"Elegy for Alfred Hubbard" by Tony Conner

The poem “Elegy for Alfred Hubbard” by Tony Conner is a poem about an old plumber who has just died. The author describes Alfred as being a very genuine guy. He says “No other like him. Young men with knowledge of new techniques and theories from books may better his work, straight from college.” This is describing that he could be easily replaced when it came to getting the job done, but maybe not so much when it came to other things that may be more important to the customers. According to his customers; Alfred was not a very good plumber. The author hints this fact in a few different lines. One of the lines says “but who will challenge his squint-eyed looks in kitchen, bathroom, under floorboards, rules of thumb which were often wrong; seek as erringly stopcocks in cupboards, or make a job last half as long?” So the question to the customers then arises, if they knew that Alfred Hubbard was a bad plumber, then why didn’t they just fire him and get a new plumber?

               Alfred Hubbard was a people person. He enjoyed talking to his customers about things going on around town and around their neighborhoods. Although his skills as a plumber weren’t quite up to par, he still got hired by all of these people because he was a gossip king. He liked to tell the neighbors what was going on with the other neighbors and they enjoyed hearing about it. The author describes the old words as, “Seventy years of gossip muttered under his cap, his tufty thatch, so that his talk was slow and clotted, hard to follow, and too much.” This wise old man is making friends with his customers so they will keep hiring him to do the job. If you ask me it is genius. 

               I found the end of the poem very humorous. The stanza reads, “And the housewife banging his front-door knocker is not surprised to find him gone, and runs for Thwaite, who's a better worker, and sticks at a job until it's done.” I find it funny, but you still have to give props to the old man because the wife knows who the better plumber is all along, but she still picks Alfred. I think that the neighbors will be sad that they don’t have their old plumber around anymore to share the gossip with them. On the other hand, they will get their plumbing done correctly.

               Alfred Hubbard is a business man whether he does a good job with the plumbing or not. The only thing that “little man” (small businesses) can thrive on is having great customer relationships. It gives the consumer comfort in knowing that they don’t have to feel awkward about a stranger coming to their house. Alfred Hubbard knows that so he builds good customer relationships in the neighborhood by gossiping about the other neighbors. I also think that he gets a little bit of satisfaction out of this gossip as well though. 

"Trifles" by Susan Glaspell

The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell has a good bit of curiosity in it to say the least. The opening scene of the play is the sheriff, his wife, the court attorney, and Mr. and Mrs. Hale as they enter the Wright house; Mr. Hale explains how he had visited the house the day before and Mrs. Wright was still being nice, but acting out a little strange according to him. Mrs. Wright then confesses that her husband is upstairs, dead.

Mr. Hale was the first person to learn of the murder of Jon Wright, except for Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Wright claims that she was sound asleep when the murder took place and that she had no idea that her husband had been strangled. The male characters of the play, the sheriff, the court attorney, and Mr. Hale, automatically assume that she is lying to them and that she did in fact kill her husband. So Mrs. Wright is taken into custody until further investigation of the crime scene. Throughout the whole play the male characters kind of have an arrogant attitude towards the woman. Asking them why they are sticking up for Mrs. Wright, and acting like they know that she did it.

The men are looking around in the kitchen and they say, “Nothing here but kitchen things.” They seem to be degrading woman in society by saying this. Then they also criticize Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping skills, which kind of offends Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. Then men believe that the women are of no importance in society, let alone a murder case. The men then leave to go upstairs and the women surprisingly notice little details that the men seemed to overlook. They noticed that there were ruined fruit preserves, the bread has been left out of its box, is an unfinished quilt, a messy table, and an empty bird cage. The men tend to focus on looking for the hard evidence when the women look at the things around them and see just how miserable Mrs. Wright really was.

            The women were cleaning up the quilting supplies as they discover a little box. Inside the box is a dead bird wrapped in silk; and all the sudden there is the evidence. They assume that the man didn’t enjoy his wife’s birds singing so he busted the cage and strangled the bird’s neck. Ironically, Mr. Wright was found dead, strangled. The women decide to not tell the men about what they found. Instead Mrs. Hale puts the box with the dead bird locked inside of it in her coat pocket. The play ends when they exit the kitchen and Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discuss how Mrs. Wright’s sewing techniques. They say she “knots it” instead of saying she “quilts it,” another sign implying that she strangled her husband.

            The play to me was interesting but I still don’t think that the women made the correct choice by not telling the men what they had found. I could understand if it was something a little less serious, but it was murder. I know that the women were just defending their gender because they felt like the men were being disrespectful towards them, but I still don’t think its right.

"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop

                The poem “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop is a well written and information filled poem. The poem is essentially about a woman who loves to fish, but she catches this one particular fish and throws it back in the water, rather than keeping it. At first she is just excited that she caught a tremendous looking fish, and then after she stares at the fish for a while she starts to feel sympathetic towards the little guy and ultimately releases it back into the water.

            Early in the first few lines of the poem we can tell that the fish is aged. Bishop uses lines telling us that it is a big fish and that he was heavy. She also describes him as she’s reeling him and says, “He didn’t fight, He hadn’t fought at all.” This tells the reader that the fish has been through the process of battling with a human before, but instead of fighting this time the fish decides not to struggle at all and be defeated. To start off the poem Bishop says, “I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of the water, with my hook fast in the corner of his mouth.” She seems very disconnected from the fish as she is bringing him into the boat. Once she brings it in and stares at the fish, it seems her views change and she becomes more concerned about the fish’s life. She describes the fish as being, “battered and venerable and homely.” This tells the reader that the fish looks a little bent out of shape.

            As she moves towards the fish’s head she notices that there are five different fishing lines drooping from his lips. She describes the fishing rods as, “Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw.” After she sees this she then admires the fish. Not only has this fish snapped five fisherman’s lines that have tried to rail it in, but it still swims around alive with five hooks in his mouth; that’s pretty impressive. She then uses the line, “I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat.” I don’t know if she feels victorious because she has captured the creature that defeated so many others before, or if she feels that the fish was victorious because of his past escapes. Either way the woman has a lot of respect for the fish now that she’s seen what it has been through.

            By the end of the poem the narrator sees similarities between the fish and the rusty old rented boat she was using. The fish was old and beat up a little bit just like her boat was, but that didn’t mean that it still didn’t function. By this point in the poem the reader is feeling sympathetic for the fish as well and hopes that it is set free. She lets the fish free at the end and it was a happy ending to a great story and poem.

"The Mill" by Edwin Arlington Robinson

“The Mill” by Edwin Arlington Robinson is about a married couple that lives together but they live a life of misery. The poem was written in the 1920’s back when millers were a crucial factor in the country. However, long hours of pouring sweat and blood, they were soon replaced by machinery. The poem takes place in the miller’s house and also at the mill. The wife of the miller seemed to be broken throughout the whole poem. Perhaps she was heartbroken because her husband committed suicide, or she just might be miserable in general for the life she has been dealt. I believe her husband killed himself because his whole life was the mill. He had nothing else in the world except for the mill, and once that was gone he was very miserable. Line five of the poem shows devastation in the old man’s heart by saying, “There are no millers anymore.” The man felt like he had nothing else to live for except for the mill, and once he was replaced he decided to end his life. The wife goes to the mill and finds that her husband has hung himself. Perhaps the man thought that it would be right for him to go in a place that he loved so much, rather than just rotting away at his house.

                In the beginning of the poem I didn’t see the wife as one who would commit suicide, but once she saw her husband that way I think she felt obligated to do the same. She didn’t want to continue her already miserable life, especially without her husband in it. In lines nine through twelve of the poem it talks about how she could smell her husband as soon as she arrived at the mill. The wife committed suicide by jumping into the water and drowning herself. The poem explains it as, “Black water, smooth above the weir like starry velvet in the night, though ruffled once would soon appear the same as ever to the sight.” This is of course the last few lines of the poem when she jumps in the water. It talks about the “ruffled” water, which explains the waves from her hitting the water, but then soon after it would have been like nothing happened because the water would settle again.

                My comments about this poem are that I thought it was kind of interesting. It forced me to think outside the box a little bit and have to read it a few times to finally understand what had happened. I liked the way the author explained certain things and gave hints in the beginning to try and figure out what the poem was about. For example, he used words like “black”, “cold”, and “dead,” which explained the rough time the couple was going through. I also liked the way the author described the water at the end of the poem. It really made me visualize a smooth and still body of water sitting there, but also made me visualize what it would be like if a person had jumped into it. All in all, good poem.