into good behavior. So overall when a person sees this light and the king’s grave they change their lifestyles to make the dead king happy? I hope this is remotely close.
The next poem that I decided to live life dangerously and try to interpret was The Underground Stream. This one, I think is about a person who is unhappy because it takes the person a long and drawn out time to get a smile. It has to go down the well, through the stones, in the water, and back up through the ground. It just seems like it takes too much to get this person to be able to smile and that saddens me because smiling is great. Also I noticed that “light” was used in this poem to in line 15, “Of the world, of light, and of me.” I don’t really know whether it is supposed to mean the same thing as in Sleeping Out at Easter, but I do know he loves “light”. James Dickey, in this poem used some pretty interesting word usage. I loved this part of the poem, “And the smile I filtered through stone motionless lie, not murmuring but listening only, and hearing my image of joy flow down.” I love when poets make things seem alive and like they have person-like qualities. For instance, the smile being able to hear, it just makes the smile seem so be human and have human characteristics and I love that kind of writing.
I don’t know whether any of this makes sense, it most likely does not but like I said before poetry is not my strong point.

If you compared the movie A Streetcar Named Desire with the actual playwright you would see that there are many differences between the two, mostly with the characters. In the actual play that we read in the book, the characters did not seem as dramatic as they were portrayed in the movie I think that this was because while I was reading the play I had to imagine what they could have done and how they could have reacted, and in the movie we got to see how the characters really were.
Blanche to me seemed more insane in the movie than she did in the play. For instance when she was playing dress up in all of her riches and pretending to be at some fancy party she was definitely fit for a straight-jacket. We saw a completely different side to her. Another part of the movie where I noticed something wasn't right in that head of hers was when Mitch came over to see her and she was acting really frazzled while she was looking for something to drink. This also made her seem like a full blown alcoholic. In the reading it does really make Blanche out to be that much into drinking because she always said things like, "I never touch the stuff." The playwright never really made her out to be insane as much as the movie did. Another thing about Blanche was that she appeared to have a thing for Stanley that I never really picked up on while reading the play. In the movie we saw some of the looks that she gave him and she seemed to be giving him the come hither eyes. I feel like Stanley kind of picked up on this and maybe at first he thought that he could have sex with her but when she resisted he just pushed further because he must have thought she was playing hard to get but she wasn't at all. The movie really brought to life this little quirk about Blanche. In the playwright Blanche appears to hate Stanley more than anything I mean she calls him names makes fun of the way he lives and appears to hate everything about his life and can't see why her sister is married to him. Which is why in the movie it shocked me to see her showing any sort of kindness and even an attraction towards Stanley. Another thing that I noticed was different was the fact that in the book it made Blanche out to be so much better than the city that Stella and Stanley lived in. Although in the movie it seemed as though she fit right in. Also the book didn't make it seem like Blanche stayed with Stella that long but in the movie it seened like she had been living with Stella and Stanley for months. Blanche's character held many differences between the movie and the playwright.
Stella in the movie actually seemed more flirtacious and like she had more control over everything than she did in the play. The way that she came down the stairs after Stanley hit her. She made that man drop to his knees for forgiveness. Oh what I wouldn't give to have that control over men. She came down the stairs really slow and seductive-like and gave him those sex-kitten eyes that in the book I would have never imagined her doing. The book made her out to be this innocent woman who let people walk all over her. This was not the case in the movie. I really grew to give Stella more respect while I watched the movie. She also seemed to stand up to Stanley a lot more in the movie, at times she really rips into him.
Other than these two characters the others seemed to remain the same to me. Mitch seemed like he was portrayed differently except for the fact that in the movie he seemed to stand up to Blanche a lot more. And Stanley never really changed although actually witnessing what he did to Blanche and seeing how he forced himself on her made me hate him but in the book I loved his character because he was the only one who stood up to Blanche and saw her for what she really was.