The main purpose of this class is to help you learn how to think critically and analytically. Most of us do not like to think and we look for the easy way out. Remember, no one gets paid to copy someone or something. This class will challenge your thinking and creativity. Your creativity will be pushed outside its habitual thinking box and into the world of inspiration, potential and originality!
Monday, May 14, 2012
Piedra de sol
Post an analysis about Piedra de Sol by Octavio Paz. Write a brief and concise paragraph analyzing his poem. Remember to respond to the other posts. Buena suerte!
In POV the story talks about the author himself who is very affectionate to someone. They use nature being a key of similar actions that people have. On the 8th stanza it gives off human features and body movements in the lines i.e.: "I travel your body, like a forest." That line shows seductiveness and praise showing how daring the two of you are. In the eyes of Octavio Paz he tries to tell the reader how he went through love and the "Fun Life" which led to unforgiving and endless memories. The time he spent diligently with her stripped him in emotional ways that no one has ever done. He expresses his feelings about the memories spent through the poem. The whole gist of this poem is: Love someone right, but love them in unthinkable ways.
I liked how you said "The time he spent diligently with her stripped him in emotional ways that no one has ever done." It does example some parts of the poem.
I apologize ahead if time since this is a lot of writing.
The mystery of the opposite sex is one that has been addressed in literature through the ages and is no less mysterious in Paz's "eternal moment." When he says;
"dressed in the color of my desires, you go your way naked as my thoughts, I travel your eyes, like the sea, tigers drink their dreams in those eyes, the hummingbird burns in those flames, I travel your forehead, like the moon, like the cloud that passes through your thoughts, I travel your belly, like your dreams,…"
Paz admits to being completely mystified. When the object of his affection is dressed in the color of his desires it seems he is projecting his helplessness, empowering his lover with it. As she goes her way she is naked as his thoughts. Here he is unable to mask his affections and once again admits to being powerless when matched against her mysterious and intoxicating womanhood. Indeed, from this point on he becomes a mere traveler, making his way across her person, in a surrealistic homage to her complexity. The true nature of his helplessness is revealed when he says;
"I travel your length, like a river, I travel your body like a forest,like a mountain path that ends at a cliff I travel along the edge of your thoughts, and my shadow falls from your white forehead,my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces and go on with no body,groping my way,…"
From this point the poem darkens, meandering through his search for meaning in heartache. He searches for; "the face that vanishes upon recall, the hand that crumbles at my touch,…" The search continues but appears not to bear fruit as he says;
"I search without finding, I write alone, there's no one here, and the day falls, the year falls, I fall with the moment, I fall to the depths, invisible path over mirrors repeating my shattered image, I walk through the days, the trampled moments, I walk through all the thoughts of my shadow, I walk through my shadow in search of a moment, …"
The true awesome power of love is revealed in these lines, defined not by its joys but by its pain. The moment that he seeks seems to be that one moment when you feel truly alive, meted out in small doses to adults but portioned liberally to children.
-Claps Loudly against the computer screen, and tries to virtually high five the computer- Your analysis is too good for me to question. I'll just add a comment, I like the way you analyzed the most meaningful parts in the poem and describing it in a way people can relate too!
Very brief and concise!!(sarcasm) i just realized that your analysis is the opposite of mine and yours makes sense. I knew you were good at poetry not analysing it.
Since this poem starts off describing rivers and trees I think the main idea is that nature and its mysteries can be found everywhere. Octavio Paz tells us that nature can be like the body of a woman. He is exploring her body and all the mysteries that he encounters in this journey. In the poem he wrote “I travel your body, like the world” “I travel your length, like a river, /I travel your body, like a forest”. This and other phrases are what made me think that the poem was focusing on the similarities between nature and a woman.
The ending was a little confusing for me, but after reading your analysis it all comes together and it makes more sense especially when he concludes" I search w/o finding, I write alone,/theres no one here, and the day falls". I think you really understood this poem :) Nice Job!
I honestly read the poem in english and spanish(i prefer spanish) and all i can analyze is how he is describing the times of the year since " la Piedra del Sol" is the calendar i presume i can analyze it this way. After he describes the times of year he applies himself to it and here in the in the first stanza he describes the calendar and in line 4,5. " doubles back, and comes full circle, forever arriving' The Aztec calendar is round. Then he goes on applying himself to the moments of the year " i travel your body like, the world,your belly is a plaza full of sun," He also applies the use of the sun into his poem because the aztec calendar is determioned by the sun.Im sorry thati couldn't find anything related to life of him and his experiences. But i presumed everybody was going to do that so i just put down what i thought.
I think your analysis is quite good, however it would have been nice if you would've gone into depth with it. Don't be sorry for not making a connection to life; your thoughts are unique.
"...i presumed everybody was going to do that so i just put down what i thought." So if you knew no one would write about that, you would write about that, not what you really thought? I am confused.
Forgive me if my analysis becomes too long and seems to drag on. Bare with me as I attempt to hopefully make a good enough connection to the poem. Here it goes: as the poem starts out, Paz is, I'd like to say daydreaming but I'm not too sure about that as he goes on to describe nature. Slowly he then begins to make a connection to a body "body of light filtered through an agate, thighs of light, belly of light,...". He seems to become intrigued and fantasized by this and digs deeper into comparing it to possibly a lover. We now know that this body he has brought to focus is a female body in which he is symbolically traveling, "I travel your body, like the world". Paz is clearly mesmerized by her body, but the tone comes to a cold twist. Paz is now coming out of his daydreaming stage, and has hit the cold fact that she is all a memory now. He begins to realize the emptiness he now feels. This emptiness may have possibly existed there this whole time, but now it's hit harder since he went into depth with it. That concludes my rough analysis, hope it made sense.
I totally agree with your analysis. I hadn't thought about that but i see your connection. I had that idea in my mind but it was hard for me to describe it, but your's is clear and to the point.
What I analyzed from this poem is that a human's life is being described within nature's way of forming. It's trying to tell how people go through different situations that are hard to overcome. Also there will always be reflections of your past in your future. Our mind is always full of thoughts but not always follow them. Wrong paths darken our days and good paths brighten our days.
Throughout the the poem the author talks about his admiration and love for the nature around him. He travels and explores the beauty of nature and he makes connections of traveling through nature with a body of a woman. In the end it says how the author is searching through his memories whiles finding nothing. It also says how he writes alone in the end of the poem. From the connections of nature and a female body, it could mean how he realizes that he's all alone with no one to be with as the time passes by.
The poem "Piedra de Sol"by Octavio Paz has many different interpretations. A main one I see is nature, time, and the way of falling in love.
Nature: Almost all of the poem is talking about nature and it compares many things to it. Octavio Paz is trying to show us the beauty of nature through this poem. One that he uses a lot throughtout the poem is water. First, water is representing time as the river that it keeps on going saying that life goes on and it doesn't stop. Water is a substance that is pure so this tells that the girl he describes is pure. She is dressed with purity. Also, this girl satisfy his soul since its going to his roots in his chest. Falling in love: This was more of how he describe the season of spring and how he described the girl in th epoem. He described very perfect with no stain of inpurity whatsoever.
Octavio is expressing his experience with the main concepts that makes life beautiful and worth living. Love and nature. By describing his experiences of the effects of love through deep nature descriptions, he is exposing his spiritual feelings towards his love. Including how love makes you feel inside, the feeling you feel when you first see your love, and the feelings you feel when you're missing you're love. The absence of love is what makes one's life seem quite less enjoyable.
I agree he is describing about life and nature. I really liked how you worded it "The main concepts that make life beautiful and worth living". Nice analysis!
Nice quotation in the end because I agree, not saying that you need love all the time to enjoy life, but people need to be loved and feel loved. "The absence of love is what makes one's life seem quite less enjoyable."
In Piedra de Sol, Octavio Paz describes how his love for a woman. He writes “I travel your body,like the world, your belly is a plaza full of sun..” Here he meant that he wanted to know every single thing about her. There are many things to learn and explore about a person. Paz seems to be really interested and amazed by this woman. Towards the end of the poem Paz writes “ the hand that crumbles at my touch, the hair spun by a mob of spiders over the smiles of years ago....” In this line he's describing the woman as being old. A spider's web is white and he's saying her hair is now white because she's aged. In the end of the poem Paz writes “I search without finding, I write alone, there's no one here..” The woman he has loved has passed away and he is now lonely without her, but he keeps looking for her. In the last line of his poem he says “I walk through my shadow in search of a moment”. Paz was trying to find himself when he was with her, because when they were together he was happy and completely alive.
The poem "Piedra de sol" was a little difficult to understand considering all the detail and topics Octavio Paz mentions all at once. The way I interpreted it was the stages of life. He starts out w/ describing the cycle of life by comparing it to a river. He then describes birth and a possible future. He uses nature as comparison to the details explaining life. He mentions how everything has a body and how we can relate ours to nature. He then goes into full detail about love. In life, love is a big part, so it makes sense he would write most of his poem about it. He ends his poem by making the reader realize how life goes by quickly and memories fade.
The poem seems to be using nature as a metaphor for a woman and her body. He likes the woman, but has left him alone or broken.
"A tree deep-rooted yet dancing still."
The woman is the tree, but a tree doesn't dance still, it gets blown around by wind, but doesn't let the wind take her away. This means that she is strong.
"A glance that holds the world and all its seas and mountains dangling in the air, body of light, belly of light, the bays, the solar rock, cloud colored body, color of a brisk and leaping day, the world is visible through your body, transparent through your transparency"
He is describing the woman's glance and how she shines bright by her past, because a transparency is made visible by light shining through from behind.
"Dressed in the color of my desires, you go your way naked as my thoughts,"
The woman has the things in her that he likes, but she tries to change out of it to not get him to like her.
Sex. Now that I have your attention, Paz's "Piedra de sol" is about sex. The poem is full of sexual innuendos and double entendres. Paz uses nature's beauty as a metaphor of the journey it takes to succeed in sexual escapades. When Paz writes, "a path through the wilderness of days to come/ and the gloomy splendor of misery like a bird/ whose song can turn a forest to a stone,/ and the imminent joys on branches that vanish,/ the hours of light pecked away by the birds,/ and the omens that slip past the hand," he describes how easy it is to "kill the mood" and ruin an opportunity. As he continues, the sexual theme gets more obvious: "I travel, your body like the world... your breasts two churches... you are a city the sea assaults... dressed in the color of my desires, you go your way naked as my thoughts," The continuing metaphor of exploring her body like a forest describes the beauty and wonder of the journey, but also the potential danger, and especially the loneliness and misery when the journey ends. He describes the bitter-sweet pain of living a sexually active life without actually having an intimate, caring relationship or feeling any love: "the endless corridors of memory, the doors/ that open into an empty room/ where all the summers have come to rot,/... I search without finding, search for a moment,/ a face of storm and lightning-flashes... a face of rain in a darkened garden... I search without finding, I write alone... I walk through the days, the trampled moments," Paz says that despite the awesome adventures and journeys through the forest, in the end, he has no forest to call home. Despite the sexual excitement and ecstasy in the moment, it is nothing without actual love.
what i got from the analysis is that the author is describing nature deeply in his mind.he describes the wilderness and the beauties of it. As the uthor goes deeper into the poem the author remembers his former lover. he also can relate her beauties to the beauties of nature.one example is "I travel your eyes, like the sea."He describes her in full detail. her eyes, lips, etc.Eventually the author remembers that he lost her nd now writes alone. Even though he had fully described her.
In POV the story talks about the author himself who is very affectionate to someone. They use nature being a key of similar actions that people have. On the 8th stanza it gives off human features and body movements in the lines i.e.: "I travel your body, like a forest." That line shows seductiveness and praise showing how daring the two of you are. In the eyes of Octavio Paz he tries to tell the reader how he went through love and the "Fun Life" which led to unforgiving and endless memories. The time he spent diligently with her stripped him in emotional ways that no one has ever done. He expresses his feelings about the memories spent through the poem. The whole gist of this poem is: Love someone right, but love them in unthinkable ways.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you said "The time he spent diligently with her stripped him in emotional ways that no one has ever done." It does example some parts of the poem.
DeleteWhat do you think it means by loving someone in unthinkable ways?? Im curious
DeleteYou should explain further why he would directly relate love to nature.
DeleteI apologize ahead if time since this is a lot of writing.
ReplyDeleteThe mystery of the opposite sex is one that has been addressed in literature through the ages and is no less mysterious in Paz's "eternal moment." When he says;
"dressed in the color of my desires, you go your way naked as
my thoughts, I travel your eyes, like the sea, tigers drink their
dreams in those eyes, the hummingbird burns in those flames,
I travel your forehead, like the moon, like the cloud that passes
through your thoughts, I travel your belly, like your dreams,…"
Paz admits to being completely mystified. When the object of his affection is dressed in the color of his desires it seems he is projecting his helplessness, empowering his lover with it. As she goes her way she is naked as his thoughts. Here he is unable to mask his affections and once again admits to being powerless when matched against her mysterious and intoxicating womanhood. Indeed, from this point on he becomes a mere traveler, making his way across her person, in a surrealistic homage to her complexity. The true nature of his helplessness is revealed when he says;
"I travel your length, like a river, I travel your body like a forest,like a mountain path that ends at a cliff I travel along the edge of your thoughts, and my shadow falls from your white forehead,my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces and go on with no body,groping my way,…"
From this point the poem darkens, meandering through his search for meaning in heartache. He searches for; "the face that vanishes upon recall, the hand that crumbles at my touch,…" The search continues but appears not to bear fruit as he says;
"I search without finding, I write alone, there's no one here,
and the day falls, the year falls, I fall with the moment, I fall
to the depths, invisible path over mirrors repeating my shattered
image, I walk through the days, the trampled moments, I walk through all the thoughts of my shadow, I walk through my shadow in search of a moment, …"
The true awesome power of love is revealed in these lines, defined not by its joys but by its pain. The moment that he seeks seems to be that one moment when you feel truly alive, meted out in small doses to adults but portioned liberally to children.
So the poem tells the story of how Paz loved a woman?
Delete-Claps Loudly against the computer screen, and tries to virtually high five the computer- Your analysis is too good for me to question. I'll just add a comment, I like the way you analyzed the most meaningful parts in the poem and describing it in a way people can relate too!
DeleteVery brief and concise!!(sarcasm) i just realized that your analysis is the opposite of mine and yours makes sense. I knew you were good at poetry not analysing it.
DeleteYour analysis was very good. I liked your analysis of love in the poem, and how the connections between them made sense.
DeleteSince this poem starts off describing rivers and trees I think the main idea is that nature and its mysteries can be found everywhere. Octavio Paz tells us that nature can be like the body of a woman. He is exploring her body and all the mysteries that he encounters in this journey. In the poem he wrote “I travel your body, like the world” “I travel your length, like a river, /I travel your body, like a forest”. This and other phrases are what made me think that the poem was focusing on the similarities between nature and a woman.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the way the poem ended? What were your thoughts on that?
DeleteTechnically this is just an exert so their isn't an ending in our printout trust me the original poem is much longer.
DeleteThe ending was a little confusing for me, but after reading your analysis it all comes together and it makes more sense especially when he concludes" I search w/o finding, I write alone,/theres no one here, and the day falls". I think you really understood this poem :) Nice Job!
DeleteDiana , I enjoyed reading your analysis. It so true, mysteries of nature is similar to the mysteries of love.
DeleteI can see how you can compare/use nature and a woman now. I liked your analysis.
DeleteI honestly read the poem in english and spanish(i prefer spanish) and all i can analyze is how he is describing the times of the year since " la Piedra del Sol" is the calendar i presume i can analyze it this way. After he describes the times of year he applies himself to it and here in the in the first stanza he describes the calendar and in line 4,5. " doubles back, and comes full circle, forever arriving'
ReplyDeleteThe Aztec calendar is round. Then he goes on applying himself to the moments of the year " i travel your body like, the world,your belly is a plaza full of sun," He also applies the use of the sun into his poem because the aztec calendar is determioned by the sun.Im sorry thati couldn't find anything related to life of him and his experiences. But i presumed everybody was going to do that so i just put down what i thought.
This is interesting. I wish i could read the poem in spanish and maybe see if i might get a different point of view.
DeleteI think your analysis is quite good, however it would have been nice if you would've gone into depth with it. Don't be sorry for not making a connection to life; your thoughts are unique.
DeleteI also prefer the spanish poem because it makes more sense even though I ain't very good at explaining my analyses about it.
DeleteI like how your analysis relates the poem to the times of the year by the use of the sun. It's interesting.
Delete"...i presumed everybody was going to do that so i just put down what i thought."
DeleteSo if you knew no one would write about that, you would write about that, not what you really thought? I am confused.
Forgive me if my analysis becomes too long and seems to drag on. Bare with me as I attempt to hopefully make a good enough connection to the poem. Here it goes: as the poem starts out, Paz is, I'd like to say daydreaming but I'm not too sure about that as he goes on to describe nature. Slowly he then begins to make a connection to a body "body of light filtered through an agate, thighs of light, belly of light,...". He seems to become intrigued and fantasized by this and digs deeper into comparing it to possibly a lover. We now know that this body he has brought to focus is a female body in which he is symbolically traveling, "I travel your body, like the world". Paz is clearly mesmerized by her body, but the tone comes to a cold twist. Paz is now coming out of his daydreaming stage, and has hit the cold fact that she is all a memory now. He begins to realize the emptiness he now feels. This emptiness may have possibly existed there this whole time, but now it's hit harder since he went into depth with it. That concludes my rough analysis, hope it made sense.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your analysis. I hadn't thought about that but i see your connection. I had that idea in my mind but it was hard for me to describe it, but your's is clear and to the point.
DeleteWhat I analyzed from this poem is that a human's life is being described within nature's way of forming. It's trying to tell how people go through different situations that are hard to overcome. Also there will always be reflections of your past in your future. Our mind is always full of thoughts but not always follow them. Wrong paths darken our days and good paths brighten our days.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the the poem the author talks about his admiration and love for the nature around him. He travels and explores the beauty of nature and he makes connections of traveling through nature with a body of a woman. In the end it says how the author is searching through his memories whiles finding nothing. It also says how he writes alone in the end of the poem. From the connections of nature and a female body, it could mean how he realizes that he's all alone with no one to be with as the time passes by.
ReplyDeletei totally agree with you that he is espressing his love for nature through the poem by comparing it to many things.
DeleteThe poem "Piedra de Sol"by Octavio Paz has many different interpretations. A main one I see is nature, time, and the way of falling in love.
ReplyDeleteNature:
Almost all of the poem is talking about nature and it compares many things to it. Octavio Paz is trying to show us the beauty of nature through this poem. One that he uses a lot throughtout the poem is water. First, water is representing time as the river that it keeps on going saying that life goes on and it doesn't stop. Water is a substance that is pure so this tells that the girl he describes is pure. She is dressed with purity. Also, this girl satisfy his soul since its going to his roots in his chest.
Falling in love:
This was more of how he describe the season of spring and how he described the girl in th epoem. He described very perfect with no stain of inpurity whatsoever.
Octavio is expressing his experience with the main concepts that makes life beautiful and worth living. Love and nature. By describing his experiences of the effects of love through deep nature descriptions, he is exposing his spiritual feelings towards his love. Including how love makes you feel inside, the feeling you feel when you first see your love, and the feelings you feel when you're missing you're love. The absence of love is what makes one's life seem quite less enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteI agree he is describing about life and nature. I really liked how you worded it "The main concepts that make life beautiful and worth living". Nice analysis!
DeleteNice quotation in the end because I agree, not saying that you need love all the time to enjoy life, but people need to be loved and feel loved.
Delete"The absence of love is what makes one's life seem quite less enjoyable."
In Piedra de Sol, Octavio Paz describes how his love for a woman. He writes “I travel your body,like the world, your belly is a plaza full of sun..” Here he meant that he wanted to know every single thing about her. There are many things to learn and explore about a person. Paz seems to be really interested and amazed by this woman. Towards the end of the poem Paz writes “ the hand that crumbles at my touch, the hair spun by a mob of spiders over the smiles of years ago....” In this line he's describing the woman as being old. A spider's web is white and he's saying her hair is now white because she's aged. In the end of the poem Paz writes “I search without finding, I write alone, there's no one here..” The woman he has loved has passed away and he is now lonely without her, but he keeps looking for her. In the last line of his poem he says “I walk through my shadow in search of a moment”. Paz was trying to find himself when he was with her, because when they were together he was happy and completely alive.
ReplyDeleteI like how you analyzed the ending. I can kind of see how you would interpret that the woman passed away.
DeleteThe poem "Piedra de sol" was a little difficult to understand considering all the detail and topics Octavio Paz mentions all at once. The way I interpreted it was the stages of life. He starts out w/ describing the cycle of life by comparing it to a river. He then describes birth and a possible future. He uses nature as comparison to the details explaining life. He mentions how everything has a body and how we can relate ours to nature. He then goes into full detail about love. In life, love is a big part, so it makes sense he would write most of his poem about it. He ends his poem by making the reader realize how life goes by quickly and memories fade.
ReplyDeleteThe poem seems to be using nature as a metaphor for a woman and her body. He likes the woman, but has left him alone or broken.
ReplyDelete"A tree deep-rooted yet dancing still."
The woman is the tree, but a tree doesn't dance still, it gets blown around by wind, but doesn't let the wind take her away. This means that she is strong.
"A glance that holds the world and all
its seas and mountains dangling in the air,
body of light, belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock, cloud colored body,
color of a brisk and leaping day,
the world is visible through your body,
transparent through your transparency"
He is describing the woman's glance and how she shines bright by her past, because a transparency is made visible by light shining through from behind.
"Dressed in the color of my desires,
you go your way naked as my thoughts,"
The woman has the things in her that he likes, but she tries to change out of it to not get him to like her.
Sex. Now that I have your attention, Paz's "Piedra de sol" is about sex. The poem is full of sexual innuendos and double entendres. Paz uses nature's beauty as a metaphor of the journey it takes to succeed in sexual escapades. When Paz writes, "a path through the wilderness of days to come/ and the gloomy splendor of misery like a bird/ whose song can turn a forest to a stone,/ and the imminent joys on branches that vanish,/ the hours of light pecked away by the birds,/ and the omens that slip past the hand," he describes how easy it is to "kill the mood" and ruin an opportunity. As he continues, the sexual theme gets more obvious: "I travel, your body like the world... your breasts two churches... you are a city the sea assaults... dressed in the color of my desires, you go your way naked as my thoughts," The continuing metaphor of exploring her body like a forest describes the beauty and wonder of the journey, but also the potential danger, and especially the loneliness and misery when the journey ends. He describes the bitter-sweet pain of living a sexually active life without actually having an intimate, caring relationship or feeling any love: "the endless corridors of memory, the doors/ that open into an empty room/ where all the summers have come to rot,/... I search without finding, search for a moment,/ a face of storm and lightning-flashes... a face of rain in a darkened garden... I search without finding, I write alone... I walk through the days, the trampled moments," Paz says that despite the awesome adventures and journeys through the forest, in the end, he has no forest to call home. Despite the sexual excitement and ecstasy in the moment, it is nothing without actual love.
ReplyDeletewhat i got from the analysis is that the author is describing nature deeply in his mind.he describes the wilderness and the beauties of it. As the uthor goes deeper into the poem the author remembers his former lover. he also can relate her beauties to the beauties of nature.one example is "I travel your eyes, like the sea."He describes her in full detail. her eyes, lips, etc.Eventually the author remembers that he lost her nd now writes alone. Even though he had fully described her.
ReplyDelete