Poem Response

Blake Fletcher

AP English

AP English poetry Questions

1.     1.)This poem shows a man who feels he has let his life waste away. We see that he is very much so taking in the surrounding and the scenery and that time is passing like when he talks about the cowbells. The speaker also talks about the sun which suggests that it is at least late spring.

2.    2.) I know that the person in the hammock is upset about wasting his life away because he says he has wasted his life away. I also know that the man in the hammock is alone because he talks about the abandoned house. He is a man on a farm that isn’t his that is lonely and feels like he has wasted his life away. I would say he is probably also depressed.

3.     3.)The conclusions I have drawn come from the overall mood of the poem. Before they added the last line it could have been just some lazy guy chilling in a hammock but now with the last line intact the overall mood of the poem just becomes depressing.

4.     4.)The title of the poem kind of slides in the idea that the poem we are about to read is about a guy who doesn’t own a farm. Not only that but a guy who may not have accomplished much if he is just lying in a hammock at William Duffy’s farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.

5.     5.)The descriptions in this poem struck me as kind of setting the mood for a chill day on a warm breezy summer day. After I read the last line the descriptions just seem upsetting. They make me think this guy must really hate his life because who really has the time to pick all these details out. Someone who is thinking about killing himself that’s who.

6.     6.)The Feeling that I mostly see in this poem is Depression. Depression jumps out at me not as much leading up to the ending but after you read the ending the whole poem jumps off the paper and slaps you in the face to tell you that the speaker is having a ruff time with his life right now.