What Are Years by Marianne Moore

What struck my interest about “What Are Years” by Marianne Moore is the doubt that comes from the poem. “What is our innocence, what is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.” (Moore. 452) When I read these lines I feel that Moore depicts are birth when she says “we are all born naked.” We all are born naked. “None is safe,” could mean that we don’t know how our life will go. As we live our life we learn certain rules and guidelines that are supposed to make us socially accepted in ones culture. Moore is trying to challenge what is socially accepted by asking what is or innocence, what is our guilt? I also like the last three lines in stanza three because in a way it plays off the first stanza. “Though he is captive, his mighty signing says, satisfaction is a lowly thing, how pure a thing is joy. This is mortality, this is eternity.” (Moore. 452) What I get is Moore is saying that even if he is imprisoned, you can imprisoned your soul are your joy. By realizing the joy in your life your soul will have an eternity of happiness.

---Richard Liptak

Unharvested by Robert Frost

Robert Frost gives the reader a visual picture of an apple tree. The first line of “Unharvested” stuck my attention. “A scent of ripeness from over a wall.” (Frost. 227) That like struck my attention because I now I just don’t have a visual picture of an apple but I have the scent of an apple in my head too. As the poem goes on I get this picture of a sky-blue, hot summer day and I am traveling down a road were I see and smell the shiniest red apples you ever see. As I walk closer to this apple tree, the hot summer day starts to clam down and a breeze goes by. This apple tree has the greenest leafs and the reddest juicy apples around. “As complete as the apple had given man. The ground was one circle of solid of red.” (Frost. 227) As I keep walking, fallen apples engulf the green grass. The smell of apples has now become even stronger. “May something go always unharvested! May much stay out of our stated plan, Apples or something forgotten and left, So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.” (Frost. 227) What I get from the last stanza is that an apple so colorful and rich that is not picked from a tree is left forgotten. When apple picking no one wants to get the apples on the floor they want to pick the apples off the tree. The solid red floor of apples are forgotten. Apples that may not be eaten and will become unharvested. When Frost says that it would be no theft to smell their sweetness he is saying that you can’t eat or take all the apples but you can get the scent of all the apples together before they become unharvested.

---Richard Liptak