Poetry

» fraidykat - Richard Cory

I must disagree with your analysis. You have focused near entirely upon the material, and upon what you see, but you took no time to focus on what you cannot see.
Downtown and Uptown is not so much to be associated with classes, but rather with time. We go downtown when we have time of liesure, and that is when we see each other, network with eachotehr, fall in love with eachother, and in general, interact with our humanity.
The people in Richard Cory's life greatly admired him, but none of them felt they could be freely with him. Afterall, he had Everything - MORE THEN A KING, that is, Everything that Matters and Not just a little financial well being. He was The Perfect Man. So why ever would he be interested, or even worthy of any of them?
The one thing he did not have was love. Sure, he was admired by all, but he was not loved. No one felt they were pure enough, or good enough, or worthy of his love, to give love to him as they were. And though some peopel tried in vain to prepare themselves for him, they themselves did not graps the meaning of what Mr. Cory needed. He needed someone to be themself with him, for that would have been mroe then enough. But that never happened. One night, he had enough, because though he had everything, he had nothing at all.

-- posted by fraidykat

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» Linda Sue Grimes - Richard Cory

In response to Richard Cory posted by fraidykat:
Dear fraidykat,

Your response to the Robinson's poem "Richard Cory" displays the usual fallacies of a novice reader of poetry. It is illogical to claim that one can "focus" on what one does not see, but unfortunately, that is what beginning poetry readers think has to happen when they meet a poem.

Your claim that "Downtown" (sic) refers to time and not place is a prime example. I would wager that in a prose piece, you could not suffer such confusion, but because "Richard Cory" is a poem, the term, you assume, has to mean something other than its actual meaning.

Overlooking your many technical and grammatical errors, I will simply select your claim, "The one thing he did not have was love," to inform you that there is no evidence whatsoever in the poem to support or even suggest that Richard did not have love. The reader, in fact, learns absolutely nothing about Richard Cory's personal life. The speaker of the poem does not know Cory personally; he has merely seen Cory in passing and perhaps spoken a brief salutation.

In future, I hope you will take the time to become better acquainted with the way poetry works. You might start by taking my free course on Understanding Poetry at http://stonegulch.com/understandingpoetr...

Thank you for your response.

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