Helen by Hilda Doolittle (with my analysis from Intro to Poetry)

Helen

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.

Poetry Journal Chapter 13
Helen
By H.D. Doolittle

Feeling
This poem was a joy to read. I’ve always loved the greek myths and I’ve tried again and again to think of things from the perspective of a woman back then. Helen is such a complicated character, and there are so many unanswered questions about what she was feeling and thinking. This is a great example of the things she must have known about what she, or at least the idea of her, was doing to Greece.

Interpretation
Doolittle is sinking deeper than Homer, or anyone else, has done into the consequences of Helen’s capture by Paris. Helen is the most beautiful woman in the world and her beauty caused, at least superficially, the Trojan war. Greece apprecitated her beauty, and even swore to protect her before she was married to Menelaus. After Helen is taken by Paris back to Troy everyone is thrown for a loop and sinks into war. Helen is so incredibly beautiful that nonone can deny her that; however, her beauty is both a treasure and a curse. Everyone can see she is amazingly beautiful, perfect even, but they can also see that this beauty is tearing Greece apart. Whenever anyone sees or thinks about her their ideas of her are tainted by the fact that she is stuck in the middle of the war. No one can really feel like she is loyal to them because she’s been on both sides before. The only way anyone will ever be able to appreciate Helen, or her beauty for itself is when the is dead. Then all that there is to see is her remains, left there with nothing tied down to it. Then, and only then, can Helen’s truly be seen as a beautiful person without the black stain of the war blocking that. She’s just so unbareably beautiful that noone can bare to love her until she’s gone.
Technique
Doolittle uses so many vague literary techniques. The poem itself is an allusion to Homer’s Iliad. Throughout the poem Doolittle also uses sporadic rhyme that puts a great emphasis on certain lines. In the first two lines, she uses the words hates and face as a slant rhyme and it really serves to point out what the general theme of the poem will be (all Greece hates this woman for her terrible beauty). Rich language gives a peek into the image of certain aspects of Helen. Doolittle tells us she is pale and slender, and yet still allows the imagination to fill in the blanks and lets the reader create their own Helen.

Question
What purpose does omitting Helen’s name from the poem itself serve?

Baby Steps

After this last post (and an amazing convo with my cousin's little bffs, in which I got called 'pretty-ful' by a 9 year old) I decided that I might get back into writing again.

For starters I'm just submitting existing stuff, but eventually I'll get to expanding ideas I've got.

I've suppose now I've got a confession to make.

I am a fanfiction junkie.

I started out in 6th grade reading/writing Buffy the Vampire (BtVS) stories (I was such a Buffy/Spike junkie).

I ended up almost filling a large notebook I affectionately called my monkey book (it had 3 fuzzy monkeys on the cover).

Let's just say, passing 8th grade math was kind of a miracle.

Anyways, I've gone through BtVs, Gossip Girl, Angel, FIrefly, Harry Potter, and now Twilight fanfiction.

It's probs one of my most healthy hobbies, even if I do get pretty into it and pass away buttloads of time without noticing.

It makes me happy, and that's a pretty big plus right now.

Writing?

So recently I got a rather unexpected question on formspring.
Someone asked why I'm not submitting the shit I write anymore.

Frankly, I guess it's because I don't really write anymore.
Besides my self indulgent ramblings on blogger and the rare wordy review on fanfiction.net , I don't really write much more than what will fit into a twitter or facebook update.

I guess that'll be something to look forward to this summer, getting back into the swing of things with writing.

I wrote something tiny and mushy for Renfrew Connections less than a year ago, but ever since then things have just gone downhill with both myself and my writing.

Idk,
I guess I'll have to think about this a lot in the 19 days until I pop into Castlewood.

why i the sky blue?

idk...ask your mom

Ask me anything

Why don't you write and submit more of your writings? You are an extremely talented writer as demonstrated by the fact that when you Do submit, you get published every time. Think about it.

Oh wow! I've got no idea who wrote this but I'm kind of in love with you.
I'm a little weary about publishing anything anymore, I really feel like a fake after I've said I was doing really well in my Connections thing, and now here I sit, not even a year later wanting to disappear.
So, Idk, I do want to write a book someday, frankly I think I've reached the point where I'm to crazy not to write a book.

But thanks,
<3

Ask me anything

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/casstasstic

What do you do on weekends? What do you do durning the week?

Haha, this one is funny. Pretty much all I do in life is go to school and read. Sometimes I'll chill with the fam. especially now that I've got a new cousin (2 months old tomorrow) but that's pretty much it. Not being able to drive and feeling so socially awkward has severely limited my outside of school relationships.

Ask me anything

What kind of music do you listen to?

I listen to everything from the cast of Glee to the Cure and the Sex Pistols, I just love music.

Ask me anything

End of the semester purples...

Usually you'd hear something like the 'end of the semester (or more likely summer) blues', for me it seems more like the end of the semester purples.

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul Varjak: Sure.
Holly Golightly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

It's a lot like that quote from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

The mixture of the sad blues and the angry reds is so volitile that the only way to even begin to sum them up is to put them together and call them purple.

I can go from having a perfectly delightful melancholy 'tude, to a raging anxiety ridden angry-as-hell bitch in 2 seconds.

My Tiffany's though, is Twilight.
It sounds so stupid, but Twilight and babies bring me down to earth in a heartbeat. Between having Aidan (my brand-spanking-new cousin who turns 2 months old today) and twilight fanfiction (not to mention Eclipse hysteria) I've been able to keep things almost alright.

Yesterday was another story though.
I woke up around 1pm, and only got out of bed because I had to spin by the doctors office to pick up my Castlewood paperwork and get my PPD test checked (as if, we all knew I didn't have fucking tuberculosis).
That was all fine and dandy and shit, only then I get up to find my mom had to leave work because her BFF, is a stupid cow and decided my mom wasn't 'helping her recovery'.
Bullshit.
This chick is mad alchoholic, which I get is rough.
But this bitch has fucked with my mom so much it's not even funny.
She gave my 19 year old sister a water bottle filled with the rummiest rum and coke I've ever smelled, and somehow figured my mom, the women who doesn't drink at all save a wine cooler or two when she goes out with said friend (before there was a problem) is a bad influence.
Fuck that shit.

My mom missed almost 2 days of work getting this bitch in and out of rehab, something my mom had no obligation to do, except for the fact that she loves this bitch and considers her her bff.

Grr, I'm just really pissed, this woman really messed with my mom's head and even though we don't always get along, she's my fucking mom, you don't mess with that shit.

So I was already anxious about this shit, then the doctor, the one I had to pay out of pocket to get a physical, faked more than half of the information on my paperwork.
At this point, I just want to fuck bitches up.

Then I end uo spending the afternoon shopping for my sister and going to my mom's doctor appointment and then wallmart, now it's almost 5 and I'm a ball of tightly wound nerves.
So I come home and pretty much have a fit over nothing.
WTF. I just wanted to come home and curl into bed, but as soon as I get home all I want to do is pout and yell.
Talk about fucking regression.

Whatevers, I've got 50 minutes of class today, then I'm so done with this school shit (until August anyway).

The times they are a' changing

Things seem to have shifted a whole lot really damn fast over here.

My mom, who's had a pretty severe auto-ammune disease which effects her lungs, is now smoking like a chimney, trying her hand at a pretty intense online dating thing, and pushing her best friend through rehab for alcoholism.

My sister is , well, a bitch, but that's sort of the norm and I can't say I'm not to blame for some of that.

And I'm playing a fucked up waiting game with myself as to how this summer is going to end up.
It looks like my admission date to Castlewood will be either May 31st, or June 2nd, and until then I'm just convincing myself that this is the right thing to do and that the positives of this choice outweigh the negatives.

I got a check from my school around a month ago and was planning on using it to cover my doctor's appointments, bus rides, and then part of my travel expenses to get to Missouri. However, because I am a stupid bitch, that money has mostly gone towards binges and book store runs.

Hopefully working for my dad will help me get back on track with my money and at least get me back to where I would have been had I not spent so much on stupid shit.

I'm sure my family will help if I need them to, but if I have to tell them where the money went I've no doubt that if they even consider helping me, it will come with no small amount of grief.

I'm hoping I might be able to cash out on things like birthdays and holidays and whatnot instead of just begging for money, but if I can't I can always try to find other options.

One pretty big option is Belmont, in Philadelphia.
My Therapist has worked with them before and a close friend has been there, while she didn't love it (who really could), she did say it was helpful.

They also don't put up with the grief that insurance companies dole out and if the decide that you still need to be there, they'll foot the bill if you cant. (and there's no way I could).
That's one of my hugest fears about Castlewood, I'm traveling so far and I don't know how agreeable my insurance company is going to be, it's scary as hell knowing that I could very possibly get down there and pretty much be told I've got to head on back home because my insurance company doesn't think I need it.

I went through this so many times at the Renfrew center in 2007, and it tore me up, but I still only lived 40 minutes away.
Now I'm going around 15 hours away and I can't just curl into a ball and fall asleep as mommy drives her little baby home.

There's also the fact that my mother wants pretty much nothing to do with this.
She offered to pay for my hotels, but everything else is on me.
I understand that I'm 20 years old, and a certain amount of responsibility should be expected, but I've always been either to crazy, or to busy to work, and if my dad wasn't paying for my insurance deductible I wouldn't be going into treatment at all.

I really can't name all of these feelings that are rushing through me. I feel so much at some times, and then nothing at all in what seems like the blink of an eye.

I'm so frightened that I won't be 'sick enough' for Castlewood, that I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to fix this, fix me.