ATP
I have two very good friends, and both of them happen to be named Alex. One of them is my alter ego physically, and the other is my alter ego intellectually, so between the two of them I tend to have a tremendously good time.
I see the first variety of Alex frequently. We’re both second-degree black belts, and we play Lacrosse, Basketball, Magic, and Starcraft at his house every weekend.
I’ve seen the second Alex on only two occasions in the last five years. He lives somewhat far away and there was once a small issue with me not being allowed to see him because our mothers don’t get along. In any case, we communicate online all the time, so we have not lost touch. Also, because of this situation, nothing will change between us when I go to school this fall. Nothing, including the “nerdy but fun!†games we play. When we’re not philosophizing about justice or the nature of beauty, we’re playing games like “ATP,†which I will share with you now.
The goal of ATP (which has nothing to do with Adenosine 5′-triphosphate) is to write the best one-paragraph analysis of a given short poem within the set time. Hence, “Analyze That Poem!â€
Let’s play.
I’ll begin with a recap of our last game, and then open it for continuation.
Here’s the selected poem:
A Poison Tree
by William Blake
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
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And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
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And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
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And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree
We gave ourselves five minutes to write up a snappy analysis, and this is what we came up with:
Alex’s Analysis
Dark, insinuating, and very creepy. While spelling almost nothing out, you get a perfect vision of what is happening to this person, complete with subtle but apparent imagery and a bleak ending. The moral of the story is that when you keep your emotions inside, they swell to a dangerous level, but this is told using continuing metaphors with a tree bearing fruit.
Eric’s Analysis
An allegorical work, sinister and mysterious, A Poison Tree depicts the discrepancy of anger toward a friend and anger toward an enemy while focusing on the swelling sentiments of the latter. Using vivid imagery and tasteful meter, Blake captures the truth of the threat one poses when one hinders the exhibition of one’s emotions. In the poem, the arrested rage the persona is possessed with augments into a metaphorical tree bearing the fruits of his wrath, which ultimately leads to the eerie demise of his unnamed foe.
Lacking a judge, we called it a tie, Alex’s winning in brevity and mine in language.
If you’d like to play, go for it. Either get your own friend and poem or play with us and respond!
Note that “A Poison Tree†may not be the best choice for group play as it probably lacks the possibility of diverse interpretations. As it is, our analyses were very similar. But have fun anyway.
–Eric